Discerning the Transmundane quest, Septimus won't give me the blank lexicon or the Attunement Sphere. The journal updates as if he has. I check sqv for DA04 and REF LexiconCubeBlank = NONE as well as REF Attunementsphere=NONE.

They are in his inventory and I can add them through the console using 3a3d2 for the lexicon and 3532c for the sphere. I can also pickpocket them from Septimus, kill him and take them, or do an openactorcontainer and take them; however, although the locked staircase will work with the sphere no matter how I get it, the lexicon pedestal won't. This causes a cascade effect of setting quest stages and adding more quest items until I'm playing in the console more than in the game.

It appears that unless the blank lexicon is given to me by Septimus, some ref or variable isn't set properly. The pedestal isn't set to recognize what's in my inventory, but that variable.

At this point, I don't care why it is happening, I've gone back to a save before I got the Ruminations Quest, lost a lot of time and brain cells looking at my load order and such.

All I want to know is how to find that box that isn't being checked when I get the blank lexicon and check it so I can move on.

This is apparently an old bug, there are many (google) references to lexicon pedestals not working when quest givers don't give the cubes and the player has to console them in. Sadly, besides starting a new game or going back to the beginning of time, savewise, nobody has posted a fix. If anyone has any ideas, I'd gladly give you SHESON's first born for them.