Rumblings on mythopoeia. Two type of deities. God is dead.
Last week there were several topics on mythopoeia, aspects and other things concerning beliefs of mortals. I tried to post answers in accordance with my vision of the lore, but it seemed somewhat contradictive. Just now I was thinking over it and then recalled something from Umineko no naku koro ni (for it became a great source of inspiration for me, though I’ve talked about it at other place) and suddenly came to realizing something very simple and yet vague. To someone it may be late news, someone will disagree with conclusions and someone will deny the basic statements. Despite it, I shall put it into words anyway, even though it will become gibberish as always when I do so ^because ^I ^suck ^in ^English because I shouldn’t do it at 4:30 am.
For a start, let’s remember the nature of Aurbis: in the beginning was word and word was AE. AE is the ‘dreaming’ (sub?)consciousness of Anu, which allows him to hallucinate. The Word was Struck by the Sword of PSJJJ and shatters into many fragments. They coalescence with magicka – sort of a raw material, from which the hallucination is made. After some time, one spirit become sentient and allows other to crystalize. It gives us two pieces of info. First one is the threefold composition of soul: it’s made of
AE – the essence, part of Anu’s consciousness, driven by emotion, basic desire, ego. Wille zur Macht. Appetion as Leibniz called it.
Consciousness – or rather self-consciousness
Magicka – corpus of the soul.
If Personality (Consciousness) desires (applies AE) it can either change environing hallucination (though it will cause a conflict with someone else’s AE) or use magicka to build a world inside itself. More details on that you can read in /u/RottenDeadite work called Oscillating something-something magic, even though I would call it mysticism rather than magic.
Second bit of info seems too obvious and thus overlooked. Admixture of close dream-emotion can give birth to consciousness.
What happened next? Gods started making up stories. But Gods themselves were stories – or more like parts of stories. Like unlimited shades of any single concept, they could cut off a sparse amount to create a story – another emotion, though lesser still unlimited. For gods there’s no difference between telling a myth and giving a birth.
Time progresses and Doom Drum starts its beating. Like his father, who shattered singularity into multitude of infinities, Shor decides to shatter an infinity into multitude of mortal finities (and then mortal finity into dead 1/finity and then 1/finity will shatter beyond the measurement of this Orbis). His plan fails on the halfway. Aka stops the time and records everyone present to never be lost. Let me make an allusion: Mundus is virtual reality. Your concsiousness and soul are going to die. Aka makes a footprint of it and places it inside that virtual reality in order to go through an endless simulation in hope you’ll be able to find a way to save yourself. Then Aka himself and his 7 compatriots devotes themselves completely to maintaining the simulation effectively turning into programs. Here starts the Great Battle, which is only a moment for Meta Beings but endless loop of time for those who inside; when time ends, time starts again and noone is forgotten. Note, how the consciousness inside the game board is not the meta-consciousness, but a copy of it attached to the captured bit of a soul. Elves believe they are clones. Humans believe they are artificial creations. Who is right? Both. But I digressed.
So, let’s one again look at the process of building Mundus. We have an infinite pool of close-related aspects – a Divine. Let’s say Auri-El. Shor cuts off a finite part of it, Auriel – let’s say he has a pool of 100 aspects, taken from Auri-El. Now, we have 5 male Divines and 3 female Divines (actually, a lot more if we count all smaller spirits turned into plants, faeries etc.), who procreate between themselves and each possible pair makes 8 children. Each next generation has a pool of 9 less aspects less. Why this happens? Maybe because different aspects conflict with each other…. Anyway, it’s the regular ancestry thing. After 10 generation we have a ton of scions, each one bearing 10 aspects, having very probably at least one from every original 8 Divines (though Altmers try to regulate the randomness a little). In theory, by careful eugenic one could reverse the process and recreate those Eight, if there’s a need. But there’s no really, because they will be anyway mortal pieces inside the virtual chess simulation. Well, not that’s totally useless - there’s probably a way out, dracochrysalis, shown by at Convention. It allows one to escape Mundus and it’s clearly better to leave in a big chunk rather than as a small fry. Maybe, the subgradience is the reason, why it’s become impossible, who knows? Anyway, Thalmor gave up on that idea and decided to unmake the entire thing rather than allowing everyone to bother with personal salvation. A-a-ah! Sweet dreams of communism! Also, there’s the Road of Love (leading to CHIM), where you harmonize your personal aspects but making ‘em in cohesive story, but that’s not really the point of this thread. Go read some Nietzsche if you are interested.
What do we see after all that baby-making? On one hand we have eight comatose Divines. They lost their personality, but still have a giant part of AE (as well as a giant blobs of magicka). On the other hand we have a host of mortals, where everyone holds little bit of AE. But there is A LOT of them. If you look from above it’ll resemble Primordial Soul-Soup, from where et’Ada appeared. And that’s where mythopoeia begins. Divines, by being comatose programs saves some reactions to stimuli. If a lot of mortals combine their AE and with their beliefs poke a Divine consciousness, it will reflexively react and meta-body with the remnant of soul applies some changes to the world. At this point phase the god to whom prays are directed is a part of original AE without real consciousness. However, Divines are quantum beings and from time to time they throw off their old skin. And here it is! Mortals from their collective dream, from this society of zealots and madmen give birth to a new myth – new consciousness! Dagoth Voryn knew it and built Akulakhan accordingly. Alandro Sul didn’t know it and spread his delusions until it became a reality. Call it 3rd Walking Way. Call it 6th Walking Way. I don’t care, but it happens. And here problem arises. Those new beings have their own consciousness, but have no real AE – they borrow it from aligned mortals. It hides another problem: different gods have same aspects and need souls with those aspects. Here the real fight begins. Without the AE, they won’t be able to leave the gameboard, but they are already not a part of it. They covet for their AE with all their passion, because AE is their passion. Ironically, it already have a mortal owner. Comical inversion of CHIM – CHIMster know s/he is a part of a bigger machine, but holds for his/her consciousness; those beings are compilations of lesser parts, they know it, but hold for their consciousness. When a mortal dies, his soul goes to the one, to whom he was aligned most. By default that’s Nirn, our Mother. AE ALMA NRN! But if a mortal truly belief in a deity, he becomes a part of it. That’s why souls are the most valuable thing for divinities – lunar currency. Without it they are nothing more than hollow ghosts of neverborn divinities (a hint is hidden in those words).
Now that you know it, will you still believe in gods? Or will you say Gott ist tot?
tl;dr multitude of mortals, where everyone hold a divine spark resembles first moments of Creation, when et’Ada crystalized. Divine spark allows mortals to tap into divine resources (through sympathetic effect) and re-shape Nirn. But if many enough mortals start believing into a myth, this myth becomes sentient and starts stealing souls of its faithful after their death.