#bc lux still has family that are nations too

[apersonwholikeslotus]

I can't help but wonder how countries without family feel.

hey man, i don't remember if this was in reference to something or just a random thought but not good,,,

Feliks and Kiku rn are the only two i have who had human families that are obviously not around, nor would either know where to even start looking for their decedents and while thousands of years have passed and you learn to cope and find family in your friends they're both still just,,,

Feliks is jealous of Raivis and Tolys having each other, same with Erzsí, Kalev and Timo and fuck it he's even jealous of Katya, Ivan, and Natalya. Because they may not get along but they still technically have each other. and he doesn't remember his parents, and he barely remembers his siblings and Erzsébet will offhandedly mention her father and he would kill to be able to remember anything about his. and he would kill to be able to hug his youngest sister, the one he remembers the best, and she lived a long life and she made it to 80 while he was still just six.

and Kiku has spent far longer truly alone and he's learned not to think about it too hard. 3000 years wipe away parents, siblings, any family he might have had. But gosh sometimes is it hard to ignore it when ancestor worship is (was?) such a big thing, and he would have spurts where he would just lock himself in his house to not have to think about it, because what does he know of his family? They were human. They were human, and he's not. and now he's alone.

#hws poland #hws japan #genuinely do not know how long thats been in my inbox but uh #yeah #not well #they're not doign well #also i don't mean only as in they're the only two who ever will be i just haven't thought to hard about other nations that have human famil #theyre the wrriten out ones #well Luxembourg's dad was human but he's a side thought on this #bc lux still has family that are nations too

[starsailorstories]

The Major Goddesses of the Sweet Chariot Universe

Well, at least the Andromedan corner of the universe.

The most common family of religions among Astraea species is known as Cosmonism/the Cosmonist faiths. They’re inspired by ancient observations of the universe, its governing forces, and what happens to actual suns/stars--which the starlike astraeas understandably conflate with themselves--over their life cycles. 

In prehistoric times before interplanetary space travel became common each world had her own religion, often centered around nature as it was perceived in that particular solar system. But as more astraeas returned to the vacuum--genetically, their ancestral home--they began to both blend their traditions and deify broader forces that affected the galaxy on the whole.

At some point a VERY long time ago, some rando–they call her the unknown scholar, but her anonymity just kind of drives home that she didn’t have any specific credentials for doing this (although really, what kind of prophet does)–gathered up sacred poetic texts from the 16 Holy Worlds where planet-based society was supposedly created, translated them into the common proto-space-latin, and in the translation sorted all the local deities mentioned into the service of the three governing forces. So Altamai’s mother goddess of daybreak, for instance, became an incarnation/guise of Orellistia because she controlled heavenly bodies, and the storm goddess honored on the inner rings of the gas planet Shali became a guise of Levinoxia because she represented a chaotic/entropic force.

The collection of poems is the text they all refer to as the Holy Poets (so called bc they come from the Holy Worlds, not necessarily because they themselves constituted religious figures, although they do for some people), which forms a core for a lot of their view of morality and the world, though it also has just…stories, not all of which have an obvious religious lesson, many of which are probably allegories, a lot of which are love stories. Like every sacred text anywhere, there are about ten billion million different interpretations of it. I’ll discuss several of them in later posts, but most have the reverence of three overarching cosmic forces, their metaphorical implications for daily life, and their correspondent deities at their center.

This post will be LONG, but it has art! 

Cunaderia is the goddess of the Origin (the big bang), birth and beginnings, time, and fate, born from the nova of the Dead Goddess (who is implied to be a form of Levinoxia and/or Orellistia, although it may not always have been such) at the moment of the big bang. She is always depicted as a young child, usually seated on a cushion in a shallow basin floating in vast blankness outside time and space and reading a scroll that bears the Story of Time. The echoes of her long recitation can be heard in the cosmic microwave background.

Although she is not the designer of most things within the universe, she is the creator of the universe itself, and holds the singularity from which the next big bang will issue on the tip of her finger. Her recitation of the Story sustains the continued expansion of the universe and therefore the procession of history. Because of all this she is considered the most awe-inspiring and ineffable figure in the whole Cosmonist pantheon, and it’s considered improper to speak her name aloud in an unconsecrated space. Most refer to her with euphemistic nicknames like “The Child” and “The Little One.” People will sometimes say “the Little One stammered” to describe a moment so charged time seemed to stand still.

Unlike Orellistia and Levinoxia, Cunaderia is generally remembered and worshipped on a regular schedule rather than receiving prayers and offerings on an as-needed basis. The perception, for  the most part, is that everything she controls is already decided, and she can’t be swayed by loyalty or hospitality. It is considered right to thank her for unexpected twists of good fortune, though, and there’s an adorable tradition of leaving handmade dolls and toys at her shrines and temples as tokens of gratitude for good luck, since she’s dogmatically considered to be like five years old.

(The five years old thing figures into a lot of irreverent humor, by the way. Every time you have a day where you’re like “this might as well happen,” they say, remember that the whole pageant of history is just a story made up by a kindergartner at the end of the day.)

Her guardianship over fate gives Cunaderia charge over who will rule each of the Holy Systems, and she’s usually depicted holding or surrounded by seven stars, representing the lives of future queens to one day be incarnated at her discretion. The same seven stars have been a symbol of the peace between the systems for many hundreds of turns, but at the time of the story, all seven mark the diadem of the Empress and the seal of the Hyperian dynasty.

For this image of her I tried to get as close to her “official” Destigravitationist representation as I could. The shell she’s sitting on forms the shape of the Sun Lily, which is a traditional motif in depictions of the goddesses because of its associations with sanctity and power, although not coincidentally it’s also the symbol of the Aula. Her clothing is a style of dress--inspired by the armor worn by an ancient, now-extinct order of warrior priestesses from the Altamaian arctic circle--worn for occasions of Altamaian, and therefore Basilean, national pride. She also wears the round hair comb associated with schoolgirls in the Atya-Jenya system (where the Basillan homeworlds and the Rings are) in general, though hers is made of royal white-gold rather than the usual cloth and cardboard.

In addition to the familiar and the patriotic motifs Cunaderia’s icons usually incorporate a number of symbols of time and fate. Behind her is a star-dial, a device held/placed at the horizon to show the time and date based on the positions of specific reference stars which are close and bright enough to be distinct from the light of the dome. Around her hand is a fortune-teller’s coin (I need to make a post about Andromedan divination soon!). The colors she wears are also significant: for Astraeas, blue is the color of youth, the ephemeral, and innocence, while red is the color of wisdom as well as of death and therefore destiny. Her light is also blue--because blue stars tend to burn brighter and not live as long, a blue light is a symbol of a kind of tragic eternal innocence--a spirit too pure for the material world.

Orellistia is the goddess of Gravity, the force which orders the stars. It follows from that that she is also the goddess of all matter, which gravity forms into stars, planets, and galaxies; as well as of light (a consequence of this pull), order, inspiration and creative activities of all kinds from construction to motherhood, prosperity, love (attraction and loyalty, at least among stars, are both functions of gravitation), marriage, family and the home. “Home” can mean everything from “household” to “home planet” of course, so she also has superintendence over all national/state/planetary protector deities. Until fairly recently the ruling classes have stopped short of actually claiming she protects the empire on the whole, but that’s a line the Hyperian dynasty have been more than willing to cross.

Gravity is an incredibly important concept in astraea cultures, to the point where it’s usually capitalized and spoken of as not only a natural law, but a moral and devotional one as well. The most extreme view of it holds that every single physical thing in the universe--people included--is organized into a perfect hierarchy by a series of literal or metaphorical orbits. The galaxy turns around the dome, within which Sol Atya, Sol Jenya, Sol Minerva, and Sol Suraya move around the gravitational center of their system (once believed to be, and still honored symbolically as, the dwelling place of Orellistia herself); the four suns are attended by their planets, who are attended by their moons and satellites, who are attended by their queens and ruling councils, who are attended by the royal family, who are attended by the nobility, and so on down the chain all the way to lux laborers and the dishonored poor.

Of course, while Orellistia is often seen in the mainstream as maintaining the status quo, her depiction in the holy poems is a little less convenient. Most often, she’s portrayed as a stereotypical artist, trying things out and gradually molding the universe towards perfection with a careful balance of gentle nurturing and sometimes ruthless erasure. Love and war are equal products of her instigation, and both are simply mediums through which she executes her grand vision. In her more ancient portrayals she shares many traits with some of the solar demigoddesses (who, most historians agree, were once worshipped as goddesses themselves despite being much more flawed and down-to-earth than the current Big Three)--she’s warm and personal and rather human, prone to frustration and jealousy and even insecurity. The many syncretic devotional paths centered around her--particularly in the antedome and farther afield--definitely have more in common with this version.

Titles used for Orellistia include variants on Mother of Gravity, (Nebula) Genetris, Creatrix Regina, Flower of the Cosmos, Mother of a Thousand Suns, Core of the People, Map-Drawer (particularly when she is taken up as a war deity), and Galaxy-Weaver (especially popular with the massive antedome textile industry). Often people will pray or sing to her and leave gifts at her shrines before undertaking an endeavor--either to ensure inspiration or success, whichever one they’re more concerned about. She’s usually pictured wearing gold, salmon and pink--the colors most associated with stellar nurseries on the galactic scale, sunrise on the planetary scale, and the mini-nebula in the womb of every Mother on the family scale; colors associated with nurturing, creation and new life--if not actually dressed in and made of nebular clouds. It’s also common to portray the central dome of Andromeda (or at least all the important bits) either symbolically or literally in her hair as if they formed there and are now in her orbit (this picture went for symbolically). Other depictions give her distaffs and embroidery hoops, architects’ tools, paint brushes, and other implements of Creation (it honestly usually depends on where you plan to hang the picture).

Her light is usually portrayed as bright white, sometimes with a blue tint. White lights are associated with the full energy of young parenthood and the prime of life.

Levinoxia is the goddess of the Vacuum and Orellistia’s wife, although the Basilean religious establishment has done everything in their power to downplay that. She is the goddess of uncharted, dark space and of antimatter, and as such the goddess of darkness, night, the unknown/exploration/the pursuit of knowledge, the pursuit of truth, truth itself, entropy, magic, change, and travel in general, as well as being the protectress of the dead (although Orellistia is said to choose who will live and die).

She travels the cosmos, broadening the borders of its beings’ understanding, maintaining a long-distance relationship until the wife’s art block gets bad enough that she needs her to come home and keep an eye on things while she does an epic studio cleanup and then takes a nap, which ultimately results in the heat death of the universe and, once they’ve spent the night together and Levinoxia has showed her wife all the new ideas and perspectives she’s gathered up, a new big bang.

Her roles as a protector of sailors and travelers and as a guide in the pursuit of truth are usually signified in icons by having her holding navigational tools (astrolabes, star maps) and ships’ lanterns. The lantern in particular represents the ability of wisdom, observation, and critical thinking to cut through the obscuring veils of rhetoric and misinformation.

Just as Orellistia’s mythical character is a warts-and-all picture of the creative process, so Levinoxia’s is a picture of the pursuit of the truth in all its confusing, depressing, endlessly fractal murkiness. She’s heavily associated with vagary and nondistinction (the practice of Levinoxian modesty is intended to be a reminder of these very things) and stories involving her generally teach that the truth is so complicated that a mortal mind is lucky to even get close. The gentle dialectical practice she exemplifies, however, results in a very compassionate and peaceful demeanor, and those who study her as a discipline tend to think of her as an unconditional comforter and a loving guardian, albeit mischievous (but only to keep you on your toes and learning, like a sensei in an old martial arts film).

Because of the radical realism she represents, however, she lends herself to morally ambiguous interpretations and is frequently misunderstood. The Destigravitational Ecclesia in particular have been on a campaign to paint her as a destructive trickster figure and more Orellistia’s opposite than her counterbalance. Around the time the old rebellion was really getting off the ground, the Aula outlawed worship of Levinoxia entirely in response to several vestal orders coming forward to call them out on their habitual twisting of the facts. Despite this, many vestals and devotees still practice her rituals, particularly those which petition for the safety of sailors and the peaceful reincarnation of the dead. It’s very bad luck to say prayers or wear symbols associated with Gravity in space (the reasoning for this varies--the fundies say it’s because Levinoxia can’t abide the suggestion of order in her domain, the cynics usually say “lol she’s a sailor, don’t remind her that she’s got a girl back home,” the romantics say being reminded of her wife simply causes her such a pique of longing and loneliness that she forgets to do her job and will leave the ship unprotected) so for superstitious spacefarers Levinoxia is THE goddess; many of them know no other beyond a name.

Levinoxia is often depicted as older than her wife (she is, if the creation story is to be believed) or as having a young face but an age-reddened light. Although she is the most passive of the goddesses, she is also considered the wisest.

#sweet chariot #sweet chariot mythology #worldbuilding #the cosmic lovers