Lore:Anu

"Anu encompassed, and encompasses, all things." —The Monomyth

Anu, or Anu the Everything, is thought to be the quintessential form of Stasis and Order, the anthropomorphization of two primal forces (the other being Padomay, Change and Chaos). Anu or his equivalent under a different name is present in every culture's traditions; for instance, the Khajiit refer to him as Ahnurr, and he is a "littermate" to Fadomai. He is known as Satak to the Redguards. He is known as the Light to the Bretons. He also shares similarities to the Argonian figure Atak. Other names for Anu include Ak, Bird, and Good.

As the story goes, Time began when the two forces entered the Void; the interplay between them led to all of Creation, starting with Nir. Anu is typically described in masculine terms, and Nir in feminine terms, and theirs is the first love story. Padomay took exception to Nir's love of Anu, and so the first love story ends in violence. Nir, wounded, gave birth to the twelve worlds of Creation before dying. When Padomay attacked and shattered these worlds, Anu fought him off and salvaged Creation by combining the remnants into one world, Nirn.

When Padomay returned to once again try to destroy Creation, Anu pulled them both outside of Time itself, ending their conflict's threat to Creation, though Creation remained abundant with many Anuic and Padomaic spirits. Anu's blood, spilt during the battle with his brother, became the stars, and the mingled blood of the two brothers became the Aedra. In the Altmer tradition, Anu personified his own soul into Anuiel "so that he might know himself", and Anuiel's soul was in turn personified in Auri-El. There is a shrine to Anu in the Altmeri site of Torinaan. Holy Waters are considered especially useful when used to honor Anu, who shaped the cosmos in the Dawn Era, and Y'ffre, the Earth Bones.

Gods with an Anuic basis, those "bound to Anu's light", include almost all Aedra and most deities associated with the creation of Mundus and Nirn.

Mythology

The creation myth of the Altmer begins before the start of the Dawn Era and the beginning of time: the primordial force of Anu the Everything, who encompassed and encompasses all things, created Anuiel, the soul of all things, so it could know itself. Anuiel in turn created Sithis for the same purpose, as the sum up of all limitations which it would use to differentiate between it's attributes and ponder itself, and their interrelation created the Aurbis, where the Original Spirits, the Et'Ada, emerged before the creation of the Mundus as "aspects of Aurbis". The ancient Aldmer believed they are the relatively feeble descendants of the Aedra ("Aedra" roughly translates to "ancestor spirit"), distant offspring of those of the Aedra who populated the Mundus so that it might last despite Lorkhan's deception, diminished from the might of their progenitors over the generations. Per the creation myth of the Altmer, after their progenitors discovered the deception of Lorkhan, their leader Auri-El begged Anu to take them back, but Anu would not because he had already created something else to take their place, instead the more merciful Anui-El created a Bow and Shield For Auri-El to use in the war against Lorkhan.

The Clockwork Apostles of Sotha Sil similarly believe that Anu is the primordial being of singularity. Anu sundered himself for wisdom's sake, seeking to better understand his nature, and all forces and entities that exist trace their roots to him as values that reside within his vastness. They believe Padomay and the Padomaic forces such as the Daedra are merely an illusion, the result of the Great Lie of Lorkhan who tricked the et'Ada and steered them away from the face of Anu, by making them view themselves as distinct and whole and give themselves names. The Clockwork Apostles believe Sotha Sil wishes to reverse this error, the Et'Ada's sin, through his work on the Clockwork City, by bringing Nirn to a state of Anuic unity, Anuvanna'si.

Contrasting the beliefs of the Altmer and Clockwork Apostles, some souces maintain that the role of creator belongs to Sithis, who is the one truly responsible for setting the interplay of Aurbis in motion by creating new things out of the essence of the inert Anu who, as the embodiment of stasis, has no desire to bring change.

In The Annotated Anuad, a creation myth from the Mythic Era, Anu and Padomay were brothers that fought over the personification of reality, Nir. Anu and Nir created Creation, angering Padomay and causing him to attack. Both wound up dying to each other, and their blood led to the creation of the gods. The Daedra came from Padomay's blood exclusively, detaching them from Creation, the stars arose solely from the blood Anu, and the Aedra were spawned from the mixing of the blood of both Padomay and Anu, allowing the Aedra to be 'capable of both good and evil' and tying them to Creation.

In Khajiiti creation stories, Ahnurr and Fadomai were mates and gave birth to the litters of the Aedra and then the Daedra. Though Ahnurr was content with this, Fadomai secretly tricked Ahnurr into helping create one last litter, angering him. Interestingly, the roles of creator and aggressor are flipped in this particular story, with Ahnurr attacking Fadomai during the birth of Nirni and the Moons. Following his attack, Fadomai flees to the Void to birth her final member of the litter, Lorkhaj, who creates the Mundus for Nirni to exist within and tricks the rest of the gods to become trapped in it.

One pre-ri'Datta Khajiit account describes how, during the Middle-Dawn, Boethra was called from her battle with Orkha by the Blue Star and transported atop the Adamantine Tower by Khenarthi. There Boethra saw the Selectives speaking lies in a way that made them true, drawing runes that were attempting to make it so that neither Akha, nor Alkosh, nor Alkhan, nor any Child of Akha, nor any of the myriad kingdoms Akha had created along the Many Paths, any of the lands he'd seeded and brought into his kingdom, had ever existed. Seeing the lie the Selectives were attempting to make real, Boethra, who had once been exiled to the Many Paths by Akha, started to wander if she had ever been the Daughter of Blades at all, or if it had all been a dream of someone who'd never existed, and felt something akin to fear for the first time. Knowing the Selectives must not succeed, Boethra calculated and enacted the cuts needed to destroy both them and the lies they'd attempted to make real. Than, sensing an opportunity created by their actions, she found a tunnel to the fate they'd sought. Boethra opened her eyes to twelve spinning wheels surrounded by fire revolving beneath two warring serpents, one a serpent of flaming feathers and crystal scales with a head like a hunting bird, and another a crimson eyed serpent of blackest scales and a white mane followed by all the Void, the truth within the lies the Selectives had sought. The flame-feathered serpent emanated rejection of all "Mannish impurity in all the known worlds", the dark serpent though surrounded by chaos emanated gentleness and love for the spirits of the worlds, and in it Boethra saw a fleeting chance for peace along the wheels. As the feathered serpent's beak found purchase beneath the scales of the white maned serpent Boethra, dodging through the wheels to reach, summoned all her blades and struck at it's eye, repelling it. Landing on the head of the dark serpent she drew upon it's black flames, forming a blade and armor as her mind was scorched with things that were and have yet to be. She named the hawk-serpent for what it was and, reciting the Will Against Rule, dashed forward, cutting concepts at strange angles and ending the Dragon Break. This event would later come to be known as the Division of Heaven by mortals who remembered the Middle-Dawn.

Yokudans see Anu and Padomay as a single being known as 'Satakal', a giant serpent on the glimmer of whose scales all words rest, constantly eating its own tail in an endless cycle. To avoid being eaten by Satakal, Spirits learned to evade consumption by "moving at strange angles" to "stride between the Worldskins" a process that became known as 'the Walkabout', and through repetition gave rise to a sanctuary from the cycle known as the Far Shores. The Second Serpent, Sep, claimed to have an idea for a way to avoid Satakal and the Walkabout by creating a new world. Once again, this creation traps the other spirits within and they begin to die, unable to leave the new world, as it is too far separated from the real world of Satakal for them to survive in or jump to the Far Shores from.

Though Argonian society as a whole doesn't have an established singular creation story, the Adzi-Kostleel tribe claims that two beings, Atak and Kota, fought until they joined together as a singular being known as Atakota. When they did this, they shed their skin and created a Shadow. This Shadow, though initially intending to devour everything, soon came to see the creations of Atakota as its own children, and instead gave them the gift of change, which would later come to be known as Death.

A simplified and secular interpretation of The Monomyth can be found within the Bretonic tale The Light and the Dark. In it, two immortal entities representing Order and Chaos chose Tamriel to be their eternal battleground. This everlasting battle would create energies so powerful it distorted the world and created both the "people of et'Ada", who would in turn give rise to the gods, by believing in their myths for so long and so strongly, it caused the energies unleashed by the conflict of the Light and the Dark to bring them into being. According to the grandfather, all of creation exists to echo the battle between the Light and the Dark.

The Dunmer god Vivec teaches that Anu and Padomay were responsible for the creation of the universe, the Aurbis. From here, Vivec teaches that Anu and Padomay gave birth to their souls Anuiel and Sithis and from there, to their firstborns, the deities Akatosh and Lorkhan respectively. Vivec cites mythology of Anu and Padomay to support his interpretation of the concept of love. According to Vivec, Stasis and Change, Anu and Padomay, are infinite forces and realms residing in the infinite Void, the latter infinity paradoxically enclosing the others in a manner akin to an encircling sphere. At the intersection of the two forces, where they touch, lies a "perfect circle of pattern and possibility", the Wheel, and inside that Wheel lies the Aurbis which is its foundation. Vivec claims that outside the Wheel exists the Void, which cannot truly be named and is bereft of anything. The Void is said to have more aspects than just Stasis and Change, but they cannot be named as they are outside of true language. Vivec claims Anu and Padomay "awakened" during the process of sub-creation caused by their intersection as "to see your antithesis is to finally awaken". It is said that in reaction to this "each gave birth to their souls", Auri-El and Sithis. Each of these souls regarded the Aurbis in their own part, and from that came the et'Ada, the "original patterns. Some sources claim that, rather than being a single wheel, the Aurbis, the intersection of Anu and Padomay, is instead more akin to "a telescope that stretches all the way back to the eye of Anui-El, with Padomaics innumerable along its infinite walls".

The Skaal believe in a single deity, the All-Maker, though they also recognize the Adversary, a malevolent and multifaceted tester who works to corrupt the All-Maker's dominion. The perpetual struggle between the two bears some resemblance to the one between Anu and Padomay. Similar to Dunmeri interpretations of Padomay and Sithis, the Skaal seemingly view their benevolent primordial force as Padomay, as opposed to Anu.

Notes

• In real-world Mesopotamian mythology, Anu was the supreme god, and is one of the oldest recorded deities in the world.
• The timeline is slightly different in some versions, and some of Anu's actions are sometimes credited to specific Anuic spirits.
• The first of the Mythic Dawn Commentaries makes reference to the "tinder of Anu".
• The Truth in Sequence, written by one of Sotha Sil's Clockwork Apostles, describes the Numidium as "the welded knot at the center of Anu".
• The soul is the "Anuic animus" held by mortals, which differs from the Vestiges of Daedra.

References

Note: The following references are considered to be unofficial sources. They are included to round off this article and may not be authoritative or conclusive.