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I’ve been working on a new suit of armor made from the Dark Stuff at the edge of the Multiverse. Since creation abhors the substance, it’s easy to use it to bend not only light, but space itself. This makes the wearer not only invisible, but intangible… effectively removing everything inside the armor from the normal field of space.

It doesn’t quite work yet. People can still see me. But I only just invented it.

I was talking to one of my cousins today, and it occurred to me that I’m on the sixth chapter of my life so far, at least by my current counting. The big difference between me and software, however, is that the goals that I’ve always had for my life were basically instilled in me at birth. So, while software progresses over time, I find that each successive version of Ian strays farther afield from the core. Ian 1.0, at age eleven or so, was really the pure Ian. And I mainly work to get back to that.

Each timeline is composed one or more “eras” wherein the possibilities of the timeline are slightly different. One era may have higher or lower technology, for example, or more or less magic. Now, of course, some eras are longer or shorter, especially when you compare them across timelines. On one world, the industrial revolution may last 1000 years, while it only lasts 10 on another. Dimensional and time-travellers have noticed that all timestreams move relative to a temporal constant, which we call Rho. Moving from an era 1000 years long, to an era 10 years long, you would notice that for every year you spend, 10 will have passed when you return (if you return). This is measured against the remote timeline Rho, which is notable for the fact that all it’s eras are exactly 1000 years long. To determine Rho for any given timeline/era, simply divide the length of the era by 1000 years. This will yield the Rho-value for that era. So, era 100 years long has a Rho-value of 0.1, while an era 40,000 years long has a Rho value of 40. Travelling from one to the other, the traveller would have to keep in mind that for every year on the one, 400 years passes on the other!

Ialdaboath is the titan of Creation, in the physical sense of creating the physical universe. He is a blind titan, and extremely narcissistic. Like the Monad, and many other titans, Ialdaboath believes himself to be the Godhead. Like many of his worshippers, he mistakes the physical universe for the entirety of the universe. His mother, Aeon Sophia, is also his compliment, the Titan of Spirituality removed from any physical concerns.

At the center of the Crystallized Cosms is a titan known as the Monad. The Monad is the titan of Order in the multiverse, and takes responsibility for all physics, logic, math, enumeration and morality. He is one of many Titans who is deluded into believing that he is the Godhead, but it is true that he is one of the most important and influential of the titans.

The principle dichotomy in the multiverse is between the Light and the Darkness, but an almost infinite number of other dichotomies exist. The brilliance of the Cosmic Round is that these dichomoties, allayed along the circumference of the multiverse, are all equally opposite to the Cosmic Core. In other words, the center of the circle is a balance of all of the dichomoties on the round, which backs up the principle found in wisdom from every religion: moderation in all things.

As we continue a discourse regarding the Light and the Darkness, we should not confuse the concept with Good and Evil. “The Light” represents God, and specifically the transcendent Godhead itself, which is pure existence and truth. “The Darkness” represents the power of non-existence, a force outside of God’s creation. Nothing is outside of God’s creation, and the Darkness is that nothingness.

Now, it’s entirely possible (in fact likely) that Good and Evil are cosmic forces which transcend humanity — but as humans I don’t think it’s possible for us to understand it in that context. In most conversations we have, “good” and “evil” are posited in relation to our existence, limited by our perception. From this point of view, the Darkness are inherently evil , in that they seek only destruction, and they oppose the will of God. But it is an evil based on their being alien to our world view. In fact, they are beyond our human morality, and it is that which makes them appear to be evil.

But the same is true of God, isn’t it? God exists beyond human morality, and so often appears to “evil” by human standards (hence, theodicy). We cannot understand God anymore than we can understand the Darkness. In deed, there are many things which are infinitely smaller than these cosmic beings, which we cannot understand because they are larger than we are. Hurricanes may occur to us as evil, for example. And these are the manners in which God is evil. But when we try (though we must fail) to understand these things on a cosmic scale, we can at least affirm that God is ultimately creative, and the Darkness ultimately destructive. God is the essence (the platonic Form) of Truth, and while truth is sometimes incidentally evil, it is ultimately good. The Darkness, on the contrary, is the essence of nonexistence, and so ultimately evil.

Beyond these two completely different forms of evil (the alien evil of the Darkness and the incidental evil of the Light), there is a third form of evil in the case of demons and evil gods. These are the only forces which are actively and deliberately evil, what we might call “malevolent”. As we read in the Book of Job, Satan himself sits on God’s court and takes his orders. This is the form of evil which is actually part of God’s plan. Where the Darkness seeks our destruction, and the Light seeks a Higher Good (which may seem evil to us), this form of evil is involved with our corruption and temptation. God exists beyond dualities, but he has set up, for us, a dualistic universe. And so there are evil forces which “work for” Him. They have their role to play. Death, for example, is an important part of Life. This interplay of “Good” and “Evil” forces which serve the overall good of the universe should not be confused with the pure destructive evil of the Darkness.

My construction for a multiversal cosmology — where the Light and Darkness are singular and opposite, and the multivarious Shadow exists between them and encompasses all of what we think of as “reality” — is really a cosmology based in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. The Light might be called “Pure Reality” and exists beyond our ability to perceive. But neither are we cast into the Darkness completely. We exist in a world of illusion, a state which naturally involves both existence and non-existence (i.e. possibility). These illusions have qualities of the Darkness, but can also be used to infer the Light (shadows are cast by the Light, after all). And this is the world in which we life — the nature of our reality has qualities of evil, especially if we become to attached to it; but the nature of our reality can also be used to infer a higher order of Reality, the reality of the Godhead.

We can use yesterday’s discussion about the symbolism of God as a circle to help us construct our cosmology of possible dimensions. While the force of God in the multiverse is represented by the Light, and the force of Those That Should Not Be are represented by the Darkness — the interplay of those forces which creates “reality” can collectively be called the Shadow. While the Light and the Darkness, at their extremes, are pure and homogenous (there can only be one purity of Truth, one Platonic Form of Forms; and only one way to be truly and essentially non-existent), it’s in the shadow that there is an interplay of different ways to exist … the force which I call “possibility”.

Graphing this basic set up into a 2 dimensional plane, so that we can make a kind of map of the various possible worlds, we’d get a circle, with pure Light (the inaccessible Godhead) at the center, and pure Darkness (the Things That Should Not Be) at the outer edge. What we call “reality” and “possibility” then, would exist as a multi-hued spectrum along the outer rim… a color wheel if you will. Circumambulating this graph would be what we generally call “dimensional travel,” moving from one world to another. Some worlds may have more Light to them, and exist closer to the Cosmic Core. Others may have more Darkness and exist along the edges of the Dark Expanse.

The Medieval philosopher Bruno, and later Poulet and Voltaire, remarked that “God is a circle, whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.” While this is a potent metaphor for the immanent quality of God, I prefer the Kabbalistic reversal, “God is a circle, whose circumference is everywhere and whose center is nowhere.” With all due respect to the many wise theologians who have spoken to this issue, the ancient argument concerning whether God is a immanent or trascendent escapes the nature of God as paradoxically encompassing dualities. To symbolize God as a circle whose circumference touches all things but whose essence exists at a distance, I think, encompasses the the duality that a spark of divinity occurs within each of us (we are created in God’s image), but that His essence remains unknowable. At first blush, one of the advantages of the Bruno/Poulet/Voltaire construction is that is also describes nicely how we can know the extent of God’s influence within our own sphere of perception (our own sollipsism), but as much as we cannot understand the essence of the Godhead, we also cannot understand the extent of His influence. While this is described very well by the Bruno/Poulet/Voltaire symbol, I think it’s also described well, though perhaps in a more subtle way by the Kabbalistic set-up. As an observer at the circumference of a circle, you cannot fully understand even the entire circumference itself, but only the arcs and chords which exist within the radius of your understanding.