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serpentface · 1 year ago

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The god Od depicted in a symbolic representation of the word's creation as a docile bull awaiting sacrifice at the altar.

It carries the foundations of the world in its horns (via a very old cross and wheel motif representing cyclical totality, now mostly used as a visual shorthand for the world). It has three sets of horns in the form of the lunar crown, a mostly obsolete symbol of Wardi royalty. The altar is decked with an orange lily motif, after a hardy native water lily capable of regrowth in waters that dry seasonally. This symbol of rebirth and fertility in a sacrificial scene evokes the sacrifice-rebirth cycle initiated by Od's primordial slaying, which is fundamental to the world's functioning.

This is a rundown on interpretations of the god Od, a deity that has a long history in the lands surrounding the Mouth of the eastern inner seaway, and the impact (or lack thereof) of its primordial sacrificial nature in religious practice.

The god Od appears in religious practices throughout the region, having the utmost significance to the Imperial Wardi faith and lesser or separate significance elsewhere. The five religious practices wherein variants of Od has longstanding historical significance are the Burri Faith, the (Imperial) Wardi faith, the Old or 'Heathen' Wardi faith, the faiths of the Hill Tribes, and the Wogan faith.

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The name Od and most significant elements of this god have origins in the Burri faith, which was transferred across the sea to the Wardi, Wogan, and Hill Tribes in the time of its second and third empire.

The Burri Od is described as having been the first being. The universe began as a cosmic sea and empty, eternal sky, loosely representative of a primordial and fundamental female and male dualism. Od appeared at their borders as a result of their interfacing, in the form of a giant aurochs or bison whose hooves touched the seafloor and horns touched the sky. He dipped his head down to the silt and lifted it out of the sea in his horns, thus forming the foundations of the world. His semen spilled into the cosmic sea and created the first seven gods, who then killed and divided their father, giving the world its form with his body.

While significant to the creation story, Od is of relatively little importance in everyday practice of the Burri faith and is not commonly worshiped (rather his seven children are, as they were the original and most powerful group of gods and created life).

Though the Burri Od takes on a sacrificial role in creation, animal sacrifice is not central to the Burri faith and is only performed in specific contexts (some festivals and holidays, in times of great strife, and to a few specific gods within a wide pantheon). The Burri faith does not involve a sacrifice-rebirth cycle as foundational to the world's functioning and god's health, and offerings are instead mostly gifts to please and rightly venerate the gods (or avert the malice of less savory deities). Offerings of food, drink, and precious materials are preferred by most gods. When animal sacrifice does occur, bulls ARE generally favored, as a reflection of their primordial counterpart.

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The modern/Imperial Wardi Od is partly an import of the Burri tradition, which fused with both native monotheistic/animist worldviews and animal cults during the reign of the 2nd Burri Empire and developed into a new faith, which has presently become the state religion of the Wardi Empire.

‘Od’ in the Imperial Wardi context is best translated as capital G ‘God’ (anyone saying 'God' is, in-universe, saying the word 'Od'). Its creation of the world plays out in a very similar fashion, but the first human life (rather than other gods) is created by Its semen mingling with the cosmic sea. It willingly sacrificed Its body at the hands of the first people, who formed the world with its remains. Its shed blood spattered the earth and can be found today as meteoric iron, and animal life emerged from the mingling of the blood and the soil. Its death initiated the eternal cycle of sacrifice/death and rebirth, with each begetting the other and necessary for the world to function.

Od's body is dead and the world is Its corpse, but Its spirit survives in seven 'faces' which govern specific functions of reality and society. The connection of Its spirit to Its body is maintained by right practice, right prayer, and right sacrifice (in the form of food/drink offerings, bloodletting, common sacrifices of animals and occasional sacrifices of people).

The Imperial Wardi Od is generally regarded as genderless and dual-sexed, and referred to with a unique deified pronoun most effectively translated as capital I 'It'. Its sex is of relatively little significance to everyday religious practice, and discussions of Its dualism are more likely to occur in scholarly and philosophical contexts (like debates on the minutia of how Its semen, milk, and menstrual blood are all mentioned in old accounts of creation, and how the implications of this should translate to body politics and taboo).

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The Old Wardi or ‘Heathen’ Wardi faith is a separate branch of old ethnic Wardi religion with significantly less Burri influence. This is a minority practice that only survives intact in isolation. Its practitioners are often hostile to all foreign influence and the Imperial Wardi faith, and suffer minority status and religious suppression.

Its version of Od is a more intact surviving remnant of ancient Wardi monotheism, as an androgynous creator god who lost physical form in the act of creation, and lives on as innumerable spirit aspects of its whole. This deity is referred to as Od in describing its primordial form, but is mostly referred to as a unique word for spirit, which is 'the Koya'. Practitioners of the old faith often identify the seven-faced Od as a twisted, foreign misinterpretation of the Koya.

This practice is somewhat animistic in nature and involves veneration of individual spirits that form a larger whole. Every aspect of the world has a spirit (plants, animals, minerals, bodies of water, etc) that exist in an ideal balance and as strands of an interconnected death-rebirth cycle. Each spirit is referred to as 'the [noun]-koya'. All discrete forms of life/matter have at least one attached Koya, while living beings also have a soul (which is separate from the Koya and reincarnated upon death).

Each Koya exists as a quintessential essence (ex: the lion-koya, the maize-koya, the iron-koya, the salt-koya) rather than separate individual objects having separate individual Koya, though unique landmarks do have their own (the Brilla River-koya is separate from the Yellowtail River-koya, though both share the freshwater-koya). Each individual may have multiple spirits (geese have the goose-koya, but also the bird-koya, the freshwater-koya, etc), a system that categorizes the world by intrinsic natures and precisely dictates how each physical body has unique metaphysical significance.

Animal sacrifice plays a somewhat similar role in Old Wardi religion to Imperial Wardi religion in the sense that it intends to maintain the stability and oneness of the divine spirit and a death-rebirth cycle. In this case, in freeing part of the spirit, balance can be brought to the Koya totality and restore the death-rebirth cycle. (Ex- in times of drought, the sacrificial release of the migratory goose-koya can encourage the return of the rains). This is far from the only way to re-balance the Koya. The most significant rites come in the form of songs that summon, release, or expel individual Koya as needed.

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The Od of the Hill Tribes is a mingling of the Burri/Wardi Od and a much older goddess of fertility and agriculture, and is strongly associated with cattle and barley. This version of Od did not create the world and is only one of many gods, though she is said to have been born from the sea and carried up fertile soils with her (which is likely a direct result of Burri/Wardi influence). A few tribes venerate Od as a chief or patron god, though none are fully monotheistic (outside of converts on individual or clan levels).

She has a distant common ancestor with the Finn goddess Morgren (as the various Hill Tribes are descendants of a single proto-Finn population who migrated across the Viper seaway in prehistory), who is also a goddess of agriculture associated with fertility and barley (though in Morgren’s case, she is THE god of the staple crop barley and lacks the cattle association, and has no direct influence from the Burri/Wardi Od whatsoever)

Most of the tribes of Greathill do not practice animal sacrifice but offer grain and fruit to Od, and create a sanctified mix of crushed barley and oil that is anointed on livestock and people to confer Od's blessings of fertility. In some cases, the dominant cow in each herd is considered to belong to Od and will not be milked or slaughtered, and is buried with full rites upon its death.

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The Od of the Wogan religion is distant to the rest of her counterparts, though has absorbed some Burri and modern Wardi elements over time and is referred to by the same name (a definite foreign import). She shares the fertility aspect ubiquitous to other Od variants, and is occasionally depicted as a cow.

She is a goddess of the earth and sea, who was wed to Iapedi, the god of the sky. The ocean is functionally her womb (which may be trace Burri/Imperial Wardi influence, or merely coincidental) and all life emerged from within.

These are the only two true gods to the Wogan, though there is an additional element wherein the mating of Od and Iapedi also created innumerable spirits found throughout nature that act as an animating life-force. The concept is very similar to the Old Wardi '-Koya' (as the two faiths had close common ancestry), though this one lacks the sort of taxonomical system of its counterpart, and only ascribes spirits to living things. Each spirit in the Wogan religion is distinct (rather than each type of animal, plant, etc potentially having multiple spirits), and the spirits existing in each body are part of a greater whole that exists as a sentient consciousness that can be communed with (ex: each lion has A lion spirit, all part of The lion spirit, the latter of which can be engaged with).

Wogan religion strongly retains ancient animal cult practices common across the ancient Wardi-Wogan sphere, some of which have been translated into the faces of God in the Imperial Wardi context (both religions share commonalities of lions, snakes, albatross, migratory ducks, and cattle being significant sacred animals). The function of animal worship to the Wogan is communication and interface with the greater spirit of each animal (which can range anywhere from gaining personal blessing and protection, to dispelling plague, to 'lay off on eating our crops').

The Wogan faith does not involve animal sacrifice (though ancient variants almost certainly did). This is connected to traditional vegetarianism among the Wogan (as a means to avoid offending animal spirits), which some view as a point of pride and a mark of distinction against their Imperial Wardi majority.

#I don't remember my own tagging system....whatever #blightseed #Should be noted that there are other religions that have adopted Od in various capacities as a result of the Wardi Empire's #expansion/role in the trade network/immigrant communities #But these are very recent adoptions whereas the five of this post have Od influences going back almost a millenia

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bantersnatch · 6 months ago

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welcome back to the madness, friends. as i do every time we get an appearance from bianca, i'm going to break down the new lore -- which is a lot more than usual, this week. not only did we get our first spoken lines from our favorite producer, we got a lot of information about her dad and her home life with host!vic. so... let's get into it!

i'm actually going to start out with an inventory of all our new information about bianca's father, aka the host's husband:

his full name is "david michaelis". this means i have something to write on the dolls i'm burning in effigy! yay.

he travels a lot for business -- he was a small business owner, but he "sold to a bigger business". this seems to confirm my speculation about the host's husband being wealthy.

he is one of ta'tania's regular suitors/clients (and thus cheating on the host in spectacular fashion), and has a thing for ketchup/squished tomatoes; he has talked about the host to ta'tania as well as requesting ta'tania dress in a suit like theirs during their sessions. i am violently holding myself back from kink-shaming this man.

the host has not seen him in six months. six months.

about bianca, we've learned:

she "hang[s] out all the time" with ta'tania. (learning this distresses the host to the point that their professionalism slips substantially; even hearing about their husband's cheating didn't prompt such a strong reaction, interestingly.)

the host has asked bianca to spend time with them, including a trip to new york city together. she has repeatedly declined -- despite planning her own trips. she and the host are sufficiently divorced from each others' schedules that the host had no knowledge of her trips to nyc (despite the fact that they live in the same house. alone with just each other. again, for six months).

bianca has explicitly asked the host to only use her full name rather than the familiar nickname "b".

we now have a clearer sense of the dynamic between bianca and the host: the host seems desperate for a closer relationship (perhaps in a bid to resolve the curse they received in season 1?), but bianca repeatedly and firmly shuts them down with thinly veiled irritation.

below the cut, i'll outline some of the questions raised by this episode in the interest of getting people's theory-brains going. do i have any answers...? nope.

so -- there's a lot going on here. let's take a look.

what is the nature of bianca and ta'tania's relationship? is bianca a suitor of hers? are they friends? if they met through david, is his relationship with ta'tania tight enough that he wanted her to "meet the family", or did he instead refer his favorite dominatrix to his daughter?? is it all a coincidence and this nyc-based fairy just happens to be particularly popular with this la-based family?

what specific kind of business is david in? when vic gets vague, i get suspicious that they're hinting at written-down lore.

six months. that's so long. this isn't a question i just feel like it bears repeating.

why does bianca dislike and reject the host so strongly? is it just a matter of them being an abusive boss with terrible politics and a personality that is, and i say this affectionately, bad? well... maybe. maybe. but with vic michaelis and talia tabin, i don't know if anything can be that simple.

if the host's investment in bianca liking them is motivated by trying to fix their relationship and thus the curse, how is the curse concretely manifesting? the episode where they receive it hints at a "crumbling life" and a monstrous transformation, and we certainly are seeing the former -- but it also seems like the host's life has been in a state of complete disaster and ruin from childhood to now, so i'm not sure if the current state of affairs would feel too new to them.

that's all i have for this post! if you have anything to add in terms of analysis, theories, or details i missed, please feel free to add on.

#vip #very important people #vic michaelis #bianca vip #bianca jocasta #dropout #big week big week the bianca stocks are BOOMING.#i should make a tag for my bianca theory posts so people can find those on my blog without having to see like . memes and shit. huh #let's do #bianca loreposting #i'll go back and slap that on other similar posts

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