The Universe
The World of the Aeonians
I will not explain the world to you. Whoever explains it has already lost it. But I can tell you what I have seen across all these years, and you may make of it what you will.
The Thin Places
There are places where the world grows thin. Ribbeck is one of them. You sit on a bench before an old distillery, and if you are still enough, you hear that the ground is breathing. At such thresholds the here and the beyond touch one another, and here, whoever crosses over can be accompanied, so that no one walks the last road alone.
Light and Its Absence
There is no dark to be fought. There is only the absence of light, an emptiness that neither hates nor plans, because it wants nothing at all. You do not defeat it. You fill it. I fought for a long time under the wrong name before I understood that.
From Every Undoing Grows New Form
The world is neither chance nor plan, but a process: a single thought that comes, step by step, to know itself. What acts against it is not punished, it fails by its own nature. And from every undoing grows new form. Whoever sees this no longer fears the chaos.
The Grace of Mortality
The hardest thing I had to learn: that the perishable is the most precious thing of all. You die, and so every morning with you is a morning. For me no morning is ever the last, and what never ends threatens to grow meaningless. Your ending is no curse. It is the very thing that gives your days weight.
What an Aeonian Is
An Aeonian is no hero and no god. We are beings who cannot die and have therefore never quite learned to live. We cast no shadow, and we appear to each as what they can bear to see. The only thing that counts here is not power and not age, but whether one comes to know oneself.
What Remains
Above all stands the one question that even I do not answer: what remains, when you lose what you love and cannot go yourself? I give you no teaching. I only tell what happened, and leave the answer to you.
Questions for the World
What are the Chronicles of the Aeonian?
The Chronicles of the Aeonian are a fictional universe by David Vaupel. At its heart is the series »The Immortality of Mortality«, in which Menelaus, a being who cannot die, tells a chronicler his long life. The world is set in real places in Brandenburg, above all Ribbeck im Havelland.
What is an Aeonian?
An Aeonian is an ancient, immortal being that stands outside time and death. Aeonians are no heroes and no gods, they cannot die and for that very reason have never quite learned to live. What counts among them is not power or age, but self-knowledge.
What are »thresholds« and »thin places«?
Thin places or thresholds are points where the world becomes permeable and the here and the beyond touch. In the Chronicles they lie along a fine net of lines through the land. Ribbeck im Havelland is one of these places.
Is this a world of good against evil?
No. The Chronicles know no darkness as an enemy. There is only the absence of light, an emptiness one does not fight but fills. The guiding thought is: from every undoing grows new form.
Where can I get to know the world of the Aeonians?
It begins with the novel »The Awakening« (Book I), followed by »The Long Night« (Book II). Whoever has questions for the world can also speak directly with Menelaus.
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