#metaphysicist

[alphatude]

Anarchy Online was quite a thing in the day.

[dailycharacteroption]

Instinctive Metaphysicist (Starfinder Archetype)

(art by dendysetiady on DeviantArt)

When Pathfinder tapped into a few disparate elements of D&D 3.5’s Psychic Handbook in order to bring psychic magic into their setting, they mostly took the names of certain classic spells and pretty much dropped the rest, eschewing the crystals and pseudoscience in favor of actual historic looks into mentalism and claims of psychic phenomena.

One of the things they brought up was mindscapes, metaphorical psychic landscapes that translate the inner workings of a living mind into a form that the mortal mind can understand, and more importantly, can be described in exciting ways for the players.

Now, while the binary mindscapes associated with psychic duels had pretty clearly laid out rules for how they work, the more in-depth personal mindscapes are rather… rules-lite, shall we say? On the one hand this is good because it means that the GM has leeway to do whatever here. On the other, it’s extremely frustrating since the mindscape chapter did a poor job of inspiring what you MIGHT do with such things. Healing someone’s mind by fighting painful memories or outside influence, extracting information with a literal mind-heist, or damaging a mental construct representing some psychic power in an enemy are all fine and dandy ideas. It’s a pity that the game doesn’t really give you an upper limit on what you can actually do to a person with a single casting of mindscape door.

In essence, exactly what you can do with mindscapes is left wholly in the GM’s hands, making someone’s mind into basically a weird sort of dungeon where you often have to get in and find a way out of someone’s mind, especially if they know you’re digging around. This also means that your GM is going to be in a lot of pain if you cast that spell a lot on people that are not who you’re meant to dive into in the story.

So with that in mind, I had hoped that the Starfinder delve into mindscapes would be a bit more detailed, but instead I was disappointed still, partially because of today’s subject.

Now with that preamble out of the way, I present our subject, the Instinctive Metaphysicist!

As the name suggests, this archetype refers to a person who, due to exposure to them, knows their way around mindscapes in ways that many others do not. They may not even be particularly potent psychics, but they have a knack for navigating and utilizing mindscapes in their work, though some of the more powerful can manifest constructs of their imagination into reality.

Despite my dislike of how some abilities of this archetype are handled, this archetype has a sort of… ancient mystic vibe to it which I do appreciate, like some wizened elder who was never formally trained but has a deeply insightful understanding of the mind from decades of practice.

It’s also notable that this archetype is heavily associated with (but not exclusive to) uplifted bears due to their psychic abilities and yearning for a cultural identity, which has given rise to the “Endless Forest”, which is either a collective mindscape of their people, or perhaps a recurring framing device for personal mind palaces that they create, depending on how you look at it.

When taking a longer rest, these psychonauts can retreat into themselves to recover much faster than others, and even use this reclusion to fight off mental effects, though they become insensate while their thoughts are deep within their own heads.

The more powerful among them can flex their minds to bring forth objects or illusions from their minds into reality for a short while, ranging from small physical objects to complex illusions and later even full illusionary environments.

Finally, they can also attempt to pull a foe into a binary mindscape to duel them, allowing them to fight directly with the foe in the landscape of the mind. However, the rules for this are much less robust than Pathfinder’s psychic duels, and is confusingly worded.

While the rest of the archetype is fine, the fact that the final ability is basically instigate psychic duel, a 1st level spell in Pathfinder, is annoying to me, especially since this is the only officially printed way for characters to do so in Starfinder without conversion or homebrewing. Beyond that, however, the archetype is simple enough, and being able to create illusionary terrain or temporary objects can be useful in the right situations. As such, you can mostly build your character as normal with these abilities to supplement it. I can see both spellcasters with a psychic bent taking it, as well as those of a less mystical persuasion having a knack for mindscapes.

Even without having any abilities that directly affect mindscapes, this archetype does make for an intriguing ability set. One has to imagine that these characters often contemplate what the nature of reality and imagination are. Some may seek to understand the cosmos more, while others may dream of being the masters of their own mental reality.

What began as an exercise in meditation and autohypnosis has warped into something stranger as ascetic guru Palani’s “Rock by the Sea” has evolved into a collective mindscape of his many fans and followers. Completely out of his depth, the charlatan seeks to develop this into a cult, but in truth, he is not the real cause of this psychic construct, and he certainly isn’t its master.

Kogress of the 40th battalion will never pick up a doshko again, not after the horrors he witnessed. The old vesk would love nothing more than to move on from those times, but those horrors will not let him be, or rather, his subconcious mind will not, projecting the memories of that battlefield into a hellscape that surrounds him whenever he grows stressed.

The xararians, a human-like species ruled by a mageocracy that fears religion and technology as threats to their absolute power, have long held the wider galaxy in grim contempt as they try to keep their people isolated. However, a new threat to the regime grows from within, as more and more people are touched by what could be called a contagious dream, one that offers freedom and equality.

[mythgirlimagines]

And last one from that post - Ultimate Metaphysicist Kiibo. On that note, I now know what metaphysics is

Sciences were interesting to Kiibo even as a child, but metaphysics were even more appealing by the time he learned about it. It was essentially studying the universe through philosophy.

Abstract concepts could be confusing to grasp, which was why he had to pay a lot of attention to them. His classmates didn’t really understand when he tried to explain it to them.

Time, identity, and knowledge were the three concepts he wanted to study the most, but he couldn’t figure out which one he wanted to focus on. He wasn’t sure he’d have the time (ironically) to really research all three.

Not a lot of his friends enjoyed talking about philosophy in their day-to-day lives, so he was in the habit of asking if they wanted to discuss it so he had an idea of where they were at.

He’s ready to spend the rest of his life studying metaphysics, since there’s always more to debate and learn. It’s a lot more interesting than most people give the field credit for.

[inkytoru]

did a reading to channel my first ever message from satoru and would you look at that the lovers card was at the bottom of the deck i’m

[fairiencarnate]

Once you realise your opinion is unimportant in a lot of spaces, it's easier to take a step back from worrying about things you can't control.

[aventurineswife]

Ashes for the Astrarium | An Anaxagorus x Reader Series

A former soldier-turned-astrologist and a heretical scholar named Anaxagoras are drawn together in a crumbling world where gods die, constellations are outlawed, and truth is both weapon and wound. Their bond begins with bloodshed and defiance, grows through shared grief and cosmic rebellion, and deepens into a love forged in ruin and revelation. As Anaxagoras challenges divine order through soul-bound experiments, the astrologist becomes both his anchor and his mirror—fierce, loyal, and haunted by the child they vowed to protect. Across battles, breakdowns, and near-catastrophes, the two navigate what it means to choose love over fear, truth over obedience, and memory over myth—even when it costs everything.

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐈: “𝑰𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑮𝒐𝒅𝒔 𝑭𝒂𝒍𝒍, 𝑳𝒆𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑺𝒕𝒂𝒓𝒔 𝑹𝒆𝒎𝒆𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓 𝑴𝒆”

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐈𝐈: “𝑴𝒆𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒐 𝑴𝒐𝒓𝒊, 𝑴𝒚 𝑺𝒕𝒂𝒓”

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐈𝐈𝐈: “𝑽𝒂𝒏𝒊𝒕𝒚 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑻𝒊𝒎𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝑳𝒐𝒗𝒆”

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐈𝐕: “𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑭𝒖𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒆 𝑾𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝑼𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑼𝒔”

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐕: 𝑾𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝑷𝒆𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒔 𝑭𝒂𝒍𝒍, 𝑺𝒐 𝑻𝒐𝒐 𝑫𝒐 𝑺𝒕𝒂𝒓𝒔

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐕𝐈: 𝑾𝒂𝒍𝒕𝒛𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑻𝒉𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉 𝒂 𝑽𝒂𝒏𝒊𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑺𝒌𝒚

𝐀𝐧𝐚𝐱𝐚𝐠𝐨𝐫𝐮𝐬

“𝑰𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒈𝒐𝒅𝒔 𝒇𝒂𝒍𝒍, 𝒎𝒂𝒚 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒓𝒔 𝒓𝒆𝒎𝒆𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓 𝒎𝒆. 𝑨𝒏𝒅 𝒊𝒇 𝑰 𝒇𝒂𝒊𝒍, 𝒍𝒆𝒕 𝒎𝒚 𝒂𝒔𝒉𝒆𝒔 𝒈𝒖𝒊𝒅𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒉𝒐𝒎𝒆.”

A former scholar turned rogue metaphysicist, Anaxagoras seeks to dismantle the divine order after witnessing too many truths buried by sacred lies. With spectral hair and haunted eyes—one hidden behind a soul-seeing eyepatch—he speaks in riddles, quotes forgotten prophecies, and flirts with oblivion. Brilliant, tragic, and unpredictable, he is both the architect of revolution and its most fragile thread.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐢𝐬𝐭 (𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫)

“𝑶𝒏𝒍𝒚 𝒊𝒇 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒍𝒆𝒕 𝒎𝒆 𝒃𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝒓𝒆𝒎𝒊𝒏𝒅 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒊𝒕 𝒎𝒆𝒂𝒏𝒔 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒆 𝒉𝒖𝒎𝒂𝒏.”

Once a blade for hire, now a protector and cosmic mapmaker. Devoted to their ward and deeply entwined with the stars they once served under divine command, the Astrologist walks a tightrope between violence and vulnerability. They are stoic, fiercely loyal, and constantly at war with their own capacity for love. Anaxagoras brings out both their gentleness and their fury—and in doing so, uncovers their truest self.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝 / 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐝

“𝑻𝒉𝒆𝒚 𝒉𝒖𝒓𝒕 𝒎𝒆.”

A quiet, starlit soul bound to prophecy and targeted for what they represent: a future where old gods no longer rule. Innocent but not naïve, the child anchors both Anaxagoras and the Astrologist in their moments of doubt. They are the moral compass, the fragile thread that keeps the two from self-destruction.

If you’d like to make a request or ask questions about any character(s) from Ashes for the Astrarium, please make sure to read the rules first! This helps keep everything enjoyable and respectful for everyone reading—requests that don’t follow the guidelines may not be considered.

[tohakumaru]

in a metropolis, there was a woman who had been married to her husband for forty years. on the day after their forty-first anniversary, she went into cardiac arrest and was admitted into a hospital, where she was promptly taken into theatre and seen by the best surgeon in the whole country.

when the surgeon opened up her chest, he was met with a sight too terrible to behold. it terrified him so that he could not do the job that he had done countless times before: he froze and broke into a cold sweat as his hands trembled, and before long the only thing left was the noise of the flat-line monitor burning into his ears, like a cheap cigarette into a child's palm after midnight.

very unfortunate, so regrettable, but no medical misconduct. it was simply too late, post-mortem said more or less the same. gone before the knife even met her skin. due diligence, we thank you for your efforts, now we will move on with our lives. and they did.

the surgeon, however, did not.

what he saw, that monstrous thing that ensnared the poor woman's heart, seemed to have wormed its way around his brains. its blackened tendrils squeeze every molecules until he feels like he was being suffocated with every gasp of air. the surgeon did everything he could, throngs after throngs of specialists, psychiatrists, therapists, metaphysicists, soothsayers, folk-medicinists, miracles workers…. but nothing worked. everytime he closed his eyes, all he could see was her heart.

eventually, the surgeon gave up his career in the metropolis and went home, to a decrepit house deep in the mountains where of his whole family, only his elderly grandmother remained. down the village path, through the forest thickets, he stumbled like a man half-asleep, to run into her open arms and began to sob.

and she said, that darling, medical men, they don't teach you in books, that the world ends sometimes, and that's quite alright.

then she began, the story of the snake. i happened to walk by their windows that afternoon and overheard this tale, here recalled, word for word.

once upon a time a serpent slept at the bottom of the sea. it dreamt that the fluorescent jelly fish dances in the dark, and the night sky was born. then it dreamt of hills and rivers, of mountain tops, valleys and planes of green - with each of its dreams, the world came into being little by little.

but then one day, the earth shuddered and split apart. from the fissure, streams of boiling blood spluttered and erupted like molten glass. all living things on earth tried their hands in vain to wake the serpent up to no avail, until a man decided he would kill the serpent for good. as his axe touches the silver scales, the serpent’s body turned to dust. only its eyes were left, which the waves carried away to where the sea meets the sky: one to the east that became the sun, one to the west that became the moon.

but the snake was never quite dead, since its body and dreams had become so tangled over the millennia. while it's shimmering gold-and-silver body could no longer be found, they say that you can still see the charred remains of its endless dreams writhing and pulsing around a woman's broken heart.

[breadmercury]

Update: this second nephew is an edgelord and he's into (⁠ﾉ⁠◕⁠ヮ⁠◕⁠)⁠ﾉ⁠*⁠.⁠✧ philosophy

You know if I had a nickel for every time a nephew of someone who does accounting for the store i work at tried hitting on me despite my clear and firm disinterest, I would have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.

[retroactivebakeries]

It's easy to scoff at the "dolors" and "hedons" of Jeremy Bentham, utilitarianism's notionally objective units for the mathematical measurement of pain and pleasure, but these ideas have taken on a new life in quantum field theory. Today's quantum ethicists understand Bentham's dolors as being energetic excitations in a scalar dukkha field permeating all of the spacetime loka. These subatomic dolor particles carry a positive "suffering" charge, while their antiparticle hedons carry a negative charge. Notably, this empirical observation was first predicted over two thousand years ago by theoretical metaphysicists, along with the existence of the elusive "boddhisattva particle," which researchers are still looking for today using CERN's Large Heap Collider, bashing microatomic skandhas together at unimaginable speeds in hopes of glimpsing the secrets of the universe.

[dotthings]

Post 2 of Ben Edlund commentary from SPN Then and Now podcast, 4/15/2024

Edited for clarity.

On the nature of SPN multiverses, alternate realities, and created realities:

"It really depends on the Supernatural physicists, or metaphysicists, sort of getting into the nature of what those universes are and the degree which, for example French Mistake has a universe in it that legitimately characterizes that’s another universe, that’s real, or a multiverse, that’s real, we don’t really know necessarily but there are intimations that It’s A [Terrible] Life might have been more a created experience, more of a B.F. Skinner* behavioral kind of rat maze. I think it balances pretty well in the middle and that partly is because of Zachariah’s desperation. They’re really up against it and the way that Lucifer operates, Lucifer and Cas operate, in the presence of past Dean, in a way that kind of encompasses the idea of where the hell are you from, this changes things, or Lucifer saying, hey, I don’t care where you’re from, this doesn’t change things. There’s some kind of, as always sort of implied, especially in the first 5 years, that there’s an under-pinning of angelic rules, there’s a by-laws system where maybe you can raise the Titanic and get a certain number of 50,000 extra souls because of the quirk in the by-laws but you’d better dot your i’s or you’ll get caught. And something similar going on here where that could very well be one of the universes where the game runs itself and we don’t really know and I don’t mind not knowing that one." ---

*footnote: B.F. Skinner was an American psychologist and behaviorist who studied human behavior “in terms of responses to environmental stimuli and favors the controlled, scientific study of responses as the most direct means of elucidating human nature” and who studied Pavlovian theory on reflexes. (source: Britannica)

[ivy-meshle]

Deadball that’s not the practice season I set up happening! I’m working through a run of Parker Simulator that’s helping flesh out Godball, another horror baseball sim that I’m coding, and decided to actually play out some of the games in the exhibition matches between Blaseball and Godball teams (namely the ones he’s playing in since he got forced onto the Garages). In the first game, a Ritual was completed and two players were Taken, one from the Seattle Garages and the other from the Washington DC Currents. (Ritual and Taken are both Godball terms, not Blaseball ones). Seren Moss and Wry McDonald now reside in the realm of Sellihna, the Storm’s Face. We welcome in their stead Rosa Friday and Lia Cole.

In the second game, things were far less interesting (at least to the metaphysicist). The Garages’ pitcher Rivers Clembons did, notably, manage to not only shutout the Salt Lake City Lakes (not very difficult, the Lakes are the worst team in Godball by a mile and a half, having won exactly two out of the eighteen games they have so far played in the current season of Godball), but pitch a perfect game (substantially more difficult, even against the Lakes).

More updates to come soon. Perhaps deeper insight into how Parker MacMillan IX (look, the tally marks got to be more of a pain to write out than Roman numerals after Parker MacMillan IIII II), Liaison from Blaseball to the Godball Consortium, has been dealing with the loss of his budding friendship with the now-Taken Moss (hint: Not Well!).

[maoge2]

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[huntunderironskies]

hi sorry to bother ypu again but i wanted to ask How would werewolves that still keep their old religion syncretized them together ? Especially when in regards of judaism

Okay, uh, this got really long, wow. Hopefully that makes it clear you have absolutely no reason to feel like you're bothering me because I love this stuff.

I do really hesitate to answer for Judaism because pre-Nicene Christianity and mysticism (and to a much lesser extent Sufism) are my focus areas so I am not an authority at all, but I can try. Also I've specifically taken a class on theological philosophy done by a fairly authoritative figure in free will theology so I think about the relationship between people and god/s a lot which means I can kind of give a generalist answer there. I'm primarily familiar with monotheistic faiths and those are the faiths that are going to have to do some extra theological legwork to explain everything so I'll focus on that.

This is SUPER long so I'm going to put it below a cut, I'll also talk a little about my OCs to give some ways that I've had characters hold syncretic beliefs in case that inspires some ideas.

Content...warning....???: Lots and lots of existential matters, big thinks on salvation, theology talk, etc.

First things first: I am very biased since religious mysticism is one of my academic interests but I think mysticism and in particular ecstatic mysticism would square nicely with werewolf existence. Mysticism is much more personal and visceral than more traditional faith paths and the sense of uncomplicated joy that comes with ecstatic practices would be a really welcome break from the usual werewolf things. For more tame forms of mysticism, the sense of unity and peace would be nice too but it's easier to imagine a werewolf drifting towards the more active forms.

Onto actually talking about syncreticism. This is something that Christianity and also to some extent Islam* is concerned about, but it's very easy to justify other powerful beings that aren't God if you've been faced with seemingly undeniable reality that beings more powerful than humans exist. You do have to kind of grapple a lot with the idea as humanity being God's ultimate creation but if you're a werewolf you're sort of faced with that idea already, I'll have to return to that point briefly later. The methodology given to me that metaphysicists use to justify the qualities of being truly worthy of all worship, henceforth referred to as a capital-G God for simplicity's sake, are that this hypothetical God would have maximal qualities, meaning that God would have the greatest possible power in all attributes.

You might be more familiar with the term omnibenevolence, omniscience, etc. in this case but for whatever reason maximal qualities gets used more. I would imagine because it's more directly indicative, it gets you out of the mire of having to explain that, no, omnipotence does not mean that God can create a rock that he can't lift. Trying to define maximal attributes** does get you into some weird places outside of the "rock you can't lift" trope, I know one thing we talked about in my classes was with regards to how omniscience could be defined. The ultimate conclusion was "holding all possible knowledge" but "all possible knowledge" didn't include every possible thought because it would not be reasonable for God to have the same knowledge that you or I might of "I am [name]," as that would imply that God is you or I and also everyone else who has any self-awareness. This is perfectly fine if you're a pantheist (as with the very confusing love of my life, Anne Conway, who I would conduct necromancy on just to pick her brain) but less so for most traditional monotheistic faiths.

All of this is to say: a werewolf who wants to hold onto monotheistic faiths can justify it easily and not have it be totally logically inconsistent. It's not that Luna, the Firstborn, or Father Wolf are false gods, nor are they Gods, they're just very powerful beings. You don't have to and in fact shouldn't worship them, they don't have the necessary qualities that are deserving of worship. You can emulate them to some degree, you can acknowledge they helped create you, that's fine. But your God is the one who has earned your worship. You don't start bowing before the first Rank 5 spirit that crosses your path, do you? Just because something is powerful doesn't mean it's worthy of your love and devotion.

And, I mean, maybe there's kind of a point in there. Any werewolf who has ever talked to a Lune can tell you that Mother Moon is kind of unstable. There's also the issue that Father Wolf is, you know, dead, no matter how badly the Pure Tribes wish that wasn't the case, so you can't do a whole lot with that.

Monotheistic pantheism or religiously focused panpsychism*** (which isn't out of the question for Christians, at least, Alfred North Whitehead and Anne Conway were panpsychists while Baruch Spinoza was a Jewish panpsychist) also provides a pretty easy out there and even kind of has some grounding since panpsychism and animism are closely related. If you're going with a Conwayist (this is a word I have just made up as one of the five people who really like Anne Conway) interpretation, you could have fully sapient Rank 6 spirits be another sort of middle-nature conduit between werewolves and God. Spirits can grant the omnipotent powers that God has, making werewolves more like-God, but they lack the omnibenevolent qualities and remain imperfect and not-like-God. Again, not things you should emulate, but part of God's perfect plan.

...actually I think I'm onto something here, I might have to double back to work on this later and make a Lodge with this as their viewpoint.

So on the upside for people who want to hold onto their original faith path, the thing about a lot of religions is when that magic is effectively real, suddenly miracles get a lot easier to explain. Prophets could be otherwise ordinary humans inspired by God but they could also be supernatural beings. Or you just start having your own miracle-workers who are supernatural beings guided by God. The Storm Lords in one game I ran were very connected to the Catholic Church and had their own secret saints they venerated, some of whom were Storm Lords, but not all. Storm Lords are very Catholic in general in my opinion. Big focus on stoically enduring suffering and trying to attain a greatness you'll never be able to really achieve. That's neither here nor there though.

Under this paradigm, Gifts are basically little miracles you can perform. Yeah, they're kind of grim sometimes, but so are the ones in saint stories. I mean, you get things like people carrying their own decapitated heads. Acts of God don't need to be tame or gentle or clean. Werewolves would absolutely be the more blunt-force instrument of divine power in this sense and it's something that a werewolf who believes this would want to embrace.

I think it also kind of helps out werewolves to know how closely connected they are to humanity and that a huge chunk of sapient supernatural beings (I would personally not say that God-Machine angels, spirits, most goetia, honestly kind-of-sort-of the True Fae, etc have both free will and sapience as a philosopher might define it but we are REALLY getting out into the weeds there) are born as humans. Some of them might still think of themselves as human, just either cursed or blessed by God, which still leaves humanity as the ultimate creation of God as suggested by the Bible. This is really more a Christian concern than anything else, though, I'm pretty sure Imago Dei is almost exclusively Christian as a theological concept.

That said there's definitely room to go the Lancea et Sanctum route and become incredibly self-loathing and see yourself as fundamentally damned or undeserving of whatever reward humans might eventually get. Living a life of extreme violence when most monotheistic faiths are generally against excessive violence would be a problem. Most faiths account for righteous wars of some kind (some Christian denominations would not, you'd really struggle as a Quaker werewolf) and the issue comes more in the form of Death Rage being indiscriminate. Directing violence at those who've earned it is fine, but you can't always do that. It's really hard to pull yourself away from the idea of being uniquely evil in that regard.

There might be a tendency to skew towards the Flesh due to that. Death Rage is fundamentally a werewolf's spirit-side coming to the front. They're not really a person anymore, they're a person-shaped conduit for death because they're in part spirits of the hunt. I think it'd be easy for a monotheistic werewolf to see their spirit-side as the "evil" half of their being and for in particular Christian werewolves...possibly also Sikh werewolves since I know that rage is one of the Five Thieves.

I did do a paper on Sikhi practice (I would have gotten to visit one of the few gurdwara in my region in-person and didn't because of the pandemic and I am still super bitter about it,) so I can touch on that a tiny bit as well. Sikhi syncreticism for werewolves would probably focus a lot on trying to control and overcome Death Rage. I cannot imagine there being a lot of Blood Talons among Sikh werewolves and the ones that are there would really, really, REALLY lean in hard on the "learning to control your Rage" aspects of being a Blood Talon.

Quick note on another consideration. For Muslim werewolves or any other Muslim supernatural being, the idea that anyone could become a prophet after Muhammad would be a huge theological no-go. Less of a big deal in the other monotheistic faiths, though. But a cornerstone of Islam is that Muhammad is the final prophet. I think your average Muslim Cahalith could and would make a case they have supernatural insight, but it's not necessarily God telling them how to guide humanity. I know that by Sufi folklore a few wali were supposed to have incredible awareness of events going on around them (the story I'm thinking of is an anecdote of a wali whose name escapes me who saw a bird suddenly fall to the ground dead and knew this was a sign that a sultan had died) but these miracles were not supposed to make them speak for God. Point is, I cannot imagine a Muslim Cahalith ever thinking of themself as being part of a prophet class from my admittedly still limited understanding of Islam.

Oh, Muslim werewolves would also have a leg up in the sense that it's acknowledged in the Qu'ran that anyone can become a Muslim, even jinn...or werewolves, and they'll still attain salvation so long as they follow God faithfully. I think you would see more self-loathing amongst Christian werewolves than Muslim or Jewish or Sikh werewolves, in short.

Also, not an expert on Zoroastrianism other than having a vague awareness of its influence on the other monotheistic religions and knowing the fun factoid that sometimes Zoroastrians were counted among the People of the Book early on in Islam's history, but I think that Zoroastrian werewolves would have a unique niche here in being able to justify their beliefs. From my limited understanding you could potentially qualify the Firstborn as being ahura while a lot of nastier spirits and ESPECIALLY Wound-related phenomena as being Aka Manah. It feels like a huge missed opportunity that there wasn't a Zoroastrian Lodge or that the Lodge of the Savior didn't have at least some Zoroastrian presence at some point or another. In its defense, the concept of the Maeljin being corrupted versions of werewolf Renown didn't exist until 2e (and to be perfectly clear, is a fantastic idea that makes the Maeljin and Bale Hounds more focused around werewolf concerns.)

Bloodless hunts would be super appealing to monotheistic werewolves as well. Claiming territory from wicked people, tracking down lost knowledge, that kind of thing. You'd also have to work a lot harder to make sure you're killing someone who deserves it. If they're sapient. Which, again, things like Shards and spirits arguably aren't. You can logic yourself into the position that the reason that murder is bad is because it's inflicting pain on someone pretty easily, you don't have to take a commandment at purely face value. If you explore why God has forbidden something, that gives you a lot more loopholes to work with. Ideally you want to be consistent with your logic, but not everyone is. The one issue is the Hunt has to be proactive by definition, while the most cut and dry examples of justifiable violence in these traditions comes from self-defense.

To get into how I've had my characters deal with theological issues...my only two still-Christian werewolves are Philippe (pictured in my avatar) and Levi (I've posted art of him a few times.) I'll talk mostly about Levi since his personal theology is the most complex and gives an idea of how weird theology can become if you're a werewolf.

Levi is a member of the Lodge of the Savior and is actively convinced that the material world is Hell while the Shadow is just another circle or facet of that. A lot of this is because the Flesh seems to have a direct link to whatever is inside Wounds, and it's way, way too easy to rip open a hole there. He can also see the God-Machine (long story) which really isn't helping.

Like most Thebans he's committed himself to hunting Malejin, killing Bale Hounds, and closing Wounds. He doesn't think salvation is beyond reach, but the way he's reasoned the world being as bad as it is is because in his personal theology, well, God can't help you if you're in Hell.

Most of this is heavily influenced by a regional cult called the Church of the Night Angel, which he is technically a member of. They believe that all sapient monsters are gifted their miraculous powers by a servant of God they call the Night Angel (who gets syncretized with a lot of minor deities and also is sometimes, albeit rarely, identified as Vahishtael,) but those gifts have been corrupted by a being known as the First Lie, the Spire, the Adversary, and about a dozen other epithets into what they are now (translator's note: the First Lie is the God-Machine.) The God-Machine, being jealous of God's wonderful creations, stole humanity from Him and trapped them in Hell.

They still have the chance to choose good, it's just harder than it should be. As such the highest duty they have is to fight the servants of the First Lie. These are defined as demons (beings without free will created by the First Lie to serve It,) the Pretenders (natives of the material world who try to deceive others into following them over God or His servant who has come to free everyone from Hell, the Night Angel, but ultimately serve a greater purpose in the world) and the Fallen-of-Purpose. The Fallen-of-Purpose are the worst of all these. The Pretenders and demons can't help what they are, but the Fallen-of-Purpose are monsters who make the active choice to do what the First Lie wants them to do by submitting to the evil parts of their nature.

Oh, to be clear as an aside, when I say material world I mean everything in the Fallen World. This includes places like the Hedge, Shadow, and so on. Those are just a different kind of Hell.

Note that as a supernatural taxonomy, this is a really bad one due to how loosely defined the categories are especially when you get really trigger-happy around things that aren't "of the Night Angel" and the Angelaltrists tend to speak very authoritatively about other monsters in extremely simplistic ways. Their attempts to fight the God-Machine also end up with a lot of splash damage and they kill both capital-D Demons and Angels without discrimination (and yes, under their taxonomy, Angels are demons. Don't think too hard about it.) You would be very hard-pressed to find an Angelaltrist who would take a Demon at their word that they've broken free of the God-Machine because all of them consider anything of the God-Machine to be ontologically evil by the transitive property. Things that are of the God-Machine are not of God and not of the Night Angel. QED.

Malejin are pretty definitively demons under this theory, and I'd almost say Levi is more an Angelaltrist than a Hound of God even if he kind of takes aspects of both. As a Storm Lord he primarily focuses his efforts on people who are being Ridden by Wound-corrupted spirits and people Claimed by the Wounded spirits, and of course to close Wounds as a preventative measure. He doesn't have to deal with any real regret for killing Claimed either. The person is long dead and the spirit killed them. You're just destroying a shell.

It's a matter of figuring out if the spirit should be eliminated for good from there. If it's a Wounded spirit, you're just conducting an act of euthanasia. It's destroying a rabid animal, nothing more or less. Better it die fast than letting it live through the pain of falling to the Maeljin.

He sees Mother Moon as being just one aspect of the Night Angel and a representation of her fiercer aspects, while Winter Wolf is an early creation of the Night Angel who is especially powerful and has attained something close to living sainthood. That's why he hasn't died yet (read: why his Avatars are still wandering about.) He's strong enough he's chosen to continue living and fighting, rather than taking the offer of eternal repose in the Night Angel's paradise that all good monsters are offered. This just makes Winter Wolf even more of an ideal to live up to.

Philippe is still trying to deal with the whole monster thing. After a very delayed rite of passage (which involved switching Tribes from the Storm Lords to the Hunters in Darkness) he's sort of settled comfortably-ish into his new life with some trepidation. He largely sees the Firstborn as being more or less real, but not possessing maximal qualities worthy of worship. Black Wolf is the kind, gentle mother you can always talk to but she's not God-- she kind of takes the place of Mother Mary here, or just a really, REALLY powerful patron saint. And when I've written them, I've had the Hunters in Darkness be pretty guilty of putting Black Wolf above Mother Moon and Father Wolf, sometimes to the point of thinking she's now surpassed Father Wolf as a hunter even when he was at the height of his strength. So he doesn't really dwell on them very much. Father Wolf is dead and Black Wolf is alive. Mother Moon doesn't really call that often.

He definitely sees himself as not necessarily of humanity but not undeserving of salvation because the idea of not being able to be saved doesn't square with an omnibenevolent God. Was the blood sacrifice of Jesus meant for him too? Well, probably. He can make the active choice to follow Jesus. He's making every effort to do good in the world. If you're looking at this from a process theology standpoint, the Bible was written from the perspective of humans, so of course they're only thinking from a human perspective and not including beings of free will that aren't human. That doesn't mean that God can't love someone who isn't human and that God won't save someone who's made the free choice to follow Him.

He's very focused on killing Hosts, unsurprisingly. It's pretty easy to justify killing them, they set themselves up as false gods, aren't really whole beings anymore, and like, when you get down to it, you're only committing one-one-millionth of a murder so that's like, a venial sin at worst. But do you feel bad for every blade of grass you step on? Do you feel bad for taking an antibiotic to kill a disease? It is technically killing something. But you can't keep living if you don't walk, and there's more blades of grass out there than you can count. You'll die if you let an infection spread and then you'll take other people with you because you were too soft. God understands that.

Also it's Wilmington, so he's in a target-rich environment. The Uglathu are a huge problem there and the whole region has been in an ecological death spiral for decades in part because of them. Otherwise he'd have to worry about diversifying into things that are harder to justify more often. He does avoid hunting humans and werewolves, all that said, and thinks it's generally the wrong thing to do except in the most extreme cases like Bale Hounds or Slashers. Especially for human criminals, that gets more into the area of things that only God can judge for. It's not a werewolf's place to intervene.

Well. Maybe you can gently nudge the human authorities in the right direction. But even that makes him feel a little guilty. It doesn't feel natural.

Sorry if this doesn't get into legalistic concerns much at all, I'm more focused on the metaphysical aspects of religion so I can't speak a whole lot to that. Werewolves being able to eat spirits would probably cause a lot of concern over what spirits are halal or kosher and what methods of killing them would be acceptable, but I have no clue how to answer that. I like thinking about how it is possible for something to become infinitely more full of light but not jurisprudence.

*post-script here to say that I had one of my professors, who is an expert in pre-Nicene Christianity and someone I admire a lot, say that generally speaking it was Christian theologians who really kicked off obsessing over what the qualities of God might be in the sense of "when we say God's hand is in something, are we giving human attributes to God and therefore suggesting God is like humans and not divine?!" type stuff. Rabbis tended to be more chill. I'll admit I've kind of taken what he says at face value since he's read a lot more material from that time period than me and also Saint Augustine had a huge impact on theology and he's the most neurotic man who ever lived so I would believe it. Him and his pears.

** another post-script to say that under this paradigm the God-Machine doesn't qualify as a God, we see plenty of proof the God-Machine is arbitrary and eminently fallible. While Its knowledge is obviously very far-reaching, and It's clearly acting with goal-focused behavior, you would have an incredibly hard time arguing Its actions are anything approaching benevolent and most free will theologians would take the fact It uses beings without free will as Its primary servants as hard proof It cannot be good

***yet another post-script to say that panpsychism is herein defined as all things possessing some level of mind, and that material differentiation are either inconsequential or purely illusion, if memory serves Conway was more in the first realm while Spinoza was in the second-- this will seem familiar if you've got any level of familiarity with Buddhism and after asking a few experts there's some consensus that Spinoza at least had some awareness with Buddhist philosophy and was influenced by it. It's less clear with Conway because we know way less about her life, sadly, and that's why I'm learning necromancy.

[donttagmypostwithyourcharacter]

Undercover metaphysicists and their Trojan Horsèd use of passive verbal constructionz, am i right

[styrien]

for the purposes of this blog, carmilla is an extant 'novel' published in 1872. it uses laura's letters to a metaphysicist by the name of hesselius where she recounted her experience with the vampire with more . . . offensive bits excised for victorian sensibilities. in verses where she lives on as a vampire, laura hates it. but what she hates more is that her letters where she described her love for carmilla, not just her repulsion and fear, but her desire for her - are lost forever. she has since resolved to be more discerning about who she opens that door for in future.

[ourolite2]

꒰꒰ CONCEPT.ㅤ some lovely general headcanons with even lovelier jihane and a few lovely honorable mentions in the midst ! so much lovable energy in the air when jihane's around, no? ꒰꒰ ALLERGY WARNING.ㅤ includes ... yonic massaging, afab!reader, female anatomy mentioned, no she/her prns, no feminine sobriquets, implied insecure y/n, mentions of clitorial orgasms, slight breast play, & eventual fingering.

੭᱙. metaphysicist!lover who’s a doggy-coded individual who ensures your vitality, welfare, and comfortability, but before that she was simply a flirtatious clerk that didn’t waste much time to evince that she’s extremely drawn to you, desiring at least an ounce of reciprocation, for she believed that she could make you reciprocate your adoration towards her completely.

੭᱙. metaphysicist!lover who never used you for your money, even before the relationship! hence you only bought supplies from her, not to mention that she’s proven the authenticity of her products multiple times with multiple clients. an antique shop that contained metaphysical products isn’t something you see everyday at all, not to mention that the manager is the metaphysician in question. as a beginner spiritualist, you’d rather focus on your journey instead, and she was extremely helpful. you knew you were the utmost comfortable around her, so you didn’t mind coming over incessantly to give her your money, for she advises certain things throughout your purchases to prove that she isn’t there to scam you, but to admire your flourishing.

੭᱙. metaphysicist!lover who thrives off teasing you at times; it’s a guilty pleasure, seeing as she doesn’t seek for your discomfort, but just look at how cute your face looks when you’re flustered by her seemingly guileless acts. such as her mint-bloom chrysoprase-based gemstones entrapping her waist to accentuate the way her hips moved sinuously with each step she took, perhaps the way she rested her shoulders on the surface of the cashier’s desk, the deepening of her mocha-imbued arch displaying itself alongside of the duel dimples just above her low-rise baggy jeans.

“o, this? noting (nothing) to your eye, promotes good business. i’m not entirely reliant on crystals, but you’ve been makin’ a business boom as of lately. i was curious if i could keep you around a lil’ longer? heh, perhaps a few discounts for another one of those seraphic smiles?”

੭᱙. metaphysicist!lover who rambles about their new trinkets towards you, vents to you about the frustrations of her career, or seeks to comfort you in obsequious ways just to ensure your insecurities would wilt incessantly when she praises or touches you. one way to do such is to give you massages after a long day; they’re not 5-star massages, but she does relieve the tension within you, for she touches you like you’re crafted from the most authentic porcelain. it started off with simple hand massages, to feet, to legs, to back, to full body. though, there was one that she was interested in trying out as well, claiming that it would not only mend your comfortability with yourself, but help you wonder what exactly you’re interested in. sexually, of course…

𑁤 𝐁illows of wispy lavender clouds permeated the air as crystalline pearls of tears rushed in rivulets from the corners of your semi-crinkled eyes, potentially muddling your vision more as the moments glided into saccharine memories. The rapturous scent, followed by a fine layer of honeyed almond oil on your glinting skin, was enough to establish the sedative amenity. The oil in question delved into your pores with the assistance of a sepia-shaded hand amorously kneading into your upper abdominal region, likely wanting to add solace to your kidneys since they’re too connected to the svadhisthana chakra. Your desire levels were having a dispute with your insecurities after all, so as your guide, she felt compelled to mend such sacredly for you.

Her left palm was cuffing your vulva with considerable pressure, gradually circling her hand in a clockwise manner to cause lower levels of stimulation; you’ve came twice from your clit alone, so she didn’t desire to overwhelm you during your first session. Low, rhythmic moans eluded your chamomile-oiled lips, successfully earning a contented smile from the metaphysician who took it as a sign to maintain the preferred pace. Her right hand, which was granting you kidney massages, journeyed down to your waist before bestowing a gentle squeeze upon it, disarmingly alerting you to blink away your blissful tears and look down at her.

“Invite me to your waist, would you?” Jihane’s a gentlewoman at heart, though any woman who is capable of utilizing such an innately beatific, guileless tone for something so puckishly endearing is an individual you may have to keep a close eye on. If you’re not blissed out during the time, that is. Disregarding the possibility, you nodded in affirmation causing her to grasp onto your waist, pulling you down closer to her other palm, (un)intentionally forcing a louder moan from you.

“I can tell your sacral hasn’t been refined in a while, has it? A shame since you’re so divine, but no fret, no fret. ‘Tis what I’m here for, yes?”

You shook your head mindlessly in return as your hips buckled sinuously against her hand, essentially seeking for more friction as her words brought warmth to your inundated lips. Instinctively, she shushed you while massaging your waist a little, but little does she know, or as much as she inferred, it solely stimulated you more, earning more hip rolls against the surface of her palm. Frankly, if this was more of a professional setting, she wouldn’t have given in so easily, but you’re more than just a paying customer, after all. If you haven’t assumed by now, she likes you.

“You’re a renaissance beauty, my beloved,” She proceeded to deify your features with a seraphic smile, one that contained dimples as profound as the deepest depths of the aquatic trenches, one that was also imbued with a plethora of secrets that were made just for you to explore. Your heart tickled pink as she slowly lifted her hand from your pussy, watching the sticky strands of cum extend from the slippery lips and onto the surface. The ardent warmth had little to no time to suffice, for she was already pushing her two fingers inside of you, earning a whimper-resembling moan to reassure her abrupt thoughts.

“A painting encircled in a gold portrait, one with medieval patterns inlaid within. Heh, I must tell my guides about you.”

Tears proceeded to pour endlessly from your eyes as she massaged your G-spot right after finding it with little to no effort. Your back then began to arch off the silky duvets you were lying supine on before she tittered at the heavenly sight, sliding her hand back up your skin to grasp onto one of your breasts once more, squeezing it fondly before kneading into its corpulence. Ridding the professionalism permanently, she crawled close enough so that your leg was between hers, bending over to replace her hand with her lips. Your hand immediately went to the back of her neck as she began lathering your breast with slobber, adorning it with audacious, tender bites.

“Now, sit pretty and enjoy yourself, m’kay?” She insisted breathlessly after taking an appreciative moment to suck on it; it was miraculous that she was capable of multitasking like this, ensuring that you felt your most divine and beautiful during such a vulnerable hour. Even the mere thought of meaning this much to her was enough to excite you in a plethora of new ways. “This is a private session, and I just so happen to be a little free this evening.”

⑅ neso productions. all rights fucking reserved, do not plagiarize.