I'm studying lore furiously. I have an idea, and this idea, I am coming to realize, requires that I come to comprehend the very myth of creation, and how it echoes downward. I only recently realized that the 36 lessons is FULL of stuff that can be thought of as a much finer grained telling of things that the various creation myths only outline. So I'm reading them closely.

I've always wondered what happened to the Twelve Worlds of Creation. They were combined to make one world... but I'm beginning to think that's not precisely true. I'm starting to think that eight of them, while diminished, still exist, and they are the Aedra, and the planets. The other four actually died, and were more fully incorporated into the world's design. What were these four? I know that a great big chunk of the world of the Ehlnofey survived. Same with the world of the Hist, though much of it was destroyed when Man and Mer warred over posession of that chunk. Then, there'd have to be two others. This line of thinking got me nowhere.

Then I considered that there are four lost worlds, which seem to be located in four cardinal directions from Tamriel: Yokuda, Atmora, Akavir, and something else to the South. I once believed the elves came from the South. There do seem to be some islands to the south, where the Maomer and the Sload are supposed to live. But the elves (indeed everyone) are supposed to be originally from Tamriel. The other three are a puzzle, but not so great a puzzle as the land to the South. This lack of information bothered me.

It appears I'm not the only one that has wondered about this, which brings me to Sermon Seventeen. If Vivec's training of the Ruling King is anologous to Lorkhan's creation of the world (which is a different telling than the version which has the world created from fragments of the Twelve), their visits to the edge worlds could be instructive. They went to Akavir, Atmora, and Yokuda... but didn't go to the South, which Nerevar wondered about, but Vivec remained silent about.

And then Nerevar tries to form the eight spokes Vivec found not into a Wheel, but a Staff... and I wonder, could that be like the thing that uncoils and makes a virtual star line?

Could I be on the right path?

I think what you?re looking for is Pyandonea

From my understanding, there were literally 12 worlds. The 12 worlds/constellations make the Serpent/Nir. Check your alchemy.

Numerology: 12 and 1 = 13 = 4, a number of closure and the dimension of time. But then again, that's numerology, something that I currently believe gets out of hand the deeper you get into it. For example, 12 = 3 when cross-summed, which itself is the dimension of space and another number of closure. 4 x 3 = 12. 12 days of Christmas, 12 months in a year, bleeble bleeble blah, it goes on and on; in many religious traditions, there are 12 individuals who follow 1 leader. Basically boils down to different strokes for diff'rent folks. Or cultures, rather.

That said, numerology isn't a TOTAL bust. Just try not to get out of hand with it (if that's even possible)

edit: Kinda glad this has been brought up 'cause I kinda wanna say sum'thin: I don't feel the 8 planets don't fully correspond to the Divines, for they are: http://www.imperial-library.info/mwbooks/lessons.shtml#3. Where the hell is Dibella and Z'en?

Tarvok,

Some thoughts. Forgive their disorganized nature.

There are plenty of mentions of et'Ada who are not Aedra (Y'ffre is the first that comes to mind), these are likely the missing four which you seek. Given the cyclical nature of time, would Talos (or rather the concepts of conquest that he embodies) be one of the four that died giving birth to Tamriel? Or is he once again merely an embodiment of Lorkhan (who, mind you, is definitely one of your four).

I view the "worlds" as Gods, hence the Ehelnofey do not entirely play in as a world (they are, in my mind, the degenerate offspring of the Gods who are witnessing the creation of modern-day Tamriel). An idea that I just had, not sure how it plays in: The Old Ehlnofey are the Meric versions of the Gods while the new are the Human (witness the division MK's latest, though that leaves us with one more).

I do not see the creation by Lorkhan and by combination as conflicting at all. The worlds are the et'Ada which we all know to have been convinced/tricked by Lorkhan into giving up immortality and creating Nirn.

Now, lost worlds. I am somewhat confused here. These worlds were lost at different times in history and are not even really lost at all (two have full fledged civilization, the other has... inhabitants). It could therefore not make sense that they were part of the 12 that crashed together and created the common world.

The staff is the Wheel sideways.

PS. I am not entirely certain as to what you are proposing, it seems that some of your points contraction each other. That may be the point however, I do love a good discourse. Forgive me if I intrude overmuch.

P.P.S. I type much to slow it seems, Numbers brings an interesting point which I, sadly, lack time to address.

Now that you mention Talos, something comes to mind:

Didn?t Vivec or someone in the forums (i?m not sure) said something about all Kalpas being the same, but for evey kalpa, there?s a minor difference?

Could Talos be the difference of this Kalpa? The factor that sets it apart from previous kalpas?

Or maybe the tribunal? or maybe the warp in the west? or maybe... or maybe... Damn it! I just realized it got out of hand. I didnt think through before i started tipping, sorry.

Ultimately, the snag in my post was me wondering about what was south, and then reading that Nerevar wondered the same thing. I wonder why Vivec didn't take him there.

And I know the tower/staff is the wheel viewed sideways... but I have a feeling that if you take the spokes of the wheel and form a staff out of them, that's different.

And then I was sleeping earlier, and got this image of a spaceship using a particular conjunction of planets to gravitationally sling-shot its way out of the system, and while that has nothing to do with the rest of this, it's still cool.

Ayaan-si, no need to apologize for disjointed posts. The original post was the same thing. I'm not putting together a puzzle right now. I think I'm just looking for the pieces.

The staff and the wheel are the same thing. To me, it's saying the same thing a different way.

Look at the Wheel sideways and you see an "I," a staff, a tower.

I know that. That's the most elementary lesson of Vehk's teachings. What I'm saying is that viewing the wheel sideways, and removing its spokes to form a staff, are different things. The wheel is the world... a prison, if the Altmer are to be believed. When the Hero takes the eight spokes OUT of the Wheel and forms them INTO a Staff, however. the Ruling King escapes his prison. Or at least, Uriel VII did.

What I mean is, I once thought the Staff of Chaos was anologous to the towers of history (as distinct from The Tower). Now I'm not so sure. This wasn't the original aim of my original post, or even the aim of my studies... but I think I may have discovered a way back to the Far Shore. That way, however, seems to require the destruction of the world.

Forget about the staff of Chaos, it shares a symbolic similarity with a sideways wheel but it's a dead end.

The Tower is I.

You're right on both accounts. Vivec said it in the forums. Apparantly you did read MK's most recent little teaser.

This sounds very interesting, and I believe you may be onto something here.

I think you are blinded by forum dogma.

You've got eight sticks. In the traditional arrangement, they are "spokes" on a "wheel"... eight components of chaos held together by time: static change. Nerevar proposed (Sermon 17) a different arrangement for eight sticks that bears a striking resemblance to the arrangement made in Arena. I don't think this can be dismissed as "old lore," because though it appears only sporadically, it also appears consistently.

I think the Tsaeci refer to the same principle when they speak of "uncoiling." I think it can also be described as extending one's leaping distance, allowing one to move at the "strange angle" described in Satakal, despite the distance between Here and the Far Shore... though this is more of a stretch.

They didn't go south because whatever is down there is a "big reveal" type of place. If I had to guess I would say it's a larger home for the Hist or Hist like beings. There are implications that there is a lot more to them than what we know now, which is very little admittedly.

EDIT: Tarvok, you and Proweler are saying the same thing, he just objects to elevating the Staff of Chaos above the others. I.E. there is mythic importance in staves but the SoC itself isn't more special.

I think it's different. An intact wheel viewed sideways is different from the spokes of said wheel taken out and laid end to end. So long as the spokes are in place in the wheel, the Ruling King remains imprisoned. Take the spokes out and make a staff, and the Ruling King is freed. I think that the Staff of Chaos was a tertiary implementation of the ultimate goal behind the construction of White Gold Tower.

White Gold Tower was, by itself, an echo of the Aurbis (as all of the towers are) Nu Hatta raised the concern that not only is it that, by virtue of its location relative to the other towers it also serves as the hub of a greater wheel, that the Ayleids (may have?) intended to disassemble spoke by spoke.

My theory is that the Staff of Chaos was a tertiary implementation of this plan used to create (and be) a pocket dimension used to imprison Uriel VII. So long as the "spokes", the individual components of the staff, were laid out in a roughly spoke-like configuration (regardless of the spatial distance), Uriel remained imprisoned. And I can imagine that one outside the prison could have, had he chosen, viewed the layout of the sticks sideways and seen the Tower (as opposed to the secret Tower, Sermon Twenty-One, AND as opposed to the Staff, which is the point I am trying to make). But when the Hero changed the arrangement of the components from a wheel to a staff, Uriel was freed. I believe this has mythic significance as yet unrecognized.

Come to think of it, Vivec said it wasn't time yet. If the Nerevarine's destiny was to "free the false gods", it could be that the Nerevarine's task (according to Azura, anyway) was to free Vivec, the Ruling King (as he is established in Sermon Four), in precisely this fashion. Perhaps uniting the eight major factions of Vvardenfell dunmer (three houses, four tribes, plus the Temple) for the execution of a single goal... or in other words, removing them from their traditional balanced opposition and getting them all to act along the same line... the Nerevarine unwittingly broke the Red Tower, which was mythically held together by the spokes of Dunmer society.

Hmm... on a note that is completely unrelated in only the most sarcastic of senses, whatever happened to the Whirling School?

I, for one, endorse the idea of the Staff of Chaos as a mini-Tower, simply because it makes Jagar Tharn that much more a compelling villain.

Tarvok,

the bit about the sermons where the Hortator tried to make a staff out of the spokes is a reference to Arena. That Vivec then prevents him from making the staff because it wasn't the time suggests it's the wrong game. It's a reference to the past nothing more.

With it's eight pieces and one gem you can obviously say that it resembles the wheel and the tower, but it's specific metaphorical image it is used nowhere else. There is no relevance to any linear construct of nine pieces. The only thing it resembles is the letter "I" as in I am, which is the Tower which is the identity of everything, hence being made up off pieces.

I'm also not sure what you mean by setting the ruling King free. A Ruling King has already transcended all limits. I think you are confusing the perspective of the Sermons where the Hurling Disk (the hub without the spokes) is meant as a vessel to transcended the Gray Maybe with the Elven perspective in which Lorkhan was marooned on Mundus.

However I can't deny that a transformation from Staff of Chaos to wheel by scattering the spoke-pieces would mimic the creation of Mundus, a prison to Lorkhan. So while I can't find anything that gives the staff of Chaos any importance as a symbol itself, I can see it as clever use of existing metaphysical imagery to create a prison-plane, which seems to be your main point and is in fact very clever. Correct?

---

The Whirling School understood and appropriately vanished.

While I still can't accept your casual dismissal of Nerevar's proposal as an easter egg (if I understand you correctly), you do understand what I'm saying, and that is enough.


lol, assuming I understand you correctly

Regarding the twelve worlds of creation, my initial thought is to connect these with the constellations (as 946000 pointed out). However, this solution compells one to ask why there are twelve constellations. I notice that the mean between 8 and 16 is twelve, but I don't know if that's significant. It's also possible that it should be taken as 12 worlds, as in 1 and 2. I'll leave you to unfold the possible implications of this hypothesis.

I'm a bit more confident on the nature of the wheel and the staff in the 36 lessons of Vivec. It has been established that a properly constructed wheel is attuned to the mytho-metaphyical nature of Nirn. Consequently, altering one yields an impact on the other (those familiar with the http://www.imperial-library.info/obscure_text/nu-hatta_nu-mantia.shtml will affirm this). http://www.imperial-library.info/mwbooks/lessons.shtml#21, the significance of http://www.imperial-library.info/obscure_text/complete_dragonbroke.shtmlshould be clear. So of course, in http://www.imperial-library.info/mwbooks/lessons.shtml#17, which constitutes the final teaching Vivec gives Nerevar prior to the war with the Dwemer (as stated in sermon 18), Vivec leads Nerevar on an excursion of the world, through which they acquire spokes (the mythical significance of this should be obvious). And then:


"[Nerevar] attempted to attach them and form a staff but Vivec would not let him, saying, 'It is not the time for that.' "