Eternal Alchemy
“Fate can't be tempted. It's part of the Eternal Alchemy, just like everything else. Days pass, the cogs turn, the future comes.
— Macha
The Eternal Alchemy (Asuran: 
) is the ideology of the asura. It is the teaching that all things, regardless of how small and insignificant or grand and important, are part of some great cosmic mechanism. It encompasses not just the materiality of what exists, but also the significance of the interconnections between things, their ultimate fates, and as such, the "meaning" of the lives of all people as well as the life of each person. There are many different aspects to the Eternal Alchemy, such as the aspect of chaos and strife, which the Zaishen Order adhere to.
It is believed that even magic and other religions' deities—including the Six Human Gods and Spirits of the Wild, as well as the Elder Dragons—are just components in the Eternal Alchemy, albeit larger components than the average person. The Eternal Alchemy is often considered a religion, though it is more of a scientific or philosophical view of life, and shares few of the common attributes of most religions. Asura will often say that while they believe in the Eternal Alchemy, it is neither worshiped nor treated with any particular reverence. While many do express awe or wonder at its complexity or its enigma, the asura generally see the appropriate response to the Eternal Alchemy to be a desire for understanding and mastery.
Ogden Stonehealer relates the Eternal Alchemy to The All, but considers the asura's attempt at quantifying it to be the wrong way to look at it—that by trying to define it, they actually understand less and less of it. Headmaster Omadd had created a machine that would allow a person who entered it to have their mind opened up; Ceara, his sylvari assistant, went into the machine, witnessing a vision of the Pale Tree who warned her not to venture further, and came out claiming to have seen the Eternal Alchemy.[1][2] However, when the machine was used again—after then-called Scarlet Briar had modified the machine—the vision witnessed beyond the Pale Tree was of The All, and when confronted, the Pale Tree suspected the vision witnessed was Scarlet's own.
Trivia[edit]
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- The Eternal Alchemy resembles the god of Baruch Spinoza.
References[edit]
- ^ Short Story: What Scarlet Saw
- ^ Scarlet's Secret Room
- Book: This handwritten notebook bears the stamp of Omadd, Scarlet's last mentor. The device works on the principle that the mind is connected to magic, and therefore, if properly opened, one should be able to grasp the entire Eternal Alchemy as a bird views the landscape far below. [...]
- <Character name>: Killed Omadd?
- Taimi: He was [Scarlet's] last mentor. He experimented on her with his mind-widening device, and that's when she saw the Eternal Alchemy, or what she thought was it.
