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| “Ancient of Days” by William Blake, 1784. “I'll sing to you to this soft lute; and shew you all alive The world, when every particle of dust breathes forth its joy” |
The world underlying the speculative and visionary hard sci-fi novel Eden's Womb has been decades in the making. As with most great mythical works, it begins with an ultimate source that frames reality, or ushers the world into existence. In Eden's Womb, that source is the great being Eru Ilúvatar (a name coined by J.R.R. Tolkien as one of many names for the supreme being, ‘God’, ‘The One’, i.e. the Dao, etc.). Although his/her name is not mentioned anywhere in the novel as currently told, her/his influence motivates the 'Core Narrative' from the 'Book of Collected Inheritance', which is the overlying frame-story out of which Eden's Womb emerges. That his/her name is not mentioned is understandable, since Eru dwells in a world that lies far beyond men's understanding. It is a realm greater and more ancient than all that can be conceived. Indeed, it lies beyond the very veil of knowing.
Yet by the Copernican Principle, which declares that any observer's position and perspective must not be deemed special or privileged in any way, Eru has to be considered merely an average citizen among peers on his/her world.
All our experience—the understanding gained by the deepest explorations of science—holds this principle to be universal. Once we believed that Earth was at the center of the universe. Then Nicolaus Copernicus came along and proved that the Sun held that central position. Subsequently we found our sun to be a minor star at the outskirts of a vast swirling island-universe called the Milky Way. Soon even the Milky Way was found to be merely an average Galaxy among trillions. Indeed, the 'layers of the onion' of reality may be limitless. Nevertheless, for the purposes of telling the tale of Eden’s Womb, the story must begin somewhere, so we shall arbitrarily declare that Eru’s individual being is sufficient to encompass all that needs to be told. Thus, our story has an ‘All-father,’ a creator being.
Eru is presumed to be of a comfortable and familiar form. He (or she) consists of a physical self and a mental identity, and the two make up the inseparable essence of her/his being. S/he is (or was) mortal, and yet his/her coming was before the curtain of time drew open and her/his passing happened, or shall happen, far beyond the end of the future of all knowledge.
Eru’s physical essence has a familiar structure. Her/his being is made of a multitude of specialized living cells. Each of these cells contain a great stream of undying knowledge in a manner similar to our DNA, and it is believed that Eru’s mind has the ability to read or interpret that undying knowledge, though perhaps imperfectly, even as we ourselves can only sense vague shadows of the knowledge contained in our DNA (which we call intuition).
The individual cells of Eru’s being are constructed of structures equivalent to proteins and other molecules that make up our living cells. In turn, these structures are composed of corpuscles that are the equivalent of atoms in our world. As with the atoms of our Periodic Table, the corpuscles come in a variety of kinds, and all corpuscles are combinations of, and made from, the seventeen fundamental elements of Eru’s world: four kinds each of Earth, Wind, Water, and Fire, and an all-encompassing, unifying Great Field of Power, which grants meaning to all things. Scholars quoted in the 'Collected Inheritance' argue whether this Great Field is nothing more than the familiar Vacuum, either as we know it or in some higher or more robust state.
The four elements of Earth are Crystal, Glass (a specialized rotating version of Glass, taking the form of a disc is what is called Flat World in the Eden’s Womb novel), Dust (Ash), and Iron (Metal).
The four elements of Wind are Smoke/Steam, Breath, Storm, and Sky.
The four elements of Water are Blood, Clear Water (sweat and tears), Bile (Acid) and Phlegm.
The four elements of Fire are Flame, Lava, Explosion, and Light (Sun).
The structure of Eru’s body is beyond knowing, but the variety of ways that s/he senses and directs its internal function seem to be myriad. As said, the choice to adhere to the Principle of Sufficiency precludes consideration of all things that Eru senses beyond her/his own body. It is sufficient to explore the interactions between mind and body and to explore theories regarding the inner workings of that mind (Eru’s imagination, creativity, internal narrative, and emotional palate, for example). What matters most to us is that Eru’s thoughts encompass what we perceive as the Spirit World—the realm of all things metaphysical—and such thoughts surely also have great sway on our physical realm. The wealth and richness of Eru’s ponderings are unfathomable; this is an area of study that may just be beginning to be revealed. In this era of emerging AI, there are those who would argue that Eru is nothing more than a massive computer of some sort, and that our reality is entirely her/his mathematical construct, with the mathematics being all that is fundamental. Others claim that the uncontrollable (even in principle) presence of the Vacuum requires the emergence of a physical realm that must underlie and give meaning and purpose to any computation. Both sides of this argument seem equally valid. The Principle of Sufficiency declares that these two opposing world-views exist in superposition, and therefore do not require resolution.
The minimum total information content contained in Eru’s being can be estimated roughly by extrapolating from our universe, with roughly 1090 bits, through Flat World, which contains (very roughly) 10100 universes, to assume (without justification) that Eru’s body is similar to our own and contains roughly 1028 fundamental/elementary units. Simply writing that number (((1090)100)28) would fill a book. Vast, indeed, must be the knowledge contained. Yet this is only a minimum estimate. The Watchers from Book Seven, Navel of Time, declare their universe to contain a quantity of information comparable to or greater than that minimum number, although they recognize their world as equivalent in nature to Naja’s being, in other words, just one known universe-citizen among the masses that dwell on Flat World.
Flat World, then, is our place in Eru’s realm. As said earlier, Flat World is an amorphous Glass element, the structure of which is malleable and dynamic, and is just one of the seventeen primal elements from which Eru is built—a single unit among 1028 that make up his/her being.
Surely, for our purposes, these constructs are sufficient. Eru’s vast mind and physical being map or project all things that could possibly be relevant to us—all things worthy of our contemplation.
Although that which lies beyond may be glorious and majestic, we deem these things to be truly ‘beyond the Veil.’
For now.
As more of the 'Collected Inheritance' comes to be revealed via future extensions or expansions of the Eden's Womb tale, we would hope that more about Eru's grand design and purpose may someday be revealed.
