A Beginner's Dictionary of Tamrielic Philosophy: 1st Edition

A Beginner's Introduction To Tamrielic Philosophy: 1st Edition

Philosophy is an age old subject that many people find boring at best or downright strange at worst. People hear strange terms like "CHIM", "Amaranth", "Anuic", and they immediately react as though none of it were real. "I can only trust what I see!", they say-not realizing that they too are doing philosophy!

The truth is that everyone does philosophy. In broadest terms, it is just the search for knowledge and reason. Some people are just more philosophically sophisticated than others. The editors of this dictionary believe that this is not because people are incapable of reasoning, but that they have not been educated about the more esoteric philosophical terms. This dictionary wants to fix that problem.

With that said, let the search for knowledge begin!

Anuic: Referring to a philosophy that favors stasis, order, potential, and stability as opposed to change. Named after the ancient figure of Anu, principle of stasis.

Padomaic: Referring to a philosophy that favors, chaos, change, limit, destruction, and entropy. Named for the ancient figure of Padomay, principle of change.

Lorkhanic: A special qualifier for Padomaic philosophies with an emphasis on limitation, particularly as a means to some greater goal.

CHIM: Ehlnofex for Royalty. Its sigil is in the shape of a tower, constantly in danger of falling apart. In metaphysics, it is the theoretical state in which a person becomes one with the universe while maintaining their identity, thus gaining incredible power.

Type Theory: The field of study which attempts to organize entities according to their mythic type, i.e. clocks AE Akatosh.

AE: Denotes mythic equivalence according to type.

Tower: Any entity capable of providing identity to an object, artificial or otherwise.

Stone: Any entity capable of providing power to a Tower.

Amaranth: The theoretical state in which a mortal escapes from this universe to create his own.

Mantling: The act of mimicking an exemplar of a mythic type so perfectly that the Dreamer is no longer able to distinguish between the two.

Dreamer: The entity that is hallucinating this universe.

Aurbis: Literally "Grey Maybe", it is often used as a word for the whole universe.

Apotheosis: The act of ascending to a higher gradient.

Gradience: Denotes the ontological status of an entity, i.e. Akatosh is of a higher gradient than a horse.

Ontology: From Aldmeri "ontos", meaning "being". Refers to the "what" of an entity, i.e. a man's ontology is composed of body and soul.

Dracochrysalis: The process by which a mortal can ascend gradients by removing limit through the alteration of time.

Music: Referring to the substance composing the fabric of the Aurbis

Tonal Magic: That branch of magic which manipulates the music of the Aurbis

Epistemology: From the Aldmeri "epistemi", meaning knowledge. The study of how to come to the truth.

Divine Dream Cosmology: A cosmological model which argues the Aurbis is best defined as a Dream, which is real to us but unreal to the Dreamer.

Crystal Universe Cosmology: A cosmological model which argues that the universe has eternally been composed of necessarily existing abstract objects, and that the contingent Mundus was created by the intervention of an outside entity disrupting the balance.

I AM AND I ARE ALL WE: A Padomaic theory of personal identity which states that each person is the same being as the whole universe, but remains the same person.

The Necessary I: An Anuic theory of personal identity which states that all personal identities are necessarily existing sets of properties.

The Dreamsleeve: The cycle which mortal souls go through after death which removes all personal properties from a soul.

Incarnation: A soul which fulfills the sufficient conditions to be considered the reincarnation of a previous soul.

Light: Anuic symbol of uncorrupted purity.

Fire: Padomaic symbol of a refining force.

Amaranthine Romanticism: A philosophy which combines the three central tenets of Padomaic philosophy-I AM AND I ARE ALL WE, Divine Dream Cosmology, and Love as an act of will. It emphasizes the creation of the Amaranth as the end goal of mortal existence.

Neostatic Transcendentalism: An Anuic philosophy which combines the Necessary I, Crystal Universe Cosmology, and various other Anuic ideas into a unified systematic philosophy. It emphasizes a return to the state prior to the creation of the Mundus as the ultimate goal of mortal races.