No gods, no fates
I’ve discussed connections between the terms used for the beings of a higher, different existence across the Maasverse before. In Erilea, we learn Wyrd is believed to be destiny, the force that forms and governs all life, and in Midgard, we learn this force was conflated with a goddess of fate. The Under-King refers to her as a mother to all, a cauldron brimming with life, a secret language of creation, and a force that governs worlds. This is what I believe Prythian means by the Mother, Cauldron, and Fate (or Forces That Be).
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In Erilea, we also hear about the Goddess and her gods. Did Wyrd become this goddess, and are her gods the Forces That Be? Over the course of the series, the number of gods also comes in multiples of three (9, 12, 36). We get a real glimpse of these forces in Erilea through a memory hidden in a witch mirror and then again before Aelin sends them back to their own world.
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We learn they are all part of one consciousness and seem to represent different parts of creation. Light, shadow, wind, rain, song, memory. One of them is even three-faced.
Before Aelin opened a portal to a hell-realm in their home world, these forces were trapped in Erilea. Did some of them escape the onslaught from the hell-realm and regain access to Prythian? I’ve wondered before if that’s why we’re now seeing a foreign yet familiar presence in Nesta’s story (assumed to be the Mother by Cassian). Has the three-faced force—called the Three-Faced Goddess and Three-Faced Mother interchangeably—or another mother-like force, such as Silba, returned to Prythian after all this time?
Manon prays to the Darkness, to the Three-Faced Mother. We’ve heard that before:
Ironteeth witches have a symbol called the Eye of the Goddess. In the center of this symbol is the Goddess’s heart of darkness. This darkness is also connected to the land and Cauldron in acosf (and therefore Wyrd and creation, based on what we learned in hofas). Life and death and rebirth.
In acosf, Nesta finds the House’s heart in the pit of the library. She called the darkness of it the heart of the world, of existence, of self. And then she lets the darkness sweep in. Embraced it. This is a concept we see across worlds. The land also asks Bryce to open her heart to it and her own mother wears the symbol of the embrace between elemental forces of creation: sky (Solas) and earth (Cthona), light and dark. In Tower of Dawn, we learn the khagan still honor the Eternal Blue Sky and Slumbering Earth in lieu of the 36 gods their citizens are able to worship.
Cauldron save me.
Mother hold me.
Guide me to you.
Let me pass through the gates; let me smell that immortal land of milk and honey. (words from the prayer in acotar and acowar)
After Manon draws the Eye of the Goddess in the earth, Aelin reveals how she learned about the Wyrdkeys and gates from Baba Yellowlegs, an Ancient. She asks Manon if these things are part of the witches’ history.
And Manon says no, not in those terms. But perhaps…other terms? Like the Darkness, Three-Faced Goddess, Mother, Womb, etc. The conversation then turns to Rhiannon’s legendary curse of the land:
The punishment for the Ironteeth was a loss of their connection to the land. They lost their original, most elemental, connection to creation. The land remained barren for them until they broke the curse (and it makes @lovelydreamlight and me wonder if Fionn also cursed Theia and Pelias before he was dragged into the Bog of Oorid, or if the land is simply waiting for another embrace from someone with the right magic).
If some of those gods have returned to Prythian, will the characters have to unravel more than just the influence of the Asteri? Many have theorized about Sarah building toward her own version of Ragnarök, the doom of the gods in Norse mythology. @merymoonbeam pointed out that this doom was prophesied by a seer, and it might help explain why Elain’s story is necessary next and is intertwined with the priestesses.
The priestesses called Aelin’s fall through their world an ill omen, but she was actively working toward a better world just like her counterparts in the Night Court.
To Aelin, whose life had been written by her ancestors and the gods long before her birth, a better world meant a world with no gods, no fates.
Funny how these words have the same energy as Elain when she says I hope they all burn in hell and I belong to no one. Could Elain use her magic to unravel these influences and help their people build a better world?
A world where they are more connected to nature and can truly make it their own?
