View source for Astral Bodies in Creation

When the [[Unconquered Sun]] departs the sky, the blue of day becomes the black of night, filled with bright shining lights seeming a great distance away. These stars are employed for many things... some can assist in certain forms of navigation, some can reveal developments within the politics of Heaven to those versed in their secrets, and most commonly some of their formations are read by seers to predict the course of things to come. 


Everyone knows that these are the Astral Bodies of the Gods, that their absence from the daytime sky is due to none being able to stand next to the glory of [[Sol Invictus]] himself, whose light illuminates the world. 


To many in Creation ''[OOC: [[Occult (Ability)]] 0]'', Heaven and the Heavens are synonymous… somewhere up in the sky is Heaven, where dwell all the gods looking down upon Creation. This is a misunderstanding of the Heavens and Astral Bodies, and those more enlightened move closer to understanding their true nature. 


For every god there is an Astral Body. This Body is and simultaneously is not the god itself, each divinity having a place in the sky while also existing in more conventional form. The brightness of each star relates to the Essence and power of the god, and during the day they continue to exist, but the light of the Unconquered Sun is so great that they cannot be seen. 


With a few exceptions, the position of an Astral Body remains at a specific point, but not an objective location... each Astral Body sits at a fixed point and distance from each individual observer in Creation. Thus, one can build a flying machine to ascend and touch the sky, but no matter how high one goes one will never reach the stars, which will remain exactly as far away from you as when you started. 


While in most cases each star occupies the same point in the sky when an observer looks to it, no matter their location or movement, a few notable Astral Bodies have motion and can even vanish. The most known is the Unconquered Sun, who traverses from the East to the West across the sky each day, along an axis which passes directly over the head of the observer, a journey of thirteen hours. Once Sol has departed the sky, the remaining Astral Bodies become visible, and Luna follows the same axis across the sky for twelve hours, light growing and fading to mark the passage of days within each month. 


The Constellations also move through the sky, though they have the same position relative to any observer no matter that observer’s location. The stars of each Constellation can change, the Astral Bodies within determined by positions within the bureaus the constellations are tied to, the anchoring star of each one always the colourful light of one of the [[Five Maidens]]. As there are many constellations for each maiden, on most nights the Caretakers of Destiny are simultaneously occupying multiple positions in the sky. 


Astral Bodies are the only source of [[Starmetal]] in [[Creation]]. When a god is destroyed, their Astral Body flashes bright for a brief moment, then vanishes, and a chunk of starmetal comes hurtling down. The more powerful the divinity, the larger the starmetal chunk that falls, and some mad theologians have theorized that the death of the Unconquered Sun would create a falling stone so massive all Creation would be destroyed when it hit. Because the position of each Astral Body is based not on objective position but on observer, predicting where this metal will fall is impossible visually... it must be done through other means, the most reliable of which is known to the [[Sidereal Exalted]], who do so by listening to the soft musical vibrations of the [[Loom of Fate]].   


Part of the reason for the confusion amongst the unenlightened folk of Creation is that the nature of gods is so different from the nature of mortals, or even the Exalted. Sol Invictus is at once a glowing sphere of light crossing the sky directly above every person in Creation and a six-armed warrior playing at the Games of Divinity, and there is no contradiction in this: there is nothing in the nature of gods, as in the nature of a Primordial or many of its component souls, which say they cannot be at once two different things in two different places, nor that their place cannot be defined based on the observer rather than any objective measure.  An obsession of First Age kinetropic studies was resolution of the [[Theologic Question]], a universal theory to explain how this could occur, but even the [[Solar Exalted]] could not unravel the mysteries, and some instead eventually turned to resolving the issue by simply eliminating the Astral Bodies so as to redefine divinities into something which fit their theories on reality. Plans to do so, and replace the glowing lights of the sky with cunning works of artifice, had only just begun when the [[Usurpation]] put an end to the field entirely. 



[[Category: Occult & Metaphysics]]