Hello,

This time I would like to put forward my ideas about the extremely messy topic of Tamrielic dieties, or more particularly, how they fit-together/syncretize and act as individuals. As a preface, keep in mind that these are only my theories, and I do not hold to them as the accurate representation of how divine metaphysics actually work in Tamriel, only a possible one. With that said, let us begin.

Divine layering: Mythic Essence

The basis of my theory is that divine entities within Tamriel exist in several distinct essences with different attributes - the Mythic/Iconic and the Corporate - of which the latter catagory may be further broken down (as will be explained later). The Mythic essence of a diety is what the diety is supposed to be doing, in a "diety-as-law-of-physics" sort of way. For example, the Mythic essence of Akatosh is time (and all the aspects therein), while the Mythic essence of Kyne(ereth) is weather / the elements in general. These are traits fundamental to the identy of the diety and in a sense irreducible : no matter what Akatosh is called, for example, that being must always be part of the mythic essence that deals with time. However, a diety-as-mythic-essence is a dead and lifeless thing: it is an object, a prop at best, allowing for the actions of everything else but unable to do anything themselves: they are the bones of the earth, but not its muscles.

Divne Layering: corporate entities and incarnation:

If all the gods of Tamriel were merely physical laws with exiting names, things would be simple. However, the Tamrielic gods are also active entities that have desires and plans that conflict with eachother, and sometimes stray far outside their purported nature. To explain this, I propose that the mythic essence of a god is but their first and most basic form of existence, sort of like machine code in a computer, and that the active, personal, gods we see in the lore are of a different essential nature than the mythic gods discussed above.

Put simply, I believe that the mythic essence of a god can be taken up (or simply glom-onto) a mortal or other spirit if that entity begins to perform actions in-line with the mythic essence. I am suggesting that Mantling as described in the lore is why personal gods exist at all, instead of existing only in the abstract, as the magical nature of the Aurbis allows those who take up the mantle of a god to become far more than just good servants. For example, Stendarr's essence could be considered to be 'the way things should be' (as justice, luck, mercy, etc. are all just different methods to ensure someone does not suffer undeservedly or beyond the norm). Any entity could make a concious decission to embody these ideals more and more until there was no effective distance between that entities nature and the mythic nature of Stendarr, with the critical difference of potential for action: the person who 'became' Stendarr has not lost their ability to affect the world directly in the becoming, nor have they lost their own individuality: they will enact their view of Stendarr's essence in whatever part of the Mundus they reside in, with multiple slightly diffent Stendarr's existing at the same time.

This is what I mean by "corporate entiy" as under this model the Mythic essence of a god serves as a combination title/corporate charter that individual actors take up, give expression to, abandon, or work around as they will. This is how the concept of Time becomes Akatosh/Auriel/Toshraka/Alduin depending on where one is, as differnt persons in these areas have created local expressions of the god that, while maintaining the same overarching mythical place in the Mundus, have very different expressions. This also explains how one god can become a different god: the entity 'wearing' a given god-title can drop it / be forced to stop manifesting that gods essence and assume another one (Trinimac to Malacath). In sum, since the idea of a god is divorced from the actual person of a god, the bewildering interplay of tamrielic religion can be partially rationalized as the jostling between different 'brandings' of a given god as to who best represents the larger mythic forces at play.

Problems:

There are still some kinks in this theory. In particular, I am not sure how this model accounts for the pre-existence of mythic essences before the creation of the mundus. One possibility is that mythic essences simply did not exist in their more refined forms before the earthbones fixed them, and that the process of subcreation created whole concepts as well as entities out of the initial dichotomny of existence/nonexistence. As a corporation develops more sub-departments as it gets larger, the list of concepts able to be embodied as gods could be growing longer as the Mundus further refines itself. I would also argue more directly that a concept, or idea, cannot pre-exist that which embodies it: they can come into existence together or the carrier of the idea may precede the idea (in some instances) but a concept cannot exist outside of a context.

Thank you for reading.