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Is the soul rune the life rune

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Swolllliosis

Swolllliosis

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The universe is composed of 14 different strands of energies represented in each different type of rune. All these energies exist everywhere, and they make up the anima spectrum.

According to Seren, Zaros's energy sprung from death and darkness, while hers sprung from life and light. When Seren discovered the Death Altar, she noted that the altar sprung energy that was akin to her brother's, who was composed of "deathly" energy, one of the energies of the universe, and if Seren exists, that means there is energy in the universe that reflects her variety of energy as well: Life.

There exists creatures composed mainly of one type of energy, like Zaros is to death energy. There exists Fire Elementals composed completely out of fire. Cosmic entities made out of Cosmic energy, Nature spirits are derived from nature energy. Surely there must be a type of energy in the universe that reflects Seren that can be pinned down to a runestone?

For trollish reasons, Jagex decided to degrade the actual life rune itself into a joke, but I think Jagex replaced the non-canon concept of the Life Rune with something else: the Soul Rune!

A soul is basically a life right? Souls are people, people are life. See the connection? For example, the "Lost Soul" nodes in Runespan (soul energy in it's purest form) is basically "life" we are trapping in runes.

Seren also said she and her elves both worked together to develop a series of spells, rituals, and blessings using her own energy as a template. The Seren spells today all require soul runes which contributes to the idea "soul energy" is "life energy."

Most of Zaros's and the Mahjarrat's Ancient Magick spells require death runes, which the Mahjarrat and Zaros can easily access being they are composed of deathly energy stuff themselves.

The point I am trying to make is that since Zaros = death energy, Seren = soul rune. Yes?
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04-Feb-2017 03:48:52 - Last edited on 04-Feb-2017 03:52:35 by Swolllliosis

Aquamancer
May Member 2011

Aquamancer

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I think both of you are wrong, and that life runes are their own thing. Souls and blood are both associated with life, yes, but neither of them ARE life.

Blood is the physical representation of life and life-force, the medium which connects the mortal body and the immortal soul, transporting the life-force around the body. Blood gives life, as seen in childbirth, but its absence can also take away life, as seen in severe injuries. As long as the blood flows, it gives life to the physical body. Blood, however, can be without life: a dead corpse, once living, still has blood. So, blood is not life, blood is the intermediary between life and body, transferring the power of life to the body in a physical form.

Souls are the incorporeal or spiritual essence of a living being, the thing that gives the body life and animated the living organism. It's the eternal culmination of our being, which even after death exists and is able to think. It does not exist physically, like blood, as it can exist without a body, yet it is important for the well-being of the human being: absence of soul can very well lead to sickness. Soul, however, can be without life: after death, the soul is lifeless, clinging to the corpse, until its lingering connection to the body are cut and it can pass on to the Afterlife. So, soul is not life, soul is the culmination of a being that lives, and which continues to exist even after the being no longer lives.

So, if the soul is the culmination of the living being, and blood is the material that transfers the life-force to the body, then what is life? Life, simply enough, is the very essence of living: beings originating from material that had never lived. Keep in mind that I never said "dead material": dead material implies that the material would've come from something that once lived. Rock never lived, while soil did, as it consists of the decayed material of dead living beings.

04-Feb-2017 18:56:43

Aquamancer
May Member 2011

Aquamancer

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Perhaps an analogy would help to understand this. Imagine a machine, a complex robot of sorts, connected to a back-up network. The machine's physical structure is BODY. The machine's sentience is MIND. The electricity that keeps the machine running is BLOOD. The machine's connection to a cloud network and it's mind's copy is its SOUL. The machine's very existence at the present, the act of it running mechanic functions and maintaining its complex machinery, is LIFE. If the machine were to damaged so that it couldn't perform its functions and the machinery were to shut down, its existence afterwards would be be DEATH.

04-Feb-2017 18:59:04

Cthris
Dec Member 2023

Cthris

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I disagree Aquamancer.

Let's start with blood:

My interpretation of life is that it is caused by sustaining a ratio of elements, oxygen, calcium, carbon etc. These elements form cells, which form the body. Bodies only can die when the life causing ratio is disrupted to a big enough degree. All deaths are a result of a disruption of the ratio.

For example:
When someone dies of choking they have died because the ratio was disrupted due deficit oxygen. Electrocution burns flesh, releasing some of the elements from the ratio, which possibly causes death. Poison introduces elements that caused a dilution in the ratios of individual cells and kills them, and if enough die body dies.

Essentially life is destroyed by taking or adding something too much to it. Even adding or taking away something just a little bit causes harm to the body.

My interpretation of the Blood is that it is that it represents this ratio of physical things, and is the life rune. Blood itself is a ratio of all the necessary elements for life To address your corpse argument. corpses may still have blood, but they lack some other element of the ratio, which is the cause of their death.


I’ll give an analogy of my account of life and blood.

The life ratio is like a bow. A bow is two material things (wood and sting) that have put arranged in a way so that there is a perfect ratio of tension allowing the bow to maintain its existence. Too much tension and either the wood, or the string snaps. Too little tension and the bow looses its form, and can no longer be considered a bow.

04-Feb-2017 20:50:13 - Last edited on 04-Feb-2017 20:50:34 by Cthris

Cthris
Dec Member 2023

Cthris

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Let’s move on too souls. I think you have made a crucial error in your interpretation of the soul. The soul is not incorporeal when it comes to runescape. We have seen physical manifestations of souls in a few quests. If they can appear visually, then they reflect photons, which proves they have a physical existence. This really shouldn't be any surprise as Runescape ghosts have been hurting us for ages.

It also makes little sense to suppose that souls give life. Are we supposed to believe that each individual cell has a soul? If each cell doesn't have a soul, then during the conception of each human, there was a point where all RS humans never had souls (due to being only one cell). Yet they were clearly living organisms. So either all cells have souls, or souls don't cause life.

Furthermore as shown in Song from the depths, human bodies can live for a time without souls.

Rather than cause life, or be incorporeal, they are an energy product caused by the ratio of life and the use of the mind. The fact that we can witness pure soul energy in the runespan adds credibility to my claim.

Using my bow analogy. The mind is the hand/force that pulls the bowsting back. The soul is like the kinetic energy created by drawing the bow back. The greater the force of the mind, the greater the soul is. (The would explain why KS claims the souls with greater experience are more powerful)

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I also think it would be super fitting for the life altar to be in Zaros' lands since the death altar is in Serens. Got a little ying yang action going on there. (My own headcanon for nail beast also relies on the blood altar being the life altar)

04-Feb-2017 20:52:10 - Last edited on 04-Feb-2017 20:54:07 by Cthris

AttilaSquare

AttilaSquare

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I'll propose yet another account:

I do not think the universe is really composed of or reducible to these elements. The magical elements are precisely magical elements and not chemical elements. They are forms we find in the universe that move the heart; they don't necessarily make up everything. For more on this claim, please see here .

That such elements really belong on a spectrum is something of which I have always been suspcious. Certainly they may be arranged that way according to some kind of measure - maybe vague and culturally relative notions of positive or negative feelings - but we haven't seen any rigorous development of the spectrum in the lore. Despite the use of the spectrum-image by in-game characters, I have proposed an alternative arrangement of the elements according to the order of runecrafting here . Because iXavior's thread is close to deletion, I'll re-present my account here.

I think that the progression of the runes in runecrafting mirrors a search for what is an important or the most important element - magical element - in our experience of reality.

- Air has been associated with breadth and the observation that when someone stops breathing he dies and the body begins to disintegrate; air is an obvious necessity and medium for life. Therefore, air/breath has been treated as a metaphor for the self or life itself. (See e.g. Homer's Illiad.)

- Mind has been identified as the source or cause of intelligibility in the world - either a divine mind has made the world such that the world makes sense to us or our minds impose order on the world. In either case, mind is responsible for the world appearing in the way that it does. (See e.g. Socrates' comments on Anaxagoras in Plato's Phaedo .)

04-Feb-2017 22:37:20

AttilaSquare

AttilaSquare

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- Water has been identified with the primordial beginning of things and the source of life. It's a powerful image - I like to compare water to the concepts of possibility and potentiality: in small amounts, it is clear; in large amounts, what it holds is obscure; in small amounts, it is safe and necessary for life; in large amounts it is dangerous and destructive of life. That water is simultaneously necessary and threatening gives it great poetic power. (Consider e.g. the Biblical talk of the abyss, the modern scientific search for water on other planets, or Thales - about whom I expect Penny Drakis to know a thing or two.)

- Earth has been identified as the center of the universe, as stability amidst the abyss of change and possibility, and as the source of the individuality of things, ourselves included, for it is perhaps the earthy material of which we're made that separates each of us from each other. (Heidegger makes excellent use of this image in "The Origin of the Work of Art" - which is also the best non-canon text I've ever encountered on the formation of pocket dimensions, specifically on the recession of temples.)

- Fire has been identified as the source of warmth and as an element within every warm-blooded being. Like water it is both necessary for and dangerous to our survival. Like ourselves, it requires both air and fuel to persist. It is attractive to our sight and restless like our own interior experience. It is quenched by excess water, as excessive possibility undermines our capacity for activity, and it consumes that whence water is driven out, as our own activity uses up that which affords no further possibility of use. (See e.g. Aristotle's De Anima and Plotinus on beauty.)

04-Feb-2017 22:37:40

AttilaSquare

AttilaSquare

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- The body and its effects are the whole of our appearance in the world; it is the central place whence each of us experiences the world, and our presence in the world seems to depend upon it. We feel through it, sense through it, and in the general course of experience wholly identify with it. It relies upon, uses, and has been said to contain air, water, and fire, decays into earth upon its death, and serves as the seat of mind. (See e.g. Aristotle's De Anima again.)

So far, while one may discern opposites among the elements, there has not yet been a progression from one element directly to another held to be its opposite; instead each might be described as another step in a wandering search for some essentially important element in the world or related to our experience of or place within the world. The following involves a more dialectical pattern of progress.

- Unlike the changing processes of terrestrial life, in which we discover the foregoing elements, the cosmos - at least for much of recorded history - have remained constant; they reveal apparently ever recurring cycles of motion, above and apart from the apparent chaos of the world. The cosmos has therefore been proposed as the constant and stable cause above of the varied and chaotic processes below.

- In contrast to the pre-eminence given to the cosmos above, it may be proposed in turn that chaos is the governing principle in the world - perhaps in light of the inexplicable division between cosmic and terrestrial life. Thus chaos appears as the primordial beginning and context of the world, no longer represented by the element of water but further abstracted and seen in many more places than before.

04-Feb-2017 22:38:39

AttilaSquare

AttilaSquare

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- The turn to nature perhaps represents an attempt to recognize both regularity and irregularity in our experience of the world - events occur predictably, like the motions of the cosmos, but not as predictably as the cosmos; there is unpredictability too. Events in nature occur as they do for the most part . (For this point, see any work of Aristotle.)

- Law represents a new attention to the work of the sapient in the world. While our life is related to and embedded within nature, it also seems to surpass the processes, predictability, and unpredictability of nature. Laws enshrine values and form habits which build upon nature and adjust the course of its development in ways uniquely caused by sapient beings.

- While law, nature, chaos, cosmos, and all the preceding elements capture aspects of our experience, they do not describe a supremely important aspect of the existential situation of most sapient beings - their mortality. Death frames our living, shapes our cultures, languages, religions, perceptions, orients all activity toward primordial non-being, and thereby uniquely contributes to all meaning.

- When law fails and death threatens and all experience approaches its end, primordial instincts reveal themselves anew - the desire to protect those with whom we are bound in blood - by familial relation or by solemn oath. Blood symbolizes much that we value, much that directs all of our experience and life. Blood is the stuff of the living body; its loss threatens the body with death; its symbolic uses recall more than bodily functioning but the preservation of family and the sacred importance of oaths, violation of which calls for the spilling of blood in vengeance.

04-Feb-2017 22:39:10

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