A Formal Interpretation of the Shamanistic Spirits

[High_On_Math 405]

Spoiler

OOC: Basically another stupid mineman philosophy essay.  If you like it, come to Sulianpoli or DM me at TheTruthIsOutThere#5784 or something so we can become lifeless mineman philosophers together. <3

 

A Formal Interpretation of the Spirits

               To outsiders it may seem that the religion of the Orcs is an unsophisticated one.  I myself used to think this way on my first visits to Krugmar.  The main city and surrounding area is littered with bloody shrines.  Heads rest upon spikes leading into the city, and bodies can often be seen hung up, impaled on sticks, and rotting away.  They have a propensity to use violence to solve problems, and often duels to the death can be seen happening in their pits.  The bodies of the dead might be skinned, their blood and flesh offered to some ominous entity known as a “spirit”.

 

               And yet, a much lesser known fact is that not far from Krugmar lies a small settlement known as Sulianpoli.  This city too is littered with shrines and temples, yet blood is absent from them.  Instead, the city is filled with amphoras of oils that bring health to the skin and hair.  The city cultivates beets, which are known to have purifying health properties to those who consume them.  Barrels of salt, too, are hoarded, a symbol of the city’s hatred for filth, disease, and infection.  And, in the temple to the spirits, pools lay before the icons – pools of clean, pure, and blessed water rather than blood.  It was this city that taught me that the spirits are not a monolithic cult of blood, but rather something much deeper.  The spirits are, in fact, personified forms.

 

               To put it simply, a form is an idealized concept of a thing.  Things that exist in physical universes are instantiations of forms.  For example, numbers seem to have a real existence outside of the minds of sentient beings, and yet it is impossible to find them in the physical world.  You can never simply see a number, only an instance of a number.  I can never see 3 itself, but only 3 dogs, 3 cats, or 3 apples.  Circles and points too exist, and reflections of them appear in our universe, but we cannot find them by themselves.  We see circular shapes in eyes and in the heavens, but a perfect circle, one that is perfectly round and is only the thickness of 1 point, does not exist anywhere in nature.  Likewise, geometers can easily conceptualize a 0-dimensional point, but they can point to nowhere in nature where such a point can be found.  Just like shapes and numbers, even emotional and ethical ideas can be forms.  Examples of justice exist in our world, but justice itself is an abstract idea.  You cannot ever destroy grace.  You could destroy every graceful thing in the universe, and yet the notion of grace would linger.

 

               The Uruks’ religion is not centered around some dark beings, but around forms.  They have discovered that from the Creator’s thoughts came these forms, and that just as the matter of our universe was created, so too were the shapes in which it can be molded.  Furthermore, the Creator has given life to forms, and given each its own realm.  These realms are the spiritual realms, and the forms, given sentience, are the spirits.

 

               The spirits that many Orcs follow are violent, but many other Orcs pursue wisdom, pursue nature, and pursue purity.  The choice of which spirits to follow is not one that only Orcs are faced with; indeed, whenever one chooses to pursue forms of violence they are pursuing spirits of violence, and whenever one chooses to pursue forms of peace, they are pursuing spirits of peace.

 

               The city of Sulianpoli is one such place.  We do not worship the forms like gods.  No, we pursue them, just as all beings do.  But there are different ways to pursue forms.  The ways of other cultures rely on individual being’s abilities to create instantiations of the forms themselves, with their own hands, and these efforts are futile.  Instead, we commune with the forms since we can speak and make requests of and honor the spirits of the forms.  We have direct access to the realm of forms, and we have a relationship with it.  It is this relationship that has been the strength of all shamanistic cultures.

 

               In future missives, I will hope to establish which spirits ought to be pursued and which ought to be scorned, as well as to establish a connection between shamanism and alchemy.

 

Ahernan for reading my musings,

Xatophon

[HIGH_FIRE 4178]

Sigurd'Raguk Ingolf reads the missive, a little confused as he does "Dis ahm ahn intuhestin tinkins by da twiggehs, bub mi tink nub. Da spirits nub have diffuhent forms, dey ahm just huw dey peep. Mi will haff tu tayk dem tu peep Enrohk su mi can explayn"

[SteppeNomad 1552]

"Great Xatophon! Likely to be a notable Philosopher of Blessed Sulianpoli! May they pursue the spirits, which are righteous and truly part of eternity, AND the waking world, with fullness and all-encompasing understanding!" A brilliant philosopher, founder of The Cult of The Blessed Ways, smiles brightly! Setting this missive in the reliquary of The Acropolis!

Edited October 1, 2022 by SteppeNomad

[Panashea 2645]

A burned haruspex acknowledges the paper within a library of ancient books and tomes.  

 

"Mi did nub expect to flat within a world where t' other descendants regarded the Spirits. May her kin be given light."