Various Topics arising from “The Web of Aoullnnia”

Cosmology & Cosmogony of the Sarlang

‘Reality’ – the Katylin term means ‘All That Is or Can Be’ — is divided by the Sarlang into two regions, the Manifest and the Unmanifest, which are in turn subdivided into the Occurrent and the Non-occurrent.

Unmanifest Non-occurrent.

Void.  No-form. Ultimate source and end of everything. Tao.

 Unmanifest Occurrent.

Domain of Half-form, drifting potentialities not yet fixed into shape and form. Here there is no Dominance (Causality) and any event can be followed by any other.  Chaos.

Manifest Occurrent.

Fixed world of events. Specificity. Full form. Will. Causality.

 Manifest Non-occurrent.

Constructed realm of archetypes, dreams, wishes.

The Katylin Language

 Katylin is a language developed by the Sarlang during the latter part of the Abyss (2012 – 2056 by your reckoning) when they lived in underground settlements in North-West Territory (your Amrica). There are two forms, Lenwhil (or ‘true mode’) Katylin which is the language actually used by the Sarlang, and Sarwhil (‘easymode’) Katylin which is a simplified version of it with much borrowing from other languages. No one today speaks Lenwhil Katylin and it would be regarded as sacrilegious to even attempt to do so. However, a good deal of the chants and litanies to Aoullnnia are in a relatively pure form of Katylin and devotees of the Yther (a mystical movement restricted  to fam) use written Lenwhil Katylin for letters and official texts.
The linguistic principles on which Katylin is based have their origins in the manner in which the Sarlang experienced reality. In Katylin the first word of every sentence is usually a ‘gerund’, a verbal noun. There is ‘action’, something occurring. Then comes a word or group of words giving  the origin of the action and finally a word or group of words giving the result of the action. Thus the statement “I am painting a picture” will in Katylin be put in the form                          “Painting / me / picture.”     

   As a secondary or alternative double specification we have the localisation of the origin of the action and the localisation of the effect. Thus the ‘sentence’             
          “Flashing/ sky/ ground”
 indicates that a flash (of lightning) has occurred, originally localised in the sky but seen from the ground.  If I direct a beam of light up into the sky I will write something like
         “Flashing/me/ground/sky”    

   Because of the (to you) strange Sarlang conceptions of causality, there is often no great distinction made between the origin and localisation of an action. However, if the action is definitely the result of an act of will, the prefix shows this, distinguishing for example between
           “Shooting/I/him deliberately”
and  simply
          “Shooting/I/him ”    

  Sarlang

The name Sarlang  comes from the Katylin ‘sar-whellan’  which  means literally ‘easy birth-ing’ and by extension ‘midwife’. The Sarlang are those who ‘ease the birth’ of material reality — drawing half-forms into concretisation in the manner of midwives who aid women in labour.

            Originally the Sarlang employed pre-existing half-forms — what you would call ‘archetypes’.  But quite soon they created their own key images which they located in the Manifest Non-Occurrent, and which eventually became the basis of ‘Rhewenia’, the so-called Unfinished World. However, their real interest was in the Unmanifest and they regarded themselves not as creators of reality but simply as ‘helpers toward manifestation’ hence their  name.      

Recognition of Aoullnnia
Aoullnnia means literally ‘She Who Is Unique’  — aullunn  means ‘single’ or ‘alone’ and ‘-ia’ is a feminine suffix.  
Aoullnnia is never represented in art.  Aoullnnia can be ‘recognized’ but not seen or heard, can be known but not in the way physical things or ideas are known.  Indeed, it is one of the central tenets of the Recognition of Aoullnnia that every sentient being has knowledge of Aoullnnia : this deep intuitive knowledge can be obscured but never utterly obliterated.

      What are sometimes represented in the Temenoi (‘meditation halls’) are ‘yrangloi’ (‘angels’?) : they are messengers between estranged parts of Aoullnnia and as such are forces for good, or more specifically for re-union. Some Temenoi  also contain images of ‘dyrantroi’, agents of estrangement and disunion and thus, in traditional terms, devils or malign forces. But ‘yrangloi’ and ‘dyrantroi´  are equally necessary for the functioning of the whole: they are like movements of contraction and expansion, breathing in and breathing out.   

Incipience 

Incipience is  inexpressible in your language and perhaps in any system of sounds  — this is said to be one of the main reasons why the Sarlang invented Whoirl. (In Whoirl the intensity of a body-pulse expresses incipience — apparently with great accuracy.)

            Degrees of incipience were denoted in Katylin by tones. There was a ‘neutral tone’ used for bald statements of fact — “It will rain tomorrow” (which in Katylin would be roughly ‘raining/day/after-now’). Other common tones express ‘probability’, ‘hope’ &c. For future events there were five basic tones. A harsh emphatic tone (never used concerning the future) expresses complete conviction. 

Reality Fixation

This is the basic Sarlang technical innovation though there remains much disagreement as to what exactly it consists in. According to Sarlang conceptions all events in the Manifest can be traced back to their origins in the Unmanifest where they exist in a tentative and nebulous state as  ‘synghia’ or  ‘half-form’.  
Supposedly, there are several stages between a pre-event’s ultimate source  in the Unmanifest Non-Occurrent (which is totally out of reach) and its appearance in the Manifest  : generally five stages are distinguished though some authors list as many as twenty-seven. In theory it is possible to intervene during some of these stages and repulse or transform a pre-event before it has become completely defined. This procedure is called ‘uz-syrsann’ or Reality Fixation. Successful reality fixation requires the ability to penetrate into the world of half-form which lies behind and between phenomena. But this is by no means the end of the story since it is essential to distinguish between pre-events that are still malleable and those that are already well-defined —  a  distinction that is very hard to make.

            Note that ‘making a wish come true’ is not Reality Fixation but Reality Construction. In Sarlang terms, all wishes, desires, fantasies and so on are   situated in the Manifest Non-Occurrent and not in the Unmanifest.

Pre-existence and Emergence  

One of the chief Sarlang ideas was that everything in some sense pre-existed in the Unmanifest. A completely ‘new’ event (new to us) emerges directly from the Unmanifest in which it pre-exists as ‘half-form’. Other events (the vast majority) are just repetitions of previously occurrent events with slight modifications. A further category includes events that are projected into the Manifest Non-Occurrent and as it were reflected back into the Manifest Occurrent. In this roundabout way the imagined can become ‘real’, i.e. operative. 

            The Sarlang attempted in their philosophical system to take account of  two opposing and equally important aspects of ‘reality’, discontinuity and emergence from pre-existing elements. The future state in some sense pre-exists in the earlier state from which it ‘emerges’. However, there is no flow, no continuity, and it is even possible to cut off an outcome which in some sense pre-exists.

            As many opponents of the Sarlang system have pointed out there is a fundamental difficulty here: if everything pre-exists, then so does emergence and so there can be no true emergence (since what emerges is already in existence). The Sarlang would doubtless  say that the above argument applies to what goes on here (in the Manifest) but not to a process which commences in the Unmanifest. The emerged world indeed pre-exists in the Unmanifest but that does not rule out the possibility of us, who do not belong to the Unmanifest, experiencing emergence. Indeed, if we did not experience it, we would not be alive at all — we would belong to the Unmanifest completely. There is a famous maxim found in the notebooks of Awailyia, the founder of the Yther movement,  

“For Aoullnnia there is no emergence, but for us who are not Aoullnnia there is only  emergence.”