Greetings everyone! I wander if you could help me out. In my time of lurking and very occasional posting on these forums, I have heard people mentioning about Akatosh and Lorkhan being the same being...I am greatly confused. Does this mean Akatosh got the et'ada to create the world and then ripped his own heart out? Does he have multiple personalities? Or is it something similar to Sheogorath and Jygallag?

Thanks.

The other forumites can give a better explanation than I can, but (AFAIK) according to MK the godhead is amnesiac and has multiple-personality disorder. Probably when the Et'ada punished Lorkhan, the godhead had already long before split into apparently separate gods.

In TES, everything is the same entity called AE. Some are just more closely related than others. Akatosh and Lorkhan are particularly connected, in the four-fold relationship

Akatosh-----Lorkhan|				||				|Peryite-----Jyggalag

Wait what?





The Spore Dream and the Song of Pelinal specify that Lorkhan and Akatosh are attached. The whole thing derives from an relation ship that always involves two opponents fighting over a third element that has the power to make them realize they are one. This is clearly attested by ANU and his double, which love knows never really happened.

For Peryte and Jyg there is no such thing. They just get tacked by people on because they do something with order like Akatosh has the order of Time. That is just a red herring, a coincidental similarity compared to a well established principle.

Now I'm even more confused So Akatosh and Lorkhan aren't the same entity, their just related thanks to their "aurbrilical cord"? Why did Akatosh go insane when Lorkhan's heart was ripped out?

proweler pretty much did say they're the same being, just of different minds.

So he's basically got a split personality?

The connection between Lorkhan and Jyggalag is thoroughly established by the circumstantial evidence, even if someone like MK hasn't come and said it outright as he has with the connection between Lorkhan and Akatosh. Jyggalag is exactness, the Spirit of Limitation that had to be suppressed in order to allow Nu-mantia. Jyggalag was necessarily changed by the removal of Lorkhan's heart, because it was his heart too. And if you still have doubts, consider Arden Sul.

Symmetry demands that if Lorkhan has a daedric counterpart, Akatosh ought to have one as well. It wouldn't be unreasonable for all aedra to have a corresponding daedra, considering that all ada arise from some type of bifurcation. In any case, I used to think that Akatosh's daedra must be Hermaeus Mora because of the latter's "influence of fate and time" but lately I've started to favor Peryite, whose foundation is falling rock, in that role.

They're not the same, they're part of the same. I believe the term is two sides of the same coin. It's not a split personality as that implies two minds in one body. Here we have two minds in two bodies.

Akatosh did not go insane. Atleast not when Lorkhans heart was ripped out, I'm not sure how you came to that. As the Spore dream descrbes it: His mind broke when his "perch from Eternity allowed the day which refers to the start of time in the Aurbis. It's in the http://www.imperial-library.info/mwbooks/monomyth.shtml, particulairy the Altmeri version.
The following phrase in the Spore Dream describes the start of the Aurbis. "and we of all the Aurbis live on through its fragments, ensnared in the temporal writings and erasures of the accusal whim that he begat by saying "I AM"." If you compare it to the Monomyth you'll notice that there is a Nordic slant on Aka (Alduin) as here it is Aka that by uttering I AM makes himself known rather then Anu's self reflection through (Anuiel/IS and Sithis/IS-NOT) in the Altmeri Monomtyh.

So not only has Aka been insane since his birth, the whole Aurbis has been or rather that in which the Aurbis is.

but how could Aurbis be insanity when insanity is a padomaic force (Seogorath)?

Mehrunes, Hermaus Mora and possibly Meridia were changed or made as a result of creation. In the Monomyth it is described as: The Daedra were created at this time also, being spirits and Gods more attuned to Oblivion, or that realm closer to the Void of Padomay.
Jyg/Sheogorath fits in this category as well. Jyg is predictability, Dyus talks about it. Mundus however was created to be always new, unpredictable. The Champion of the Isles shows this by prevailing contrary to all prediction. In other words, the concept of complete predictability could no longer exist in a world that had become unpredictable. Hence the birth of an unpredictable schizophrenic manic depressive mad god.

Under the assumption that the myth of Arden-Sul retells how a new Sheogorath is born, the two stories reflect the Merish or Manish versions (sort of) of the death of Lorkhan. As in Faith of the Empire, this would imply that the death of Lorkhan triggered the transformation of Jyg into Sheogorath. (Not the Daedra as Jyg claims!) In this situation, there is no special relationship between Lorkhan and Jyg. No more special then his relation and any of the other Daedra that were changed in creation.

Though if you must assume that there is, then assume Dagon instead of Peryte. Then you have a story of how Lorkhan triggered Jygallag into Sheogorath and Alduin triggered Leaper into Dagon. The two still have no relation but atleast it's less jarring then Peryte being a Dragon.



This is an important key point. In each level of creation be it Anu vs Padomay, Oblivion vs Aetherius, Lorkhan vs Akatosh, Cyrus vs Tiber, Nerevarine vs Dagoth, Martin vs Mankar, you can find this duality. There is no room for a two by two relationship.

I have always questioned how people say it all is so absolute, nobody ever thought it's just weird myths with personification and polarisation of concepts all over the place that somehow makes up a world and its rules. Why would anyone be right?

I've wondered that myself. How do we know when our only sources are retroactive gods and daedra?

Sheogorath is the embodiment of madness in the Aurbis. If you are that in which the Aurbis is, floating around in a tank with saline water of skin temperature, it is how you would perceive the concept of madness in your own madness.

---

Thought: What if there never was any Jygallag before Sheogorath? His memories don't match, he's got Dyus whom by all appearance seems to be mortal. Then he really is just the part of Sheogorath that has OCD.

here's a bit of a real-world bridge. Space and Time, Shor and Auriel. Different, but part of the same thing, Space-Time. Because the gods are thought given form, so Shor is space and Auriel is time. Therefore since space-Time is one thing made of two parts, so are they. Screw all that Godhead crap, people were saying they were the same since Akatosh ate Lorkhan after ripping out and tossing his heart, long before CHIM was the death-word of threads.

The Godhead is a myth echo, too. At some moment, someone in the current history introduced the unpredictable, and the world changed, creating a Dawn, and by extension, a God, to justify the alteration. Or have I completely missed the target?

I've always wondered if it isn't actually Sheogorath, but the Tree of Madness itself that is the embodiment of madness.

While I don't like invoking authors intent, the mythology was largely conceived by a single person. While the perspectives of the work differ based on the fictional characters involved, they all do subscribe to the same system. As such you can assume this system is a reality. If not, then there is indeed little point in discussing the mythology or even having such an elaborate mythology as we do now.

Well, it's a mythology, so it's an explanation to the world, in my opinion it's taken too far, but that's just me

Roots of madness running deep within the land. A constant that feels its way everywhere, giving an image to play its face.

Myths are stories, narratives, just like the games are. So you can freely suspend that disbelieve.

And that's the more complicated thought behind the CoC went bonkers theory.

Of course every daedra lord can be connected to the Convention in some fashion - that's when they decided who was in and who was out. A case can be made that Sheogorath is different from the rest, and more connected to Lorkhan.
Sheogorath is the Sithis-shaped hole, associated with the unstar at the heart of the Serpent. No other daedra has a comparable quality.
Vivec claims Lie Rock was advised in the serpent constellation by the Void Ghost, commonly interpreted as Lorkhan. Others attribute responsibility for Lie Rock to Sheogorath.
The aedra ganged up on Lorkhan. Jyggalag is the only force that all other daedra lords have ever aligned to oppose.
Lorkhan was the Spirit of Limitation who conceived of Exactness, but enabled the possibility of Liberty by allowing his heart to be removed.
Jyggalag was the lord of predictability who became the lord of unpredictability at the exact moment Lorkhan's heart was removed.
Arden Sul, who either is or represents Sheogorath, cut out his own heart.

You're right that the essential relationship is between two parties, but echoed at many levels. That's why identifying Jyggalag as a member of one of those levels demands a similar counterpart to Akatosh. But what are the applicable "levels"? The observation that Jyggalag might not have even existed prior to the Convention is apropos. It comes down to the split between aedra and daedra. They were changed at the Convention because the Aurbis was a tar baby - they couldn't leave without leaving something behind. The Magna Ge left, and what they left behind were the aedra. What they "kept" of themselves were the daedra. The Magna Ge themselves still exist integrated, but at a higher subgradient of AE. A pair at that level gives rise to quadruplets at the lower gradient, making the four-cornered diagram appropriate.

And no, this is certainly not the author's intent, at least for some author. It was not it all the product of one person, but the result of the laminated work of dozens.

Wow thanks guys, this stuff goes deep. But yeah, I get it now

The creation myths have common elements because some part of mortals was a witness to the events.