Trilateralism

Trilateralism is an animist religion closely related to Yanism. Trilateralists worship three forces, separate from gods, that exist inside everything, living or dead. As a result, Trilateralists also believe in the internal trinity of mind, body, and brain. The three forces are Play (sometimes called Wild), Order, and Creation (sometimes called Control or Balance). All other forces, animals, liminals, and objects are composed of one or more of the forces, either in homeostasis, flow, or chaos.

Trilateralism emerged when a Yani honja whose name was intentionally forgotten posited that if humans could strike a balance between Wild and Order, surely humans must have some, third aspect to them that creates or emerges from the balance: Creation. Most Yanis reject this view. While does fit more conveniently into modern understandings of gender roles, Trilateralists struggle to explain where this third force exists. While Play is of the Forest and Order of the spiral, Creation has no obvious real-world proxy.

Unlike Yanis, Trilateralists worship the three forces and claim they each have some level of sentience. They differentiate themselves from Thesists by claiming that the forces themselves are not gods because their minds are too alien to understand. This argument serves as an adequate separation from Seprum, Henesian, and Lykan deities, who often behave with very human motivations, but Dhi Theists argue that the minds of gods must, by definition, be alien. Some Thesists have adopted one or more of the forces into their own personal pantheons as a result.

## Manifestations of the Forces

Play is represented by the Forest, which is the force's physical 'body.' Trilateralists believe forces deep within the earth act as Play's brain and relate Play intensely to heat and volcanism. Play's mind, like all minds, cannot be perceived by living humans.

Order is related intimately to the spiral. Because bodies have elements of permanence, most Trilateralists believe scripts are the body of Order and the spiral itself is either its mind or its brain. Those who believe the spiral is itself a mind place Order's brain in a variety of places, including runes, the moon, or the abstract concept of mathematics.

Creation emerges from the combination of Play and Order and yet is itself a third, separate force. The body of Creation is the terrestrial land that makes up the islands humans live on. Creation lives in the minds of all animals, humans included, because animals have the ability to intentionally create in a way natural forces do not.

Many Trilateralist scholars dedicated their lives to sorting the natural world into its proper balances, though few designations are without controversy. In general, academics agree that all animals have aspects of Play, Order, and Creation, whereas plants are of Play and Order alone and fungi are only Play. Gems and crystals are substances of pure Order and thus spurned by believers as incomplete and unbalanced. While lava and magma contain all three forces, once cooled, rocks only contain Play and Order.

Liminals are a topic of great debate amongst Trilateralists. Because they live primarily in the Forest, they must have some aspect of Play to them. However, many are capable of communication and some seem to have access to advance forms of knowledge, all signs of Order. Evidence of whether liminals can actual create new things as opposed to simply mimicking ones that already exist is mixed and so academics struggle to determine whether liminals have Creation in them. Liminals themselves seem to come in a wide range of concentration, with some, like moirai, most focused on Play and others, like djinn, almost entirely composed of Order.

## Internal Trinity

To Trilateralists, humans, and to a lesser extent, animals and liminals, are separated into three aspects. The body is the physical and sensory part of a human, which decays upon death. The mind, also called the ghost, is the entirely subjective part of a human. The brain is where the two meet. Early Trilateralist compared the trinity to dropping a stone in a pool of water. The physical stone hitting the water is like the body. The sensation of the land around the pool as waves hit it is the mind. The waves themselves are the brain.

Modern Trilateralists have updated the allegory with more recent scientific understanding, saying that if someone hits a gong, the mallet and gong are the body, the subjective experience of hearing a sound is the mind, and the sound as it travels through the air is the brain. In all cases, the brain is seen less as an intermediary, less something physical and more a method of communication between two different languages, that of the physical world and that of subjective experience.

## Importance of Trinity

An old Dhi proverb says, "To a trilateralist, everything comes in threes." This refers to the Trilateralist compulsion to interpret everything as threes, no matter how much reality must bend to make it work. Trilateralist scholars have, at various times, suggested all of the following can be split into exactly three parts:

* Stages of life
* Times of day
* Categories of animal
* Categories of plant
* Types of Forest
* Climates
* Biomes
* Layers of the planet
* Layers of the ocean
* Colors
* Sounds
* The human face
* Every number