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AttilaSquare

AttilaSquare

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In a way, the early ambition of mystics had returned - to understand all that there was to know about the multiverse; but it took on a new form - the form of abstraction. For a time, they spoke of "abstract principles." These were fixed, but they were not spirits, and they were not limited to the abyss; these applied equally to all things.

Elsewhere I have proposed a division of the abstract principles into the broadest category of "intelligibilities" which include even contradictions; the subset of "validities" - which do not contain contradictions but are perhaps incomplete; and the further subset of "manifolds" - complete, non-contradictory abstract structures. A more thorough account of how abstract principles informed and continues to inform the development of modern runic magics can be given another time.

Because abstract principles applied to all things equally, human mages of the late 4th and 5th ages spoke of a layer of reality common to the realms of light, shadow, and abyss. This was a layer of abstraction and was devoid of spiritual content. Metaphorically, it was an empty space in which the realms of light, shadow, and abyss were embedded. Just such a dimension corresponded well with the Guthixian legend - Guthix had cut beyond the spiritual content of reality, beyond the spirits of shadow and abyss, finding only abstraction beyond.

This account did not explain, though, why Guthix's action resulted in a weak place in the plane. The mystic might explain it thus: by laying bare the abstract structure of some part of Gielinor, Guthix made it so that a foreign creature need not attune itself to any native spirit in order to enter Gielinor in that place. All it needed was an abstract thought - to think the relevant structure, without any change in its heart. (To use a cliche, there Guthix had unwittingly severed mind and heart - there their joint action was not necessary to enter the world.)

24-Jul-2016 03:49:55

AttilaSquare

AttilaSquare

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This explains why the pests plague the southern islands. It costs them nothing to journey here. They make no sacrifice in order to enter our world. They have access to Gielinor for as long as they can think the abstract structure of the environment suited for them. Any creature which has attained the ability to think of itself according to abstract principles - and abstracting oneself from all experienceable content is a strange and difficult feat - can therefore travel via the void.

One more interesting manifestation of the void appeared in the year 169 when an adventurer aided a family trapped in a pocket dimension in the shadow of the wilderness to escape the influence of the terrible spirit beast. This spirit, empowered to form pockets of its own by episodes of slaughter during the 4th age, sought to exist in two worlds simultaneously, straddling Gielinor and its own pocket dimensions. Ordinarily this would be impossible, because the spirit beast differs from the spirits which constitute Gielinor's realm of light and could only enter Gielinor by taking on a physical body. Instead it sought abstract principles common to Gielinor and its own realm. By acting according to these, it could bypass the need to attune itself to the native spirits of Gielinor.

Two difficulties arise with this account. First, it is unclear whether the spirit beast's realm should be associated with Gielinor's shadow realm or treated as an independent plane. The claim that the spirit beast acted strangely because it did not seek paths through the abyss suggests that we should consider its realm an independent plane. But the account of the spirit beast's origin resembles more closely the formation of pocket dimensions within the shadow realm of a world. Because the division between the shadow realm and the abyss is often fuzzy from the perspective of a realm of light, this does not appear to be a serious issue.

24-Jul-2016 03:50:50 - Last edited on 24-Jul-2016 04:57:02 by AttilaSquare

AttilaSquare

AttilaSquare

Posts: 1,792 Mithril Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Second, it is claimed that after the spirit beast tore through the abyss the emptiness of the void remained. It is also claimed that the void is the weakened "veil" between the plane of Gielinor and the spirit beast's realm. These both seem to be metaphorical and contradictory. Concerning the first claim, if we understand the abyss not as a spatial dimension but as the dimension of principle spirits in reality, then there is nothing for the spirit beast to tear through or push aside; it is simply avoided or ignored, and the metaphorical meaning of the first claim becomes clear.

Concerning the second claim, if we hold that the void is empty of experienceable content, then it makes little sense to say that one could stand in the void; instead we can understand the white space called the void as the beginning of an experience of straddling the planes. While standing in the "veil" one is actually attuned to the abstract principles common to both Gielinor and the spirit beast's realm, but one has not yet thought through those abstract principles sufficiently to move and perceive and live in both realms simultaneously. This provides us with an appropriate metaphorical meaning of the second claim above. Some abstract principles are common to both realms, but unless one is fully attuned to them, one is embedded in the native spirits of one realm or another.

This brings us to the 6th age. At the end of the 5th, anima , as well as the related concept of the anima mundi , was conceived as a quantifiable spiritual force, and as a condition for the practice of magic. Where the field of the anima mundi was corrupt, mutants and aberrations could be found; but these were not understood with any reference to the spirits of sorcery and mysticism.

24-Jul-2016 03:51:22

AttilaSquare

AttilaSquare

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Once the Edicts of Guthix fell, the physical manifestations of the change were identified as anima . Likewise the spiritual barrier erected by Guthix was described as "physical." These locutions indicate just how foreign modern magical theories are in comparison with their ancient precursors. From a mystical perspective, the pools of green matter are not anima itself, which is a capacity; rather green glow manifests the reaction of matter whose animating spirit has been cast out - the remaining spirits animating the matter resist such violent thinning and reveal the capacity of the matter of the world for further animating spirits by the green glow. Thus adventures have fed this "hungry" matter, so to speak, with memories - they reintroduce spirits mediated by those memories to Gielinor's matter, restoring and thickening what Guthix's death had thinned.

This can easily be illustrated with a real life example. Imagine a loved one dies suddenly. The animating spirits of things all around are thrown into disarray - the meaning of everything has changed. Objects in the home themselves seem to long for the presence of the missing person. It takes time to reconnect these things with the memories of the loved one as memories , i.e. as related to someone who is now absent from them. This happens in the time of mourning, after which the memories have settled and new memories are forming, which heal the wounds of loss.

Wounded by the death of Guthix and meddled with by the gods, Gielinor's anima mundi has brought forth from the shadows the spirits of Vorago and Telos. This might encourage human mages to reconsider in the 6th age the anima mundi as the community of Gielinor's native spirits, and anima in general as related to spirits. The 6th age has also seen advances in portal dynamics, astromancy, divination, and invention.

24-Jul-2016 03:51:48 - Last edited on 24-Jul-2016 05:00:50 by AttilaSquare

AttilaSquare

AttilaSquare

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Last Prophet said :
Also, I would really like to hear more about these alternative forms of magic, sorcery and mysticism. We should chat in-game whenever I return from hiatus. I had no idea I would write that much in order to develop more on the ideas of sorcery and mysticism. I'm sorry I took up 31 posts to do it! I hope you enjoy it though - I enjoyed writing it, and this will help me tremendously for when I fix it up for an independent thread.

24-Jul-2016 03:56:19

AttilaSquare

AttilaSquare

Posts: 1,792 Mithril Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Since I have had a couple days to think about this, I have come up with a few clarifications and a summary.

First, I set out to distinguish three broad eras of human magics:
sorcery - the reflective participation in spirits
mysticism - the study of the spiritual
(modern) magic - the direction of spiritual power

Though these sound extremely similar, the subtle shifts are essential. The shift from sorcery to mysticism came in two phases: first, the distinction between native spirits and principle spirits, as well as the corresponding distinction between shadow realms and the abyss; and second, the distinction of spirits from "the ultimate darkness." The shift from mysticism to modern magic also came in two phases: first, the conceptual developments following the rise of obelisks - the reconception of magic as governed by laws of exchange, the reconception of anima as quantifiable spiritual power, and the new interest in precisely delineating the elements of magic; and second, the revolutionary increase in the quantity of runestones available to Gielinor's humans.

These historical moments were not clear to me when I began writing - I had called the Era of Mysticism everything from the first shift from sorcery to mysticism to the last shift from mysticism toward modern runic magics. In light of my new summary, I should probably shorten the 'Era of Mysticism.' Also, the renaissance of sorcery associated with the druidism of the early 4th age deserves mention.

25-Jul-2016 22:51:51 - Last edited on 25-Jul-2016 23:27:02 by AttilaSquare

AttilaSquare

AttilaSquare

Posts: 1,792 Mithril Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Second, though the foregoing draft is pretty rough, I think I have established the possibility of speaking of magic in two different registers - a traditional register (of sorcery and mysticism) concerning spirits, and a modern register concerning spiritual power. The advantage of this is twofold. First, the ancient register takes up historical resonances and relations among the words we use to speak about magic. Second, the notoriously ambiguous concept of spiritual power at the heart of modern runic magics, i.e. anima (which I have always italicized precisely because I wanted to emphasize its foreignness and suggest my discomfort with its ambiguous usage) is clarified by the historical context in which it arose. Unfortunately, I have simply transferred the ambiguity to another concept, that of spirit. But this is, I believe, a more manageable concept, and I hope to address it soon.

25-Jul-2016 22:52:30

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26-Jul-2016 00:27:51

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