So I just started reading up on gods, godhood, and creation in the Elder Scrolls (As a lore buff, I mostly just paid attention to history, cultures, and anything pertaining to my favorite race, the Bosmer and Valenwood) And so anyways, I decided to start with the two primordial beings, Sithis and Anu. Sithis is the entity of change, or as I like to call him/her/it, the Dynamic, while Anu, the entity of stability, or as I like to call the Static. And together, they are the creation of infinite (The Dynamic needs to change the Static, and with no Static, there is no Dynamic, thus they create a mutual existence) Now, to someone new to the lore of TES, one would think that Sithis is evil, "malevolent" being, especially since they are worshiped by a cult of Assassins, and the Daedra being his very blood, while Anu, the "benevolent" being, is usually associated with the Aedra, which in most cases are considered benevolent to mortals of Mundus (save for a few heathen cultures). However, the truth would seem that Sithis and Anu are more neutral deities. for example, one of the most recognized Daedra is Azura, Queen of Twilight. Her domain is basically night and day, the constant dynamic all mortals understand, and Azura is more often than not benevolent. This would show that Sithis is not evil, but rather just Dynamic, and most of his spawn just so happen to be evil. And on the other hand, one of the most popular deities associated with Anu is the Aedra Akatosh. Akatosh is regarded by Man as the savior of all Men, and the Dragon of the (now crumbling) Empire. However, to Elves, he is a demon for uprising out of the Merethic empire, and to the Nords, he is Alduin, the World Eater. In an old Nordic book that deals with the creation of the Nordic version of Mehrunes Dagon (forgot the book's title) Alduin is depicted as an evil dragon who returns once every set number of years to consume the earth and recreate it (thus making all changes null, leaving for a world with a static fate) So this proves that the Aedra, associated with Anu, are not necessarily benevolent, and are just embodiments of Static, and most Aedra just so happen to be benevolant, depending on who is viewing them.

Does this seem about right? I'm just overthinking Skyrim, Alduin is suposed to be the main antagonist where in Oblivion he was a supporter of sorts to the protagonist, and also because Dark Brotherhood is my favorite faction along with Morag Tong. However, whenever I play an Elder Scrolls game, my first playthrough always worships Y'ffre.

First off, you did some slight misclassification.

With Anu, it's best to say he's "IS" and his opposite is Padomay, who is "IS NOT." One is to affirm, the other is to deny that affirmation. It's the Godhead's mind splitting in two when IS was responded with IS NOT. You could also go with infinity with Anu and 0 with Padomay.

The two then had their souls come into form, being Anuel for Anu, and Sithis for Padomay. With these two, it ends up being Stasis and Chaos, or could say pure potential energy and the other being pure kinetic energy. From there we gain the god of time, known as Auriel/Akatosh/Alduin, coming from Anuel, and the god of space, known as Lorkhan/Shezarr/Shor, coming from Sithis. The god of time brings order, with the god of space bringing limit.

Now, as for cultures, some see Sithis as the original push, the one who got the ball rolling from the stasis. With the Dark Brotherhood and Morag Tong, they celebrate limit through death, and actually seem to worship Lorkhan in the guise of Sithis (see the Vile Lair's statue, which looks like a grim reaper without a heart. Missing heart is like Lorkhan, whose heart was removed, no?)

Now, with whose good and bad does depend on which culture you are looking at. With the nords, they see Shor, his shield thanes, and his battle wives as being good. With the mer, they see Lorkhan as being evil and malevolent because he sought to limit everyone and reduce the et'Ada from being cool, awesome, and powerful gods into weak, pathetic, and flawed mortals. With the Cyrodiilic religion of the 9, it's heresy.

Also to add, ignore all classifications done by the mer, as it tends to be very confusing, convoluted, and ethnocentric. In reality, all et'Ada, including the aedra, daedra, magna-ge, and mortals, are combinations of Anu and Padomay, though the amount does vary.

Lastly, for all intents and purposes, view Sithis, Anuel, Padomay, and Anu as forces, instead of sentient beings.


That should be the short. If you got any specific questions, I and most of everyone that frequents here, should be able to answer your questions with more detail. Also, it'd help the reading if you split your paragraph of death a bit.

Fantastic response by Hellmouth...

Simply Fantastic!

Hahaha, sorry Hellmouth for the paragraph of death, I just wanted to get every thing out there and I'm not great at deciding where paragraph breaks go. Can someone explain the godhead? I've only heard of it when I heard that Dagoth Ur wanted to be the new godhead.

Also, I realize that Padomay was nothing and Anu was everything (IS/IS NOT) but were they not also change (chaos) and stasis?

And finally, I'm still having a hard time with the whole "forces instead of sentient beings" what does that entail, like all kinetic energies are the manifestation of Padomay while all potential energies are the manifestation of Anu? Forgive my naivety with the subject, but it is all quite confusing unless I am looking for the right answers in the wrong places (I've just been using the UESP, is there an official document describing Anu and Padomay, or even the Godhead?)

Not forces as in literal energetic forces, forces as in... parts of nature. Not discrete, anthropomorphic entities.

So instead of gods, they're more like concepts? like gravity?

yes. In fact, if you find my writings explaining why I think the whole Sithis [censored] with the Dark Brotherhood to be utter crap, you'll often see me use gravity as an example of why worshiping Sithis is a complete waste of time and a silly joke.

And for you other questions.

The Godhead. The Godhead is the dreamer, whose mind fractured into IS and IS NOT (not everything and nothing), then Anuel-Sithis, then everything in the TES games. From the god of time to the smallest blade of grass is the highly fractured mind of a mad dreamer.

As for reading, http://www.imperial-library.info/content/morrowind-monomyth. It contains various accounts of a bunch of creation myths, and some background info on Anu and Padomay. Also, when reading the Monomyth, try to see how similar these creation myths are. Try to view them through the lens of the race that's describing the creation of Mundus.

Other sources of the Godhead and such are thrown into the Obscure Text, and there is a small mention in Mankar's commentaries.

Thanks, Hellmouth, whenever I play the Elder Scrolls games, I almost never do it solely for the gameplay, but for the advancement of the story and lore, I can't wait to see advances in faiths, how Dunmer religion has changed after the Tribunal's end, and of course, the return of Y'ffre as told be the Precursor. Now, on to reading the Monomyth.

So basically the entirety of Mundus is a dream? I used to think similarly when I was young, I thought that everything in the world was just my dream, and there were parallel universes which were just other's dreams. Maybe we should call the Godhead the "Chris Weaver Head" after all, Arena was his "dream" in a sense

It's more accurate to say EVERYTHING in TES is a dream of the Godhead. Anu, Padomay, Oblivion, Aetherius, Mundus, etc. Though, I believe a good theory is that the mortals of Mundus are fractured personalities of the Godhead that interact with the concepts the Godhead recognizes through the daedric princes, the aedra, and the polar forces.

Also, Y'ffre isn't Akatosh, but the Earthbone that gave itself entirely to solidify the forms of mortals. The khajiit were a previous attempt at solidifying a form on Mundus, performed by Azura by binding their forms to the lunar lattice. With Y'ffre's sacrifice, mer don't morph into plants morph into ogres, morph into bees, morph into wind, morph into poop, morph into a 1000 foot giant, morph into the flying spaghetti monster, etc, etc. Removing Y'ffre would cause Mundus to morph into a world similar to the realms of Chaos in Warhammer Fantasy/40k (i.e. extremely screwy, illogical, and so on and so forth).

The Lore for Dummies hath spoken!