Basic ascan concepts
About Order and Chaos
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"Beware those who would lead you into a different way of life , for all change of path requires the destruction of the old one" Terlaxes, the last of the High priests of Ascan |
Ascans based much of their culture in their concepts of Order and Chaos, and that is why anyone hoping to understand their culture must be familiar with them.
First, it must be noticed that all things wrong and evil were directly related to chaos and all things right and good to order, good and evil were not really relevant in ascan ethics; order and chaos always took precedence.
Due to the stories of the Great Storm, chaos was identified with constant change, and that influenced ascan thought up to the point where they became reluctant to change, believing that stability was better.
Order was identified with stability and lack of change. It was this very concepts that brought about the bloody civil war that ended the Era of the ascans.
Of the Ancient Ones
The Ancient Ones, in ascan culture, were considered to be the conscious intelligent expression of a force. They believed that when a force came to be, it was raw and pointless, unable to move or create by itself. So it was that such forces achieved consciousness, so that may influence their surroundings and exist in a proper way.
Ascan theologists even spoke of "inert forces", forces that had no self conciousness, and as such, could not influence anything and were damned to float without change or advance, moved only by the constant movement of the great storm. These inert forces could not exist for long, since they were eventually destroyed by the storm.
Concerning Man and his existence
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"What is form without purpose if not a pointless carcass blown by the winds of fate?, and what is purpose without a form if not a voiceless ghost floating in the oblivion of exnim?" Fheslar, first high ascan priest Taken from "The Teachings of the Elders"
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Ascans believed that man had a dual existence, that he was the result of the merging of two essences; form and purpose.
The form constituted the raw part, the material component which gave them existence in this reality, this part of human reality is made of Apeiron, transformed into flesh and bone.
The other part, the purpose, could be interpreted in modern thinking as the soul, it is what gives freedom and conscience to the form. This part is related to Ascan the Ancient One of Life, but it is trascendant to him at the same time, allowing human consciousness its own free will.
It must be noted that ascans never considered one part superior to the other, since both are necessary to create the whole of a human being. But they did state that man was superior to any other creatures because of its free will and its capacity to trascend both the material and spiritual world (due to their dual nature), forging an existence of their own.
The ultimate goal of man caused a long debate in ascan society, especially during the Golden Era. The tradiotional way states that man must raise above their own existence and trascend to become one with the basic forces of the universe (the Ancient Ones) so that their life be perpetuated on all creation.
The second opinion, created by the high council during the Golden Era, states that men must effectively raise above his existence, but must do it by himself, regarding human religion as fanatical and pointless. This posture believes that humankind constitutes (due to its dual nature) a force in its own, placing them outside the influence of the gods. The ascans who believed in this were not atheists, they accepted the existence of the Ancient Ones and their importance, they just denied any links to them.