RuneScape Forum Archive | Summoning and the Anima Mundi

AttilaSquare

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Good work, Colossus!! The distinction between most familiars and titans is intriguing, as is the distinction between elemental-titans and biome-titans. On the earlier part of your theory, I’m excited to see someone tackling RuneScape’s metaphysics - there are so many concepts to sift through!

23-Dec-2022 10:59:07

Apr

2022

Colossus823

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AttilaSquare said :
Good work, Colossus!! The distinction between most familiars and titans is intriguing, as is the distinction between elemental-titans and biome-titans. On the earlier part of your theory, I’m excited to see someone tackling RuneScape’s metaphysics - there are so many concepts to sift through!
Thanks for the compliment @AttilaSquare!

I must confess, the distinction between elemental titans and biome titans is most speculative. You could argue the swamp titan is simply the titan that represents the element mud. In a similar fashion, the hypothetical desert titan could represent the element dust and the hypothetical mountain titan could represent the element earth.

As we know, certain worlds created by one or more Elder Gods represent one element, and have a specific biome because of it. Gielinor, as a balanced world, could have them all.

It is hard to make more concrete theories, as information is scarce in the game and even the master summoners find it a mystery. I do hope we get a quest that explores how Summoning ties into the wider fabric of reality. Nothing to see here.

30-Dec-2022 17:32:17

AttilaSquare

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Agreed with all of the above!

I remembered another highly relevant text that you might want on the first page: the account of Akthanakos on the creation of the Ugthanki.

Regarding whether to maintain a distinction between elemental- and biome-titans, I can go either way. A reason I hesitate to identify the swamp titan with the element of mud, or desert with dust, or mountain with earth, is because the concept of swamp is in some way older than the concept of mud. It would be strange to call it “more basic” because we generally understand elements to be basic, the basic constituents of more complex realities. But this is a rather sophisticated abstraction. Language classifies landscapes before it abstracts elements. Humans would have identified swamps, and the risks and resources associated with them, before focusing on the more specific part of swamps that we call mud. In general, languages move from fewer words that cover larger, more concrete swaths of human experience (and therefore archaic words and phrases have a certain poetic/magical power that contemporary words and phrases do not) to more words that have narrower meanings and that can be combined in more ways. It seems reasonable to me that magic would develop similarly.

So I’m inclined to think that the focus of mages on the magical elements is something of a modern development - maybe of the 4th or 5th Age - and that perhaps the swamp titan points back to an older magic when summoners considered whole landscapes at a time. But, as you note, it doesn’t help my case that the elder gods and their creation of the current multiverse and the prior one are explained entirely in terms of magical elements…

05-Jan-2023 20:20:47

AttilaSquare

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Once I attempted to reconstruct a whole history of human magics in Gielinor that would explain the focus on magical elements and even druidic summoning as late developments. This would render understandably anachronistic accounts of the elder goddesses, of the construction of the runecrafting altars, etc. that focus on magical elements. It’s been years, so I’ll recap it here, if that’s ok:

Gielinorian Human Magic in the 1st Age: Sorcery

Like you, I started with “anima,” but not with the “anima mundi,” since for much of RuneScape’s history that concept was almost wholly associated with the gnomes. Instead, I considered “anima” as Latin for “soul” and according to Aristotle’s account of it. For him, anima is simply the life of a living thing. I took this as the starting point for the understanding of anima by the humans of Gielinor. As a matter of headcannon, I set this understanding in the 1st Age.

I also considered anima in relation to another concept that is both ancient and somewhat marginal in RuneScape’s lore: the concept of “spirit.” I interpreted spirit with the help of Plato - as a kind of messenger between us and gods, a connectedness or directedness between us and the goods/values that motivate us. Taking spirit to be the condition for motivation or motion generally, I interpreted anima, or life, as “receptivity/responsiveness to spirits.”

So the human magic of the 1st Age, which I called “sorcery,” would have been understood as conscious sensitivity/attunement to the spirits of Gielinor. In other words: being “in tune with nature” - with “nature” meaning the spirits of the world/the motivators of living things. “Energy” and “quantity” wouldn’t yet have been prominent concepts in the practice of magic.

05-Jan-2023 20:21:56 - Last edited on 05-Jan-2023 20:29:24 by AttilaSquare

AttilaSquare

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This was the time when the runecrafting altars were built by the followers of V. These, I expect, were erected as places of pilgrimage wherever sorcerers found themselves especially attuned to the spirits of their surroundings, and were not then understood as representing abstract elements of magic. And runestones were crafted not as elemental products for consumption but as momentos, as reminders of the insights enjoyed in these special places.

Gielinorian Human Magic in the 2nd Age: Early Mysticism

When the gods arrived in Gielinor at the start of the 2nd Age, the human concepts of anima and magic would have to have changed. For the first time in millennia, Gielinor’s humans encountered beings from other worlds, and some of them had ambitions that spanned multiple worlds. Until then, Gielinor’s humans thought of spirits as spirits of the world, but to conceive of the multi-planar empires of the gods, they had to believe that the gods themselves responded to spirits that transcended worlds.

So the concepts of anima and spirits were expanded: Anima responded to both “local spirits” and world-transcending spirits/“principle spirits.” Likewise, Gielinor’s humans had likely had a concept of Gielinor’s shadow realm as a place where Gielinor’s spirits dwelt visibly. But now they would have conceived of the abyss - a space between all worlds - where the principle spirits dwelt visibly. I called this new phase of human magic “early mysticism.” The advent of golem construction too - with all the commands/motivations that can be given to golems - would have contributed to the expanded concepts of early mysticism.

05-Jan-2023 20:23:14

AttilaSquare

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Also as a matter of headcannon, I proposed that the 2nd Age saw the rise of various human schools of mysticism:
a Menaphite school;
a Fremennik school, which was eventually destroyed during the runecrafting crusades of the 5th Age, so that its mystic robes can be found at its last headquarters in the Fremennik slayer dungeon and some of its survivors became the seers of Seers Village;
an Armadylean school, which absorbed the human magical institution founded by the wizard Jack in the 1st Age and which was later absorbed by the Saradominist school after Armadyl’s departure from Gielinor in the 3rd Age;
a Zarosian school, part of the Church of Zaros and finally destroyed near the end of the 3rd Age;
a Saradominist school, which absorbed the Armadylean school in Kandarin and whose headquarters in Yanille became the Mage Guild today, which still sells traditional mystic robes;
a Zamorakian school, founded in the 3rd Age and destroyed in the backlash against Zamorakians following the burning of the Wizard’s Tower in the 5th Age, succeeded by the ZMI, and leaving its traditional robes behind at its last headquarters in Morytania’s Slayer Tower;
and an Anti-Zarosian school that had survived in secret in the forests east of Ice Mountain throughout the reign of Zaros and the Godwars, only to be destroyed by the dragon Garak in the mid-4th Age - its story inspired the discoverers of the Primordial Realm to establish their camp near Ice Mountain. (All this is made up.)

05-Jan-2023 20:23:52

AttilaSquare

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Gielinorian Human Magic in the 3rd Age: High Mysticism

With the death of Zaros and the beginning of the Godwars, the concepts of anima and magic would have changed again. As the destruction of the Godwars carried on and on, Gielinor’s humans would have found themselves disappointed with the spirits they had known, both local and world-transcending/principle. Instead, they sought peace, peace beyond the spirits that motivated the gods and shaped their empires and locked them in endless conflict. But Gielinor’s humans could not identify this desire with any specific spirit; it was something beyond the spirits, something that moved the heart most deeply and that could not be articulated by the mind.

So the concept of anima was again expanded: Anima responded to local spirits, to principle spirits, and most deeply to something beyond all spirits. At last, the tight link between anima and spirit was loosened, which would have immense consequences for the development of druidism and modern magic.

This development also led to the widespread condemnation of necromancy near the end of the 3rd Age. Until this time, necromancy had been understood as the reintroduction of various spirits to dead organic matter, thereby restoring it to life. This could have been the crude reanimation of a skeleton or zombie or the full resurrection of a loved one or oneself. Necromancy of the latter sort required intimate knowledge of the one restored to life.

But with the discovery that anima, at least human anima, responded to something beyond all specific spirits, the mystics came to deny that anyone, or at least anyone who had felt this deep down inarticulate desire, could ever be resurrected fully. Therefore, they condemned the practice of necromancy with humans and other intelligent beings. This condemnation has remained with us to the present day, even if the reasons for it have long been forgotten.

05-Jan-2023 20:24:24

AttilaSquare

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Gielinorian Human Magic in the 4th Age: Druidism

The return of Guthix and the end of the Godwars once again changed the situation for Gielinor’s humans. Many mystics abandoned the long militarized schools for the pacifistic Order of Druids, and attention returned to the local spirits of Gielinor. At this time, the Anti-Zarosian mystics emerged from their long hiding. Having carefully preserved an ancient tradition of mysticism from before the Godwars, they became a symbol of power and unity for humans, and they held in check any rapid changes in magical practice among the druids, i.e. until their destruction by the dragon Garak.

For ages, the local spirits were thought to dwell in the shadow realm whence they motivated our actions. In the latter half of the 4th Age, the druids, with a keen interest in balance, conceived of a way to summon the spirits visibly so that we humans might motivate their actions as well. In different places, the druids established connections with the shadow realm/spirit realm, where the summoning obelisks began to grow. The genius of these druids in maintaining balance lay in this: Every spell to summon a spirit would require a cost of spirit shards shaved from the growing obelisks; if the druids summoned the spirits too frequently, they would deplete the obelisk and break the connection; if the druids summoned the spirits too infrequently, the resulting massive obelisks would become attractive to their enemies and put the druids themselves at risk. Although brilliant, the mechanism of cost and the need to consume would introduce a whole new paradigm in human magic, and subsequently many of the ancient concepts of mysticism would be lost, even the concept of spirit as the condition for motivation or motion.

05-Jan-2023 20:24:56

AttilaSquare

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As a sort of counterbalance, the druids also invented a way for us to visit the spirit realm and thereby to gather additional spirit shards. This unveiled a new facet of the shadow realm. From the 1st Age, the shadow realm had been understood as a place of spirits. It had also been understood as a place of lost things and of contradictions. If one were to act under the influence of a spirit in a manner incompatible with life in Gielinor, then one would not necessarily die but would go on living in the shadow realm under the influence of the same spirit. Since the 2nd Age, the Mahjarrat had used this dynamic to access the shadow realm and to draw their servants into it. Likewise had demons, like Agrith-Naar in the 3rd Age, used it to create pocket dimensions in the shadow realm of Gielinor. And real estate agents have used it since the 5th Age, without quite knowing what they’re doing, to multiply space for housing.

Sometimes Gielinor’s shadow realm is experienced as invisibility to others within Gielinor, sometimes as one or more pocket dimensions, and sometimes simply as darkness. What all these have in common is a modality of counterfact - these experiences contrast with reality in the light of Gielinor. I take this to be the defining characteristic of the shadow realm in all its manifestations. In this same way are spirit familiars said to be “not real.” The spirit realm is a remarkable manifestation of the shadow realm because, although the shadow realm was known for ages to be a place of spirits, humans did not enter the shadow realm in order to meet the spirits visibly - i.e. to meet many of the spirits, rather than some one spirit of particular interest - until the 4th Age. Gielinor’s spirit realm is Gielinor’s shadow realm entered with this intention.

05-Jan-2023 20:25:25

AttilaSquare

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These developments, as well as new interest in delineating the elements of magic, came from the druidic commitment to balance. To illuminate how to serve balance in any given situation, the druids would seek an account of the elements present, i.e. the elements needing to be balanced. And then they would set about bringing these elements into balance. Sometimes this method worked well; other times it did not, such as when some overzealous druids sought to bring balance to the runecrafting altars and the stone circles and the summoning obelisks through the construction of the elemental obelisks. This last case yielded very little for human society or magical practice, except for the art of making elemental staves for the remaining mystics, an art preserved by the sorcerer Thormac.

From the druids of the late 4th Age came all the conditions for the emergence of modern runic magic: an intense interest in the magical elements, a conception of magic as regulated exchange - regulated often by magical laws - and even a tendency to value consumption. All that was then needed was the discovery of an unlimited supply of runestones, which would unleash massive production and consumption of runestones in magical research.

Other developments of the 4th Age include: the discovery of summoning by the ogres; advances in oneiromancy, perhaps inspired by its use by the Mahjarrat, like Zemouregal against Arrav; interest in the abyss - a realm of spirits and contradictions like the shadow realm but characterized by the modality of parafact, i.e. without relation to the facts of any particular world; and a rediscovery of demon summoning, which like druidic summoning employed a paradigm of cost or (contractually) regulated exchange. A style of necromancy that exchanged life for life also came to prominence, as practiced for example by Urval, founder of the Chaos Druids.

05-Jan-2023 20:25:56 - Last edited on 06-Jan-2023 12:55:01 by AttilaSquare

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Summoning and the Anima Mundi