A History of Anu; Chapter One: Before the Mundus

A HISTORY OF ANU

Being a comprehensive record of all events to have thus far transpired within the universal totality, called ANU by Men and Elves.

by Brer, of the Three Hares

CHAPTER ONE: Before the Mundus

Quoted Sources:

  • The Anuad (via The Anuad Paraphrased) - by Unknown
  • Sithis - by Unknown
  • The Monomyth: Chapters Altmeri and Yokudan - by the Temple Zero Society
  • The Thirty-six Sermons of Vivec: Sermon Ten - by Lord Vivec née Vehk

We cannot know what happened before the creation of our totality, or even if that question is one that makes sense, but through synthesis of myth, we can arrive at some common consensus.

The Anuad, a Bosmeri myth (or perhaps Ayleid; scholarship is hazy on this), tells us the following (quoted from The Anuad Paraphrased, for ease of consumption):

> The first ones were brothers: Anu and Padomay. They came into the Void, and Time began. > > As Anu and Padomay wandered the Void, the interplay of Light and Darkness created Nir. Both Anu and Padomay were amazed and delighted with her appearance, but she loved Anu, and Padomay retreated from them in bitterness. > > Nir became pregnant, but before she gave birth, Padomay returned, professing his love for Nir. She told him that she loved only Anu, and Padomay beat her in rage. Anu returned, fought Padomay, and cast him outside Time. Nir gave birth to Creation, but died from her injuries soon after. Anu, grieving, hid himself in the sun and slept.

Some scholars posit that this is the point at which our universe truly begins, with the Anu of The Anuad, asleep in the sun, being the ANU of Altmeri myth. That is to say; the universal totality.

Despite its typicaly primitive objectification of the reproductive female, something to be expected from the myths and legends of early societies where it was expected that women were worthy of fighting and dying over, in The Anuad we see some mythic understanding in line with what both the Altmer and the Yokudans also recognise in their myths; that whatever the cause, the foundation of the universal totality is one of grief, violence, and hate.

From The Monomyth, a tract by the Temple Zero Society on common themes in Tamrielic myths; specifically, its chapters titled Altmeri: "The Heart of the World" and Yokudan: "Satakal the Worldskin":

> Anu encompassed, and encompasses, all things. So that he might know himself he created Anuiel, his soul and the soul of all things. Anuiel, as all souls, was given to self-reflection, and for this he needed to differentiate between his forms, attributes, and intellects. Thus was born Sithis, who was the sum of all the limitations Anuiel would utilize to ponder himself.

> Satak was First Serpent, the Snake who came Before, and all the worlds to come rested in the glimmer of its scales. [...] but of course there was nothing outside the First Serpent, so aid had to come from inside it; this was Akel, the Hungry Stomach. Akel made itself known, and Satak could only think about what it was, and it was the best hunger, so it ate and ate.

Padomay, Sithis, Akel, PSJJJJ. It is the fundamental force of differentiation in the universal totality. It is the force by which any part of the totality of ANU gains an identity other than ANU. Not by self-love, but by other-hate. It is the definition of the self by opposition to the other, which is created by the very act of opposition. This is the foundation for all self-identification in the universal totality, and it is unstable and corrupting, as it will eventually tear everything asunder.

As Lord Vivec (née Vehk) wrote in His Sermon Ten:

> [...] He will sunder the whole for the sake of a shingle. [...] SITHISIT is the start of all true Houses, built against stasis and lazy slaves.

And in Sithis, a perverted tome by those that worship this force of differentiation:

> Sithis sundered the nothing and mutated the parts, fashioning from them a myriad of possibilities. These ideas ebbed and flowed and faded away and this is how it should have been.

And this is exactly what is represented as happening in myth. The force of PSJJJJ, self-identification by opposition, overwhelms the aurbis until the divisions are so fine as to render the universe indistinguishable from itself once more; ANU. With the metaphorical reality of Akel's "hunger" clearly defined, we now return to the Yokudan myths; the only of their kind to explicitly tell of a cyclic destruction and rebirth of the entire totality, of which there is little scholarship.

> Soon there was enough room to live in the worlds and things began. These things were new and they often made mistakes, for there was hardly time to practice being things before. So most things ended quickly or were not good or gave up on themselves. Some things were about to start, but they were eaten up as Satak got to that part of its body. This was a violent time.

> Pretty soon Akel caused Satak to bite its own heart and that was the end. The hunger, though, refused to stop, even in death, and so the First Serpent shed its skin to begin anew. As the old world died, Satakal began [...]

This cycle of "skin-shedding" is also represented in The Anuad, given some small interpretation.

> Meanwhile, life sprang up on the twelve worlds of creation and flourished. After many ages, Padomay was able to return to Time. He saw Creation and hated it. He swung his sword, shattering the twelve worlds in their alignment.

It is important to note that all of this occurs before the creation of the Mundus, which renders it entirely separate from the "Kalpic" legends of the Nords and their Dragon-God Alduin, presented in The Aldudaggavelashadingas, and other skald-songs, which tell of a cyclic Mundus, not this grander cyclic Aurbis. As we see in the both The Anuad and the Yokudan myth, the first recognisable "spirits" do not arise until after this first universal death.

> and when things realized this pattern so did they realize what their part in it was. They began to take names, like Ruptga or Tuwhacca, and they strode about looking for their kin. As Satakal ate itself over and over, the strongest spirits learned to bypass the cycle by moving at strange angles. They called this process the Walkabout, a way of striding between the worldskins. Ruptga was so big that he was able to place the stars in the sky so that weaker spirits might find their way easier. This practice became so easy for the spirits that it became a place, called the Far Shores, a time of waiting until the next skin. Ruptga was able to sire many children through the cycles and so he became known as the Tall Papa. He continued to place stars to map out the void for others, but after so many cycles there were almost too many spirits to help out.

Thus we come to the following simplified narrative:

  1. ANU is the primal object. PSJJJJ is the primal action.
  2. When the primal action, PSJJJJ, is taken upon the primal object, ANU, Anuiel is differentiated from it.
  3. Anuiel differentiates by defining its limitations, Sithis.
  4. Spirits and Worlds are born and die within ANU by this process of PSJJJJ acting upon all within it.
  5. Through runaway PSJJJJ, ANU is returned to indistinguishable totality ∵ it is impossible to pick out any singular voice in overwhelming noise.
  6. This cycle of differentiation into complexity and dissolution into simplicity repeats ad infinitum.
  7. Certain spirits learn to escape the cycle by "Walkabout", living multiple cycles.

An even simpler model might be rendered as such:

  1. [ANU]

  2. [ANU | Anuiel]

  3. [ANU | (Anuiel | Sithis)]

  4. [ANU | ((Anuiel | Spirits and Worlds of Anuiel) | Sithis)]

  5. [Noise] = [ANU]
  6. [ANU] → [Noise] → [ANU] → ∞

This was the pattern of the universal totality; self-destructive cycles of differentiation into the infinite and collapse back to the indistinguishable singular object; until the arrival of Lorkhan. This will be the subject of the second chapter of A History of Anu.