InterpretingScriptures

Operating on the assumption that "Rebecca is neither crazy nor taunting us with contentless mysteeeriousness" (yes, a strong assumption,) I have set out to try and make sense of the Scriptures in the Sidereals book. This deals in largest part with simply identifying the characters depicted in the scriptures and relating their stories to setting events if possible. Alternative theories are welcomed.

It helps a lot if you cite what parts of the text lead you to what conclusions, instead of just saying, "I think X, I think Y." See Lucy4luvzu's comments for good form - evidence leads to conclusion.

If you're referring to fan-created entities or those that are not canonically Yozis, italicize your entire comment, please.

 

• The Golden Barque
  • The Eternal Maiden
    • "fleeing wood leads to water": Kimbery? - Deaths Toe
    • Maybe Autochthon, for the running. Maybe the iron makes sense for him; maybe not. - Raindoll
    • I see Autochthon too. What is the one element that is totaly lacking in Autochthon? Wood, and we know that his Eye is in creation not Him, so thats a good candidate for the hart thats thrown away. - HeWhoSpeaksOfDarkness
    • Wood is life, is sapient involvement. The thing that Autochthon fled from was specifically the Exalted. - linkhyrule5
    • The Eternal Maiden, Endurance, "throws away her heart" in her Sutra. This Maiden "made of iron, shaped by wind, sea & fire" is interesting. The Sidereal uber-Charm for Endurance lets you regenerate & heal incredibly fast so long as you have a goal (and if this reflects the Primordial, perhaps it intentionally destroyed it's own Fetich, with the goal of regenerating & reforming into something greater...or to survive the coming imprisonment)? - Lucy4luvzu
  • The Desirable Maiden
    • Maybe the Games of ? - Raindoll
  • The Maiden at Sea
    • "The Sea came over the side as a creature with teeth." Adjoran, considering what happens to her. -Kicker
    • The Maiden at Sea, Sail, might refer to Kimbery, the Sea That Marched Against The Flame. In the Sutra, the 'monster' had it's face shattered, and it was burned away (leaving only teeth). Heck, this might be a source for a Malfean (whose death might have then removed some sort of disturbance from the Sea). - Lucy4luvzu
  • The Maiden Entombed
    • "...who lived in a tomb, and the tomb was made in her image." Malfeas, Oramus or Autocthon, all trapped inside themselves, wasting energy in futile activities. -Kicker
    • This talks about a Maiden who lives in a tomb made in her own image and goes on to say "Because she lived in a tomb, she became like a ghost", which to me is pointing out a similarity between Malfeas and Malfeans. Also, the Maiden Entombed paces up and down in the tomb, and Malfeas is continually trying to warp itself in order to break out. - Katsue
    • Could maybe compare to Malfeas (trapped in a tomb in her own image) or a Malfean (trapped in their tombs around Oblivion).- Lucy4luvzu
    • I see Oramus, who is the only Yozi who is explictly contained in himself, rather than simply a landscape; I believe GoD even states that in his cage of his wings he dreams. - willows
    • Definitely seeing Adorjan here. "I am not trapped while yet I run" is just so strongly her theme it's hard to imagine anything else. And she is in fact trapped in a tomb that is roughly in her image, in that it's the world-body of a Yozi. - linkhyrule5
  • The Maiden and Shadow
    • This could be about the Malfeans. The maiden is the dying Primordial, clinging to the shadow which is her slain identity. "The cave full of ghosts" would be the Underworld; the ladder pointing downward would be the Mouth of the Void. The Malfean cannot stop trying to pursue her shadow into Oblivion. - Quendalon
    • ...Shadows fleeing over fire & stone, into a monster's mouth? A cave full of ghosts? It became thorns that gave life? A bone ladder that only goes down? Maybe the Primordials, upon becoming Malfeans, dont "lose" their "concepts" as much as change them? Perhaps this Primordial became the River Lethe, while another became the Void, while yet another (similar to Oramus, who affects the Bordermarches) affects the Shadowlands. - Lucy4luvzu
    • I'm thinking that this is actually a prediction of the Mask of Winters' conquest of Thorns. The references seem to point to a more Underworld-type image. Fleeing over fire & stone could refer to the battles between the Scavenger Lands and the Realm over Thorns prior, while the cave of ghosts could refer to the Labyrinth or the Mouth of the Void. - Patkin
• The Cerulean Lute
  • The Lover and Maiden
    • "...who met a thing that lived outside the world, and there was a beauty to it." Gaia or Cytherea. Luna is scary. -Kicker
    • Gaia, I think; Cytherea originated Creation but she does not embody it. - willows
    • Craft, the Lover & Maiden, is hard to settle on. It might be Autochton, the Great Maker, bringing beautiful things from outside Creation in via his forging? Or perhaps it's a reference to Malfeas, with an "unholy wrath" to destroy it, offering "hooks to the soul", both hating & loving it? Malfeas' Fetich, it's definining Soul IS a master Crafter. - Lucy4luvzu
    • The Craft Scripture may refer to the Exaltation. Exaltation wasn't in the world, until Autocthon brought it into it. And who can deny that the Exalted have "hooks to rend the soul"? - Katsue
    • Another possibility, is He Who Holds in Thrall, the singular canon Malfean I know anything about. Burning with an unholy wrath, offering power with hooks to rend the soul. Sounds like his offers to First & Forsaken Lion or the Abyssals, really. - Patkin
    • I'm thinking this one's about the Ebon Dragon and the Scarlet Empress. - GordonMichael
  • The Hunted Maiden
    • The Hunted Maiden, Dodge, driven from her land & chased by Black Stags? Some sort of flashback depicting a pack of Lunar Exalted & Beastmen hunting down an injured and bound Fetich? Not all are omnipresent you know... - Lucy4luvzu
  • The Bride
    • "there was a maiden who fled a shadow in the company of a friend..." Gaia and Autochthon leaving the company of the other Primordials; Autochthon practically declares his imminent betrayal and attack of her: "How can you trust me..." - [[willows]
    • Yeah, the strange people, and places are th Exalted and the old Realm, very diffrent then befor. They could also be Gaia and luna. As the Cestalines killed/imprisioned the other primodials. - HeWhoSpeaksOfDarkness
  • The Dancer
    • "...who stood at the center of every dance." She Who Lives in Her Name -Kicker
    • This is in accord with my analysis of the Dancer as Stanewald, who is an aspect of SWLIHN. I think it's also not bizarre to see her as Zsofika. - willows
  • The Whore
    • "She had to give up power to get it, and she didn't get much..." Gaia creating the Terrestrials, giving herself to the Incarnae, Necessity. - willows
    • And I'm in the camp that says that the Scripture of the Whore refers to Gaia. If Luna isn't "a man called Necessity", I don't know who is. - Katsue
• Crimson Panoply
  • The Clay Maiden
    • Luna. Examine the Charms - they shapechange! - willows
    • Gaia she is the substace of the world, but if Luna is made from Gaia then Luna fits even more. Humm this is looking like luna to me - HeWhoSpeaksOfDarkness
    • Also, like the Clay Maiden, Cecelyne's writeup says that the Endless Desert feeds on "the substance of the world". I'm not sure about knowing how to love, how to hate and how to mess up wisdom, though. I sometimes think that the Athletics Scripture may refer to Cecelyne. - Katsue
  • The Drowning Maiden
    • Here's an odd thought: if the Primordials emerged from the Wyld, perhaps they were subject to similar strictures as the Fair Folk, and thus they too suffered, in a sense, from the suffocating force of Order? "She could not breathe" because beings of the Wyld cannot draw upon the Essence in Creation. "Each time she gasped and found no breath, a human child died; and thus, she lived": Creation devours the Wyld, as observed in the last chapter fiction in E:tS. - Quendalon
    • I see Autothon, he is in the void, wich dose not slow him, but he devoures souls to keep alive. -HeWhoSpeaksOfDarkness
  • The Maiden on the Shelf
    • Mara. Current theory states that she was the "forest spirit" who taught Sorcery to Brigid. Sorcery is a trap, demon-binding a snare, with which the Yozis will decapitate the forces of Heaven at the appropriate time. - Quendalon
    • Maybe "child" refers to one of the Incarna, and this scripture has yet to come to pass. (Of course, who could the maiden be? Some unknown 24th Yozi who breaks the numbering scheme? The GoD?) - Raindoll
  • The Maiden at War
  • The One-handed Maiden
    • "...who struck an iron wall until it shattered her hand." The Ebon Dragon? -Kicker
    • The One-Handed Maiden, Resistance, might tie to the Ebon Dragon, somehow wounding itself to escape it's prison. The Sidereal uber-charm shares your own injuries with another. - Lucy4luvzu
    • I'm thinking this one's She Who Lives in Her Name, of all the Yozis, she fought the hardest against her imprisonment, destroying part of herself (three of her spheres) in an attempt to escape, and burning away huge portions of Creation in the proccess. - GordonMichael
• Forbidding Manse
  • The Savory Maiden
    • I'm pretty confident that this Maiden represents the Fair Folk. "She started to squirm through the crack, but then, she saw that the clouds carried chains and that the wind was their manacles." The maiden takes on form among the elements, but is shackled to form and stasis thereby. And you'll note that it's the Larceny Charms, under the Savory Maiden, that deal with the Wyld. Hey - that may be the key to pinning down some of the scriptures, by seeing what the Charms associated with a given Maiden focus on. - Quendalon
    • Larceny, the Savory Maiden, has a reference to a "Maiden" in a pot. Strangely, there is a hole in the pot that leads to the Sky, where clouds await to Chain her. She calls the Stones & Skies for help but instead only Night (with Fire & Pain) arrive.This is curious because in GoD, a reference is made to sorcerors riding Air-Elementals up to the sky and cutting an opening in the "roof", in order to enter Malfeas. Almost an image of "Hell" being over the "Sky" in the 'heavens'. ;) Anyhow, there's some imagery to play with there. The uber-charm lets you trade someone to the Wyld, in exchange for the Wyld itself, perhaps connecting it to Oramus (whose dreams twist the Wyldlands) or Isidoros (whose passages altered destinies). - Lucy4luvzu
  • Absence
    • There are many scriptures that fit the Ebon Dragon. But of all of them, I feel this one fits him best. It relates to his obsession with death, his shadowy being, but the fact that even so he is of this world in a way that the Malfeans are not. (Thus the reference to the Void.) - Raindoll
  • The Maiden in Chains
    • SheWhoLivesInHerName, The first 2 or 3 lines acurately describes what those who wander near her do, and what the people of creation did to to imprison her, and well she isn't trying to excape, and i think the last line might just discribe her thoughts rather well - HeWhoSpeaksOfDarkness
    • Who rules yet remains enslaved? Cytherea, Mother of Creation, of which little is known except that she was imprisoned with the Yozis. - Lucy4luvzu
    • Cytherea, Mother of Creation, would be better titled for "Creation", and the Sutra of Occult, the Maiden in Chains, who everyone seems to desire & worship, and yet which everyone keep imprisoned (none release her chains). - Lucy4luvzu
    • I tend to see The Maiden in Chains as being She Who Lives In Her Name. The fact that the people of the earth "set aside all their petty disputes in her name(!)" squares well with SWLIHN's project to eliminate free will. - Katsue
  • The Maiden in Terror
    • ...Lore, the Maiden in Terror, is spooky. The 'man' doesnt like what the "Maiden" reveals. Worse of all, he looks into her Inner Self and finds only the Void. Perhaps this is some strange Primordial whose Nature is to Not-Exist? A Primordial who wants to consume Primordials? Or who embodies the opposite of Cytherea? - Lucy4luvzu
• Violet Bier
  • The Maiden and the Dust
    • Adorjan, because of the related astrological effects of The Rising Smoke (someone else noticed this; add his name if you know who). Also, the running is appropriate for a wind or even a river. - Raindoll
    • Adorjan, first she is a river runing. Then she gose past her life, the death of her Fetch, and now she is a wind flying. This is one of the clearist Scriptures to me. - HeWhoSpeaksOfDarkness
  • The Maiden and the Scythe
    • "I know how I'm going to die", maybe Sacheverell ("He Who Knows the Shape of Things to Come")? I suppose the Ebon Dragon, with his obsession with death, might be fit by this as well. Given that this scripture is talking about a primordial, it's a bit spooky. - Raindoll
  • Maiden's Promise
    • The living embodiment of everything right in the world. "Except," she said, "I'm going to die." And no one listened. Maybe it's the WoD in me talking, but that sounds like Gaia. - Kicker
    • "Oh... even death, sure. But she stood between the world and anything worse." 'Something worse' would seem to be the Void to me, or possibly just the Wyld. In the case of the former, this scripture would seem to be about a Malfean. (Which doesn't really fit into the current model, but still it's an interesting idea.) - Raindoll
    • The Maiden's Promise, Bureaucracy, who embodied everything right in the world? The Sidereal uber-Charm for this can end all debate & root out corruption - appropriate for She-Who-Lives-In-Her-Name, whose Nature embodies Hiearchy? - Lucy4luvzu
  • The Expectant Maiden
    • "Someday, I'm going to kill that boy that put me here." Sounds like a Yozi who has a serious hankering for vengeance upon the Unconquered Sun. - Quendalon
    • To me, this one sounds a lot more like the Ebon Dragon than the One-Handed Maiden does. I envision him as much more of a plotter/dreamer than a sledgehammer. _Ikselam
      • I haven't been making the assumption that there's a one-to-one relation between entities and Scriptures for the purposes of this effort. - willows
    • "...who was always looking forward to the way things would be" -- Sacheverell ("He Who Knows the Shape of Things to Come"), maybe? - Raindoll
    • And the Expectant Maiden, Martial Arts, who is always dreaming forward but waits for Time to run out? That would be Sacheverell, of which little is also known, except that Lucien whispers to the perronele "I have seen you in the dreams of Sacheverell, who knows the things to come." and that 'Lucien kills those whose deeds would awaken Sacheverell, the Demon Prince that knows the shape of things to come, for Sacheverell's sleep is prized by gods and Yozis alike." As for "Time"? Perhaps a reference to page 85 of GoD, in which "In the distance, an angyalka plays the harp named Time."? Maybe a lulling song to keep a most-terrible-amongst-Yozis asleep and dreaming?Heck, perhaps the scribbles the Sidereals discovered, the Sutras, are a past-present-AND-future prophecy by Sacheverell, perhaps even using them (and giving them talent at Martial Arts) to further it's own dreams? - Lucy4luvzu
  • The Maiden and the Road
    • Stanewald - she is undaunted by mountains, but look how she balks at sky! - willows
    • Gaia, Maiden of 'Plenty', might be the Maiden on the road for the Sutra of Medicine. Gaia aided the Gods in creating the Primordials, instilling the principle of Life into the Elements. The uber-Medicine Charm, for Sidereals, actually binds you to a dying elemental, and thus bound you both begin healing, with the elemental's new power proportional to your own Essence. I could counter argue (with vague definitions of "Principle of Life" begin a generic term for Essence, and with then tying Gaia to Occult, but I think the Occult Sutra best fits Cytherea for now). - Lucy4luvzu

Comments

This could be tied in to Creatures/ATaxonomyOfMadness. Just because RSB didn't have our fanmade Yozis in mind, doesn't mean they won't fit. :) - Quendalon

For that matter, I'd like to take this out of my personal subcategory, since it is hardly something that belongs in a garden. Where would it go? Quendalon, though I don't disagree with you, I would like to make it clear that my intention with this page was to try and deduce the writer's intentions, not to create connections that could not possibly have been there. - willows

Easy. Just have all suggestions involving fan-made Yozis written in italics, just like they are in the Taxonomy. - Kicker

Maybe the reason the Ebon Dragon is suggested so frequently is that he is the Yozi of whom we know the most, in terms of his personality and goals. (I don't know what Blood & Salt tells us of Kimberry.) - Raindoll

It's bound to happen when we try to distribute the ten (?) canon primordials between 25 scriptures. - Kicker

Some of the Scriptures look a lot like particular demons or even other players in the game to me. - willows

"Operating on the assumption that.." i would say we dont need to make this asumtion to get these conections. We can just put them there -HeWhoSpeaksOfDarkness

I will come back with more detail, but it seems to me like we are making one mistake. Mosts people seem to assume that the scriptures all refer to Primordials, living and dead. However, unless I'm forgetting something, we have no real support fro that assumption. We are assuming that the scriptures have reason, but to assume that all their reasons are the same might put us on the wrong track. Some scriptures might refer to Primordials, some might be prophesies, some might be references to other Celestial Incarna or the Maidens themelves. -Seraph

It might be illuminating to look at these in the light of the Shinma. That said, I am not so sure that the assumption in the introduction is brought out in the interpretations that follow. - willows