BoM/TWS Message Forum

Take this with a grain of salt, as I feel Seuzz is the one that should clarify this, but:

1) Consider that the Libra is written as a treatise as much as a grimoire, so that the student can learn about the metaphysical components little by little, understanding how one thing builds up to another. If going backwards, the principle might be true - the corpse-golem spell would come before the actual golem spell, so you must learn how to destroy the golem shell before trying it on a larger scale. You could probably gauge how to create a spell that completely dissolves the golem into its constituent components from these two. Placing the master transference sigil is mostly to add an alternative to destroying what's essentially the costliest spell in the entire book.

That said, there are two things I can say, but they're mostly opinion:
* The first is that destroying a golem can be dangerous. The golem itself is essentially a dot of substantia encased into the thinnest layer of imago while trapping the caster's essentia (if any was placed on it). Going with my opinion, substantia isn't solid - the golem isn't made of substantia but rather something that, for all intents and purposes, is a perception of it. (Think of it as coding fluid mechanics into a game - it's not real water, but for the purposes of the simulation it is.) Working out the golem-destroying sigil would most likely dissipate the golem, or at the very least turn it back into the mound of earth.

* The second is that it's entirely possible that von G had no idea on how to work it out, or didn't want to. Perhaps the act of creating a golem was sacred to him, so he refused to work it out, but figured that if he wrote the two previous sigils, the "student" could figure out the third one if he wanted to. Conversely, it could be that once you create a golem, you can't unmake it, so the transference spell exists as a way to disassociate yourself from it.

2a) This is speculation, but it's likely that the spell requires any kind of body part from the new master. As I see it, the master transference sigil is really a way to evaporate the previous essentia, breaking the original connection. If left without a replacement, it'll create a free golem; else, it'll only do a transference. It's possible that the intention was to create a sigil that would destroy the essentia of the original caster (to free up "slots"), but the dangers of free golems caused an alteration that would create a transference, and this is what ended up in the book.

2b) I assume it's true, but you'd require changing some of the sigils. Both the corpse-golem and the mask-golem are indistinguishable from the golem itself, so it'd be natural to think it's possible to do so - at least in terms of the corpse-golem, as they're identical. I feel the mask golem would require a sort of "emulation mode" to allow the transference - and that depends if the method of creating the mask golem influences anything. (I.e., whether adding the essentia donation to the mask itself or to the paste during creation.)