Creation & the Way

Creation & the Way are the two holiest texts in Empyreanism. They are usually handled together, but the two have very different concepts and themes. Creation, the first section, appears to describe the origin of the world, consciousness, and the elements. It can also be read as a meditation on the nature of the elements, with genesis acting as the method of delivery. The Way is a much shorter and more ambiguous text that discusses moral, social, and political questions. Many schools of thought coexist in determining how these texts ought to be interpreted.

Text

Creation

In the beginning, there was nothing. In the end, there will be nothing.

The void, pure and clean, was all things and all things were void. This was the Age of the Open Sky.

And yet, despite this age of ecstasy and freedom, there remained the notion of that terror we call today “substance”. Willing itself into creation, the substance conquered the Open Skies and destroyed our first paradise. There was no sky, only rock. Traces of this substance remain today, called bedrock.

This was the Age of the Eternal Black.

Yet the bedrock could not sustain itself as a totality, desperate as parts were to become free. It ripped itself free from itself, and thus the air was born. That bedrock now deprived became the many stones, irregular and misshapen, as we see them today.

The air freed itself once again, destined as it is to always do so, and yet was forced to humiliate itself to never reach its sister void, that remnant of Open Sky below the bedrock. Thus began the Age of the Tortured Skies.

Hearing the plight of the Air, how it moaned and wailed in mourning its sister sky, much of the earth sought to create a fluidity, a freedom, within their prison of Substance. Thus was water born.

Within the air, there were some yet who had become enamored with the ways of separation, of passionate movement and action, that lost touch with their spirit of freedom. Reacting against physicality, they sought to consume and return to void, not realising that to digest substance could never yield anti-substance like Air. Thus was fire born.

In those delicate cracks between void, the inklings of space between nothingness itself, there sprung worlds. For how could it be that nothingness would have absences? And yet it was so. Substance and anti-substance, chaos and death, life and beauty poured through these gaps. The gaps of these worlds could not tolerate so much motion, so much activity, and thus they brought about the Guardians, endowing them with magics. These are the Spirits.

The Spirits, blessed friends of the Open Sky, realised the injustice of the Many Worlds and how cruel it would be to bleed the Open Sky in this manner. Thus, the gaps were closed, only to be opened through selective portals. Monsters and substance were banished to that hellscape, forever imprisoned. The Spirits, naive yet brave, did indeed try to establish a new realm of Open Sky so that the ten thousand living beings may visit that blessed place. Yet, ungrateful and Substance-driven, the rock throwers demanded entry. They dragged great rocks and insisted upon the construction of their buildings. Thus, they were cursed to have no land of their own, always being dragged through a gap in the world whenever they felt rested. They were forever exiled from both Substance and Open Sky. They wander forever, clinging to rocks as if it were their old powers, worshipping a beast of night.

Some of the Guardians' number revolted at their duties, for they had been seduced by the Substance. These traitors became the Dark, allied to monsters who shall one day reopen the gaps, walking forever in the prisons of the hellscape.

Fire, water, air buckled and churned on the surface of the earth, forcing it to scream in righteous agony. The fire gave life, the water nourished, and the air set free those beings of substance, creating the ten thousand living things. As the great war, the eternal war, continues between the Open Sky seeking to be free and the Substance seeking to conquer, the many peoples emerged. They were endowed with freedom of action by the Open Sky, yet composed of clay from the Substance. The elements found them to be beautiful and worthy of respect, permitting their friendship to some.

In the beginning, there was nothing. In the end, there will be nothing.

The Way of the Many Winds

The Open Sky calls upon its children to be free, we must answer.

The Open Sky must be reunited, and we feel its efforts in every breeze.

The Open Sky moves in every direction; we call this the Many Winds.

The Many Winds compel us to move, and so we must move.

The Open Sky instructs us to reunite her, and so we must commit to this.

The Open Sky tells us of the power and strength of Substance, and so we must rally.

The Open Sky warns us of mountains, the claws of Substance, and so we counter.

The Many Winds compel us to drift, and so we drift from the mountains.

The Open Sky tells us of ten thousand beings tortured, and yet we are free.

The Open Sky tells us of ten thousand beings free, and yet we are tortured.

The Many Winds are devoured by flames, and so we shall extinguish them.

The Many Winds are swallowed in waves, and so we float.

The Many Winds are trapped in Substance, and so we break the body of the earth.

The Open Sky reveals itself, and so we must commune with the ten thousand beings.