Aleu
3 ~ Aleu
So what in Temerant is an Aleu?
All we can really divine from that sentence is that Aleu is a plural , that they currently reside somewhere above us all and they are fully expected to remain there until the end of days. They also have an important association with their Names.
"In the beginning... The world was spun out of the nameless void by Aleph, who gave everything a name..."
My best character match up to that description from the few clues we are given in the books is that Aleph is a shining example of one of the Aleu since He is a non corporeal being who knows the names of all things which effectively makes him a God and thus should be fully expected to always remain an eternal presence across the land.
Falling nameless from the sky sounds an awful lot like a metaphor for death, but imho Gods cannot die, that fate is denied them, and so this line must be talking then about Aleph one day forgetting the names of all things instead and thus setting all things free and for Himself becoming officially recognised as being nameless. Unfortunately for that thought, imho neither can Gods ever forget anything, or go mad, or even sleep for that matter because the Aleu are beings from a seperate plane of existence that is way beyond the limitations of the four doors of the mortal mind.
How can there be more than one God? Well that's easy to explain.
The first rule of any universe is that For every action there is a equal and opposite reaction. And that law dictates that if you can magically conjour up one God out of the void then He must always have a twin, usually called the Devil. Why? Because in this instance God is light and you cannot create light without also making a shadow at the same rime, and so darkness is the colour that this devil wears. Between them these two gods will control everything (except the moon of course , she is a third party anomaly with whom I shall deal with properly on another day) . This Anti-Aleph twin of God's counterpart in these books is called Iax. They are two halves of the same being, like the two ends or the same piece of string. You can Think of them variously as light and dark, One and zero. Alpha and omega ...It's all the same thing really. Two gods. Perfectly balanced. But absolute opposites in all ways that matter. If one of them knows the light names of all things, then the other one knows their dark names for balance.
Aleph is the same god who appeared in Perial's dream as a being 'made entirely of fire or sunshine.' Agents of darkness usually appear suitably clad in the colours of the opposition.
So. Let's start at the beginning. How were the Aleu born? Well I imagine that In the beginning there was the nameless void and at that point this void was all there was.
Now I generally imagine that to have looked a bit like a vast field of static. Lots and lots of little bits of black and white names all jumbled up together.
That's when Aleph made his grand entrance. He became aware of his surroundings and decided to separate all the white bits out of the void
As an inevitable consequence of his actions, this meant that all of the black names were also separated out at the same time. These were the undesirable parts to Alephs desire and thus chance/choice was created in the nameless void and now ther were two piles of all things. And therefore by dividing the void Aleph also doubled it and so ex nilho created his own opposite called Iax. Aleph is the Lord of light and plays with the white stuff. His opponent is the Lord of Shadows who plays with the black stuff. They are like two sides of the same coin that is Black on one side, white on the other. Two halves of the same thing. Each Lord and master over their own side.
Aleph and Iax, the Aleu. Twin gods
And never the twain shall meet.
Ih Hespe's story, the two do meet. And because choice has now been created, they played a game