This is the new WoD Cosmology blog, it won't contain any terminology, as that can be found in Ultima's blog, which is still valid.
Cosmology[]
A Tapestry:[]
- The Tapestry is the smallest structure in World of Darkness, each of the settings takes place mainly within the Tapestry. Functionally, it can be used similarly to "Universe".
"Tapestry, the: A Metaphor for Reality" Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition, Page; 29
- The Tapestry is known to be Infinite, but considered finite to the Tellurian. (See Tellurian section for that)
| “ | "Infinity is too big to wrap your head around. Like God, it needs a face. The Tapestry is that face – a metaphor for that which exists. Whereas the Tellurian is potential, the Tapestry is form. All woven together like some artistic curtain, the strands of interconnected existence create a shimmering whole." | „ |
| ~ Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition, Page; 90 |
| “ | "Reality, as most of humanity knows it, is defined by the collective belief of the six billion people who live on Earth. It’s a system governed by immutable laws, a dimension where two plus two equals four, gravity works, and the sun rises in the east every morning. In this “real world,” most of humanity remains oblivious to the existence of the supernatural world, actively disbelieving (or at least ignoring) anything that isn’t “real.” Every day, mass media chatters on endlessly with its trivial observations, money changes hands, and life goes on. Mages, on the other hand, are aware of alternatives to this reality. They have awakened to other possibilities. For visionaries who can perceive things outside the physical world, other dimensions surrounding the Earth contain the improbable, the impossible, the idealized, and the imaginary. These are the Otherworlds, the Infinite Tapestry of creation." | „ |
| ~ The Infinite Tapestry, Page 5 |
- The Tapestry itself contains all of History, all that is, was and all that can be imagined.
| “ | "The Infinite Tapestry of creation encompasses everything — all that is, all that was, and all that can be imagined. For a frame of reference, mages place the Earth at the center of all creation, if only to understand the mysteries around it. Call this reality the physical world, if you like, or the real world, if you eschew all alternatives. We call it Earth." | „ |
| ~ The Infinite Tapestry, Page 9 |
- This is important as the Technocracy have very specific ideas on what's going on with the cosmology called Tychoidian Cosmology which covers Max Tegmark's IV Multiverse.
| “ | "Founded in Platonism, Tychoides’s ideas were refined by cross-research with Iteration X and before their defection, the Electrodyne Engineers. Modern Tychoidian cosmology treats the cosmos as a “hypercomputer:” a phenomenon able to exceed the limits of Turing machines and generate infinite, continuous processing. Physical laws behave like cellular automata and generate further “input” (for lack of a better word in English) for cosmological processing. These functions are handled by the smallest possible unit of physical information, which we call the Prime Element ... Once these processes produce sentient beings capable of generating their own reality models, the universe instantiates the results just like any other computable input. Non-intelligent sentient beings merely model their own sense data, and cannot model what passes for their imaginations with enough fidelity to generate physical manifestations. But sapient beings, like humans, can instinctually produce perfect mathematical models of imagined objects — as physicist Roger Penrose postulated, such brains are natural quantum computers, capable of more processing power than anatomical studies suggest." | „ |
| ~ Void Engineers, Revised, Page 55 |
| “ | "Ensemble Space: Called the “Astral Plane” by Reality Deviants, Ensemble Spaces contain objects generated by human minds that lack the characteristics required to instantiate in material reality. This dimension includes fundamental mathematical objects: the Platonic “ultimate ensemble” predicted by mathematician Max Tegmark. The prevalence of “unreal” mathematical constructs gives rise to spatial distortions and subdimensions containing similar data sets, superstitiously referred to “conceptual realms,” “Epiphamies,” and “kingdoms of the gods.”" | „ |
| ~ Void Engineers, Revised, page 56 |
- This is further amplified by Set theory's inclusion within the Ensemble, expanding the expression of Mathematics into Set theory, where it is embodied within the Umbra, an exists only because people imagine it does, with Set theory's power and domination in Mathematics being due to this, thus, Physical reality as a whole with the Ensemble (Tapestry as a whole) would be Tier 0:
| “ | "The Toposes: Less of a specific being than a class of them, the Toposes are some of the most baffling denizens of the Platonic Realm/ They can be found in the Digital Borderlands where each has carved out a territory where they make the rules. These territories only ever grow over time, and seem to relate to how much they've been visited. If pushed, some will suggest that the majority of the Platonic Realm itself is simpyl the territory of a single Topos that has grown particularly dominant: Set theory" | „ |
| ~ Paradigm Explored: Number and Shape, Page 28 |
- Beyond this, The Tapestry has infinite levels, and falling through them one loses distinction and duality;
| “ | "But almost everyone in the world wants to manipulate others." Overwhelmed, Battering Ram felt herself forced down into the mandala of history, whose woven threads stretched out before her limited vision.
Being outnumbered should not strike fear into the heart of one in contact with her inner self. With lashing claws Tiger tore through the Tapestry and rushed forward through infinite level of concurrent existence. Dragon became less corporeal, and the air became thick with oppressive heat. It is my turn, Dragon. The Voice pierced through thought, and form grew in the distance: Let me clutch her Avatar. The Celestial Dragon's body snaked about and Fall Breeze rushed away into nothingness. She felt her being stripped away. Neither woman nor man, human nor insect, earth nor sky, she fell. |
„ |
| ~ Akashic Brotherhood (1994) - Page 29 |
Resonance:[]
- Resonance was a concept introduced in Demon and gives additional layers to the World of Darkness Cosmology. When the Angels created their Tapestry, Creation had Near-Endless layers where things had conceptually different meanings.
| “ | "“You’re not very well equipped to understand it,” he said at last. “I don’t say that to be insulting. The world was fundamentally different back then. It was… more complex. Richer. It had layers that are simply absent, now.” “Layers?” “Yes… consider this coffee we’re drinking. It’s only coffee, right? It’s not anything else?” “I guess not.” “In the uncorrupted world, this coffee could also exist simultaneously as a song or an aesthetic idea or even a sentient and helpful creature. Different things on different layers, all equally real, all similar, but each discrete — even while they were simultaneously experienced.” Seeing Matthew’s expression, he continued." | „ |
| ~ Demon, the Fallen, Core, Page 25 |
| “ | "“I’ll give you a more relevant example. The first people: Were they Adam and Eve, a woman and a man, or were they the evolved descendents of apes?” “They were a woman and a man, as the Bible says.” “Correct. But they were also a multitude of ape descendents. The universe was made in seven days, on one level, but that same span of time was billions of years on another level. “Or consider the Angels of the Firmament. On some levels of reality they were conveying the life-giving breath of the Maker on a purely scientific level — they were, literally were, the process by which solar energy striking simple carbon molecules agitated them into forms of ever increasing complexity, until they became organic molecules, then primitive single-celled animals, then nucleated cells and so on, up to and including dogs, cats and humans. But at the same time they were crouching over the mouths of newly sculpted creatures of all types, breathing into their mouths to animate them.” “Are you talking about metaphor?” Gaviel chuckled. “Not yet, no. These contrary things really were simultaneously true in the young cosmos. It makes no sense to you because you’re used to living in this, the singular world. But once you accept the idea of the multiple world, it clears up a lot of the problems you humans have with faith, miracles, the Divine Architect—”" | „ |
| ~ Demon the Fallen, Core, Page 26 |
| “ | "In the beginning, before Paradise was destroyed, Creation consisted of an almost infinite number of levels of meaning. Every object possessed multiple levels of existence — a sword might also be a song, a rose, a spirit and a philosophy, and it existed as all of these things at the same time. Creation was a complex, interlocking engine powered by meaning and symbolism, and the Elohim could use symbols and meaning to affect the fabric of Creation. Through the power of her lore — her capacity to affect all the levels of Creation — an Elohim could recite a poem and cause a star to be born because the star and the poem were the same thing." | „ |
| ~ Demon the Fallen, Core, Page 68 |
The Umbra:[]
- The Natures of the Umbra are as followed:
| “ | Above us is a dimension of intellect, a realm where ideas and concept exist in strange forms and living images. Perhaps the word "above" is appropriate because of the lofty concepts that dwell there. For untold ages, the High Umbra was only attainable by Masters of the Mind Sphere, elitists who could isolate their intellectual essence in Astral Space. Projecting their minds into astral bodies, they once thought themselves superior to lesser creatures unaware of the Astral Plane's existence. Now, they encounter ancient forces that humble them with impersonal and omnipotent power: courts of Umbrood, alien infestations, and far stranger things only the mightiest minds can survive.
|
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| ~ The Infinite Tapestry, Page 10 |
- The World of the Dead, the Low Umbra, itself contains layers upon layers, potentially an endless amount, this Dark Umbra where every possible Underworld exists which gives way and breaks down further one travels until one reaches the Far Shores:
| “ | There are islands of stability and safety in this Storm - the Great city of Stygia is one, the islands of the Far Shores are others. There are also safe paths through the Howling madness, called Byways, and a place at the storm's heart which is the least safe of all.
Layers around layers around layers, that is how the Underworld is built. The trick of it is, of course, the further you go, the more the next layer encompasses. So inside the Tempest, which is beneath all of Existence, is a Labyrinth that holds at its heart a Void. Correction: The Void. Oblivion. The Great Unmaking. I have seen it. I have also seen its servants, though. I have sojourned with one, and know how the nearer ones comes to an idea, the more one can be twisted by it. I still serve the Great Unmaking, but with the greater care, if that is possible. I very much believe it is. |
„ |
| “ | Despite resistance to using a popular Traditionalists term, Void Engineers call the strange dimensions attached to Earth Umbrae because they’re “mathematical shadows” of Conventional Space. In modern Tychoidian cosmology, these dimensions consist of phenomena that could not be fully instantiated within the conventional universe because they lacked completeness or contradicted “fitter” aspects of reality.
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| ~ Void Engineers, Revised – Page 56 |
| “ | Jaynes goes on to write, “There is not much we can do about such metaphors except to state that that is precisely what they are.” In saying this he demonstrates the difference between the Sleeper's view of Astral Space and that of the Awakened. To the overwhelming majority of mortals, this "country of the mind" is unique to the individual, locked up in each person's head with inviolable privacy, “a hidden hermitage.” One cannot travel to another's country except by proxy, exchanging thoughts and feelings only through the medium of words spoken or written, of artistic expressions, of actions and behavior which are imbued with particular significance. Mages know better. (Don't they always?) To the Masters of Mind and Spirit, ideas take on a shared objective existence in a continuous realm that does not simply vanish when the one who contemplates them finally turns away, loses interest, or falls asleep.
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| ~ The Infinite Tapestry – Pages 37 and 38 |
| “ | The entirety of the Astral Umbra is comprised of thoughts and concepts. Each area, structure, and item is made real by a collective consciousness thinking of those things. It is the conceptual representation of the world, filled with ideas, hopes, fears, and emotions. The Astral is not beholden to the laws of the physical realm like the other Umbrae, though it is limited by thought and imagination.
The Garou know very little about the Astral Umbra, and what they do know comes from loremasters who dwell on the notions of thought and theory. Some Uktena believe the Astral Umbra is made up of the living dreams of the world, since they often encounter it by passing through the Dream Zone. The idea has a bit of credence as ideas born of dreams do pass through the Astral. The Astral is much more than just dreams, though. Every thought, ridiculous concept, flight of fancy, complex mathematical theory or incongruous physics problem can be found within the Astral Umbra. Stargazers tell stories that anything a werewolf can think of is in the Astral Umbra and any thought is fulfilled just by thinking it. Some Theurges spend time debating how much the thoughts from the physical realm shape the Astral Umbra and how much the thoughts and ideas within the Astral influence the minds of those in the physical realm |
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| ~ Umbra: The Velvet Shadow – Page 96 |
- As you can see above, the realms and spirits of the High Umbra are personifications of a wide array of ideas, and some of those are displayed in other source books. The Tradition Book on the Dreamspeakers, for instance, establishes that some shamans manipulate space by interacting with the spirits that define the concept of dimension:
| “ | Being a successful shaman is partly a matter of knowing what to ignore. Most of the time, shamans don't need to pay attention to the very simple spirits that define space and time by their movements, any more than a walker needs to think about the composition of the dirt underfoot. Correspondence magic requires the shaman to look at these neglected spirits and learn how to work with them. In some approaches, Correspondence makes it possible for the shaman to move herself, body and/or soul, by convincing a spirit of dimension to carry her across the gap between where she is and where she wishes to be. In other approaches, Correspondence involves speaking to the space itself, and convincing it to move or change to suit the shaman's needs. Sometimes, it's a matter of ignoring the rules of space and distance, and stepping "between" instead of "through" or "sideways."
There are few complex rites among Dreamspeakers for speaking to the spirits of dimension, partly because these spirits wouldn't understand or appreciate them. Rather, Dreamspeaker rotes using Correspondence call for invoking the fetishes they use in dealing with other spirits, acknowledging how the spirits of dimension make all else possible. In effect, the Dreamspeaker makes connections with known spirits to show the importance of connection itself. |
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| ~ Tradition Book: Dreamspeakers – Page 53 |
| “ | Be polite to the spirits here. They are concepts and ideas, mathematical equations and hypotheses, discarded theories, philosophical theses and religious beliefs. I do not claim to understand half o the Realms or beings of the High Umbra but I can sympathize with their desire for respect and many Umbrood make their homes here. Some of them are Paradox spirits that you may someday meet on the other side. Others may be minions to beings of godlike powers who will crush you out of existence for annoying their servants. If all else fails, remember that should you ever need to get into a Horizon Realm through the back door, you'll probably be traveling through the High Umbra to do it. Don't offend the Spirits! | „ |
| ~ Infinite Tapestry |
- It, in turn, is divided into several different layers of existence, each of which represents a different degree of abstraction extending upwards from the material realm. The first of these is the Vulgate, which is the region of common thoughts and concrete ideas, which acts as the very idea of the world, where all of its conceptual components are laid bare, and everything from intellectual discussions to the gossip of housewives is embodied in one form or another. To explain that characteristic, it should be kept in mind that Vulgate itself is just the penultimate stage in the process of the universe's creation, where all ideas, possibilities and models assume a semi-physical state, but haven't yet made the transition into a fully material existence. Because of that, it's stated that, if the physical world is a series of shadows being projected upon a wall, then the Vulgate is the residence of the things that cast these shadows.
| “ | Although the Astral Umbra may appear differently to all who enter it, seemingly comprised of billions of separate,
mutually contradictory realities, the work of the Mercurian Cosmologists centuries ago showed that, where some accounts agreed, a roughly continuous ideospheric geography could be stitched together and posited with some degree of certainty. The lowest level of Astral Space, which is adjacent to, and corresponds most closely to, the Penumbra, is the Vulgate. This is the idea of the world, and mimics physical reality in general look and behavior, if not in the specifics of place and time. |
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| ~ The Infinite Tapestry – Page 38 |
| “ | Generally, astral doorways simply open for the person who finds them; occasionally, you’ll need a password or other form of key. Once you get through that entrance, you’ll find yourself in the Vulgate: the portion of the Astral Umbra dedicated to common concepts and easily-grasped ideas. Here, the truly weird aspects of the High Umbra begin to manifest: flying eyeballs, four-dimensional temples, Escherian landscapes, and snowing geometry… that sort of thing.
In the Vulgate, you can find endless hallways filled with doors; rivers that speak in human languages; glass-tree forests where each leaf is a memory; places where the local reality takes on the flat, brightly colored, and caricatured appearance of an old-school comic strip… complete with word- and thought-balloons. Libraries where books that were never written can be found, philosophical paradises in which abstract theories like Communism and anarchy really do work the way their proponents say they should work… If you took the analogy of Plato’s cave (which actually exists here, by the way), where people see the shadows cast on the walls and believe it’s reality, the Vulgate is where the watchers start to turn away from the wall and begin to see the things casting those shadows. And no, that view isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Like all portions of the Otherworlds, the Vulgate can be scary as hell… and yes, you’ll find real hells in the High Umbra too, shaped by the things people fear about the concept of Hell. Beyond the freaky shit that’s part and parcel of the realm, there can also be a terrifying sense of disconnection. We humans are accustomed to the world as we know it; when you take that world and start breaking it down into its conceptual components – when the blinders we wear come off whether we want them to or not – the experience can be unnerving, depressing, even shattering. There’s a desert where the reflective sands show you the way that other people see you, stripped of all your self-identified illusions, and a realm in which the shared hallucination of money is revealed by stacks of phantasmal treasure. |
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| ~ Mage The Ascension, 20th Anniversary Edition – Page 95 |
| “ | The astral region adjacent to the Penumbra is known as the Vulgate, or common area, where the most widely held notions of reality directly reflect the physical realm. Medieval Hermetics knew it as the Mundus Imaginalis, or "world of images." To students of the Qabala, this is Yesod, the ninth sephira on the Tree of Life; the Ahl-i-Batin call it the "alam al-mithal," or Realm of Similitudes, in which the transcendent Unity becomes immanent in phenomenal diversity and takes on the forms that ultimately manifest in physical reality.
The Vulgate looks and feels much like the physical world, with the same sense of solidity and immediacy. The Vulgate is comprised of the collective thoughts of humanity, not only the rational intellectual constructs of the intelligentsia, but the gossip of housewives, the prejudices of barroom philosophers, the daydreams of children and every passing whimsy that does not actually belong in the Dream Realms themselves. Whether human thought creates the Vulgate (and, by extension, all of Astral Space) or the thoughts of humans are simply the result of ideas that filter down through the Vulgate has long been a key point of conflict in the Ascension War. The Technocratic paradigm favors the former view, treating Astral Space as simply a consensual hallucination shared by interacting intellects, enjoying an illusion of permanence as ideas are handed down through the ages to successive generations. Traditional paradigms tend toward something closer to the latter view, sometimes even granting the Vulgate and the Epiphamies respectively lower and higher places in the hierarchical tiers of their ontological philosophies. Regardless of which view one takes, it is clear that actions in the Vulgate closely mirror the mental life of the physical world. Most of the Vulgate's economy is based upon the flow of information rather than actual resources, but this is not always apparent to the casual observer since information can usually appear as an object or substance in Astral Space. However, even a newcomer can easily see that Vulgatic cities are clearly dominated by their libraries, universities, bookstores and temples. |
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| ~ The Infinite Tapestry – Page 44 |
- The Vulgate's landscapes also mark the appearance of the Spires, mountains of rising abstraction that embody the idea of higher levels of consciousness, and which an astral traveler needs to metaphysically "climb" in order to ascend to the apex of the High Umbra, by wrapping their heads around increasingly loftier concepts. When one climbs a Spire, the world starts to lose its sense of concreteness and immediacy as they start to approach the realm of pure thought and consciousness, with characteristics such as the size, form and shape of things gradually disappearing.
| “ | Rising here and there throughout the Courts, rooted in the Vulgate but peaking upward into infinity, you’ll find the Spires: reflections of the idea of higher consciousness. As with so many other things in the Otherworlds, the Spires turn abstract concepts into concrete forms. Some of them appear as towers, minarets, or mountains that make Everest look like a speed bump. Many resemble glass cathedrals with spires that fade into the sky. I’ve seen beanstalks leading into the clouds and literal stairways to heaven. They’re all Spires. So if you want to get your head in the clouds, then you’ll often have to climb these things. And that, my friend, is not easy!
Climbing a Spire isn’t a matter of physical effort but of metaphysical ascent. It’s not your hands and feet that move you – it’s your mind. The slopes can be slippery, treacherous, impossible to grasp. In order to rise up those Spires, you must wrap your mind around difficult concepts and drift beyond the gravity of common thought. Few travelers can make that journey at all… and only the most rarified can reach the top. |
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| ~ Mage The Ascension, 20th Anniversary Edition – Page 97 |
| “ | While physical objects and actions have their reflection and consequence in Astral Space, those mages who visit regularly have learned that astral ephemera forms and reacts according to the meaning and significance attached to it. Newly encountered astral phenomena must be examined in light of what abstractions they represent if any real useful knowledge is to be gained from the study of them.
Travelers in the High Umbra get nowhere by asking “What is it?" rather than "What does it mean?" Likewise, the intentions that propel one's actions are just as important, if not more important than the specific actions one takes, even when the outcome of an action differs from what was originally intended. This aspect of the higher Umbral planes becomes more pronounced the higher one climbs into Astral Space, but does not apply to the Middle or Low Umbrae. Objects carried into the High Umbra tend to perform only the specific functions for which they were intended; all incidental physical qualities – weight, hardness, even size and shape – seem present in the Vulgate, but gradually diminish as the items are carried up the Spires. At the level where reside the High Umbrood, only the purely sensory aspects of an object - what it looks like, how it feels when brandished or worn, the way it sounds when used, what it smells like — remain to signify what it does. Nearing the Epiphamies, physical objects are translated into pure functions that act as natural extensions of their bearer's own innate faculties. This subtlety of astral existence is frequently misunderstood by novice voyagers, who often believe that they are being forcibly deprived of material possessions as part of the passage to the higher realms of abstraction. (An apt interpretation, for this can happen literally as one approaches certain Epiphamies.) For instance, a mage manages to step sideways while carrying his brand new athame, a custom-crafted dagger he has begun to use as his focus for magic involving the Sphere of Forces. While recovering somewhere in the Vulgate, necessity finds him employing his dagger for other uses. Its keen edge slices smoothly and cleanly. The sides of the blade are smooth enough to reflect light like a heliograph, and if well polished can serve as a narrow hand-mirror. The flat heavy pommel can be used as a hammer, to drive nails or bust heads. Later, he becomes ensnared in the intrigues of the High Umbrood Court, where the inhabitants might remark upon the dagger's striking design and fine craftsmanship. When a misunderstanding with a short-tempered Umbrood lord forces the mage to use his athame as a defensive weapon, however, he finds that the blade will no longer cut, no matter how well he strikes with it. In the lord's dungeon after he loses the fight, even the massive pommel cannot smash the ancient, rusted lock on the bars of his cell door. Fortunately, the athame still functions as a very serviceable focus for Forces, and he blasts out the wall of his dungeon and continues on his way. Later still, bound up amid the ethical perplexities of some deeply moral Epiphamy, the mage wishes to take action in some emotionally charged scene appearing before him, but finds his feet rooted to the ground by literal tendrils of doubt that coil and stretch up his legs just as uncertainty about his intended course of action grows in his mind. Instinct tells him to whip out his trusty blade and slice through the soft clingy tendrils, but when he reaches for the belt sheath it is empty. |
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| ~ The Infinite Tapestry – Page 39 |
- As mentioned, the Spires themselves are simply physical visualizations of the general concept of an hierarchy of higher levels, and thus, they can be studied and represented in many different ways, all of which are equally valid, and often comprised of multiple higher levels of being. For instance, The Infinite Tapestry itself cites the colors of the rainbow, the spectrum of visible light, the system of chakras and the kabbalistic Tree of Life (Which indicates that the Vulgate and the physical world are themselves a part of the Spires, as the former is directly stated to correspond to Yesod, the ninth sefirah of the Tree of Life) as symbols of the Spires.
| “ | The one thing common to all these great astral journeys is not simply the distance involved, it is the actual effort
required to get to the higher reality. Not every Spire takes the form of a mountain. Some High Umbrood reside in deep caverns where the seeker must climb down rather than up, feeling his way in darkness. Some are on islands far across the Great Ocean, requiring the building and use of a metaphoric ship, or the heroic effort of a long-distance swim. Some Epiphamies even connect these vastly divergent regions, so that the way out is entirely different than the way in. Spires have been represented in allegorical literature as ladders and stairs as well, so that some Courts and Epiphamies might be reached without even going outside of a building in the Vulgate. A symbolic motif frequently associated with both Spires and Epiphamic thresholds in texts accessible to Sleepers is the rainbow, or the spectrum of visible light. "Graduated” Spires like ladders and stairs are often depicted with steps of varying colors, usually starting with red (the color of light with the lowest vibratory frequency, most closely associated with the physical world) and going up through orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and finally arriving at violet (the highest rate of vibration corresponding to the highest spiritual states). This brings up an interesting point that Storytellers may wish to consider. A number of traditions also use the color spectrum (not capitalized, for this lore is available to Sleepers too) to symbolize the chakras of the yogic paradigm and, in a different order, the Sephiroth of the Qabalistic Tree of Life. While the Tree can symbolize the Spire - a system of hierarchic orders of spiritual reality — it also, like the chakra system, represents a hierarchy within the human individual. By making an effort, by doing the necessary work, the mystic can raise her own inner state to attain an experience of the archetypes and the highest truths, just like climbing a mountain to find the Umbrood and the Epiphamies. |
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| ~ The Infinite Tapestry – Page 63 |
- All of these, of course, are nothing but symbolic representations, and equally valid ones in spite of seemingly establishing different hierarchies with a different number of levels (Six for the colors of the spectrum, seven for the chakras of the human body, ten for the Tree of Life). Indeed, the Spires themselves are described as going upwards into infinity, as seen in the excerpts above, and even the Tree of Life is described as comprised of an infinite number of refractions of a single Unity standing at its top.
| “ | Like the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, the Qlippoth represents a symbolic model of principles that nevertheless holds a meta-physical kind of reality, too. Where the Sephiroth represent a “tree” of emanations leading upward from the base principle of earthly reality (Malkuth) to the sublime radiance of Divinity’s Crown (Kether), the Qlippoth represents a profane initiation from the mother of demons (Lilith) to the ultimate paradox of godhood through annihilation (Thaumiel). At the consummation of that paradox, the Void supposedly opens to new potential existences, sometimes referred to in occult lore as the Black Diamond or Universe B: the transcendence of this flawed cosmos through self-divinity that extinguishes the individual so some new totality can be born from nothing-ness. If this seems bizarre, that’s pretty much the point. Such esoteric concepts transcend rational thought. Folks who try to apply conventional logic to such paradigms are not supposed to understand them in the first place.
Certain interpretations place this “Nightside of Eden” parallel to the Tree of Life; others invert it, claiming that the initiate travels down instead of up. The Eaters of the Weak claim their name “the Fallen” because of this Descent. Their Seekings involve dark tunnels and Realms of terrifying beauty. The Kabbalist Ascends; the Nephandus Descends. Whether or not a monotheistic creator God exists is beside the point. The Qlippoth charts the Nightside, and though its structure may be symbolic, the entities encountered within its depths are as real as any spirit is. Among the Fallen, the Qlippoth provides a model for deeper understanding of the Nightside. From the fringes of Jung’s shadow, it reaches toward the Void. Each of its waystations — or Qlipha — are personified by demonic over-lords whose Dominions reflect infernal principles. Certain Qlippoth, like Lilith and Samael, are named specifically for infernal overlords, while others, like Gha’ag Sheblah and Thaumiel, signify forces rather than individuals. Unlike the godly emanations of the Tree of Life, the energies of these broken spheres reflect an array of dire personages, not a single Unity whose glory holds infinite refractions. Echoing that fractured state of affairs, the Qlippothic traveler goes from Qlipha to Qlipha seeking not ultimate unity with the whole but ultimate disconnection for himself. |
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| ~ Book of the Fallen – Page 100 |
- Amongst the Spires is the Manifold Mountain, which has mathematical concepts stacked on top of each other creating a Mountain with no top, only ever ascending Mathematical concepts rising in increasing complexity which no mortal has been able to deduce a logic to. Thus, the mountain is an infinite collection of mathematical concepts, literally being all mathematics.
| “ | The Manifold Mountain cannot be described as a peak, because it lacks one. Somehow it climbs high and higher, and despite seeming to thin out, never actually becomes smaller. It is a place of pure shape, growing more complex on the ascent. At the bottom are the simple things: spirits representing lines and curves, planes, spheres, Platonic solids and their higher dimensional analogues. As complexity increases, surfaces appear, as do complex high dimensional objects, irregular shapes and moduli spaces: shapes whose points parameterize variations of simpler shapes. The trouble is that no mathematician has ever understood the way the mountain determines complexity, lead to long searches for any specific figure. | „ |
- At the precipice of the Spires, a traveller then leaves concrete existence entirely and enters fully abstract domains known as "Epiphamies," whose nature is described fairly extensively in the cosmology books, and which the passages up there mentioned very often.
| “ | Swirling around the highest reaches of consciousness, the Realms within the Epiphamies are realms in name only. These regions are too abstract and ephemeral to feel much like our crude constructs of reality. Composed of symbols and superluminal concepts, these regions drift in and out of contact. For the astral traveler, Ephiphamy Realms remain solid for a few fleeting moments. Such mysteries are too transcendent for a mortal mind to grasp for long.
Astral travel is the only way to reach such regions. Sleeping or inspired mortals can flash into the Epiphamies for brief seconds, but those visitors quickly fade out of that space, hopefully with memories of the visit to guide them through their imperfect lives. Even astral travelers can remain there for only a short time. It’s a place where the ground literally shifts under your feet… except that there’s no actual ground or feet involved! Imagine the love-child of Salvador Dali and Dr. Seuss. Now imagine it as a world. And now imagine that it exists because you imagined it. That’s the nature of the Ephiphamies. Fleeting concepts get smaller worlds, whereas lasting concepts, backed by millions of minds over hundreds of years, have massive regions with something approaching a stable nature. Within the Epiphamies, you might find a Fortress of Government that represents the symbolic might and futility of that concept; a River of Language that flows with the sounds of every dialect ever spoken on Earth; a titanic chiming clock with a thousand hands, each one marking some measure of Time; the realm of Platonic ideals, which exists perhaps only because Plato imagined that it might. There are tortured halls of Art and mindscapes so bizarre that Dali himself might have been amazed by them. You’ll find realms based upon not only our popular images of holidays (though those exist as well) but around the very ideas those holidays represent. In short, the Epiphamies are as boundless as imagined consciousness itself. There are said to be Realms within this domain where mortal minds cannot go at all – regions too transcendent for human consciousness to grasp. Are they the dreams of gods? The secrets of the Universe? Who can say? That which we cannot imagine, we cannot travel to… just yet. As human history has shown, though, we puny mortals are capable of expanding our imagination to apparently limitless degrees. Again, who knows? Perhaps someday, you’ll visit an Epiphamy Realm that hadn’t existed until you conceived of it yourself… |
„ |
| ~ Mage The Ascension, 20th Anniversary Edition – Page 97 |
| “ | An Epiphamy is the most difficult aspect of the High Umbra to understand, as well as the most fundamen-
tal. If the Vulgate can be thought of as interpersonal Astral Space and the High Courts as personal Astral Space, then the Epiphamies are transpersonal Astral Space. Scholars in the Order of Hermes and Celestial Chorus called it the “Mundus Intelligibilis" and the Realm of Divine Names; qabalistically, it is known as the Macroprosopus, or "Greater Countenance" comprised of the upper sephiroth on the Tree of Life. To the Ahl-i-Batin, it is "Alam al-Lahut," the Presence of the Divine Attributes; to many technomancers it is the Pandimensional Metaverse. Some teach that, like so much else in Astral Space, an Epiphamy is formed as a result of human belief and tends to present itself in whatever shape is expected. They explain that the Epiphamies as a whole can be conceived as the culmination of human mental activity, all the highest-level abstractions and most intense feelings superimposed to form a semi-continuous landscape of excruciatingly significant imagery. This may be true up to a point, but the experiences of those who have visited them suggests that an Ephiphamy exists independently of human conception, abiding outside of the space-time continuum in a way that the Vulgate and High Umbral Courts do not. The view from above, as they call it, shows the material world as a mere epiphenomenon, an emergent form caused by the simultaneous intersection of all Epiphamies at once. Traditional histories contain accounts of many Epiphamies embodying what are generally referred to as “laws of nature” that were not understood until the Order of Reason incorporated these laws into their technologically progressive paradigm. Likewise, many Epiphamies of religious revelation or philosophical truth, long thought lost when the ideas associated with them fellout of use in the mundane world, have been rediscovered in modern times, their appearance and symbolic imagery changed but their inherent ideas still intact. The Epiphamies may thus be considered as the cause rather than the effect of human thought and feeling. Those who travel to the Epiphamies sometimes find their adventures there appearing as fictional narratives — novels, movies, television, comics, etc. — after they return to materiality. While individual Epiphamies often refuse to be identified until one has actually crossed their threshold, all collectively appear in the sky of the Vulgate as clouds of varying size, color and movement. The common lore of the Vulgate claims that specific Epiphamies can be recognized among the clouds by their symbolically suggestive shapes, but actual experience shows no basis for this. The Epiphamy does not exist "on" or "in" a cloud the way that a place corresponds to the surface of a landmass, but the constantly shifting positions and shapes of clouds - how they break apart and seemingly dissipate into thin air, how they grow and spread to blanket the sky - does in some way reflect how Epiphamies can phase in and out of existence (or, rather, in and out of our experience) and how one can lead directly into another at times while having no connection at others. All Traditions can agree that the substance of the astral clouds seen from the Vulgate must be ephemera in its most rarified state, broken down into infinitesimal particles of raw experiential processes and highly reactive to observation and interpretation. This ephemeral "vapor” forms itself into shapes and scenes that are meaningful to the observer, in a deliberate effort to convey the concept that the Epiphamy embodies, not simply as a place to pass through but as a state of mind to be experienced. Ephemeral material as refined as this is extremely reactive to magic, but can nullify magical effects that conflict with the experience it seeks to impart, prompting one neo-Mercurian wag to dub the figures of astral meteorology "cumulonuminous clouds." Let it not be thought that an Epiphamy is some sort of "place" floating high above the Vulgate, for an Epiphamic revelation can occur anywhere in the Tellurian, whether Umbral realm or even the material world. The purely transcendental nature of the Epiphamy allows it to intersect any other level or type of reality - dreamscape, Seeking, spirit glen, Horizon Realm or another Epiphamy - in a way that Dimensional technomancers describe as "perpendicular to the local space-time axes." |
„ |
| ~ The Infinite Tapestry – Page 84 |
- In this case, the Epiphamies existing "independently of human conception, abiding outside of the space-time continuum in a way that the Vulgate and High Umbral Courts do not" refers to how even the Astral Time present in the lower parts of the Umbra does not exist in them at all, and travellers can explore them for what seems like a lifetime while no time passed in the physical world.
| “ | Experiencing an Epiphamy, even when on the physical plane, may seem to take days, even a lifetime, but once one emerges from the experience one may find that no time has passed at all. One of the best examplesof this comes from Batini lore, the Night Journey wherein the Prophet Muhammad is borne upon al-Buraq to tour the various heavens of Islamic cosmology. Just as al-Buraq was taking flight, a pitcher of water sitting nearby was knocked over. After spending an evening traveling to the furthest knowable ends of the universe, Muhammad is deposited in his dwelling just in time to see the pitcher fall over and spill across the dry ground | „ |
| ~ The Infinite Tapestry – Page 85 |
- For reference, the aforementioned Astral Time in which the Umbra operates is also specified to not be a physical direction at all, but just a vague concept of duration entirely defined by an individual's experience, directly likened to their personal sense of accomplishment and purpose, rather than material, quantitative factors like speed and distance.
| “ | If I ask you to think of the last hundred years, you may have a tendency to excerpt the matter in such a way that the succession of years is spread out, probably from left to right. But of course there is no left or right in time. There is only before and after, and these do not have any spatial properties whatever - except by analog. You cannot, absolutely cannot, think of time except by spatializing it. Consciousness is always a spatialization in which the diachronic is turned into the synchronic, in which what has happened in time is excerpted and seen in side-by-sideness.
–Jaynes, op.cit In general, time appears to pass at the same rate in the Astral Umbra as in the physical world, but variance and distortion can be quite common in many circumstances. Masters of olden times sometimes spoke of embarking on prolonged quests through the higher realms that took months to complete, and of learning that only a few days had passed when they returned to Earth. Others complained of spending days engaged in some fruitless research in a remote astral library and afterwards finding that weeks had passed in the material world during their absence. No instances of such extreme can be verified in the modern era but similar stories persist, and Masters of Time who visited the High Umbra agreed that astral time does not flow in a constant ratio with physical time except for the periodicity of the astral moon's phases, which are always the same as the physical moon's. An astral lunar month, however, can be comprised of any number of days, and astral days or nights can take, in game terms, anywhere from one Scene to one Chapter. When the astral sky cannot be seen for whatever reason –overcast Epiphamies, in the shadow of a Spire, being underground or simply indoors– there is no correlation at all between physical and astral time; minutes can seem like years and vice versa, although such extremes are rare. But if the sky can be seen again, the exact date in the physical world can be reckoned by a trained astronomical observer with three successes on an Intelligence + Science or Cosmology roll. (The Storyteller sets the difficulty according to which celestial bodies can be observed at any given moment.) Those who keep track of such things have, in comparing notes on their respective experiences, developed a rough theory that may explain these time-flow variances. Astral time, they hypothesize, is equivalent to the way humans subjectively experience the constant passage of regular time. When a person is engaged in an enjoyable scene, or is diligently applying her consciousness to a particular task, she perceives time as moving by much faster, perhaps discovering later that something that seemed to last only a few minutes in fact took hours to happen according to a clockoran uninvolved observer. Conversely, when someone is suffering through a difficult or uncomfortable occurrence or is waiting for something specific to happen or simply finds himself with nothing to occupy his attention, he feels that time is passing much slower than it normally would, even to the point where the hands of his watch seem to take longer to move. In theory, the ratio between physical and astral time would vary in proportion to this difference between objectively recorded time and subjectively experienced time. When a mage in Astral Space is actively pursuing an acknowledged goal or working to accomplish the task at hand, he will find that less time has passed in the physical world than her astral adventure seemed to take. Conversely, a mage who wanders the High Umbra without direction or purpose, or who cannot manage to concentrate and apply himself to whatever his immediate goal might be, will reenter materiality to find that it is much later in the day than he thought it would be. Astral time seems to measure itself in qualitative factors of purpose and accomplishment rather than in quantities of speed and distance. Experienced astral travelers often exhort novices to "be unhurried, but move with purpose.” In other words, don't go there without a good reason and don't allow yourself to be distracted or sidetracked from doing what you went to do, or you may end up wasting far more time than you realize. |
„ |
| ~ The Infinite Tapestry – Page 41 |
- To illustrate their relationship to the other spiritual realms we've went over up there, it is further stated that, if the Epiphamies are pure abstractions that ontologically exist a priori from physicality, then the lower realms and things of the High Umbra are just lenses through which these ideas are focused and given pseudo-tangible forms and faces, with the Gods (Or High Umbrood) that live in realms perched along the Spires being examples of such forms.
| “ | The High Umbrood may take nearly any shape, but the forms most accessible to them are those defined by millennia of human belief, the gods and goddesses of old pre-monotheistic lore. Some tend to think that it is belief that shapes and sustains them, but others suspect that the ontologically precedent abstractions of the Epiphamies fashion the gods as a kind of lens through which to focus pure idea into the human mind by giving it a quasi-tangible form. The intellect is more receptive to a notion with a face on it, they argue, and this explains why
the old religions fell by the wayside as mankind evolved a greater capacity for abstract thought. In either case, it is easier to refer to the High Umbrood as gods since they have for the most part retained some degree of their ancient identities. Furthermore, Umbral explorers have noted the emergence of new god-forms in Idea Space, perhaps indicating that the abstract has not yet surpassed the need for faces. |
„ |
| ~ The Infinite Tapestry – Page 80 |
- And this was already established even back in Beyond the Barriers: The Book of the Worlds, where it is stated that the abstractions residing in the Epiphamies defy mapping and definition entirely, and once one attempts to express them with words, images and sounds, the result will always be referring to something else.
| “ | High up in this Umbra, the Realms and residents become more abstract, harder to grasp. Few minds can reach this far. Geniuses, great artists — all of them help create the Epiphamies, or regions of sublime ideas. You may have difficulty finding many Realms here, but be assured they do exist. It's just very difficult to visit the Realm of General Relativity if you cannot comprehend the concept in the first place. Keep trying as your understanding grows.
These Realms, which spring from the highest reaches of consciousness, lie quite outside the limited purview of words. How does one detail the Corridor of Pi, or the prismatic streams that pass for Language to our eyes? I can tell you of the manifold angles of Logic or the Kingdoms of Color, but those descriptions would be as fleeting as my fingers across this keyboard. For once a concept is set into words, images or even sounds, it becomes something else. |
„ |
| ~ Beyond the Barriers: The Book of the Worlds – Page 25 |
- Another interesting feature of the Epiphamies, which you may have noticed in the excerpts above, is that they are not limited to the Earth at all: In fact, they are stacked into a series of levels as well, each higher one being a greater degree of abstraction and representing the "completion" of the intellectual work initiated in a lower Epiphamy (The referent example, in this case, being how the Epiphamy of General Relativity is higher than the Epiphamy of Newtonian Mechanics.) Eventually, the Epiphamies stretch beyond the Near Umbra entirely and grow adjacent to the whole Tellurian, with their highest regions being completely inaccessible to mortals, as they represent concepts far beyond the reach of human consciousness, which are impossible to be imagined.
| “ | These two closely related Epiphamies are described together here to show how certain Epiphamies can be "stacked" in Idea Space, with the "higher" one representing the completion of the intellectual work begun in the “lower” one. This is commonly found in Epiphamies heavily exploited by the Technocracy, whose scientific method demands a thorough understanding of basic fundamental principles before one may derive a higher order of theories from them. It can also
be seen here how certain much-visited and widely known Epiphamies bear the imprint of the manner by which their concepts are usually explained to the world at large, taking the form of scenes, characters and actions that may or may not have existed and occurred in the history of the physical world. |
„ |
| ~ The Infinite Tapestry – Page 91 |
| “ | The Epiphamies range from the relatively solid Realms of Language and Government to the twisting logics of Fractal, Meme and Quark. Time eats its own tail, Music hums in a thousand separate keys, and Touch caresses your astral form like a bath of textures. These places grow more and more abstract until simple minds like ours can't even imagine them anymore. At that point, the ur-consciousness of the Oracles is said to take over. | „ |
| ~ Beyond the Barriers: The Book of the Worlds – Page 43 |
| “ | At the lowest levels of the Epiphamies, the traveler recognizes concepts as metaphorical constructs; as with so many other Otherworlds, you see the concept expressed the way you expect to see it. The highest reaches spiral outward beyond the Horizon's restrictions, spinning like Dream Realms off into the endless Void where no one can catalogue them. I've heard that the Oracles dwell (if they exist, of course) in these fluid droplets of pure concept. Mortals cannot visit them because, quite simply, our minds are not comprehensive enough to reach that far.
Such “Realms” are theoretically everywhere yet nowhere at once. Reaching such a state is the goal of Mind Masters, but those few who could be said to have attained it cannot put their experiences into human words or pictures. |
„ |
| ~ Beyond the Barriers: The Book of the Worlds – Page 26 |
| “ | There are said to be Realms within this domain where mortal minds cannot go at all – regions too transcendent for human consciousness to grasp. Are they the dreams of gods? The secrets of the Universe? Who can say? That which we cannot imagine, we cannot travel to… just yet. As human history has shown, though, we puny mortals are capable of expanding our imagination to apparently limitless degrees. | „ |
| ~ Mage The Ascension, 20th Anniversary Edition – Page 97 |
Horizon:[]
- The Horizon lies beyond the 3 Layers of the Near Umbra:
| “ | "The three Umbrae described above extend to the limits of Earth’s atmosphere, contained by a massive spiritual barrier called the First Horizon. It forms the limit of Earthly reality and the outermost boundary of the Near Umbra. During the Renaissance, mages testing the limits of creation considered it the edge of the world. Modern mages see it in many different ways. Some Dreamspeakers see it as a churning river of ethereal energy; Sons of Ether monitor its disturbances of cosmic rays; Void Engineers often encounter a barrier of unquantifiable energy as they approach it. Whatever your paradigm, it serves as an obstacle for sorcerers and Technocrats who lack the power to cross it" | „ |
| ~ The Infinite Tapestry - Page 10 |
As mentioned above, the three realms that comprise the Near Umbra are not the entirety of the cosmology, far from it, and are indeed simply the Earth's metaphysical counterpart in the spirit world. There are a number of further realms existing beyond it, and the first of them, which metaphysically represents the limits of Earth's atmosphere and encompasses that entire reality, is the Horizon:
| “ | There’s a point of demarcation between what we know as reality and the vaster Reality beyond our world. And that point’s often called the Horizon. A metaphysical membrane around the many layers of our Earth, it presents a second, thicker Gauntlet that insulates our world from outer space… and probably protects space from us as well.
Unlike the Earthly Gauntlet, you can’t step through this wall unless you’re skilled and powerful enough to try. Astral masters can project their consciousness beyond this point, and lucky travelers can fly through Anchorheads. Technologically inclined folks hop on rocket ships and blast through the planet’s atmosphere, and the fortunate (or unfortunate) others employ portals to reach the Horizon and beyond. Metaphysically speaking, the Horizon is a titanic wall around the Otherworlds – a shadow of the edge of material Earth’s atmosphere. Whereas the air gets thin up there, however, the spirit barrier gets thicker. Appearing in the Middle Umbra as a rain- or moon-bow and in the High Umbra as the clouds atop the Spires, the Horizon has been called the Dreamshell – enclosing the dreams of humanity while sheltering us, perhaps, from the dreaming Void. Because, you see, the Void does dream. By “Void,” I don’t mean the inner Void where souls get recycled in the Underworld, although that probably dreams as well. I’m referring to the Great Void of outer space, the fathomless reaches that stagger comprehension. Throughout most of human history, this was the place we could not go – the Vault of Heaven, the Firmament. In recent years, however, human beings have not just observed and theorized about the mysteries of outer space – we have pierced them. And in our dreams and nightmares, it comes to visit us as well. |
„ |
| ~ Mage The Ascension, 20th Anniversary Edition – Pages 109 and 110 |
| “ | The three Umbrae described above extend to the limits of Earth's atmosphere, contained by a massive spiritual barrier called the First Horizon. It forms the limit of Earthly reality and the outermost boundary of the Near Umbra. During the Renaissance, mages testing the limits of creation considered it the edge of the world. Modern mages see it in many different ways. Some Dreamspeakers see it as a churning river of ethereal energy; Sons of Ether monitor its disturbances of cosmic rays; Void Engineers often encounter a barrier of unquantifiable energy as they approach it. Whatever your paradigm, it serves as an obstacle for sorcerers and Technocrats who lack the power to cross it. | „ |
| ~ The Infinite Tapestry – Page 10 |
- And further than (Or maybe coterminous with) that, there is an infinite, churning sea of magickal energy known as the Etherspace, where the laws of reality are far hazier and more fluid than they are in the Near Umbra (Although Paradox is still existent there), and which culminates in a second, "True" Horizon, the spiritual reflection of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
| “ | The True Horizon stretches from the limits of Earth's atmosphere to the hazards of the asteroid belt. Just as Earth casts reflections into the Otherworld, space also casts a spiritual reflection. In the spirit world, deep space has never been a lifeless vacuum; instead, invisible and insubstantial winds soar through it. A vast sea of luminiferous ether roils ceaselessly, conducting heat, light, and spiritual energy. In our reality, this area is empty space, a lifeless vacuum, but outside of Earthly reality, it holds infinite possibilities. Some modern mages call this Etherspace, but for others, all of this territory is the Horizon. | „ |
| ~ The Infinite Tapestry – Page 10 |
| “ | Certain cosmologists insist there’s a second Horizon – a True Horizon – located out past the moon and Mars, in the region of this solar system’s Asteroid Belt. Between Earth’s Horizon and this True Horizon, a cosmic Umbra often called Etherspace reaches outward toward the stars. Here, a traveler might pass from the hard vacuum of scientific space into the strange expanse of spirit space, where the laws of legend still prevail.
Out past Earth’s Horizon, reality as we know it is far more fluid than it ever was back on Earth. Here, the principles of magick, faith, and science remain in constant flux. We have the airless vacuum of space, true enough, but as I mentioned earlier, certain mages survive just fine there without life-support gear. In the old days, it’s been said, flying ships waged strange wars and journeyed to distant planets in what was known as the Void of Heaven. In the Age of Steam, star-faring Etherites journeyed out into Etherspace, setting up colonies on Mars and Luna, discovering civilizations of other beings that could simply have been conjured by their own imaginations. (There are, after all, certain types of legendary Martians – Bug-Eyed Monsters, tentacled horrors, red-skinned nude beauties, and so on – and who’s to say whether those entities exist on their own terms or whether they’re there because someone expected them to be there…?) More recently, the Void Engineers, the Etherites, and occasional other explorers staged weird battles in this fluctuating space. Etherships and rocket ships out of science-fiction fantasies populated this space between the stars. Once again, however, that wild era screeched to a halt when the Avatar Winds kicked in and travel beyond our Gauntlet got more perilous. Given the distance between destinations and the risk of Disembodiment, few travelers have dared to start that space race up again. Supposedly, phantasmal ghost ships still flow through Etherspace, re-enacting cosmic firefights or flitting between colonies of ghost-ridden ruins. If these rumors are true, it puts an eerie spin on that whole idea of a space ghost… |
„ |
| ~ Mage The Ascension, 20th Anniversary Edition – Page 113 |
- The Metaphysical Earth as a whole is also part of a group of worlds known as Shard Realms, which are spiritual reflections of the planets of the solar system, each of which can contain their own Umbrae and hold connections with one of the Nine Spheres of magick that Mages can utilize to exert control over reality. The Earth, for instance, is just the Shard Realm of Prime, while Saturn is the Shard Realm of Time.
| “ | Genesis stories both secular and sacred allude to a Big Bang that birthed the universe. According to certain cosmologies, the Shard Realms – which we now know as the planets of our solar system – were especially significant chunks of metaphysical debris. Reflecting mystic principles, these Fragmenti were considered the realms of ancient gods: Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, and so forth. We can see their influence in the everyday puzzles of astrology and the corresponding zodiac, through which we are “children of Mars” or “littered under Mercury.” To Otherworldly travelers, the planets are enigmas of the scientific revolution. According to the archives of Etherite explorers, those planets were, until recently, worlds unto themselves, with workable atmospheres and indigenous life. Now, though, the cold hand of Technocratic wisdom has reduced these worlds to spinning protoplasmic cauldrons and icy stone.
Certain Etherites suggest that the only things standing between Earth’s wonders and a similar fate are the mages who refuse to let such things happen. I don’t know how true that is, but the idea is worth considering. Whether or not the fabled adventures on Mercury and Mars actually took place on the planets themselves or within their Umbral Shade Realm reflections, it is a matter of record that modern-day mages occasionally travel further than Earthly scientists would have us believe. These days, the Shards are more or less “dead” by human estimations; if the great god Mars still makes his home on that red ball of rock, he’s hiding his presence well. Still, the Etherites and Void Engineers send spaceships to the various planets and their moons, occasionally finding ruined Skyriggers and other mysteries on those planetary surfaces. Although the more obvious magickal phenomena seem restricted to the Shade Realms… at least for now… there has clearly been more mystic history throughout our solar system than the average person would possibly believe. |
„ |
| ~ Mage The Ascension, 20th Anniversary Edition – Page 113 |
| “ | Adrift in the night, spheres of isolated reality promise safe havens from the terrors of the Void. Within our solar system, each of the nine planets holds a Shard Realm, and each casts a spiritual reflection within the Otherworld called a Shade Realm. Hermetics have documented that each one corresponds to one of the Nine Spheres. Before the Avatar Storm, these reflections were actually cast on the First Horizon. After the Reckoning, the primal connections between Earth and distant planets were lost; thus, spiritual travelers must now journey to other planets to find them. With the advent of space travel (both spiritual and physical), explorers have found other Planetary Realms, from the Venusian Penumbra and Martian Mythical Realms to personal dimensions that test the minds and spirits of mages who seek them. | „ |
| ~ The Infinite Tapestry – Page 11 |
| “ | "In the beginning, there was One, perfect and infinite, encompassing all creation. In one dynamic burst, it fragmented, forming the stars and planets of the universe. Shards of divinity lay in the structure of planets and the souls of the awakened. The Resonance of each of the Nine Spheres remains in the nine planets of the solar system. As above, so below."
– Winston Teyvel, Mercurial Cosmology, 1553 This introduction from the cosmological documents of a noted Hermetic is typical of a common view of the cosmos. It's as good an explanation as anything else. No one can thoroughly document all the realms and extra dimensions beyond the First Horizon. If we need an anchor for our extra-dimensional epistemology, it might as well be the nine Shard Realms. The Shard Realms reflect the sun, the moon, and the nine planets of our solar system. Experience verifies that in each realm, one of the Nine Spheres is dominant. It is as though the very character of the realm and the planet reflects the essence of that Sphere. Acts of magic associated with that Sphere are often easier to perform there, and usually remarkably coincidental. According to some accounts, simple acts of willworking hold great power in such realms. A breath of wind that lifts a feather in the physical world may move a mountain in a realm dominated by Forces, at least if the theorists are correct. At one time, the Shard Realms were accessible from Shade Realms on the Horizon. Each Shard Realm cast a "reflection" on the Horizon in the form of a Shade Realm, which could act as a portal to that distant planet. Since the Avatar Storm, these former portals have become treacherous, dangerous, distant, or misleading. Each one resembles the "spiritual landscape” of its respective planet in some way, but the Umbral winds have altered them. Powerful spirits are needed to find them, and sometimes the spirits themselves must be sacrificed to the winds before a traveler can escape beyond the Horizon. Old-fashioned loremasters have the disturbing habit of referring to the various planets by the names of their Shade Realms. For instance, a Hermetic referring to Jupiter may choose to call it the Shade Realm of Matter instead. Instead of speaking of the Shade Realm of Matter, it's much easier to simply describe it as the Matter Realm. Technocrats are vilified for just calling a planet a planet, but that's the easiest label to use. As the spiritual and astral landscape surrounding Earth demonstrates, there's no limit to the number of Realms and dimensions surrounding a planet. The more mages look, the more they find. Theoretically, most of Earth's spirit worlds are in one of three places —one of the three Umbrae— but there are plenty of exceptions to the rule. After all, in a world of limitless possibilities, it's hard to have rules at all. On a distant world where there aren't six billion conscious minds thinking “no, reality is like this!" — well, anything's possible. |
„ |
| ~ The Infinite Tapestry – Page 117 |
- Beyond the True Horizon, there is only the Deep Umbra, or the Deep Universe, which is the point where humanity's influence over reality breaks down entirely, and the very distinction between realspace and the spiritual world becomes hazy and uncertain. Being what it is, Paradox doesn't occur within its bounds.
| “ | Out past the Asteroid Belt and its True Horizon, the Deep Umbra (or Deep Universe) plays host to the most powerful Marauders and Nephandi – mages too unstable for Earthly confines. Rumor has it that the Traditions and Technocracy joined forces during and after World War II to drive these demented creatures out past the Horizon. Afterward, the story claims, those factions thickened one or both Horizons to keep the Mad Ones, the Fallen, and their various cosmic horrors on the far side. If that’s true, however, then Earth’s Horizon is a poor protection – a powerful wizard can get around it easily enough. Beyond that, though, the story has another major flaw in its logic: if the Horizon is supposed to keep sinister titans out in deep space, why have so many Technocrats and Etherites been dedicated to leaving Earth behind and venturing off into the dark?
Because, yes – there are demonic entities out there in the Void of Heaven. That much is a matter of record. Just as the deepest seas contain creatures too vast for dry land, so the Deep Umbra teems with creatures who’d eat Godzilla for a light snack. The Void Engineers have their Pan-Dimensional Corps to deal with such threats, but their record is spotty at best. The age-old terror of alien invasion is apparently valid, and although the Engineers and Etherites maintain their Earthly rivalry in deep space, they also share camaraderie and occasional cooperation in the face of mutual threats. So why go there to begin with? Because Paradox, the scourge of magick here on Earth, does not exist in deep space at all. A mage who’s powerful enough to fly through space naked while shooting fireballs out his ass can do so without Reality slapping him into next week. The difference between “realspace” and “Umbraspace” gets hazy out beyond the Horizon. Both science and magick seem equally possible in the Void. |
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| ~ Mage The Ascension, 20th Anniversary Edition – Page 114 |
| “ | Beyond the Far Horizon, the cold and deadly Void stretches out to infinity. In the physical world, deep space may be a lifeless realm, but the Void contains horrors entirely alien to mankind's comprehension. Mages try to define this realm through their disparate philosophies, but the minds of men hold no influence on its shadow or substance. Alien forces are at work, and alien creatures demonstrate abilities beyond magic. Spiritualists know this realm as the Deep Umbra; Technocrats speak of the Deep Universe; both groups are entirely out of their depth within it. | „ |
| ~ The Infinite Tapestry – Page 11 |
- The Deep Umbra itself contains infinite different versions of the Tapestry, up to and including the True Horizon, and it is in these alternate universes that the several different game lines take place, with internal contradictions being simply parallel worlds briefly interfering with one another. This is conveyed through a plot device called the "Fractured Cosmos," which Storytellers are free to use should they decide to just not bother creating an unified cosmology for the verse in their game sessions.
| “ | In Mage, Storytellers don’t need to worry too much about forging a unified cosmology. Instead, you can decide that each game has its own universe. Let’s outline such a possibility.
Science fiction and occult literature both support the idea of other universes. In Jewish Kabbalah, God created other universes, but none of them suited humanity. In one instance, He created a perfectly just universe, but absolute justice contradicted mercy and free will. Out of compassion, God created a new universe where injus-tice could exist, but where men and women can make meaningful choices. The prototype universes were peeled from Creation, leaving hollow shells (or Qlippoth), full of energies inimical to spiritual health. Mystics who travel the Sephiroth (the Kabbalistic Tree of Life) risk wandering into the Qlippoth and falling to corruption. Buddhist and Hindu cosmology provides its own opportunities for alternate universes. In this belief system, time is cyclical, moving from yugas of thousands of years to kalpas and mahakalpas of millions and billions of years. Since time is circular, there isn’t a true past or future. Each cycle has common characteristics, such as the manifestations of a great religious teacher or god. Mystics can travel from one iteration of the cycle to the next by recalling other incarnations. In contemporary physics, the idea of alternate universes exists in the Many-Worlds (or Everett) Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. According to this controversial idea, superpositioned particles don’t collapse into a single state. Instead, every possible per-mutation splits off into its own, self-sufficient universe. Communicating with or traveling to these worlds is supposedly impossible, but that’s a small barrier for interested Etherites and Technocrats. These universes do interfere with each other on a very small scale. In a Mage game, this interference can be exaggerated to allow for more robust interactions between universes. |
„ |
| ~ Ascension – Page 203 |
| “ | In Mage, all of these theories can reflect a larger truth: The Tellurian actually consists of several connected Tapestries.
The destinies of these worlds are intertwined. When a significant event occurs in one, its vibrations transmit to the others. Sometimes, this causes the parallel universe to duplicate the event, but precise details shift. A sufficiently strong pulse can violate causality in several universes. The events of the Reckoning might have been so traumatic that cause and effect were scrambled, allowing the Ravnos Ancient to project its singular being into several worlds. Thus, mages inhabit a Tapestry in which belief shapes reality. This property bleeds into an animistic cosmos, where Garou claim that the Awakened’s alien powers come from twisting Gaia’s sacred names. Vampires’, werewolves’ and mages’ dark sides are paramount in a world where they are all rebels against the cosmic order. In this universe, the imbued fight for the rightful dominion of the Messengers and Ministers. Each game line has a Tapestry in which its rules are paramount — and they are a few drops in a sea of possibilities. Contradictions represent the interference of parallel worlds. |
„ |
| ~ Ascension – Page 204 |
| “ | Is it possible to travel to alternate Worlds of Darkness? Spirit, Correspondence, Time and Entropy magic could all help catapult a mage into another world. Tradition Book: Sons of Ether features one suggested rote and a story that takes place in an alternate universe.
Characters might be able to reach alternate worlds through the Umbra, but only by traveling past the Outer Horizon and into uncharted Umbral space. In the spiritual wilderness, the traveler needs to search for paths that don’t correspond with physical space. Rumor has it that great cracks and portals lie in the deepest regions of Umbra, capable of taking voyagers out of the known Tapestry completely. Parallel worlds include their own Umbrae all the way to the Outer Horizon. Even the spirit world can change from universe to universe. In the default Fractured Cosmos, we assume that the universes described in each game line are sufficiently entangled that people and objects can’t duplicate themselves. A technomancer who changes her quantum harmonics to visit the world described in Vampire displaces her counterpart. Her counterpart will be almost exactly the same, but a few slight differences might arouse suspicion in her friends. Remember that according to this model, moving between universes is common. Most people aren’t even aware of it, since the Tapestries tend to have very subtle differences. What happens to the counterpart? The visitor’s Pattern, mind and spirit might superimpose themselves over the double. Its more likely that when the visitor arrives, the double travels to another universe as well because she replicates the visitor’s Tellurian travel. The double might switch universes with the visitor or move laterally in the same direction as the visitor. The latter option means that the double’s double also moves down a universe, ad infinitum. |
„ |
| ~ Ascension – Page 204 |
- The Technocracy also catalogues the existence of constructs they call "Everett Volumes," which are basically alternate histories and "timelines" (The term itself being muddled by what we discussed above, but then again, the Technocracy's whole shtick is speaking in technobabble), where one can find counterparts of everything existing in the primary universe, up to and including even the Deep Umbra.
| “ | Everett Volumes Named for the founder of the Many Worlds hypothesis, Everett Volumes cut across multiple dimensions. In them, explorers can discover alternate Conventional Spaces, Umbral Dimensions and Deep Universes. They include timelines where the Technocratic Conventions fight a Traditions-ruled tyranny from bases in the Deep Universe, and histories where humanity colonizes the solar system, moving the Spatial Horizon beyond the Oort Cloud.
In some Everett Volumes, time passes faster or slower than the main timeline. Void Engineers might use them for a less risky form of time travel, albeit one with fewer practical benefits. Changing history in an Everett Volume doesn’t affect the main timeline, but it won’t invoke disastrous temporal paradoxes either. Bringing objects or people back to the main timeline invokes extreme Paradoxes, however, crushing Void Engineer schemes to bolster their strength with the help of better-equipped counterparts in other timelines. Although the main timeline is theoretically an Everett Volume itself, no known traveler has ever crossed into here from another timeline. |
„ |
| ~ Void Engineers, Revised – Page 58 |
Distant Shores[]
To explain the things residing even further into the cosmology, we also need to read back into two extremely important concepts that were brought up in the first section of the blog: The Consensus and the Sleepers.
In essence, World of Darkness' cosmology is very heavily founded upon concepts present in Gnosticism, a branch of esoterism which posits that the material world all of humanity takes for granted is, in fact, an illusion, no different from a fantasy or a daydream, and that the utmost duty of an individual is then to "awaken" from this illusion and peer into the true nature of reality that underlies it.
| “ | More of a belief system than a specific practice, Gnosticism refers to an overall view that the Creation we perceive as reality is actually the construct of some corrupt or malevolent force. To escape the prison of this fallen reality, a Gnostic seeks wisdom and knowledge (gnosis) that will lead to eventual transcendence.
This concept of an inferior Creation ruled over by malignant “alien forces” or a “lord of this world” can be found everywhere from The Matrix or David Icke’s “reptilian” conspiracy theories to many forms of Christianity or the more dour strains of pre-Christian Pagan belief. Certain approaches to Buddhism or Hinduism could be considered Gnostic even though that word rarely gets used in reference to those faiths. Transhumanism is certainly Gnostic in its ideals of post-human existence through technology. Even certain atheist creeds have Gnostic undertones; Ayn Rand’s fixation with parasitic masses and Nietzsche’s obsession with the Overman cast Gnostic shadows on essentially godless philosophies. On several levels, Mage embodies an essentially Gnostic cosmology, one in which “Sleepers” Awaken, transcend their humanity through knowledge, and potentially Ascend to a higher state. Still, many mages are not Gnostics, either because they do not see their world as innately corrupt; they refuse to believe in higher or lower powers; or they feel that everything is miraculous if and when you open your eyes enough to recognize that fact. Although Mage features certain Gnostic elements, it’s more existential – in the sense that one must find meaning in existence among a meaningless and potentially hostile cosmos – than purely Gnostic in its foundations. |
„ |
| ~ Mage The Ascension, 20th Anniversary Edition – Page 39 |
- The "illusory reality," within the context of World of Darkness, is the Tapestry, the universe that is woven into existence out of the infinite possibilities of the Umbra by the collective belief and thoughts of the masses, containing every possible concept that their minds are capable of grasping. The Technocracy refers to this sphere of existence as "conventional space," and as seen above, the Sons of Ether think of it using the metaphor of the Walls of Troy.
| “ | The mundane world is the best-known example of Conventional Space, where the laws of nature function largely as the Masses expect. A strong dimensional Gauntlet separates incompatible instances of reality. Conventional spacecraft contend with vacuum and radiation. In this dimension, Yuri Gagarin looked down from his capsule, and Neil Armstrong took his small step on the Moon.
Conventional Space extends past the Biospheric Horizon and ends at the Spatial Horizon. We work to extend the Spatial Horizon further with unmanned probes, followed by human explorers — formatting more and more of the area into stark vacuum, not a riot of extradimensional horrors. (Due to this, some Void Engineers refer to this region as Formatted Space, notably those who spend a great deal of time with Iterators who use this term.) |
„ |
| ~ Void Engineers, Revised – Page 55 |
- As they cannot perceive the mystical workings of this reality, as well as what lies further beyond it, the common masses are called "Sleepers," and in contrast, Mages who actively delve into this alien world are called "the Awakened." The key difference being that, while normal people think of the physical world as primary and discard their thoughts and daydreams as secondsry, Mages see the latter as part of a deeper reality, every bit as real, if not more so, than the physical one.
| “ | The first card of the Tarot is the Fool – that pretty boy or girl about to walk off a cliff. And yes, the Fool’s androgynous, like many characters in Coleman’s deck. I like to think she did that on purpose, so that folks who knew how to look past their preconceptions could see themselves, male or female, on that journey. Our Fool’s got belongings slung over his or her back, with a little dog yapping right at the edge of the drop.
Meanwhile, the Fool’s staring off into the sky, perched on the edge between disaster and flight. That’s us. We silly humans come into this world with open eyes. And then we take our first breaths and begin to close those eyes and scream. Most folks never open their eyes again after that… or when they do, they see only what they want to see. What they’re told to see. Mama or Papa hold us close, or doctors smack our butts to hear us howl, and that’s as far as most people get. In Awakened circles, we call those people Sleepers. They’re alive, and they dream, but their eyes are closed to the world around them. And then there are the folks who wander around in a daze. They can sense shapes and sounds and have some degree of control over their movements, but they’re still going through the motions like they’re still asleep. Some of us call such people Sleepwalkers, but they have other names too: hedge wizards, geniuses, mad poets, dreamers, and saints. Certain Sleepwalkers wake up halfway, stuck in nightmares where they imagine themselves to be both potent and powerless. We call them the Night-Folk: vampires, changelings, the various Changing Breeds that rampage through a realm between human, animal, and god. There are hunters and hunted and lost souls of every description. None of them, though, know the secrets we are heir to. They’re mighty in their way, and deadly as hell. But they are not us, and they can never be like us. Because there are people who take that first breath and then wake up. We might feel sleepy for a while, but there always comes a point when just dreaming isn’t enough for us. That’s the Awakening. The thing that makes us what we are. |
„ |
| ~ Mage The Ascension, 20th Anniversary Edition |
- If you didn't guess up until now: This structure doesn't stop here. In fact, Truth Beyond Paradox establishes that, much like Mages control the Consensus of the Sleepers, so too do the Gods control the Consensus of the Mages, and just like regular humans are "asleep" to the spiritual reality which Mages experience, Mages are also "asleep" to the world which the Gods experience.
| “ | “Consensus isn’t yours, Roy,” ExMachine says. “It doesn’t belong to the Technocrats, and it isn’t controlled by the Council, and not by the Nephandi or Marauders ei-ther. Your various global guilds and conglomerates try to shape what the masses believe, and you create gods left and right. Gods that are smarter than you. Your pride won’t let you see what’s right in front of you.”
“Um…” I interrupt his monologue. “What language are you speaking now?" Keymon translates for me: “Belief makes reality, baby. It’s easier to control beliefs of Sleepers than it is to cast spells. And it’s even easier to control the beliefs of mages.” “I think I get it,” I say. “The gods handle mages the same way mages handle… ‘sleepers.’” I saw it in the code on the console. Not any specific code, but the idea itself. So I know it’s true. ExMachine nods smugly, and Roy is sputtering and spitting and babbling. “Neat,” I say calmly. |
„ |
| ~ Truth Beyond Paradox – Page 139 |
| “ | I’m mulling over what ExMachine said about consensus. If mage consensus is created by the gods, then that means, even as a mage, I’m still a type of sleeper. I’m a sleeper to the larger picture. The picture the gods can see.
Since I’m new to all this, it’s pretty easy for me to accept anything. After all, my whole understanding of existence has been rebooted a couple of times today. All of reality is a massive 419 scam. Our beliefs assure us our lives and bodies are fixed to a solid reality with immutable laws. It’s no different than the belief that a prince needs forty grand to bribe the Nigerian Banking Bureau. People need bodies. I get the sense that gods do not. People, even mages, depend on their heads not being carpet-bombed all over the beach. They live their lives stuck within the bounds of their DNA and organs. Gods… do not. I’ve had my epiphany, my real epiphany. To what end do we all exist? What pur-pose do all sparks of consciousness serve? We live out our puny lives serving reality. Until we realize that reality serves us. Time to scam the scammers. With no mouth, I speak aloud: “I hereby bypass consensus to become a god.” |
„ |
| ~ Truth Beyond Paradox – Page 140 |
- Once Theodore, the protagonist of this short story in particular, realizes this and ascends beyond the Consensus in order to become a God, her mind becomes perfectly able to handle contradictions and breaches to normal consensual reality that a simple Mage could not, and ExMachine, her companion, further states that the Gods, too, have their Consensus colled by even greater Gods that can perceive an even deeper reality with even greater minds, and this whole process, in turn, forms an infinite regression of illusory realities constructed by belief.
| “ | Boosted IQ. Product delivered as promised. A++ seller. More tricks than described, but will buy again.
Roy is still muttering about consensus. He can’t handle the cognitive dissonance, apparently. Needs to cling to his rules and reality. Things have got to be a certain way. I feel sorry for him. “Go home, Roy,” I tell him. “Have too many drinks and pretend it was all a dream.” The idea must appeal to him, because he frowns and then wanders off, dejected. Sometimes, cornered people just need a way out. “Real paradox is inside ourselves, isn’t it?” I ask. “Contradictions can exist without a problem. They only have the power to hurt our heads, not the universe.” ExMachine nods. “Paradox is a problem for small minds, like Roy here. We’ve got medium minds. And the gods above us have greater minds still.” “It’s turtles all the way down.” He smiles and motions to the sky, beyond which I can reach with senses I’ve never before known, and touch the presence of the stars. |
„ |
| ~ Truth Beyond Paradox – Page 141 |
Quintessence and the Dot Scaling:[]
- Firstly, to Outline what Quintessence itself is:
"As the archetype of all things, Quintessence forms the Patterns of reality. Prime Force can be channeled into magic, directed in defense, used to fuel potent attacks and turned into new Patterns of creation." - Mage, the Ascension, Revised, Page 127
- This is important as Quintessence acts not only as the Archetype for All things, but informs Patterns.
"As Mages see it, various things spring into being from belief, ideas or the raw bubbling of creation and rebirth. In time, these things take on Patterns - insubstantial ideals of Form. These Patterns can collect Quintessence. That is, they strengthen within reality until they have a true nature, be it ephemeral or material." - The Cycle of the Tellurian, Page 132
- Patterns themselves have been directly stated to be Platonic concepts:
"The theory of forms can (and historically did!) inform and inspire mages of all backgrounds. Most western ideas of changeless perfection arise from interpretations of the Platonic forms, which are themselves usually attributed to Plato's contract with Persian mysticism. (You'll note that forms themselves show up in core Mage as Patterns, the underlying shapes of all Forces, Matter and Life.)"
- This is interesting as this tells us that manipulating Quintessence not only influences the Archetype of All Things, but also Platonic Concepts which inform the Tellurian, and this relates to the difference between Level 1 Mages and Level 2, where at Level 2, Mages can do this:
"Attaining a degree of control over Prime energies, the mage may divert Quintessence into new or existing forms. Combined with other Spheres, this allows that mage to create new Forces, Life, or Matter Patterns (conjuring them from thin air), and to infuse existing items with Primal Force to strengthen them or enhance their protective or destructive power" - Mage, the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition, Page 520
- From this, we establish the Infinite Hierarchy of Mage Dot differences. And as the Embodiment of the Spheres where these powers are derived from, the Planets would scale above the Hierarchy as a Whole.
The Tenth Sphere and Ascension[]
As mentioned above, Mages divide the use of magick into Nine Spheres, each corresponding to a fundamental aspect of reality which they tap into in order to reshape both the Tellurian and the Tapestry to their will; these spheres, as a collective, are believed to encompass all facets of the Tellurian, and their interactions govern the fundamental patterns out of which the all things emerge, forming an infinite cycle which binds all of existence. The spheres themselves are, in total:
| “ | Correspondence – the element of connection between apparently separated things.
• Entropy – the principle of chance, fate, and mortality. • Forces – the understanding of elemental energies. • Life – keys to the mysteries of life and death. • Matter – the principles behind supposedly inanimate objects. • Mind – exploration of the potentials of consciousness. • Prime – an understanding of the Primal Energy within all things. [Quintessence] • Spirit – comprehension of Otherworldly forces and inhabitants. • Time – the strange workings of chronological forces and perceptions. |
„ |
| ~ Mage The Ascension, 20th Anniversary Edition – Page 65 |
| “ | Correspondence: All points in space are one. Command of this Sphere allows a mage to transcend the constraints of space and distance
Entropy: Things fall apart. The Wheel tums on its inexorable course, destroying what exists to make way for new growth. This Sphere encompasses both fortune and destruction. Forces: This Sphere provides its students command over the fundamental forces of the universe, Electromagnetism, fire, gravity, kinetic energy and nuclear power all are within its purview. Life: The biology of all life forms (from simple viruses to the complexity of the human body) fall under this Sphere's control. Biological functions may be sped up, slowed down or even completely rewritten at the whim of the mage who masters the Sphere. Matter: This Sphere encompasses the study of material, inorganic patterns. Everything from simple analyses of chemical composition to the transmutation of base metals into gold. is possible using the magic of Matter. Mind: The study of sentience, perhaps even separate from the biological brain, is the goal of this Sphere. It allows the munge to plumb the depths of his own consciousness and unlock the powers within. Prime: This Sphere covers the study of Quintessence, the raw stuff of Awakened Magic. Mages trained in this Sphere understand and manipulate creation at its most basic, learning to detect, absorb and alter this mysterious Fifth Essence. Spirit: Knowledge of the Umbra and its inhabitants comes from studying this Sphere. The mage who commands its power may converse with spirits and travel to their realms (albeit with difficulty). Time: This Sphere promulgates the subjectivity of time. Using it, a mage may manipulate the perception and passage of time for himself and others. |
„ |
| ~ Mage The Ascension, Revised – Page 140 |
- And their cycle, in turn, works by the following sequence:
| “ | All Spheres are, of course, interconnected, their properties cycling through a circle of connections that unite the principles while keeping each individual field a specialized unit of study and effect. In plain English, one thing leads to another, with all of them playing a part in the greater scheme of things.
This cycle creates things out of apparent nothingness – from the initial conception of an idea, to its form, to the perception of its form, to the decay of that form so that the idea, its materials, and its essen>ce can return to the first point of the cycle and begin all over again in some new state. Each step of that cycle involves a series of Spheres. From original conception in the energy field of Prime, an effect gets focused through consciousness in the Mind and attains substance through the Spirit. Given form in Patterns of Forces, Life, or Matter, the substance interacts with other Patterns through Correspondence and Time. Finally, it breaks down through Entropy, its elements dispersed back to the Prime to start all over again. If there is a Tenth Sphere, it probably governs the entire process, like a circle that encloses this cycle, keeping it all whole and functioning. |
„ |
| ~ Mage The Ascension, 20th Anniversary Edition – Page 67 |
- And the Tenth Sphere, in turn, is a theorized unifying force representing the most fundamental level of reality out of which everything springs forth, and which, as said above, governs the entire cycle of the lesser Nine Spheres. Attaining dominion over this sphere is said to unlock the gates to Ascension, the namesake of the Mage gameline, and the final goal of all practitioners of magick, in which they attain harmony with the Ultimate Reality.
| “ | According to certain authorities, there’s a Tenth Sphere too. The idea has a certain symmetry to it, after all, and – like dark matter in quantum physics – it’s thought to exist simply because there appears to be a place for it in the space between the other elements.
Some folks call this theoretical Sphere Unity, Balance, Unified Field Theory, or even Ascension. By understanding it, they say, you can go beyond the limitation of the other nine Spheres and open the door to Ultimate Reality. So far, though, if anyone actually has discovered and mastered this Tenth Sphere, they’re either not sharing their insights about it or they’ve transcended this Earthly mudball and taken the secret with them. Right now, so far as I’m aware, the Tenth Sphere – like Ascension itself – is an abstract goal of attainment, not something that people achieve and then hang around to talk about afterward. |
„ |
| ~ Mage The Ascension, 20th Anniversary Edition – Page 65 |
- In-verse, every faction disagrees on the exact specifics of the Tenth Sphere, but every single one of their definitions ultimately boil down to the same basic principle. For instance, all of them agree on the existence of the Correspondence Point: The core of existence, and the infinitesimal singularity that preceded the Big Bang that gave birth to the universe, which occupies no point in space and time whatsoever (Even the metaphysical, purely qualitative spacetime of the Umbra) and yet contains all possible spaces within itself.
| “ | Space, interrelationships and sympathetic links all become clear through the study of Correspondence. By bending space or bypassing it entirely, a mage can travel rapidly, fly or teleport from place to place. Divining locations allows the mage to see far-away places or direct magic over distances. With a link between a person and an object, Effects may be targeted through connecting rituals.
Distance forms no barrier to a master of Correspondence. Indeed, distance and even space do not exist to the student of this Sphere. Through the unifying Correspondence Point, mages realise that all things occupy the same space of no space at all. Virtual Adepts, the most dedicated modern students of Correspondence, theorize that all things coexist in a single All-Space or Correspondence Point, and that bypassing space is simply a matter of realizing this unity. Mathematically, space is just an illusion, a convenient construct of the mind. Objects, people and places don't really take up space, according to such theories. Instead, everything is just a Pattern, and space simply describes the relations of different Patterns to one another. |
„ |
| ~ Mage The Ascension – Page 156 |
- The Virtual Adepts, the most proficient of all factions when it comes to the sphere of Correspondence, model their entire cosmology around the Big Bang and the Correspondence Point where it started. In fact, they take an approach far more focused on theoretical physics, and describe the relationship between the consensual reality of the Tapestry (Which they refer to as the Tellurian, unlike other factions, so be mindful of their terminology) and the sea of possibilities from which it emerges using the metaphor of a Hypersphere:
| “ | But what is virtual space? It took physicist Stephen Hawking to figure it out. Hawking used advanced mathematics to examine the fabric of space-time. Believing them to be both manifestations of the Big Bang, he came up with a wonderful metaphor to describe how reality works – A metaphor we will now hijack.
The explosion of Quintessence that created the universe spread out in a very predictable pattern, first unevenly <which allowed things like Matter to emerge> and then finally spherically like a giant bubble. In the end, everything within space-time emerged simultaneously; that means that everything we know – the past, present, and future as well as everything within our universe and all its possibilities already exists in the "hypersphere” that makes up reality. Hawking's model showed that everything we take for granted, from the Earth to the Umbra up to the Horizon and quite possibly beyond, exists on the boundary of the bubble. What lies outside is the Deep Umbra. What lies within the bubble? Turing's virtual space! Within the hypersphere <called the Hype by some unruly Adepts>, there is no space and time as we know it. Everything is relative to the center - the Correspondence Point where the Big Bang started and everything on the boundary of the Hype (our reality) is equally reachable instantaneously from this center. Since space-time doesn't exist inside the Hype, everything outside of the center must be described relative to one another — that is, mathematically. And when you're talking about mathematics, you're getting into the realm of the Adepts. |
„ |
| ~ Virtual Space, Revised – 57 |
| “ | "This is probably going to sound pretty stupid," she qualified, “but, do we know how the universe began? I've
heard some pretty out there stories from the other Traditions, but never our own take on it." BOOksmart smirked. "Are you looking to learn the Adept Creation Myth?" She nodded. He thought for a moment. "I guess the best way to explain it is through example." He held out his hand. A baseball appeared. “This is the universe. I don't suppose you're a fan of America's pastime, are you?" Holly shook her head in mild embarrassment. "You really should be, if for no other reason than to watch a Chaotician have a brain cramp. They totally get off when the announcers talk about ERA and batting averages and have incredible tantrums when a player makes an error. Hilarious. Anyway..." He grabbed both sides of the ball and twisted. The ball split to reveal a perfectly sliced cross-section. “A baseball is made up of three parts: a rubber core, tightly spun yarn and a leather cover. Reality is also composed of three parts. At the core is the Correspondence Point, the central point to all points in reality. The yarn makes up the Hypersphere. You know it better as virtual space. The leather represents consensual reality, or the Tellurian." He pointed at the core of the baseball. “The universe began at the core. Popular opinion says it was the Big Bang. Of course, there's no way to answer that question for sure unless someone was there to witness it. For now, it's what we got. So, to answer your question, the universe was created by the Big Bang." He twisted the ball back together and tossed it at her. |
„ |
| ~ Virtual Adepts, Revised – Page 34 |
| “ | BOOksmart held out the intact baseball. “All right. To recap: Correspondence Point core Hypersphere twine, leather Tellurian. In order to understand how all of it relates, you must start at the center and work your way out."
The baseball's stitching came undone. The leather cover sloughed off and the twine unwound as if a marlin was hooked on the other end. Finally, the last of the twine snapped away, leaving the plain rubber core resting in BOOksmart's palm. “The Correspondence Point is made up entirely of information. Don't confuse it for a three-dimensional object; it's literally a one-dimensional point that occupies no space whatsoever. Thus, when I say it's made up of information, think of it as Information with a capital I." "Okay," Holly slowly nodded. "Information with a capital 'I,' then, is the sum of all information." "No," he corrected, "there is no sum. It's Information, that's it. See, the trick to grasping this is to imagine it as a child might. A child doesn't know a forest is made up of trees until you tell him it is. You need to go back and see the forest for what it was before the trees got involved." “I think I got it," she assured him. "Good." BOOksmart reached out with his other hand. The edge of twine floated between his pinched fingers for him to display. "The Hypersphere is the extrapolation of the core.” He presses the end against the rubber core and slowly winds the twine around it. "Just like the Correspondence Point, the Hypersphere has no space or time. What the Hypersphere does have, however, is the ability to let Information with a capital 'I' be perceived as information with a lowercase 'i' For simplicity's sake, let's refer to perceived information as 'info." He released both the core and the twine. Suspended, the twine whipped around the core, slowly building it out to baseball size. BOOksmart waited for it to finish before continuing. “All the components of reality reside within the Hypersphere. This includes the Quintessence that provides the energy required to translate the info as real objects. What those objects become, of course, depends upon the perspective of those who perceive them." |
„ |
| ~ Virtual Adepts, Revised – Page 34 |
- The Sons of Ether, meanwhile, identify the Tenth Sphere with the "True Ether," a concept based on the idea of the aether as a fluid medium in which the universe resides, established back in the 19th Century. The True Ether, to them, permeates all of space and time and has infinite forms and manifestations, and is the place from which even the Quintessence springs into being, not a force, substance or a mental construct.
| “ | The only common root is the Ether, the basic medium of the universe. Ether takes an infinite number of forms and occupies all space and time, but it is defined by what it is not. It isn't a mental construction, a substance or a force. It is the place from which everything - even Quintessence — rises into existence, and where everything goes when it departs. All matter and energy is conserved.
Aside from the fundamental Ether (what Scientists often call the "Ideal Ether"), other "Ethers" encompass partial states of material and metaphysical reality. Quintessence is held to be the "purest" of these. It is wholly metaphysical, only existing when perceived and acting when acted upon. Contiguous Ether is more base, since it encompasses the physical properties of distance and the relationship between objects. Etherspace is a series of dimensions that lie outside of the Consensus's "Wall of Troy." It has physical features, but they lie outside normal human experience. Quantum Ether theory holds that they are alternate universes that have developed due to humanity's rejection of certain cosmological principles. |
„ |
| ~ Sons of Ether, Revised – Page 54 |
| “ | If there is a "10th Sphere" for the Sons of Ether, it is their namesake. Ether is the fundament of the cosmos, and to discover its true nature underneath the phenomena it creates would surely raise a Scientist to the pinnacle of her calling. True Ether is more basic than even the Tellurian's Quintessential roots because it must include Paradox (which is not Quintessential, but reacts to Ether Science) and the methods of other Traditions. Ether holds the key to these alien secrets, and the Sons are eager to find it.
It is said that the real goal of all experiments is to touch this True Ether. The Sons' holy grail is a theory that explains all of the Ether's manifestations according to a single set of laws. This would describe the Ether fully - and with it, the true nature of the universe. |
„ |
| ~ Sons of Ether, Revised – Page 60 |
- And the Nephandi, finally, identify the Absolute Reality with the Void, an endless nothing against which all constructs of reality are nothing but illusions, akin to "metaphysical dust" briefly imposed upon its surface that will eventually disperse. Framed in the terms of the Kabbalah, this is the Ein Soph, the infinity that lies above the Tree of Life from which the Tellurian evolved.
| “ | Each Avatar, it’s been said, has an Essence: a sort of metaphysical personality. The nature of that personality is, as with most things, open to debate. Is it a reflection of the mage’s subconscious self? The draw of ancestral spirits? A fragment of celestial or demonic force embedded in the mage’s soul? A wild weaving wyrm conjured up from warring entities? Or is it simply the inclinations – spiritual or even genetic – within the mage herself? Awakened folk debate such questions endlessly. What’s certain, though, is that Essence guides the shape and behavior of your Avatar. Its tendencies tend to become, or mirror, your own.
The Council of Traditions recognizes four clear Essences, with a fifth one theorized but not yet accepted as official. Three of those four gravitate toward what Council mages call the Metaphysic Trinity, with the fourth between those extremes and the fifth supposedly encompassing them all. Also known as the Threefold Path, the Trinity epitomizes: Dynamism, the force of unbridled possibility; Stasis, the forms and patterns such possibility attains; and… Entropy, the inevitable pull of destruction that breaks down Stasis and cycles back to Dynamism again. Between them, there’s a quest for Balance, avoiding the extremes while remaining true to the cycle. And beyond them all, there’s said to be Infinity, the One-That-Is-All. The Ein Soph. Unity. The Absolute. Sometimes even called the Void, this cosmic “dark matter” supposedly exists because theory insists that it should. To Nephandi and some other mages, this Void is the true nature of reality, an endless nothing onto which we impose the other forms before they dissipate into metaphysical dust. Not the most cheerful concept, but a potent one anyway. |
„ |
| ~ Mage The Ascension, 20th Anniversary Edition – Pages 44 and 45 |
| “ | Word: The concept of choosing a Word that embodies the whole essential being of an Awakened spirit is still a bit novel to the members of this House. The Word either tries to summarize the infinite or to create exclusivity in that which should be all encompassing. Those few Solificati who have deigned to adopt a Word have often chosen one that is broad (and lofty) enough in its application to adequately encapsulate the Royal Art: Perfection or Ein Soph (the transcendent state of Divinity which exists "above" the Kabbalistic Tree of Life), for example. | „ |
| ~ Order of Hermes, Revised – 59 |
| “ | The Kabbalah is a system of mysticism uncovered by Jewish scholars and holy men that aspires to explain the underlying pattern of the Tellurian and
the holy and unholy forces that shape the world. In the World of Darkness, the three groups that make the most use of Kabbalah are the Lions of Zion, the Ahl-i-Batin and the Order of Hermes. Gematria is the Kabbalistic study of numerology. In the Hebrew alphabet, every letter has a numerical correspondence, and gematria is the study of the numerological meanings of words. Most Kabbalists focus on the Holy Sefiroth, the ten Lights or primal numbers out of which all of the Tellurian evolved. Each Sefira also represents one aspect of the Unity that, while hidden, seeks to be known and made manifest. The metaphysicists of the Ahl-i-Batini have compiled enormous amounts of writing on the interactions between the Sefiroth, as well as the angels, Spirits and magical Sphere associated with each Sefira. |
„ |
| ~ Lost Paths: Ahl-i-Batini and Taftani – Page 26 |
- Several other bits of text reiterate the nature of the Void as a nothing which predates even the Tellurian. For instance, it is often described as the primal state of non-being that preceded "Creation," or "the All," whose advent is explained in several different ways across various creation myths.
| “ | Where did it all begin?
That’s always the question, isn’t it? And especially when you’re talking to and about the Awakened, it’s not a question you can answer with surety. The truth, assuming one exists, keeps getting tangled up in mythologies. We do know this much, though: It started with a bang. According to many myths, a cosmic Sound – a phrase, a song, a thunderbolt – cracked through the empty Void, filling it with possibilities. One, or Nothing, became All. Was this some Big Bang, a titanic OM, a godhead shattering itself into infinity… and really, aren’t they all just different ways of looking at the same thing? Whatever the cause, the Void broke and Creation spilled forth. Infinities passed. Stars blazed. Balls of spinning stone cooled to become worlds. It’s been said that in those earliest days, holy hands passed over waters and set things into place. God-wars raged and their carnage shaped the universe. Deities cast their servants down into an Abyss, and that Divinity tore itself in half – Light and Darkness, the broken shells of what was and the bright spheres of what is. Perhaps it was simply a mythologized play of natural forces… or maybe there was something more. The truth, as it so often is, was lost to time and space. |
„ |
| ~ Mage The Ascension, 20th Anniversary Edition – Page 121 |
| “ | I AM, said the Voice, THAT I AM.
It spoke not in English, nor Latin nor Hebrew nor Greek. Its logos was supreme – all words, songs and languages that would ever come to be. The Word rang from the Void and raced out from the Heavens, filling the Nothing with All. It spoke in the void of possibility: the all-that-is-nothing yet will become all things in time. Its timbre set the void vibrating, and many songs began to spin themselves to life in that dying silence. |
„ |
| ~ Order of Hermes, Revised – Page 14 |
- In contrast to the Tellurian, which is nothing but potential in its purest form, the Void is also defined as the total absence of any and all possibility.
| “ | Void, the: Capitalized, the deepest reaches of space; the principle of ultimate Oblivion; the utter absence of possibility; primal chaos; and the heart of the Underworld – all of which, in essence, may be the same thing. Sometimes called the Absolute, especially by Nephandi. | „ |
| ~ Mage The Ascension, 20th Anniversary Edition – Page 28 |
- Book of the Fallen, a complement for Mage's 20th Anniversary Edition, then elaborates a bit more on the nature of the Void in the form of a state known as "The Black Diamond," an endpoint where a Nephandic Sorcerer descends beyond Creation entirely and enters the Void, reaching beyond human conception and consciousness, and supposedly emerging as a Supreme Creator of a new universe, of the same ilk as the God who created the Tellurian. In this mode, all symbols and divisions collapse entirely, and everything is united back into the darkness.
| “ | As for the Nightside, it both represents a state of symbolic exploration, and occasionally becomes a state of physical location, too. Symbolically, a shaman can venture into the Wilderness without wandering into a real desert or deep forest; physically, that same shaman could take up residence in a far-off location that suits his nature better than, say, an apartment downtown. Any mage can, in fact, do both. Again, though, only the Fallen understand what it truly means to go as far into the Abyss as a mortal person can go.
The Black Diamond waits beyond that point. In that state of personal Descent, the mage becomes the Abyss, the Abyss becomes the mage, and both attain a multifaceted perfection within the Absolute which might consummate annihilation, expand into a new universe where that magus becomes a god, or…who knows? Potentially both. In that state, limitations disappear, and all things become perfect in the Dark. |
„ |
| ~ Book of the Fallen, Page 94 |
| “ | As the shadow of Kether, the transcendent Crown of Creation, Thaumiel represents the essence of ultimate attain-ment. In Kabbalistic tradition, Kether provides Unity… and so, of course, its dark opposite provides Division: two related but separate dimensions, one ruled by Satan, the other by Moloch.
The consummate Adversary of God and Man embodies the Red Dragon, thief of fire and warlike manifestation of the most beautiful Fallen one of all, Lucifer; Moloch, bull-headed god of avarice and wealth, is the true form of the Golden Bull and the living furnace for innocent souls. To face down their demonic hordes and approach the pandimensional throne is to triumph over mortal weakness, fear, despair, principles, and even love. Only the most powerful Nephandi Oracles, the Aswadim, make it this far, and the ones who manage to seize the Throne and assume the Void in all its glory become deities of fresh and glorious hells. With such attainment, a Nephandic God-Magus reputedly unlocks the 10th Sphere: The Absolute. With this legendary Art, the lore insists, the traveler ends her quest with the power of a new Jehovah — not merely a shadow of divinity, or even a minor god, but a supreme creator, immortal and remote from the concerns of mere humanity. Whether or not this is true is — as with all things connected to the Qlippoth — debatable. For certain Fallen, though, this is supposedly the ultimate goal: not to merely end the world as we know it, but to create new worlds to take its place, where the flawed one we know of never mattered at all. That’s the ideal, of course. |
„ |
| ~ Book of the Fallen – Page 112 |
| “ | Global Descent, as we’ve seen earlier, involves the final death of Earth, its dominion by Those Who Dwell Behind the Stars, and the final triumph of the Void. For personal Ascension, some Fallen aspire to the Black Diamond: Escape from the frailties of mortal life, ascension to self-divinity, and the birth of a new universe for which she becomes its Demiurge, creator, and tormenter of all life. For that latter goal, the magus claims the Throne of Lucifer, opens the Gates of Thaumiel, passes through the final crown, and celebrates the Consummation of Leviathan, wherein the Nephandus attains supremacy, not by bowing to a Dark Master but by becoming one herself.
Some authorities refer to this stage of perfection as the Black Diamond: A cosmic jewel of infinite perfections, its endless facets reflecting anti-light in the Absolute eternity of the Void. That Diamond’s an illusion, of course… or a metaphor, or the closest shape a mortal mind can envision when attempting to conceive of something beyond human consciousness. What waits beyond Thaumiel is theoretical. Nephandic Aswadim have supposedly glimpsed it, perhaps held it in their eternal hands, but have not yet assumed its perfect form. Anyone who’s seen this Diamond, though, much less attained its lightless grace, didn’t stick around to offer details. For Nephandi, the Black Diamond and the new universes in its shape represent the ultimate Descent, Falling through the crevices in our world and creating a new cosmos where she becomes its god. Certain advocates of Leviathan declare that a Fallen God may consume the false gods of our world and, by doing so, attain their power for himself. If that’s true, though, then it hasn’t happened yet… although the theory may explain why so many gods have disappeared, their cults forgotten and their achievements dust. Just because it hasn’t happened, though, doesn’t mean it can’t. Perhaps a Nephandic god with enough power and infinite hunger actually could consume the gods of this world someday. And if so, that Fallen One’s Ascension would meet both goals of the Nephandic ideal: Ultimate power, and ultimate Void. |
„ |
| ~ Book of the Fallen, Page 113 |
The Tellurian:[]
- The Tellurian is everything, All of Creation.
"Creation: When capitalized, the term refers to everything that exists – as in “all of Creation.” (See Tellurian.)" - Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition, Page 24
"Tellurian, the: The whole of reality; all Creation." - Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition, Page 28
- The definition for Tellurian is similar to Tapestry, however, far superior;
"“Tellurian” essentially means everything. It’s Reality with a capital R – everything that has been imagined, can be imagined, or has yet to be imagined. It’s a word for something that transcends words… an ineffable name of God, if you will. Why would the names of God or Infinity be unspeakable? The reason many religions forbid speaking the names of their God is because those religions consider Divinity to be beyond definition; to name it is to limit it… and thus, to insult it." - Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition, Page 90
"Speaking of expectations, there are two terms I want to explain before we go any further: Tellurian and Tapestry. Both are essentially metaphors for things that transcend words. When you’re dealing with cosmic concepts, poetry usually speaks better than numbers." - Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition, Page 90
- Similar to the Tapestry, Tellurian is defined several times in the 20th Anniversary book, which confirms that the Umbra is apart of the Tellurian.
"the Tellurian: A name given to the infinite whole of Reality, combining the material and spiritual worlds into one; also known as Creation with a capital C." - Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition, Page 92
- The Tapestry being merely finite to the Tellurian.
"the Tapestry: A metaphor for the structure of the universe – infinite potential given finite form. " - Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition, Page 92
- More than just all imagination or possible things like the Tapestry, but the Tellurian contains things that are completely impossible.
"The Garou also speak of something larger than Gaia, a concept so encompassing that it includes not only the physical reality we know, but all alternative and impossible realities contained within the spirit world. The Tellurian is all of reality, including the living creation of Gaia and all alternatives to reality in the spirit world. It’s more than the universe as we know it, as it includes all shadows, reflections, and variations of reality that are above, below, and surrounding our world. Such simple words hardly do it justice" - Werewolf 20th Anniversary Edition, Page 307
- There is an infinite series of Tellurian's, wrapped into a ball on each other like a fractal all made by Archmages in each Tellurian. Each higher Tellurian is so superior, objects within the new Tellurian cannot exist within the Higher one, this is supported by the use of Prime magic and Quintessence, which as shown above, is the Archetype of the Tellurian and allows the Mage and all Mages before them to create more Tellurian:
| “ | Creating a Universe is best left to the storyteller's imagination. Due to the differences in primal patterns, objects from a created universe cannot survive in the parent universe (the Tellurian of the creating mage). They are, at best, insubstantial shadows of that higher reality. The reverse is not true; the creating mage (and other creatures or objects of his reality) are quite functional in such a universe, unless the creating mage specifically builds its Pattern otherwise. | „ |
| ~ Masters of the Art - Page 73 |
| “ | Naturally watching this universe evolve can provide all sorts of insights for less-experienced fledgling mages, and may even be an interesting place to visit for the Archmage creator. The mage simply gives the tiny Pattern a spark of Creative force, and lets it run. Perhaps this is the way our own universe started... | „ |
| ~ Masters of the Art - Page 73 |
Beyond the Tellurian:[]
- As a General theme as you'll have noticed by this point is that WoD contains all imagination all things possible and impossible and yet have things outside of it, examples here are of Godheads and their Creations, The Weaver's Pattern Web extends beyond the Tellurian and into whatever lays beyond.
"The webs that coat portions of the Penumbra are actually reflections of the Pattern Web itself, the "tip of the iceberg," as it were. Where a Garou walks on the Pattern Web, she is walking more or less within, behind, and beyond the universe all at once, traveling the interstitial void between spirit, matter, and anything which may be beyond the Tellurian." - Werewolf, Book of the Weaver, Page 31
"The Pattern Web is the lattice that underlies all of reality. It can be said to be alive, but not really conscious. It is the spiritual scaffolding which supports both material and Umbral reality, the framework for all that exists. ...- The Pattern Web is the oldest and largest structure in the Universe, but very few Garou ever come into direct contact with it." - Werewolf, Book of the Weaver, Page 31
- Beyond the Pattern Web, what maybe beyond the Tellurian is unknown, except for the Void.
The Demiurge and Aeons[]
The Cosmology of Gnosticism is advanced and discussed in depth, therefore, I will present the most relevant elements here, firstly;
| “ | Gnostic cosmology differed strongly from Christian conceptions in other areas as well. In most Gnostic traditions, the material and divine worlds can be clearly distinguished; many Gnostics considered the Creator of the World (whom they called Ialdabaoth) not merely separate from God, but inferior or even malign and resentful. In Gnostic thought, the Godhead, in its Platonic purity, cannot have created the gross cumbersome material world. Rather, emanations from God (usually eight or 30 "aeons", identified as angels in more Christian Gnosticisms) extend from the empyrean to the material, and the lowest such Aeon, the Demiurge, creates the world.
Nevertheless, although the Demiurge's Creation remains horribly flawed, hope exists, at least for some. One of the aeons, Sophia, the Feminine Principle of Divine wisdom (whom some traditions blame for the Creation through her lustful weakness or her prideful reason), bring forth a redeeming spirit in memory of the higher world. When that redeemer rescues Sophia from the world through divine marriage, the reign of matter can be broken. |
„ |
| “ | The Reign of the Demiurge: The world was made by the Demiurge: a being subsidiary to God (and perhaps the same as Lucifer, and sometimes called Rex Mundi, "king of the world") who hides the true nature of the world in a cloak of matter, pain and lust. | „ |
- Here lays the foundation of Gnostic cosmology, which is then further expanded upon:
| “ | The World
Setite theologians begin with Ancient Egyptian myths but develop them in their own way. Theophidian doctrine holds that the world is a bubble of light and life within an endless black sea called Nun. This "Primeval Ocean" contains within itself the unrealized potential of all existence. Atum-Ra, the Creator, spontaneously arose from Nun when he became aware of his own existence. Atum-Ra raised a mount of earth from the waters so that he would have a place to stand. This mound grew to become the entire world. Setites describe the Creator as a small and wicked god, a mere Demiurge, rather than a truly universal deity. |
„ |
| “ | Whatever truth hides behind the enigmatic symbols of Nun and Atum-Ra, the Setites say that the Creator birthed lesser deities - the Aeons - to assist him in shaping and ruling the world. The Demiurge and Aeons created humanity, too, but created her too well. Perhaps Atum-Ra breathed too much of his divine essence into the first humans when he gave them life and souls. Setite mystics propose dozens of poetic fancies about the Great Accident that gave humans free will.
In the First Age of the world, the Aeons lived among humanity, apparently quite corporeal. Setites disagree about whether the gods grew apart from Humanity to become bodiless spirits or whether human perceptions coarsened so that mortals could no longer interact direct with gods. Set became the first vampire during this Age of Fable. Many Setite mythopoeists declare that the Dark God's metamorphosis forces the Aeons to depart the Material World. The Aeons no longer intervene in human affairs directly. Instead they rule spiritually, deluding the mortals into working their will. The Aeons create religions, governments, commerce, wars - all culture and society - as a web to ensnare human souls. Even the salvations and afterlives promised by other faiths are cunning snares by which the Aeons harvest souls to become their slaves. The Demiurge is a jealous god. |
„ |
The Void:[]
- To be as poetic as possible, the Void is the Alpha and the Omega, Beginning and the End.
"Absolute, the: The Void at the beginning and end of all things, whose violation by Light provided the origin of suffering. Ideally, Nephandi wish to return all things to the Absolute." - The Book of the Fallen, Page 20
- From the Void came the Two, and we get confirmation about Demons and their fates.
"Imagine darkness. Not the modern conception of a night sky illuminated by millions of electric lights, but the absence of light. A darkness before light, wherein the existence of light is an affront to the dark. Imagine a blast of light so bright and sudden that it rips the darkness into shadows. From an Absolute, there are now Two. Divided. Opposed. Where one goes, the other cannot follow. To Darkness, Light is an atrocity. The end of perfection and the genesis of pain. It’s been said that the Creator cast demons down from his heaven, but what if the opposite were true? Suppose it was the Light that shattered Darkness, turning Void into Substance and Substance into Form? And with that Form, eternal suffering began?" - The Book of the Fallen, Page 40
- As stated repeatedly, the Void exists before Creation but, it will consume it in the end as a Cycle of Dynamism.
"Whichever destination they prefer, the Fallen aspire toward a return to the Absolute: the Primordial Void that, according to their myths, preceded our existence and wants to take everything back. Whether or not the Absolute is a spiritual state, a physical state, a pandimensional state, or even a living thing depends upon which Fallen One you ask" - The Book of the Fallen, Page 48
- Interestingly, the Void has a major connection to the Wyrm, showing more that the Triat is among the strongest beings seen in World of Darkness.
"In their way, Malfeans do serve the Lords of the Outer Dark. In their understanding, though, those “lords” are far beyond the vain Satans and banal demons of classical myth. Instead, they’re aspects of the cosmic Void, personified as the entity known as the Wyrm. Its lesser Urge-spirits are gods to men but mere shadows of a greater presence. Malfeans revere these Urges not as masters but as exemplars. Where traditional gods and devils strut about like mortals in cosmic drag, the Urges and their Wyrm progenitor reflect the lightless purity of the hungry Void." - The Book of the Fallen, Page 74
"Having witnessed the new Histpah accept the geas, Cahlash reveals the truth as he knows it. All of Creation is irrelevant. The Wyrm was never the embodiment of balance; the Wyrm is bigger than anything else, it is the void within which everything else sits. The Wyrm conceded tiny parts of its unknowable self to permit the Weaver and the Wyld to exist as brief diversions in its infinite expanse." - Book of the Wyrm, Page 157
- With the Maw of the Wyrm itself being directly stated to be the Abyss;
"The Abyss: A tear in the fabric of creation, the Abyss is a yawning chasm that consumes everything that has been lost or abandoned. Paths snake down its cavernous walls, descending into darkness and madness. In its depths, travelers may find things long gone and things best forgotten. Some believe that at the nadir of this chasm, a ravenous maw of the Wyrm devours and annihilates anything that falls into darkness. No one can prove this, of course, since anything that falls into the pitch-black void is never seen again." - Werewolf 20th Anniversary Edition, Page 316
"Many legends connect the mysterious realm known as the Abyss to the Wyrm, and these legends are entirely correct. The Black Spiral Dancers revere it as the Wyrm’s all-devouring maw. While anything entering the depths of the Abyss vanishes never again to see the light, the edges of this Realm offer a little known and dangerous path to — or from — Malfeas." - Book of the Wyrm, Page 22
- The Void itself isn't just Non-Existence, it is antithetical to existence itself, collapsing all distinctions into nothingness.
"At its ultimate extreme, the Nightside becomes the Void: extinction — not merely death but anti-life. One does not go from the edges of the Nightside to its darkest extremes easily; most mystics never get that far at all, and even Fallen mages get stuck (or stop themselves) in the Dark Wilderness or the Underworld. Very few, even among the Fallen, reach the heart of true Extinction. And once you reach that place, it’s near impossible to come back again. At the Abyssal extent, the false divisions among symbol, form, and state of mind disintegrate. There is no difference here among them; all things are one in the dark. The Void collapses all distinctions into nothingness. Transcending flesh, consciousness, and sin, an Arch-Nephandus, it is said, may become a god unto themself. This space, then, may be the domain of the Dark Masters — not mere monster gods but former humans who have graduated from the mortal condition and attained the zenith (or nadir) of existence." - Book of the Fallen, Page 99
- The Void is a state beyond conception, and truly is the end of the line. with nothing beyond it.
"The Void is the Absolute. Beyond it, one can go no further. Although dark mystics postulate a recursive path back to mortal existence by way of this cosmic attainment, that possibility remains theoretical, if only because proving it is impossible. The Void swallows everything. Those who manage to achieve this state of ultimate darkness cease to exist as anything a human mind can comprehend. Although, as the Fallen say, humanity is a speck in the cosmic sense of things, and the journey beyond human conception runs into… and perhaps through… the Void of all." - Book of the Fallen, Page 99
- One of the few constructs within the Void, the Qlippoth, offers any Mage who can breach all the way to Thaumiel ultimate power, not merely a Lesser God but of a Supreme Creator.
"As the shadow of Kether, the transcendent Crown of Creation, Thaumiel represents the essence of ultimate attainment. In Kabbalistic tradition, Kether provides Unity… and so, of course, its dark opposite provides Division: two related but separate dimensions, one ruled by Satan, the other by Moloch. The consummate Adversary of God and Man embodies the Red Dragon, thief of fire and warlike manifestation of the most beautiful Fallen one of all, Lucifer; Moloch, bull-headed god of avarice and wealth, is the true form of the Golden Bull and the living furnace for innocent souls. To face down their demonic hordes and approach the pandimensional throne is to triumph over mortal weakness, fear, despair, principles, and even love. Only the most powerful Nephandi Oracles, the Aswadim, make it this far, and the ones who manage to seize the Throne and assume the Void in all its glory become deities of fresh and glorious hells. With such attainment, a Nephandic God-Magus reputedly unlocks the 10th Sphere: The Absolute. With this legendary Art, the lore insists, the traveler ends her quest with the power of a new Jehovah — not merely a shadow of divinity, or even a minor god, but a supreme creator, immortal and remote from the concerns of mere humanity." - Book of the Fallen, Page 112-113
Before there was Nothing[]
Before there was nothing, less than darkness, less than even the Void, Gaia was present and she made all:
| “ | Listen --
There was a time when there was a Nothing that cannot be imagined. It was less than chill, less than darkness, less than Void. Into this primordial Nothing crept chaos, the Creator. Chaos was not Nothing - which made her Something, Anything and Everything --- but beyond that, she was unbound by definition. For eons, all noise, all matter, all energy, all form swirled together in the first great storm, and everything arose a hundred thousand times, but nothing lasted more than a moment because Chaos created, but does not sustain or preserve. After Time, Chaos spat forth a piece a part of Herself that had become Self-aware. This part quickly learned to value pattern and form. For eons, it refined itself until it became he, until he became nothing but pattern and form. He could not create, but he could spin the stuff of Chaos into the smooth silk of Order. Where he moved through Chaos, he carved a Swatch of logic behind him, and the Preserver pulled solid ground from out of the storm of the Creator. For eons, the Preserved pulled potential from the storm-jammed belly of the Creator and created and refined his relentlessly orderly Kingdoms. |
„ |
| ~ Nagah Tribebook - Page 20 |
The Supernal[]
The Supernal (distinct from the Supernal from nWoD) exists beyond the Void, across a chasm from which no reason can reach, the realm where the Triat broke from Cosmic unity into their cosmic aspects and formed reality.
| “ | Quaes: I have travelled far and accumulated
much in the way of lore; I mark the cycles of earth and heaven in my brow; my gaze penetrates the firmament and I have discerned the threefold way of the Supernal. Adver: What IS meant by "Supernal?" Quaes: That word denotes that which is beyond the Abyss, the chasm across which one cannot be carried by reason nor intellection, for the minds of men are dark and dense, admitting of no subtleties. The Supernal is beyond knowing directly through any of the Realms Visible or invisible, but is reflected in them all, as it is the source of them all. |
„ |
| ~ Chronicle Of The Black Labyrinth - Page 45 |
| “ | Adver: Name the threefold way.
Quaes: That which is Supernal may not be named, for all names are finite and limiting, and are thus below the Abyss. Adver: But that thou shalt perform the naming, thou shalt not pass from this chamber alive! Quaes: Foremost among the Supernal, the First Principle of all Creation, is the Unity. It is the source all things, the fount from which flow all the manifold forms and forces of all the worlds, and the end to which they all return when their cycle is complete. Within the Unity, All is One, All is within the One, just as the One is within All. Every extreme finds its complement, and all opposing aspects of Creation are reconciled. |
„ |
| “ | Quaes: From the Unity emanates the Supernal Dyad, the opposed and yet interdependent
twins of Force and Form, of Becoming and Being, of Time and Space. The first emanation is formed from the Urge of the One to know Itself, to reach out to all that is not Its Self whereby It may look back and regard Its Self as distinguished from what is not Itself. It is this first action, the reaching out, but not the looking back, which is considered the first part of the Dyad. This action is the movement which initiates the beginning of time, and the force which drives all things to change through time |
„ |
| ~ Chronicle Of The Black Labyrinth - Page 48 |
| “ | Adver: How is the second emanation reflected in this world?
Quaes: It is reflected in the knowledge of all the actions and interactions of men, in accord with the first emanation. As it follows naturally from Beast of War, it can be seen in the women administering to the dead and wounded from battle, thus containing and dissipating the energies of conflict and strife, clearing the way for understanding, and the developing of culture. Thus may it best be seen in the writing of history, where the actions of men upon each other may be unfurled and laid out like a great net or Web. Adver: And how is it reflected in the individual? Quaes: It is reflected in the contemplation of past actions, wherein the energies of Rage are grounded and dispersed. This tightens the cycle of self-awareness, for it is the hunger of the mind consuming itself. Hence may it be named Eater of Souls. Adver: In all that you have said there is harmony and balance, and so must there be harmony and balance in the world. Quaes: But in this world there is no harmony or balance. Adver: So how then can this be? Quaes: I know not, for it was none of my doing. Adver: Answer me or die! Quaes: With the cycle of self-consciousness complete, the Unity has swallowed and consumed itself. Thus losing Its own identity, the Unity has become a Plurality, alienated from Its Self by the divisions and distinctions imposed by the Web of the second emanation. The single Urge to self-knowledge is divided, by passage through the Web, into the manifold conflicting Urges of the human heart. The serpent has lost its grip and now spirals out of control, but is nonetheless ensnared and trapped within the ever-tightening Web. The original Unity, now seen from afar, is perceived as alien, as Other than Self, despoiling the harmony of the original separation and distinction. Hence may it be named the Defiler. Adver: Gaze ye then upon the walls of this chamber. What is the meaning of these images? Quaes: Upon the one hand I see the Spiral Labyrinth, which may be considered a map of that portion of the Web wherein the unbalanced Wyrm is imprisoned. And upon the other hand, this plaque shows the divided mind of the captive Wyrm; in the left-hand column I discern the four signs of the elements, long used by the alchemists; across the top, these three glyphs represent the reflections of the Supernal. Here is Beast of War, head rampant for the attack. Here is Eater of Souls, devouring itself like the Wyrm of Unity and balance, but doubled over in separation. And here is the Defiler, burrowing ever inward to the Unity at the heart of all things. I take these subdivisions then to signify the divided Urges, rendered apart from one another by Supernal distinction above and worldly separation below. Herein is mapped the Rageful mind of the captive, yearning to escape. |
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| ~ Chronicle Of The Black Labyrinth - Page 49 |
| “ | The Triat is what human mystics would call supernal -- existing outside of time and space, but so integral to the very fact of existence that their influence can be perceived in all things at all times. Chaos, order and balance are not visible features of creation, but are principles demonstrated by it; careful examination, thought and intuition reveals all three to be present in the orbits of planets, of electrons, or of a loved one's eyes. Likewise, the story of Triat is expressed over and over in the history of the universe, of mankind and even in the life of an individual human being. | „ |
Alder Bole[]
Alder Bole is the World Tree, the Axis Mundi, a foundation from where the Weaver spins her Pattern Web, where the Wyld nourishes it roots and the Wyrm eats its fallen leaves:
| “ | These spirits tell a myth, one widespread and consistent to a remarkable degree with many of our own:
At first, there was nothingness - The Wyrm, the Void, Oblivion, Entropy. This Void persisted indefinitely, since even Time had yet to be conceived. Then suddenly, a drop of the Wyld, of Primordial essence, splattered into the Void. Another drop followed by the first, then another. Where drops of Wyld struck the Void, the two essences cancelled one another. Something was created. This something took the form of a single seed. Fed by the erratic Wyld-Void reaction, the seed grew into a sapling: the Alder Bole. As the tree grew, its roots spread across the Void and eventually covered it completely. And yet, the Alder Bole continued to grow, its vast and wide-reaching network of branches brushing the High Umbra. At the tips of each branch, a bud opened and a new realm blossomed. Mean while, its roots had burrowed into the Low Umbra, giving form the Lands of the Dead. This part of the myth explains why the Alder Bole reaches into many realms. According to myth, the Alder Bole gave form to other things as well - the Sisters, Umbrood and aboriginal spirits, and entities you would consider "gods". Where Pattern was most vital - in the Middle Umbra around the trunk - a Phyusical reality eventually formed: the Earth, its elements, animals, plants and mortals. In short, all things sprang from the Alder Bole. |
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| ~ Beyond the Barriers: The Book of the Worlds - Page 125 |
| “ | Axis Mundi: The World Tree
The term "axis mundi" comes from the study of Shamanism. It is the ritual centre of the world in a shamanic ceremony, the world naval or the world tree where the shaman enters the upper or lower worlds of reality, seeking cures from spirits for ailments. All shamans (and Theurges) know this centre, for they call upon it every time they enter the Spirit World. All Garou feel it when they step sideways, the sense that they are somehow at the centre of everything, that the most important thing in the universe is happening right now, right here. When moving between worlds, they must start from the centre. This spiritual centre is not a place but a state of being, a feeling deep within the spiritual traveller that she stands at one point before the beginning of time and space, before the phenomena of the world unravelled to become the vast tapestry it is today. Each being carries this sense of primal oneness within themselves, regardless of how deeply it is buried beneath dualities and pluralities. Mages know this as the Correspondence Sphere; Garou feel it instinctually and imagine it as a primal tree, Gaia's One Tree. The One Tree, a power image for all of the Garou, symbolizes lost unity and the womb of Gaia. This is the axis of the world upon which the wheel of the seasons turn. |
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| ~ Axis Mundi - The Book of Spirits - Page 14 |
- To Verbena Mages, the World Tree is more than just the Correspondence sphere, it is the embodiment of Prime energy, which is duality, the source of all things:
| “ | Prime: The Hub of the Wheel, the World Tree
Prime sits at the centre of the wheel, the centre of creation, embodied by the World Tree, the life that sustains the Tellurian and extends its branches and roots everywhere. For the Verberna, Prime is the Union of opposites: the meeting of earth and sky, day and night, masculine and feminine, summer and winter, life and death. From that dynamic balance springs all creation. It is the union of the Goddess and God in the Great Rite, the moment of conception. Some Verbena equate the Sphere of Prime with the Godhead or Great Spirit, which is to the gods as the gods are to mortals, the sun-source of divinity and life. Prime magic for the Verbena is mainly creative, the power to bring new things, particular new life into being. |
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| “ | The World Tree
A common Verbena metaphor for the Tellurian is the World Tree, also known as the Great Tree or the Tree of Life. It stands at the center of everything, the axis mundi, the point around which the world turns. The World Tree’s roots deep in the earth represent the past and the foundations of the world. They reach into the Underworld, the land of the dead, where death literally fuels new life by composting into the earth. They are the dark recesses of the mind, the shadow side of creation, home to chthonian gods and goddesses. The World Tree’s trunk supports the cosmos, which turns around it. It connects the earth and the sky, serving as a bridge between the worlds. The trunk represents the present, the strength of the moment that the Verbena embrace. The spreading branches, each reaching out to touch different worlds, represent the future, the many different choices and roads that lie before us. To the Verbena the many worlds of the Deep Umbra lie among the branches of the World Tree, as well as the many possible worlds of the future. The fruit and seeds of the World Tree represent potential waiting to bloom into being. Even if the tree itself dies, it does not mean the end, because new life will grow in its place. The World Tree, the Tellurian, holds the seeds of its own death and its own renewal. |
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| ~ Verbena, Revised - Page 52 |
- The Garou (Werewolves) have many ideas about Alder Bole, but they seem consistent, it existed before everything, even the Pure Ones:
| “ | Despite this, the stories all start simply: The Earth is at the center of Gaia. The Heavens reach above it; the Underworld lies below it; the spirit world of the Umbra surrounds it on all sides. The Garou recite a line attributed to a legendary Galliard: “realms beyond the one you know…worlds above and worlds below.” From this truism, account sand details vary. The Pure Ones tell stories of a World Tree that rises through the center of creation; for the Stargazers, it’s called the Axis Mundi; for the Get of Fenris, it’s Yggdrasil; in more elaborate legends, the roots of the tree grow from the back of a World Turtle on an endless sea. All of these stories are different, and all of them are equally true | „ |
| ~ W20 - Core Rulebook - Page 307 |
| “ | Of all the visions that a shaman may receive during his life, none is more sacred than the World Tree, the living heart of all Creation. It extends everywhere --- nothing escapes its touch. It is, has and always will be -- it's possible it was the first manifestation of Earth before anything else was created.
It has a few specific manifestations within the Umbra: the Well of Souls in the High Umbra, the Radiance in the Middle Umbra, the Labyrinth and Oblivion in the Low Umbra (or Shadowlands). The enigmatic place described in The Book of Worlds as its most blatant manifestation, and the Null Zone exists within its trunk and branches (literally inside the Tree). Maya, the Dream Realms, are a mirror of the World Tree - in dream, everything is possible and played out. Here, the eternal cycle - Dynamism, Stasis and Entropy - continues as it has for millennia. |
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| ~ The Spirit Ways - Page 74 |
- The World Tree itself is both the culmination of all Cosmological trees, the Sephirot, the World Tree, it is all of them and more:
| “ | "The World Tree - it's beyond that barrier isn't it?" Adam asked. It was a shimmering rainbow wall in the middle of the village. The people - infinite faces, infinite colours - stood around him, watch as he approached the barrier.
The African woman nodded. Adam could feel Obatala urging him on. He approached the wall, touched it. It gave way. He stepped through. "The Alder Bole, or the World Tree, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, et cetetra," he heard a voice say, "is a useful analogy for the cosmological structure of the Umbrae, but we certainly don't mean to accept it as a literal model for how the world is structured---" |
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| ~ Spirit Ways - Page 73 |
| “ | The Alder Bole
Depending on one's perspective, the Alder Bole could easily be called the Tree of Life, of the Knowledge of Good and Evil; the Sacred Tree; or the World Tree. The Alder Bole is said to have existed since the earliest times, even to have spawned many Realms. A manifestation of Pattern, it is certainly one of the last Vestiges of pure creation remaining. The Pure Ones are said to have sheltered themselves beneath this tree, and some claim that the One Itself climbed the Bole's branches and hung himself upside down searching for Wisdom. |
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The Essential Divinity and the Godheads[]
Mage's 20th Anniversary Edition, among other things, provides us with an outline of the "Umbral Hierarchy," which, as the name suggests, is the most basic and general pecking order in which Mages divided the Universe, as well as what lies beyond it, though this doesn't necessarily include only the Umbra. And the three most important classifications of this hierarchy, in turn, are the following:
| “ | One of Mage’s thorniest elements, both in and out of the fictional world, involves the question of God and other spirits.
To be blunt, where does God rank on the Umbral Hierarchy? What about Krishna? Is the Goddess somehow lower than God, or is Her consort a Horned God in a cosmos where the Christian God does not exist? How can someone wrestle with God, as Jacob does in the Bible, and does the existence of Raven preclude the existence of Allah or the Buddha? Where does Satan fit in there, if Satan even exists at all? After all, Mage posits the existence of a spiritual world filled with spiritual truths. Which god is God, and are there many gods or only One? Ultimately, the capital-T Truth depends on what you want it to be. If your Mage chronicle favors your own Muslim, Baptist, Wiccan, or Tibetan Buddhist creed, then by all means decide that all roads lead to your Divinity of choice. If you’re an existential atheist, then maybe all of this is just delusion. We’re not here to tell you how to believe or to force a religion (or the lack of one) down your throat. Maybe all spirits really are aliens or angels or demons or archetypes. That’s your call to make, not ours. Within the Mage world, the various Traditions have been arguing these points for centuries. The Technocracy discarded an official creed beyond Enlightened Science, and the Disparates have left that question off the table, definitely for now and probably for good. The Umbral Hierarchy represents an uneasy compromise with lots of room to move. It’s certainly not definitive, and it neither demeans nor demands a single point of faith. At the top of that Hierarchy, however, the terms Essential Divinity, Godhead, and The Adversary deserve some explanation: Essential Divinity is the name given to That Which Cannot Be Named – the I AM THAT I AM at the core of sacred mysteries. An indefinable essence that pervades Creation, it transcends names and identities. As ineffable things go, this one scores the top of the list. Godhead is what you get when you assign Divinity a face, personality, and name. Sometimes that Divinity incarnates itself in an avatar: an identity that humans can relate to (Krishna, Mary, Old Man, and so forth). Other times, it remains a transcendent yet still relatable force… a Holy Spirit, if you will, understood by certain people in certain terms. The Adversary is the cosmic Antagonist, the force of Opposition that may or may not be another aspect of Divinity. Some folks see it as an evil anti-god, others view it as a rebellious lesser creation, and still others view it as a shadow of Essential Divinity. Many people refuse to recognize it at all or theorize that it exists because people think it exists. In any case, the Adversary is godlike… and might, as the Nephandi believe, be that summation of cosmic Absolute against which god is the rebel who will eventually be consumed. Compared to these Greater Powers, all other spirits are functionaries – courtiers, servants, embodiments of principles, or incarnations of ideas. They’ve got their own identities, even though such identities often remain unclear to human witnesses. At the top of the Hierarchy, however, the Greater Powers defy easy categorization, transcend game Traits, and command powers far beyond any human reach. |
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| ~ Mage The Ascension, 20th Anniversary Edition – Page 487 to 488 |
- This relationship between the Essential Divinity and the Godheads, in turn, is alluded to in Gods & Monsters, which lists the following as one of the possibilities for the origin of Gods listed in the book:
| “ | God is a funny word. People will kill each other over different interpretations of it, but few — even when they share a creed — agree completely about just what the word means. For Mage purposes, though, a god-form reflects a spiritual entity who embodies a recognizable identity that has been shaped by human belief in its divinity. Although it might assume temporary manifestations in the human world, a god-form transcends game Traits. Its powers might not be truly limitless, but they’re far greater than those of playable characters or confrontable foes. Whether a given god-form predates humanity, has been shaped by human consciousness (see “Thought Forms” in Mage 20, pp. 598-599), or is an ineffable essence that has, in turn, been shaped into an identity by mortals who revere it… that’s stuff for philosophers to debate. | „ |
| ~ Gods & Monsters, 153 |
- And it is also alluded to in the revised Order of Hermes tradition book, where the Creation Myth of the titular faction involves God, itself both male and female and encompassing all things, manifesting its "Nous," which in turn fashions all of Creation from the nothingness of the Void. And the primordial "Word" which it sounded in order to manifest itself, in turn, was "I AM THAT I AM," the same statement that defines the core of the Essential Divinity according to Mage.
| “ | "God, being both male and female, beginning as life and light, gave birth, by the word, to another Nous*, the Creator of the world; he, being the god of fire and air, formed seven powers who encompass in their circles the sensory world, and the governances of these powers is called Destiny."
– Poimandres, from the Corpus Hermeticum (* Nous, a vital word in Hermetic thought, has no direct English translations. It conveys consciousness, intellect, wisdom, perception, primal divinity and sophisticated creativity, and it means all and yet none of these things directly) |
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| ~ Order of Hermes, Revised – Page 14 |
- The term itself being used in its Neoplatonic sense, where it is the active faculty of The One, and a Demiurge which fashions the world based on the "thoughts" contained within the Absolute. To quote Wikipedia here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nous
| “ | The Nous (usually translated as "Intellect", or "Intelligence" in this context, or sometimes "mind" or "reason") is described as God, or more precisely an image of God, often referred to as the Demiurge. It thinks its own contents, which are thoughts, equated to the Platonic ideas or forms (eide). The thinking of this Intellect is the highest activity of life. The actualization (energeia) of this thinking is the being of the forms. This Intellect is the first principle or foundation of existence. The One is prior to it, but not in the sense that a normal cause is prior to an effect, but instead Intellect is called an emanation of the One. The One is the possibility of this foundation of existence. | „ |
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoplatonism#Ideas
| “ | The original Being initially emanates, or throws out, the nous, which is a perfect image of the One and the archetype of all existing things. It is simultaneously both being and thought, idea and ideal world. As image, the nous corresponds perfectly to the One, but as derivative, it is entirely different. What Plotinus understands by the nous is the highest sphere accessible to the human mind, while also being pure intellect itself. Nous is the most critical component of idealism, Neoplatonism being a pure form of idealism. The demiurge (the nous) is the energy, or ergon (does the work), which manifests or organises the material world into perceivability. | „ |
- And this, in turn, coincides with how a Nephandi who attains the Black Diamond, although empowered by, and one with The Void, is explicitly still a Demiurgic figure whose ultimate role is to create its own universe apart from the one in which they originated.
| “ | Global Descent, as we’ve seen earlier, involves the final death of Earth, its dominion by Those Who Dwell Behind the Stars, and the final triumph of the Void. For personal Ascension, some Fallen aspire to the Black Diamond: Escape from the frailties of mortal life, ascension to self-divinity, and the birth of a new universe for which she becomes its Demiurge, creator, and tormenter of all life. For that latter goal, the magus claims the Throne of Lucifer, opens the Gates of Thaumiel, passes through the final crown, and celebrates the Consummation of Leviathan, wherein the Nephandus attains supremacy, not by bowing to a Dark Master but by becoming one herself. | „ |
| ~ Book of the Fallen, Page 113 |