Creation Myths – Part 2 (Catarthian ‘Divine Family’ Religion)

The Creation Myth

Once upon a time there was a God and Goddess. They thrilled in each others’ company and used the entire universe as a canvas for their imagination. Delighting in their ability to create, they painted everything into their universe until the layers and layers of paint became nonsense. The God saw this and realized the painting was nonsense and so he declared that the universe be wiped clean so that he could use his learned skills to do much better.
But the Goddess loved her world more than her husband, and the chaos of her painting infected her, so when God cleared the canvas of creation, the Goddess wept and scorned him, gathering up the threads of this place before God could clean it all, and hiding it away.

God offered her something new to salve her pain. To help order their wild creations, they should create two new Gods, and to do so he took two pebbles and placed them in the Goddess. Their Divine Children were also infected by the chaos, the female aspect being more tainted than the male, as she took after her mother, and he their father. Yet together they painted a perfect world upon the canvas where all made sense and all existed in harmony.

But the Goddess was not content with this. She was bitter that the others exalted in paradise while she stewed in regret and grief for her lost world. She whispered into the ears of her children of a promise land and offered to show them a better way. Her son rejected her notions and went to seek out his father, while her daughter – who was pregnant with the next generation of gods – went with her and gazed into the mad tangle. The pollution of her mind was too much for her to bear and she fled back into the world of perfection, tearing it and tainting it as she went.

The first God saw the destruction but instead of weeping he called them all together and he declared that one more universe would be created to house the creatures of paradise while it was being fixed. He also swore that for her meddling, the first Goddess would be banished to the edges of the cosmos where she soon set to playing with her hellish world. Finally, with the birth of the final Gods, for the first God swore there would be no further Gods, a third universe was made.

This universe was weak and hastily made as it was only meant to be a temporary measure. The third God, the Divine Son, had to march its borders to defend it from his mad Grandmother. He followed the instruction of the Father who was eldest and wisest of them now that the Grandfather was busy repairing paradise. The Mother, guilty over having broken paradise through her failure to trust the Grandfather, bowed her head to the Gods and became an nurturer to the third world, obeying the wise male Gods. The Daughter, having been made ‘innocent’ and ‘simple’ due to her exposure to the Grandmother’s perverse world.
For those who do not assist the Grandmother’s attempts to damage the true laws, there will be life ever-lasting in the paradise of Grandfather’s creation.

What is this creation myth based upon?

Well, the Sen Dalians’ view of the gentle Family twisted as they became more militaristic. As the might makes right philosophy began to take root, the physically strong took control in order to protect their families from the increasingly militaristic people around them, and in doing so, they also began to enshrine the violent soldier’s code. They required a religion that was more in line with justifying male superiority, feminine weakness, and discouraging dangerous emotions that might upset the status quo. They also needed something to explain why life was so harsh and to promise a reward for those who toiled.

They needed an evil figure and their vilified the Grandmother as her cults were the most tenacious amongst the people and her original practices revolved around medicine and teaching those of lesser station, which was the most dangerous to the status quo. This creation myth doesn’t justify cruelty to any other human being, however, simply that each person has their place and should be proud of their place. An ordered society is a healthy society.

History of the creation myth

The Sen Dalians embraced this creation myth over a thousand years ago though it has obviously changed somewhat over the years. When the tribes of the Realms began coalescing under warlord states, shortly before the Chelian aristocracy, Sen Dalian merchants brought their new religion to the continent. It was resisted at first, but after a successful invasion of the northern parts of the Realms by the Sen Dalians (that lasted about 70 years), the religion soon spread.

Part 3 will be the Imperials Creation Myth ….

Creation Myths – Part 1 (Velastant ‘Divine Family’ Religion)

The Creation Myth

Once upon a time, the universe was filled with mud as land and water mixed. The mud spawned many things but they soon drowned in the chaos of the time. A long time ago in the past and in the future, came the Gardener who crawled through the mud. The Gardener whispered promises to the mud of all the beautiful things that could fill the universe and how those beautiful things would forever worship the land and water that sprung them forth. The Mud fell in love with the Gardener’s visions and spread apart so that the land became sturdy and the water became clear.
Still the Gardener was drowning for he could not breathe land or water. He prayed to the Land and Water and begged for space to breathe and move about so that he could bring about the beauty of their blessings. The Land and Water distrusted each other and were already unhappy with their lack of control in the other’s dominion. So the Gardener suggested they birth Air to flow between them and ensure that the Land must give way to the Water and the Water to the Land in cycles that give each one some time in that place.
The Land and Water agreed and gave birth to Air but Air was quite powerful and blew the Land and Water into a small tight ball and took up the rest of the cosmos for itself. Air was inside the ball as well and it blew and blew so hard that the Land and Water were always mixing. Land and Water were horrified so the Gardener fashioned a mirror from the Land and held it up to Water and from Water’s reflection sprung its opposite, Fire.
The Gardener plucked up sparks of Fire and tossed them up into the Air to pin it in place. The Gardener then dug holes into the Land and put Fire into the world’s belly to compete with Air and control the quakes and keep the Air inside the world from meeting and conspiring with the Air outside the world. Thus whenever the Air shook parts of the world and ripped holes in the Land and Water, Fire would rush up in its watery form to plug the gaps.
Now the world was steady, the Gardener took the biggest spark of Fire that he had reserved for a throne in the sun. Yet sitting upon the throne of fire influenced the Gardener’s thoughts, for it was so far away, and so bright. The Gardener saw the influence it had and thought it trouble for who could withstand the influence of their vantage point? So then the Gardener tricked Land through its vanity by whispering tales of the beauty of the world and how wonderful it would be to see itself, and formed it into a throne in the sky, as the moon, and set it so that at times it would be basked in the light of the sun to warm the Gardener, and other times it would be in the shade of the land to cool the Gardener.
From these two vantage points, the Gardener saw that all was not yet beautiful. The Gardener then took Land and Water and sculpted them into animals and plants, to which he breathed in Air and invested a spark of Fire to keep warm and alive. The Gardener swapped between moon throne and sun throne during the sculpting of each creature so that the twin perspectives could lead to creatures that might thrive upon the land. The Gardener soon realized that to take the dual perspectives to their true complexity, a month had to be spent upon the lunar throne, and a full day upon the solar throne, so that the Gardener could be influenced by the light and dark of the lunar throne, and the tilt upon the land on the solar throne.
The Gardener built these influences into the creations so that they would be born into the freshness of dawn / new moon, grow and procreate in the industriousness of noon / full moon, and grow aged and ready to pass on one’s knowledge and die in the darkness of dusk / no moon. In death, they were then reborn, to pass through the perspectives of each creature. The Gardener even placed divine essence into each object, place, and non-sentient creature, and that essence became a spirit to imbue it.

Yet there were two creatures that rejected the divine essence for they had no need of a guiding spirit for they already had a spirit of their own that was a part of them and allowed them intelligence beyond measure. These were the humans and the orcs.

What is this creation myth based upon?

While this myth has its roots in a religion that is several thousand years old and from the Sen Dales, in truth this version has been adapted so much that it is both uniquely Realms and uniquely modern. Vast stretches of the Realms reject human intervention, giving it a timeless feel, and many of the Realms people still believe in cyclical time rather than linear time – where what was, will be again. Thus the God and Goddess are both simultaneously in their three aspects and yet constantly travel between them at the same time. The recent re-examination of gendered attributes now that physical differences have assumed lesser importance, combines with the language groups’* need for stable and easily definable roles (though there had always been some adjustment made for skill).

This duality has led to the Diving Being being simultaneously embodiments of gendered archetypes (the God and the Goddess) and a single divine entity (alternately called the Creator, Gardener or Sarin). Thus, men are capable of embodying feminine aspects and women are capable of embodying masculine aspects. It is only that one’s lifespan leads to certain duties and influences that must pull a person further in line with their gender. By this religion, exceptions can and should exist, and a person is most holy if they are capable of transcending limitations and being both God and Goddess, young and old, so that they might bring all lessons and skills to bear. While this is the ideal, it is not assumed that anyone is capable of doing this completely, and that is accepted as understandable.

This creation myth does frown upon compartmentalizing people entirely into parental role (grandparent, parent, child) or gender role (male or female) as that is considered unnatural. If a woman behaves like a man than she simply embodies more of the masculine aspect than she does of the feminine aspect, and while this is unusual, it is natural to her state of being. If it were natural for her to behave otherwise, than she would behave otherwise, and while attempting to influence her towards balance is commendable, it is wrong to expect that she should change her behavior.

* The Realms originally didn’t contain tribes and there aren’t many words in English to represent their actual old systems of governance.

History of the creation myth

This is thought to be the traditional creation myth behind a religion which is a few thousand years old but, in truth, the original mythology was lost when the early Sen Dalian cities were ransacked. Numerous variants trickled into the Realms when the first Sen Dalians migrated there in search of new land and the many tribes that then formed in the Realms each had their own version that developed steadily over the years. The religion was suppressed for a time under the Catarthian religious movement but, now that the might makes right philosophy has dissipated in the Realms, has started making in-roads as it meshes more easily with current Realms viewpoints.

Next up will be the Catarthian ‘Divine Family’ Religion….

My Fantasy Universe

Well, I think I'll go through my world-building online. Partly because I'll never info-dump enough to share half of it in my books when I get published (fingers crossed) and partly because there might be other world builders out there who'd like to see how other people do it. I'll try to keep it short and snappy. Tell me if I get long-winded. This is on the basics of how Earth-like I'm making the universe and solar system.

To make things simpler on myself, and because I don’t want to study astronomy, I decided to make my other world quite earth-like. There is but one moon, about the same size as our moon, and only one sun, about the same size as our sun, and they are both about as far from the planet as their real world equivalents. There are ten planets in the solar system and they are a bit different, with their own names and number of moons, but they’re only likely to come up as mentions during alchemical talks (and even then, only maybe) so I didn’t go into much more detail with them rather than risk getting the solar system wrong. The stars are suns burning billions of kilometers away, though different races think otherwise.

The primary difference is that this is animistic world. There is a spirit in everything of varying ages and strengths. Some of these spirits can materialize from their physical anchor. Some can free themselves of it and clothe themselves in flesh (the sidhe) and even forget that they were anything but creatures of meat and matter. Some mostly exist in the in-between-places that are not in the world of matter, yet not devoid of it, like pocket realms that exist where nothing else should. These can be an oasis behind a desert tree, a Narnia in a closet, or a hiding place in a shadow.

In space, the spirits are ancient and unchanging beings, hostile to life, that slither between the black spaces and coil in the hearts of ancient suns. They sometimes crash to this world on the meteors or are summoned to this planet and whenever this happens, devastation soon follows. These are monstrous and unknowable though some confuse them for a God that may never have even existed. These beings do not comprehend life as we understand it. Some would toy with us. Some destroy us or craft us anew. Some simply wouldn’t notice us but their presence would be as bad. Some say that the dragons were spawned from these places and that they took flight to our planet so long ago – either from a place of monsters or another living planet that suffered some long-lost calamity. They came to our world, slipping through the in-between-places and laying claim to territories that they could control on an almost base level. But then, few claim to have seen a dragon, so perhaps they are but a myth.

The Character Therapist looks at The Butterfly Lady

Well, after seeing Jeannie Campbell's wonderful blog, I couldn't help myself. I just had to submit details on one of my own characters. Now if you've come from the far-flung future where I have published The Butterfly Lady, you might not want to track down the post and read it as it has horrific levels of spoilers for the entire first book. If you're dying of curiosity, future-readers (c'mon, let me dream), then go purchase the future-published-book and THEN read it.

For people from my unfortunately unpublished present, go and take a look. She's got a very interesting way of looking at the character which I like very much. It has also helped simply to write out the character's history and see just how much trauma I've put him through so far.... I am a terrible, terrible person. If 'Justin' ever comes to life, he will hunt me to my dying days.

Until then, though, so long! Back to work.

Discerning culture to discern motivation

Well. I just got a rather clever crit that pointed out something I hadn't noticed beforehand. Inconsistent motivation ... inconsistent behavior ... who is this nurse, anyway? What is she after? What is she doing? I'm lucky enough that the critter has enough confidence in me to assume that I knew all of the answers and simply hadn't revealed enough through the writing.

Er, thanks for the compliment, but ... no.

No, I just realized that I had never sat down and really tried to get inside her head. I have been guilty of letting a vitally important character fall into the role of cipher. A simple series of plot points ... a convenient enabler for my plot. This isn't far for her because I know she has far more depth than I have given her credit for.

I could simply interview her character or perhaps daydream about her. Who was she? Where did she come from? Just by vaguely trying to tap into her I see that she has a sister she left behind who was overtaken by the salts. I see that she has been betrayed before. I can't see anything more than that.

I think I need to go back further than simply understanding her, however. She isn't human. She comes from an entirely different culture, a whole other worldview, and I wouldn't be doing her credit if I examined her answers through character interviewing through the lens of just another Realms human.

To understand the sidhe, I will have to go back further, though. I will have to start at the beginning of the world's history and work my way down. Thus, from now on, I will have installments on world building as I take us both on a journey to the sidhe mentality.

Are you ready and willing to come with me?

Top 15 Things I Generally Like In Fiction

Well, well, the fascinating Blog, Merc Rants pointed out a very clever gem in Chris Baty's writing advice book, No Plot, No Problem. Chris Baty suggests coming up with what he calls your Magna Carta - a list of what you like in novels and what you dislike. So, I'm going to do up mine. The first part will be based on the top 15 stuff, in no particular order, that I like in fiction.

1. Apocalypses I'm not sure why this grabs my fancy but it always does. I'm less a fan of the lawless-society trope though I am happy to read a splintered society one. The apocalypses that really make be happy are those on a biblical level. Surreal, supernatural, and all-consuming are all bonuses. Stephen King's 'The Mist' where there may, or may not, be any place left on the planet free of the monsters; and various zombie apocalypses are the more obvious versions. I think it's because the attention is kept strictly personal, on a group of individuals finding hope in an essentially hopeless situation. I'm also, sadly, a fan of the logistics of being a survivalist. How do they get enough food, medicine, water, and other supplies? How do they barricade themselves in? Where?

2. Voyeurism One thing that makes me a fan of both video games and apocalypse daydreams is the idea of being able to walk into people's homes just to see what it looks like. Yes, I'm weird. What wannabe author isn't? I'm curious about places and the histories of those places. Even boring places. What does a cement factory look like? A police station? What is that electrical cabinet actually called? What does a fantasy mill look like? Most people skip the details entirely, for fear of getting it wrong, or of bogging down the text. You don't need to feed me a lot to keep me happy. Just a few dribs and drabs. The correct name for a particular room, a protagonist leaned up against an oil drum, the correct terminology for items and equipment (though you might need to carefully use this in context for those who aren't as scholarly.

3. Natural Disasters Especially tornadoes. Did you know that every few years I have a dream about tornadoes? Either running away from them, helping evacuate people to safety, normally ending with me hiding in a dirt tunnel underground. I never get scared in these dreams. Just filled with a sense of awe and wonder. It helps that I'm unlikely to ever see one in Australia. It's not just tornadoes that fascinate me. Hurricanes, bush fires, earth quakes, etc. It's not enough to simply have it happen. I want to see how people prepare to one, how it impacts the world in its wake, and how people adapt to it afterwards. I want to see the little details. I want to understand it.

4. Moral Gray-Scale. As painful as it is, I like being able to understand the twisted depths of all the characters. Their justifications are often more interesting, and painful to read about, than showing them cackle manically while torching orphanages.

5. Causing pain to a loved one. I can watch a dozen horror movies about serial killers and monsters devouring people but I still flinch when I see a friend perform necessary amputations without anaesthetic. Its a fate many have suffered, something I can imagine might happen to myself, and I can more easily relate to both victims (as the poor fool with the saw must feel pretty bad as well).

6. Evil for a good cause. There's a reason why the cults in the Project Zero series (videogames) were far more fascinating than the ones in most others. They did terrible, horrible things, often to willing participants, to keep something worse from happening. It's not enough for them to simply think it's for 'the greater good', but when it truly is, it's horrifying.

7. Symbolism. Much in horror benefits from good symbolism. Humans think and feel in symbols. A nightmare world that shifts according to its master's needs / sins / desires. A monster that reflects some of humanity's greatest fears in its physiology (i.e. werewolves reflect loss of control, vampires used to reflect fear of contamination).

8. Struggling against one's inner nature. A demon fighting against its sinful nature. A monster seeking redemption. A man struggling against his cursed heritage. Someone seeking to overthrow their abusive histories to break the cycle of violence. I'm not as much of a fan of people hiding from their pasts, though. People who have chosen, off their own back, to do evil and then changed their mind or were redeemed or whatever. I don't hate this plot arc. I'm just not attracted to these plots.

9. The survivor. Y'know that character, normally a minor one, that goes through hell and back and survives a massive beating? I love that character. I will root for that character. Once a character has survived enough, they really should be allowed to live.

10. Ships. Ever since I started reading nautical fiction, both fantasy ones - Robin Hobb's The Liveship Traders - and various Napoleon-era historical ones, I've become a sucker for anything on a ship.

11. Underwater stuff. I think the ocean is one big, unexplored mass of brightly colored things that can kill you. What's not to love? Describe it well enough to make me feel like I'm there and I'll love it.

12. Connected Protagonists, preferably with a younger sister or child. I don't mind an orphan protagonist but I find it hard to relate to an orphan that's got no real responsibilities to their attachments. Normally such relatives are just a chapter one issue that chapter two will sort out. I think that's a shame. Y'know what's got more conflicts and trouble than looking out for yourself (and you're well-armed, well-equipped compatriots)? Having to raise your younger sibling or kid friend or what-not! The movies made me a sucker for it (Grave of the Fireflies, for example).

13. Ghosts, zombies, and other undead things. What can I say? I like them. They're creepy as sin. I think it's just because I'm stubborn so I appreciate stubbornness. What's more stubborn than refusing to die? Also, genres involving the undead often do quite well with tragedy. I draw the line at vampiric angst, however. It's more tragic when people are trying to make the best of a bad situation, in my opinion, rather than brooding about something that happened decades ago.

14. Demons, hell, and embodiments of sin. This is partly due to number 8. Struggling against one's inner evil; and no. 7 symbolism. I'm not as much of a fan of the religious hell of fire and pain. I prefer a more personalized form of hell, such as can be found in the classic novel, Dante's Inferno. Dante used symbolic representations of fitting punishments for sin quite well. Even demons that are flat-out evil also work well as monsters - they're ancient beings who have reason to truly despise us. How is that not going to be a problem?

15. Culture Shocks. Nothing highlights how a culture works more than when two cultures collide. Even in a peaceful encounter, the differences between how they meet and greet, do business, and date can be quite interesting. This goes doubly for fantasy worlds - particularly those where most people rarely leave their village.

So, that's a list of basics that attract me irrationally to a tale. What about the rest of you? Feel tempted to try it out?

Swapping perspectives to give characters depth

I spent some time today editing Chapter 5 of the Butterfly Lady and I came across a rather dull conversation where the protagonist stereotypically sympathized with a group that had been reviled as human-hating monsters (the Unseelie Court) who were so tainted by evil they were doomed to become demons. It wasn't a bad viewpoint. It made sense. There were reasons why the monsters could be considered sympathetic.

They were, after all, evil because they had chosen to stay and defend an increasingly toxic homeland rather than flee to greener pastures. The toxic nature of the land, known in my story as the Ihlander salt plains, had corrupted them. There's a certain element of the tragic in that which could invoke sympathy. So my protagonist, predictably enough, is sympathetic towards their predicament.

Of course, to do this I ignored the fact that he was raised by a member of the Seelie Court when his mother had died. I ignored the fact that he would have been given at least a light dose of indoctrination. No, no, he's the protagonist and thus automatically sympathizes with their plight. While this is possible, it's hardly interesting, and was so predictable that the scene was dull because of it.

So I swapped the viewpoint of my protagonist with a spoiled nine-year-old kid who is a fan of gothic horror stories. The kid who loves gothic horror, of tragic pasts, evil destiny, and the rest, manages to see what the protagonist doesn't - that the Unseelie Court might be monsters, but they're sad and pathetic monsters who should be pitied. This simple switch breathed so much more life into the scene.

The conversation showed the protagonists' arrogance (he expected the kid's argument would be weak), the protagonist's flexibility and capacity for humility (rather than doggedly resisting the point, he could accept that it was a point well-made), made the exposition more interesting and removed the sense of lecturing (history lesson was vital but goody-two-shoes protagonist made it dull), and the interplay will make it far more understandable when the protagonist makes a certain decision later on in the novel.

The motto of the anecdote: Sometimes a writer has forced words in their protagonist's mouth. If a scene just doesn't ring true to you, perhaps see what happens when you swap the characters' perspectives.

Did your character mean to give that first impression?

Reading Caroline Kauffman's interesting article on Impression Management spoke about how people try to leave a certain impression and can sometimes fail horribly. For example, I might think that I look confidant and suave in my three-piece suit and sunglasses but others might think I look stodgy, unfashionable, sexy, or eccentric. It's such a fun source of conflict that people don't use nearly as much as they should. Sit-coms and comedians do it all the time. They understand that the contrast between the impression that a character thinks they leave on people (tough guy) and the actual impression (whiney kid) can be incredibly entertaining.

I had a think about my own novel and realized that there are several entertaining moments (at least I think so) in my story that revolves around this. The most obvious one involves the lad who wants to appear as a dashing gentleman who'd sweep any lady off their feet ... and comes across as a leering adolescent who quotes other people's poetry poorly. There's also the young woman who firmly believes she's coming across as an empathic and friendly companion who can truly understand who people are ... and comes across as an emotionless and creepily overly-analytical ethereal being.

Do you have any characters who leaves a decidedly different first impression than the one they intended? Is it humorous? Or have you managed to do it in a way that's more serious or sinister?

Writing and Illustrating Blog

So I figure I'm safe, right? There I am, having come from A Brain Scientist's blog, having learned a whole new thing to keep an eye out for with editing, and BAM, I come across an article on chapter endings. It even has a handy list of example endings to help make the story a page turner. The rest of the blog looks really interesting too. Will it never end?

The Brain Scientist's Blog

Well, this is more than a little bit annoying. There I am, scanning through the various blogs on the blogoverse and I come across this site full of interesting tidbits on writing from a self-confessed brain scientist's point of view. Innocently I take a look ... only to find an article that gives me yet another really good angle to edit by. Like my editing list isn't long enough.

So now I have to go over my story and make sure that each one of my characters, from minor to major, make a first impression. I should also bother to figure out what kind of a first impression each one gives. *sigh* I'm going to run out of highlighter pens!