Layers of Being

All beings are a gestalt, sums greater than their parts through ingenius construction. Instead of body and spirit simply adding, they multiply.

Nether is the physical or corporeal, flesh and bone. Ether is the spirit, gelatinous endomembranes that house essences of all kinds like fire, air, water, and earth mana. And then comes aether, the mortal soul. Each of the Three Planes may be seen as echoes of the Prime Material, distilling further and further into pure energy and chaos not unlike the Sea of Eventualities from where universes are borne. Ether is the in-between of physical and quanta, solid and tangible matter and incorporeal spirit-light.

Aether is a strange substance. It is the distilled essence of all, called Grandmist in the East. It is the stuff that compromises the mortal soul, the half of the soul which dwells nearest to the Prime. Souls come in pairs, a concept best found in the East as Yin and Yang. The mortal soul is wrought of aether or animus, and the immortal soul of noesis.

Mages harness its power to transmute any kind of mana imaginable as aether is inherently neutral. It can be flame or metal or earth or liquid. It matters not. One only needs to inject the desired arcana, the metaphysical knowledge that makes an entity, into aether, and it becomes such. Sorcerers do this instinctually, imbuing their sorcerous arcanums with help of the immortal soul. Spiritualists require much training as the spirit arts are more skill than intuition. Arcanists are much the same in that regard as well. In the end, all Paths use aether as a vector for their concepts.

The Many Created One, One Created Two

Aether, though mostly neutral, comes in two distinct flavors. Negative and positive, not unlike matter found in the Prime. Due to their conflicting arcana and polarity, they both annihilate and assimilate in equal bounds when in close proximity. Negative aether is called nekrosis, and postive aether animus. Animus is usually found in living beings and contains two-thirds creation and one-third destruction meta-knowledge. Order within, chaos without. Animus is wont to destabilize the surrounding aether-field and suck its order or copacetity dry to fuel itself. Not unlike living beings which destroy surrounding order to self-continue their existence, like a flame that devours the ordered cell walls of wood to propagate.

Nekrosis is two-thirds destruction and one-third creation. It spreads slowly like a cold gust in the winter, bringing order without and chaos within. It inhabits the Aether in conjunction with animus, but in a mirrored or semi-separate manner. The Aether does not contain space as we mortals conceptualize it. It is an infinite sea of creation and destruction without color and most things mundane. A paradox without much way to describe. Only those who’ve delved in the Depths can truly know.

Most human mages use aether in its postive form as that is the energy source they possess. Mana types that end in the suffix -ai such as ignai (flame mana), terrai (earth mana), ventai (wind mana), and aquai (water mana) are positive or living amalgams. They contain animus. Mana types that end in the suffix -nen such as ignen (flame), quen (earth), aardnen (wind), and aqunen (water) are negative or thanatoric amalgams. They contain nekrosis.

Thanatoric amalgams are twisted shadows of living mana, they corrupt and contain much more brute power than their counterparts as their aetheric backbone contains much more destruction arcana than animus. A thanatoric or deathly or ghastly flame would burn away flesh much faster and effectively than ignai, for example.

Shapeless Structure and Structured Shapelessness

The aetherial body or mana system is a flow of energy. It does not contain structures per se as the Aether does not have much in the way of “space” or rigidity. Instead, it has flow and configuration and density and shape, but not much in the way of boundry. Imagine a system of flowing rivers without river-beds, that is the mortal soul or high-spirit.

The image of a roughly humanoid simulacra for the aetherial systme is a academic model. It is used to show interrelation of parts and correlation to the other bodies, not a literal depiction. The aetheric has structure the way a graph does, nodes edges and relations, not the way a cube has geometry with literal physical position.

The Aether is best described through the lense of mathematics as its planar topography and space-time differs from the Prime Material Realm. Math is rife with this sort of structured shapelessness, or shapeless structure. Whichever, mathematicians will still draw pictures of such unique planar fabric and energy flow without space-based imagery.

In essence, the aetheric body isn't shaped like "a human", but it isn't shaped like "not a human" either, because shape just isn't a relevant concept. And when the universe isn't bothered to actively disagree, academics are free to use whatever model they like.

Meridians are the rivers that contain the flow of aether, of which there are twelve main ones. Scholars debate and gaggle and fight over denominations of which meridians are prime and which are minor. The commonly accepted number is twelve with a set of main or prime meridians and two other sets of meridians that also number in a dozen each but are considered minor. Meridians are called nadis in Qyrazael, and may have other names in differing countries such as Ell’ar in Caedo’Maar.

Aetheric basins are the echoes of the Ether such as the Mind’s Eye, Heart of the Bodies, and Center of the Spirit. These are the highest concentration of revolving aether in the high-spirit. Aether-cores, or chakras in Qyrazael, are the densest concentrations of still or bound aether. They serve to bind animus to the body as they create minitiure gravity wells in the Aetherial and control the swirl and flow of aether.

Convergence nodes are where two flows of aether, meridians, intersect or converge as their namesake. This creates a half-step or pseudo aether-core which controls the minute flow of aether in the body.

The main meridian or primary vessel for aether is called the soul vessel. It is made of two sides, one belonging mostly to the soma or netheric and etheric bodies and the other to the immortal soul as it coterminates with the soul node or Inner Gate.

There is not much more to discuss of the aetheric body as it is simple by design, being the distillate of the Prime Material in the form of pure energy. It is inherently simple and the backbone of the ethereal body as a whole, endowing it with energy flow much like the corporeal circulatory system.