[new setting] Paths to divinity

Paths to power

When a person becomes an adult in their culture, this is nearly universally marked with an initiation into adulthood. This initiation varies with culture and by people, but it usually attunes the initiate into the first linking they have with magic and their first taste of power; their ambition. An initiate gives their ambition in the dream quest that they walk to get to adulthood. In doing so they usually walk a path similar to a great myth already made, or a sacred path that is well understood. In doing so they connect them self with some part of the world and gain a part of it’s power.

A farmer from a barely surviving set of hill farmers experiences the myth of his god gathering the clouds into the first flock of sheep and forging them into living animals to warm and feed him. In doing so they open themselves up to that source of power and gain access to the sheepherders magic. Before long, they learn the song which will cause a lost sheep to bleat out it’s position, and the secret language of herding dogs. They learn how to dance the dance with their fellow herders that scares away the parasites of the sheep herds and the poem which makes a sheep sleep for shearing.

His sister initiates into the path of the raider, and goes through the rite of the youngest of the gods proving their worth to their fathers and mothers by going into the halls of the devil and stealing his wealth, after fighting the seven deadly guardians and escaping the four endless traps. She will soon learn the words that convince a cow or sheep that you are its owner for a night. She will learn to smell pursuit on the wind and the dance which makes her steps faster and arm stronger.

These people are moving into one of the traditional and sanctioned roles of their culture. Someone on the path to divinity, however, got there in a different way. When they went on their initiation they had a different experience.

The first is that their ambition was for something which they had no myth to fall back on, and they flailed around lost in the dreamscape until they came upon the first and high god, and they recreated the myth of him making the first and high god, who was himself. These people’s cultures know from then that they are on the path to divinity, and this is the only myth that seems to transcend all cultures and be omnipresent.

Second, they could be questing on a normal myth and go much further in the myth than is usual. This will normally bring them into the presence of the living god they sought to emulate, who will gift them with a mark that puts them, if willing onto his or her path to ascension. This is most common with those who walked to become a priest and were found special by the god they sought to devote themselves to.

The third is to quest for divinity intentionally. This is dangerous and powerful quest and it claims a lot of the lives of the people who attempt it. If you walk the myth of the first and high god creating the first and high god, who is himself, and come back successful then you are attuned to his powers of divine creation. This deliberate move towards divinity is the hardest of all the paths, but at least it is certain.

This is only the first initiation, and the first station of power. Before passing on to even semi divinity, there will be many more initiations and stations to walk. But for no one ever forgets their first initiation.