The Thu'um is a Big Deal: Divinity

In this essay I’m going to explore the relationship firstly between concepts and divinity (using Arkay as the perfect example), secondly between concepts and the Thu’um, and third between the Thu’um and divinity.

Part 1: Concepts and Divinity

As we all know, each TES deity has a sphere of influence which defines the way they interact with other TES characters. Kyne is nature, the sky, etc., and causes storms. Mehrunes Dagon is destruction, so he destroys stuff. And so on. This is reminiscent of the various gods of various real life mythologies: Poseidon rules over the sea, Thor is the god of thunder and all that.

However, in TESlore, it goes deeper than that. All things in TESlore are aspects of a higher being, called the Amaranth, and the various deities are embodiments of the most important concepts at play in the Amaranth’s mind. These beings have the power (creatia) to shape the dream in the image of their sphere, and also have an intrinsic understanding of the concept that matches the Amaranth’s vision for it (knowledge). This knowledge, power, and the purpose of making the knowledge a reality using their power, is most of what makes their identity (AE). Most of these concepts always existed, and therefore most of these beings always existed. Sometimes, however, an important new idea is formed, leaving a sphere open. Whoever picks up that knowledge may pick up the AE of a new god.

Here I turn to the example of Arkay. As stated here and in Varieties of Faith in the Empire, Arkay is not regarded as primordial; instead, being a god of mortality, he aptly possesses origins as a mortal. Like Arkay himself, the sphere of life and death is not primordial. Before Convention, all beings were et’ada, or primordial ada (immortal concept-beings whose ranks include Aedra and Daedra). When Mundus was created and the mortal coil began, however, the important idea of life and death was created as well. In this story, we observe Ark’ay the man picking up the knowledge necessary to take up the AE of Arkay the god. It is not insignificant that he was on his deathbed, and that he did not have enough time to fully complete his work: one thing necessary for the Arkay the god to know is that mortals desire immortality and fear death because they feel that they have not done all of the things they want to do. One cannot walk a path without knowing or learning how to walk the path, and one cannot truly know how to walk the path without walking the path. Life and death became manifest through Arkay because he was the one who understood it well enough to represent it in the Amaranth’s mind.

The idea of duality is important enough for a god to fill it since duality defines CHIM, and Vivec rose to the position “God of Duality” not just with the Heart of Lorkhan but with his understanding and practice of duality as well. When Shor’s sphere had no one to represent it, Talos took up that mantle. Mannimarco became the embodiment of undeath, and used Numidium to make it such that undeath as Mannimarco was important enough to warrant apotheosis (the Numidium’s tonal architecture capabilities include giving people godhood by shifting the Dream to include their divinity as a reality).

When these ideas become as important as the primordial divine-tier ones, the beings to master these ideas become as important as the primordial divine tier ones.

Part 2: Concepts and the Thu’um

This one is fairly simple. You learn what fire is on the metaphysical level, and you become capable of insisting on fire. Your willpower, which relates to Anuic self insistence, drives the reaction. Your own creatia is the battery, since the Thu’um does not pull from your magicka reserves. Your knowledge pertaining to fire sets the Tone of a YOL TOOR SHUL to work correctly.

In short, you have to know a concept to insist upon it, just as the gods have to know their concepts in order to embody them.

Part 3: The Thu’um and Divinity

Herein lies the crux of it: when a deity Shouts, they are pulling from knowledge of their sphere so as to enact their sphere: concept-made-real, which is the whole point of the Thu’um. And concept-made-real is the point of ada as well, as each ada and all they do is the realization of the concepts pertaining to their sphere. Moreover, the Thu’um carries a link to divinity in that it does not use magicka: gods do not borrow power from Magnus, instead using their own, and use of the Thu’um satisfies this. When Kyne shouts storms into the world, she uses her own power and knowledge. The Thu’um, then, is how Kyne operates; it is the expression of her power and her sphere and how her divine concepts are made manifest. She shares this with other notable beings: the rest of Nordic pantheon (including Alduin and his dragons), Talos, Akatosh, the Last Dragonborn, Reman, and in its own way the Numidium (more on that later). It’s not just the language of dragons, it’s the language of the gods of Man.

The greatest example is Talos. Here, the loss of his Voice is compared to the loss of Shor’s Heart, and even cited as an example of AE alignment. Shor’s Heart was the source of his power, how he made his ideas manifest, and so it is with Tiber’s Throat.

In short, the Thu’um is the way Man-aligned deities exert divine-tier magical power. When a Greybeard shouts, he is changing the world in the exact same way that many gods do, albeit probably on a smaller scale. And an important detail of a Man-aligned deity (with the exception of the Yokudan pantheon) is that he or she uses the Thu’um as a crucial way of realizing their sphere.

If your AE is the embodiment of a certain concept, if you know it in and out, and if you use your own power to make it manifest in the world (particularly using the Thu’um)? You’re walking the way gods walk. More on that later.

TL;DR: The Thu'um is godspeak magic closely tied to divinity.