World of Darkness Cosmology

==Introduction==
Yeah, some of you probably didn't expect me of all people to be making this blog.
This, I think, doesn't have much of a need for introductions, and in all fairness, it's probably been one of the most straightforward things I've written in a while. In any case, I give props to Udl for getting me into this nightmarish abomination of a verse, and for giving me directions for which books to read so I could organize all of these excerpts. 
So, without further addo:
==Terminology==
Before delving into the finer details of WoD's cosmology, we first have to establish some basic terms, both fundamental units in which the universe is divided: Tellurian and Tapestry.
So, in essence, while the Tellurian is formless potential in its broadest extent, which contains all that exists or may exist, even in imagination and spirit, the Tapestry is the conventional universe, which emerges out of the primordial soup as a reduced, more limited "face" of infinity, built so human minds can comprehend it. Guide to the Traditions reinstates that concept, and also provides a neat little metaphor for the relationship between the two: If the Tapestry is a sweater, then the Tellurian is an infinite amount of yarn.
And the thing doing the knitting, in this case, is nothing but the will and belief of all sapient beings, whose Consensus shapes the Tapestry out of the chaos of the Tellurian, and picks apart form from potential.
To elaborate on the nature of this "yarn," it is then necessary for we to go over the concept of "Quintessence" (Also known as the element of Prime), which in World of Darkness' cosmology is defined as the sea of fundamental energy that fuels and provides the basic framework of all Creation, being "the archetype of all things" and "The perfect model of reality" that is formless and yet holds every Form within itself.
Once Quintessence congeals into the "threads" out of which the Tapestry is woven, the interconnectedness of those threads gives rise to abstractions known as "Patterns," which are essentially the building blocks of the universe, akin to changeless, perfect blueprints of everything they define.
If Magic as a whole is the act of drawing from the Tellurian's possibilities to rewrite the Tapestry according to one's will, then a Mage, by doing so, is constantly fighting against the Consensus of humanity itself, which seeks to reassert the agreed-upon reality, and should they lose this battle of wills, they are consumed by Paradox.
Void Engineers, a source book which explains the cosmology from the slightly-more-science-based perspective of the Technocracy, explains a similar aspect of the setting under the lenses of the "Tychoidian Cosmology," which, to quote the book itself, is founded on the following theorem: Any perfect description of an object is the object itself, relegated to the order of things by divine providence.
In brief, it basically states that all things in the universe are akin to an ensemble of mathematical objects, with the cosmos itself being essentially a massive computer that generates and instantiates all possible models of reality based on the thoughts of sapient beings. During this formation, however, the laws of physics and mathematics undergo a process of natural selection, and while the winners get to be instantiated within the physical world, rejected models are instead relegated to spirit worlds:
And the Tradition Book on the Sons of Ether, in turn, offers another metaphor for visualizing this structure:
Now that we've already established all this, it's possible to look further into how exactly the spirit worlds are divided.
==The Umbral Realms==
===The Near Umbra===
The basic idea behind World of Darkness' cosmology is that absolutely everything within the physical world also has a metaphysical version of itself existing in the astral plane, which is often linkened to the act of casting a shadow, and thus leads to Mages referring to the other world as "The Umbra."
In the case of the Earth, its projection into the astral plane takes the form of three separate realms: The Low, Middle and High Umbra, which correspond to its underground, surface and upper atmosphere respectively.
As for the nature of each of them:
As you can see above, the realms and spirits of the High Umbra are personifications of a wide array of ideas, and some of those are displayed in other source books. The Tradition Book on the Dreamspeakers, for instance, establishes that some shamans manipulate space by interacting with the spirits that define the concept of dimension:
It, in turn, is divided into several different layers of existence, each of which represents a different degree of abstraction extending upwards from the material realm. The first of these is the Vulgate, which is the region of common thoughts and concrete ideas, which acts as the very idea of the world, where all of its conceptual components are laid bare, and everything from intellectual discussions to the gossip of housewives is embodied in one form or another.
To explain that characteristic, it should be kept in mind that Vulgate itself is just the penultimate stage in the process of the universe's creation, where all ideas, possibilities and models assume a semi-physical state, but haven't yet made the transition into a fully material existence. Because of that, it's stated that, if the physical world is a series of shadows being projected upon a wall, then the Vulgate is the residence of the things that cast these shadows.
The Vulgate's landscapes also mark the appearance of the Spires, mountains of rising abstraction that embody the idea of higher levels of consciousness, and which an astral traveler needs to metaphysically "climb" in order to ascend to the apex of the High Umbra, by wrapping their heads around increasingly loftier concepts. When one climbs a Spire, the world starts to lose its sense of concreteness and immediacy as they start to approach the realm of pure thought and consciousness, with characteristics such as the size, form and shape of things gradually disappearing.
As mentioned, the Spires themselves are simply physical visualizations of the general concept of an hierarchy of higher levels, and thus, they can be studied and represented in many different ways, all of which are equally valid, and often comprised of multiple higher levels of being. For instance, The Infinite Tapestry itself cites the colors of the rainbow, the spectrum of visible light, the system of chakras and the kabbalistic Tree of Life (Which indicates that the Vulgate and the physical world are themselves a part of the Spires, as the former is directly stated to correspond to Yesod, the ninth sefirah of the Tree of Life) as symbols of the Spires.
All of these, of course, are nothing but symbolic representations, and equally valid ones in spite of seemingly establishing different hierarchies with a different number of levels (Six for the colors of the spectrum, seven for the chakras of the human body, ten for the Tree of Life). Indeed, the Spires themselves are described as going upwards into infinity, as seen in the excerpts above, and even the Tree of Life is described as comprised of an infinite number of refractions of a single Unity standing at its top.
At the precipice of the Spires, a traveler then leaves concrete existence entirely and enters fully abstract domains known as "Epiphamies," whose nature is described fairly extensively in the cosmology books, and which the passages up there mentioned very often.
In this case, the Epiphamies existing "independently of human conception, abiding outside of the space-time continuum in a way that the Vulgate and
High Umbral Courts do not" refers to how even the Astral Time present in the lower parts of the Umbra does not exist in them at all, and travelers can explore them for what seems like a lifetime while no time passed in the physical world.
For reference, the aforementioned Astral Time in which the Umbra operates is also specified to not be a physical direction at all, but just a vague concept of duration entirely defined by an individual's experience, directly likened to their personal sense of accomplishment and purpose, rather than material, quantitative factors like speed and distance.
To illustrate their relationship to the other spiritual realms we've went over up there, it is further stated that, if the Epiphamies are pure abstractions that ontologically exist a priori from physicality, then the lower realms and things of the High Umbra are just lenses through which these ideas are focused and given pseudo-tangible forms and faces, with the Gods (Or High Umbrood) that live in realms perched along the Spires being examples of such forms.
And this was already established even back in Beyond the Barriers: The Book of the Worlds, where it is stated that the abstractions residing in the Epiphamies defy mapping and definition entirely, and once one attempts to express them with words, images and sounds, the result will always be referring to something else.
Another interesting feature of the Epiphamies, which you may have noticed in the excerpts above, is that they are not limited to the Earth at all: In fact, they are stacked into a series of levels as well, each higher one being a greater degree of abstraction and representing the "completion" of the intellectual work initiated in a lower Epiphamy (The referent example, in this case, being how the Epiphamy of General Relativity is higher than the Epiphamy of Newtonian Mechanics.) Eventually, the Epiphamies stretch beyond the Near Umbra entirely and grow adjacent to the whole Tellurian, with their highest regions being completely inaccessible to mortals, as they represent concepts far beyond the reach of human consciousness, which are impossible to be imagined.
===Beyond===
As mentioned above, the three realms that comprise the Near Umbra are not the entirety of the cosmology, far from it, and are indeed simply the Earth's metaphysical counterpart in the spirit world. There are a number of further realms existing beyond it, and the first of them, which metaphysically represents the limits of Earth's atmosphere and encompasses that entire reality, is the Horizon:
And further than (Or maybe coterminous with) that, there is an infinite, churning sea of magickal energy known as the Etherspace, where the laws of reality are far hazier and more fluid than they are in the Near Umbra (Although Paradox is still existent there, and thus it is nonetheless a part of the Tapestry), and which culminates in a second, "True" Horizon, the spiritual reflection of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
The Metaphysical Earth as a whole is also part of a group of worlds known as Shard Realms, which are spiritual reflections of the planets of the solar system, each of which can contain their own Umbrae and hold connections with one of the Nine Spheres of magick that Mages can utilize to exert control over reality. The Earth, for instance, is just the Shard Realm of Prime, while Saturn is the Shard Realm of Time.
Beyond the True Horizon, there is only the Deep Umbra, or the Deep Universe, which is the point where humanity's influence over reality breaks down entirely, and the very distinction between realspace and the spiritual world becomes hazy and uncertain. Being what it is, it is outside of the Tapestry, and Paradox doesn't occur within its bounds.
The Deep Umbra itself contains infinite different versions of the Tapestry, up to and including the True Horizon, and it is in these alternate universes that the several different game lines take place, with internal contradictions being simply parallel worlds briefly interferring with one another. This is conveyed through a plot device called the "Fractured Cosmos," which Storytellers are free to use should they decide to just not bother creating an unified cosmology for the verse in their game sessions.
The Technocracy also catalogues the existence of constructs they call "Everett Volumes," which are basically alternate histories and "timelines" (The term itself being muddled by what we discussed above, but then again, the Technocracy's whole shtick is speaking in technobabble), where one can find counterparts of everything existing in the primary universe, up to and including even the Deep Umbra.
==Further Beyond==
To explain the things residing even further into the cosmology, we also need to read back into two extremely important concepts that were brought up in the first section of the blog: The Consensus and the Sleepers.
In essence, World of Darkness' cosmology is very heavily founded upon concepts present in Gnosticism, a branch of esoterism which posits that the material world all of humanity takes for granted is, in fact, an illusion, no different from a fantasy or a daydream, and that the utmost duty of an individual is then to "awaken" from this illusion and peer into the true nature of reality that underlies it.
The "illusory reality," within the context of World of Darkness, is the Tapestry, the universe that is woven into existence out of the infinite possibilities of the Umbra by the collective belief and thoughts of the masses, containing every possible concept that their minds are capable of grasping. The Technocracy refers to this sphere of existence as "conventional space," and as seen above, the Sons of Ether think of it using the metaphor of the Walls of Troy.
As they cannot perceive the mystical workings of this reality, as well as what lies further beyond it, the common masses are called "Sleepers," and in contrast, Mages who actively delve into this alien world are called "the Awakened." The key difference being that, while normal people think of the physical world as primary and discard their thoughts and daydreams as secondsry, Mages see the latter as part of a deeper reality, every bit as real, if not more so, than the physical one.
If you didn't guess up until now: This structure doesn't stop here. In fact, Truth Beyond Paradox establishes that, much like Mages control the Consensus of the Sleepers, so too do the Gods control the Consensus of the Mages, and just like regular humans are "asleep" to the spiritual reality which Mages experience, Mages are also "asleep" to the world which the Gods experience.
Once Theodore, the protagonist of this short story in particular, realizes this and ascends beyond the Consensus in order to become a God, her mind becomes perfectly able to handle contradictions and breaches to normal consensual reality that a simple Mage could not, and ExMachine, her companion, further states that the Gods, too, have their Consensus controlled by even greater Gods that can perceive an even deeper reality with even greater minds, and this whole process, in turn, forms an infinite regression of illusory realities constructed by belief.
==The Tenth Sphere and Ascension==
As mentioned above, Mages divide the use of magick into Nine Spheres, each corresponding to a fundamental aspect of reality which they tap into in order to reshape both the Tellurian and the Tapestry to their will; these spheres, as a collective, are believed to encompass all facets of the Tellurian, and their interactions govern the fundamental patterns out of which the all things emerge, forming an infinite cycle which binds all of existence. The spheres themselves are, in total:
And their cycle, in turn, works by the following sequence:
And the Tenth Sphere, in turn, is a theorized unifying force representing the most fundamental level of reality out of which everything springs forth, and which, as said above, governs the entire cycle of the lesser Nine Spheres. Attaining dominion over this sphere is said to unlock the gates to Ascension, the namesake of the Mage gameline, and the final goal of all practicioners of magick, in which they attain harmony with the Ultimate Reality.
In-verse, every faction disagrees on the exact specifics of the Tenth Sphere, but every single one of their definitions ultimately boil down to the same basic principle. For instance, all of them agree on the existence of the Correspondence Point: The core of existence, and the infinitesimal singularity that preceded the Big Bang that gave birth to the universe, which occupies no point in space and time whatsoever (Even the metaphysical, purely qualitative spacetime of the Umbra) and yet contains all possible spaces within itself.
The Virtual Adepts, the most proficient of all factions when it comes to the sphere of Correspondence, model their entire cosmology around the Big Bang and the Correspondence Point where it started. In fact, they take an approach far more focused on theoretical physics, and describe the relationship between the consensual reality of the Tapestry (Which they refer to as the Tellurian, unlike other factions, so be mindful of their terminology) and the sea of possibilities from which it emerges using the metaphor of a Hypersphere:
The Sons of Ether, meanwhile, identify the Tenth Sphere with the "True Ether," a concept based on the idea of the aether as a fluid medium in which the universe resides, established back in the 19th Century. The True Ether, to them, permeates all of space and time and has infinite forms and manifestations, and is the place from which even the Quintessence springs into being, not a force, substance or a mental construct.
And the Nephandi, finally, identify the Absolute Reality with the Void, an endless nothing against which all constructs of reality are nothing but illusions, akin to "metaphysical dust" briefly imposed upon its surface that will eventually disperse. Framed in the terms of the Kabbalah, this is the Ein Soph, the infinity that lies above the Tree of Life from which the Tellurian evolved.
Several other bits of text reiterate the nature of the Void as a nothing which predates even the Tellurian. For instance, it is often described as the primal state of non-being that preceded "Creation," or "the All," whose advent is explained in several different ways across various creation myths.
In contrast to the Tellurian, which is nothing but potential in its purest form, the Void is also defined as the total absence of any and all possibility.
Book of the Fallen, a complement for Mage's 20th Anniversary Edition, then elaborates a bit more on the nature of the Void in the form of a state known as "The Black Diamond," an endpoint where a Nephandic Sorcerer descends beyond Creation entirely and enters the Void, reaching beyond human conception and consciousness, and supposedly emerging as a Supreme Creator of a new universe, of the same ilk as the God who created the Tellurian. In this mode, all symbols and divisions collapse entirely, and everything is united back into the darkness.
==The Essential Divinity and the Godheads==
Mage's 20th Anniversary Edition, among other things, provides us with an outline of the "Umbral Hierarchy," which, as the name suggests, is the most basic and general pecking order in which Mages divided the Universe, as well as what lies beyond it, though this doesn't necessarily include only the Umbra. And the three most important classifications of this hierarchy, in turn, are the following:
This relationship between the Essential Divinity and the Godheads, in turn, is alluded to in Gods & Monsters, which lists the following as one of the possibilities for the origin of Gods listed in the book:
And it is also alluded to in the revised Order of Hermes tradition book, where the Creation Myth of the titular faction involves God, itself both male and female and encompassing all things, manifesting its "Nous," which in turn fashions all of Creation from the nothingness of the Void. And the primordial "Word" which it sounded in order to manifest itself, in turn, was "I AM THAT I AM," the same statement that defines the core of the Essential Divinity according to Mage.
The term itself being used in its Neoplatonic sense, where it is the active faculty of The One, and a Demiurge which fashions the world based on the "thoughts" contained within the Absolute. To quote Wikipedia here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nous
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoplatonism#Ideas
And this, in turn, coincides with how a Nephandi who attains the Black Diamond, although empowered by, and one with The Void, is explicitly still a Demiurgic figure whose ultimate role is to create its own universe apart from the one in which they originated.
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Category:World of Darkness