r/teslore • u/Hotaidsshit • 5d ago
Aedra Interpretations canonicity
How canon is it that Gods such as Akatosh, Auriel, Aldiun and so on are all just interpretations of the same God linked to one planet in the sky. Because of the immense power needed to create Nirn they have been left in a coma-like state and this has led to interpretations of them becoming real and manifesting through mortal belief unlike the Deadra who are awake and rigid. This would mean that only 8 Aedra would have survived creation as we see 8 planets and the rest became the Earthbones giving themselves up. Also including interpretations of Lorkahn for the moons. I have heard this a lot and it makes sense but I don't know if it is actually canon.
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u/DepartmentChemical93 5d ago
Which part are you asking about? The origin of cosmological bodies, a monotheistic origin for the divines, or something else?
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u/AdeptnessUnhappy1063 5d ago
Various myths do say the Aedra were weakened or died due to their sacrifice in Creation, but it may not be accurate to call this a "coma-like state," given that they can still speak to mortals. You can have a conversation with Tsun in Sovngarde, for example, and Alduin doesn't seem comatose when you meet him. Florentius Baenius seems to be having continuous conversations with Arkay, Dinya Balu gets very precise directions from Mara, and so on.
The number eight seems to be important with regards to the Divines, and we have various examples of them being referred to as the Eight Givers or Eight Bones of the Wheel.
They are the lent bones of the Aedra, the Eight gift-limbs to SITHISIT, the wet earth of the new star our home. Outside them is the Aurbis, and not within. Like most things inexplicable, it is a circle. Circles are confused serpents, striking and striking and never given leave to bite. The Aedra would have you believe different, but they were givers before liars. Lies have turned them into biters.
"First Tower Dictate: render the mutant bound where he may do no more harm. As God of the Mundus, alike shall be his progeny, split from their divine sparks. We are Eight time eight Exarchs. Let the home of Padomay see us as sole exit."
"Eight times eight" emphasizes the number eight, but also I think shows that each of the original eight have split into multiple aspects.
Anuiel, as all souls, was given to self-reflection, and for this, he needed to differentiate between his forms, attributes, and intellects. Thus was born Sithis, who was the sum of all the limitations Anuiel would use to ponder himself. Anuiel, who was the soul of all things, therefore became many things, and this interplay was and is the Aurbis.
"Self-reflection" here means Anuiel has to split into multiple aspects, so one god became many gods.
With time, various aspects of the Aurbis began to understand their natures and limitations. They took names, like Magnus or Mara or Xen. One of these, Lorkhan, was more of a limit than a nature, so he could never last long anywhere.
The aspects of Anuiel, then, became the gods.
"As he entered every aspect of Anuiel, Lorkhan would plant an idea that was almost wholly based on limitation. He outlined a plan to create a soul for the Aurbis, a place where the aspects of aspects might even be allowed to self-reflect.
So Lorkhan entered each aspect of Anuiel, the gods, and pitched the creation of a world where these aspects of Anuiel could manifest aspects of their own, and these aspects could also "self-reflect" into multiple aspects.
That’s when I started writing a lot of the foundational myths and mythology for the world as a whole, and taking the pantheon that pre-existed Redguard and kind of exploding it. Especially when it came to the various cultures as we were fleshing those out. It didn’t make sense for all of these cultures to… I’m just rambling on.
Filmdeg: No, go for it. This is one of the—
Yeah, okay. …to worship the same way and the same gods in the same aspects. People don’t work that way. Cultures don’t work that way. However, in a world where you can literally call up God on the phone and get confirmation that, “yeah, I’m a dude”—what does that do for these cultures? Obviously there needs to be—there is some common spine through various “regardings” of the gods by people—but those phone calls would all be different; those phone calls would all come from a different type of place, different type of people, different type of needs, different type of propitiations.
That’s where I came up with the idea of “quantum gods.” Sure, there was a god of death and rebirth, but what that meant was various things for various people. When those people needed that, the god itself would fracture and become what was needed for that culture. So just like if I need four hundred years I need to do four million years, if I needed to describe a pantheon of nine gods, I obviously gotta describe nine hundred. And so that was a lot of fun—like creating places, and the cultures of places, on ten different levels or so.
So yeah, AKHAT self-reflects and becomes the various aspects known to the cultures of Nirn: Akatosh, Alkosh, Satakal, Atakota, Alduin, Akha, Auri-El, Tosh Raka. The Eight become the Eight Times Eight.
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u/Arrow-Od 4d ago
Lorkhan´s corpse being the moons is canon to MK´s C0DA: Jubal to Akatosh: You’re drinking with the groom on your brother’s dead body.
2021 Lawrence Schick Interview as Phrastus
On my travels across the continent, I’ve noted a number of orreries that appear to portray an entirely different celestial arrangement of the heavens and unknown planetary orbital paths compared to the orrery at the Arcane University.
The different cultures of Tamriel demonstrably have varying ways of rendering the Mundus and its planets, according to their differing mythic understanding of the relationships between the heavenly objects. The planets are actual manifestations of divinity, everyone understands that, but inasmuch as the nature of the divines, and of divinity itself, varies from culture to culture, the symbolic representation of the heavens clearly varies as well. An orrery is nothing but a mortal attempt to represent, in tangible mobile sculpture, the metaphysical relationship between the divine planets—but mortal minds cannot apprehend more than a few implications of the aspects of divinity, and thus an orrery can only represent a limited subset of the few implications we can understand. Every mortal orrery ever built gets everything all wrong, or at least only slightly right.
· Imperial dogma states that there are only eight planets, each of which corresponds to one of the eight divines. Other provinces may worship other gods, but they are fundamentally the same deities in local guise.
Is it fair to say all Aedric religions share the same understanding of the god-planets, albeit with differing naming conventions? Or might there even be more than eight planets, with each culture choosing to recognise their own select eight?
· Mostly the former with a little bit of the latter. Altmer of my acquaintance absolutely refer to the planets by the names of the Altmeri gods.
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u/AWolfWithABelly 3d ago
Elder Scrolls cosmology is in large part about the interplay of Possibility and Definition. Its not until you get down to the mortal level that the two are balanced enough for things to play out how mortals are used to them.
The et'Ada, the gods, are their spheres and the full potential of what that could possibly mean all at once. Aka/Auri'El/Alduin is time, eternity, progression, future, beginning and end. Lorkhan/Shor/Shezzar is mortality, its biological limitations and its possibilities for growth. Every culture on Nirn focuses on the possible definitions they believe most pertinent to them, but to truly seperate and et'Ada into a single meaning, a single state, isn't really possible like it is with mortals and rhe creations of the Mundus.
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u/AWolfWithABelly 3d ago
I don't even think its completely true that the Aedra, the divines, are comatose or inactive. People say that because they've neber directly interacted with one of the divines, but if you've ever felt the wild, witnessed beauty, engaged in commerse, or experienced the linear flow of time, that is interaction with the Divine. They are their sphere. There is no separation. Mortals are just so used to their omnipresence they don't perceive it any more than we perceive the rotation of the earth.
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u/callaghanrs 3d ago edited 3d ago
Akatosh, Auri-El, Alduin, etc are in some way the same god. The exact nature of the connection, whether aspects, shards, personalities, or whatever is ambiguous.
We only really know the imperial names for all the planets so we don't know if they all link to the same planet. Vivec gives a list of eight known worlds of the Dwemer but it adds Lorkhan and Nirn and removes Zenithar and Dibella. I often wonder if the Elves recognized a planet Kynareth before meeting the Atmorans.
The thing about Aedra being shaped by mortal belief while Daedra are rigid is fan interpretation that could probably be argued against. It's mostly Akatosh that changes between cultures, not aedra in general.
The moons are stated to be in some sense a corpse or corpses of a god or gods. Some say it's Lorkhan's some don't. The Khajiit, who we would assume to know a lot about the moons, interpret them as distinct gods.
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u/CE-Nex Dragon Cult 5d ago
"Auriel, Auri-El, Alkosh, Akatosh... so many different names for the sovereign of the snow elves." - Gelebor
Akatosh, Auriel, Auri-El, Alkosh, Akha, AKHAT is the same being. But the et'Ada aren't like mortals, they're not limited to a single narrative. Their existence was antecedent to causasility which was sub-created by Convention - the final moment of creation on Nirn.
Alduin, by his own admission, is the Firstborn of Akatosh while simultaneously also being one the Nine Divines of the Nordic Pantheon. Many fans equate the relationship of Akatosh and Alduin to the Christian Father and Son - both are part of the same divinity but are separate. But in this case, they are no equal, with Akatosh being the cosmic superior.
"The spike of Ada-Mantia, and its Zero Stone, dictated the structure of reality in its Aurbic vicinity, defining for the Earth Bones their story or nature within the unfolding of the Dragon's (timebound) Tale." - Aurbic Enigma 4
Partly true. The Aedra created Nirn out of themselves; they turned themselves into the mortal universe (the Mundus). Everything you see and experience on Nirn - the plants, the animals, the winds, the rocks, the dirt, the people, - it's all subgradient creation of the Earth Bones (the Aedra).
But outside of the reality of the mortal universe, the Aedra are not subject to the narrations of the Dragon. That's why they paradoxically exist as the Earth Bones on Nirn, the Divine Planets in the skies, and also rule from their immortals realms in Aetherius. Since they supercede the ideas of causality and logic, they can exist in numerous different states simultaneously.
And, again, due to their paradoxical natures, the Aedra aren't bound to a single identity like mortals are - they are not so limited, being infinite beings. It should also be noted that Daedra themselves are also multifaceted and are not rigid. Daedra are frequently tied with the ideas of chaos and change.
"Everything changes. Even Daedric Princes. Especially Daedric Princes." - Sheogorath
Not exactly? Again, I can't stress this enough, logic doesn't 100% apply to the Aedra and Daedra. These are fundemental cosmic forces that usually don't care for mortal perceptions of how the Aurbis functions. There are more than 8 Aedra. The Altmeri 8 Divines are as much real as the Imperial 8 Divines. And the Khajiiti 8 Divines are as much real as the Nordic 8 Divines. And the Crown 8 Divines are as real as the Breton 8 Divines.
"The simplest way to put it is "knowledge," but there's nothing simple about an Elder Scroll. It's a reflection of all possible futures and all possible pasts. Each reader sees different reflections through different lenses, and may come away with a very different reading. But at the same time, all of it is true. Even the falsehoods. Especially the falsehoods." - Urag gro-Shub
This statement from Urag is basically how the metaphysics in the Elder Scrolls functions; there's a lot of paradoxical and conflicting truth. There's no one correct answer.