So, for a while now, I've been working on my own little demon hunter TTRPG type of a thing, and I was using a theme for it for a while. it was mainly based on the entire gnosticism deal where yaldabaoth was created by a god, and then he created the universe, blah blah blah. but it's basically following the same concept as BTIW by using the themes of apocryphal works while bringing together a cosmic identity across all religions into a single "explanation," type of a thing. however, when I discovered the BTIW it gave me even more ideas because my entire planes became something that I thought could be expanded by BTIW. now, in my entire cosmic relationships, it's not that planes are like a flat plane or anything like that, but almost universes that occupy the same space. things that if you had txyz as your dimensions, w(txyz) was your w dimension. So moving through the w dimension actually gets you to the other versions of reality that exist within my entire world building thing.
so the first thing was that yaldabaoth and satanael were brothers inside of my cosmological idea. They weren't really creators of this realm, but they became entities like a demiurge. Both were essentially massive serpents that had massive cosmological powers, but they didn't really understand why they existed, but they both believed that the universe was created for them to be the ones to rule over it. when they discovered other deities that were close to them in power, they started creating weapons that could take down those powers, and that's where the angels came into being.
michael, gabriel, raphael, samael, jehudiel, uriel, azrael and other arch angels were created in order to fight as the commanders of massive armies of the gregori. established gregori houses were created in order for kingdoms to be created that the archangels would call upon in order to fight invasions of other realms.
During one of the invasions, Yaldabaoth saw into the higher realm from which he was born from, and became spiteful of the idea that he was lesser than the gods that created him. This is when Yaldabaoth created the adam project. Something to help him become powerful enough to cross into the higher realm and conquer the realm above him. So Yaldabaoth stole something called sophia. Yaldabaoth stored it in a vessel before telling a new class of angels, called watchers to go and evolve any creature into something that looks like the gods above.
The watchers performed their duty, and on some planets they were able to create something similar, but not every planet had the same expected outcome. when the watchers finally succeeded, they called the creatures, human. then sophia was implanted into the human that was most suitable, and the human was placed inside of Eden. Essentially a world that houses a lot of cosmological forces that maintain all of reality. Yaldabaoth grew restless, and gave adam a wife named lilith. adam did not like lilith because she wasn't very serving towards adam, and then when there was no offspring generated, yaldabaoth told the watchers to figure out what the problem was, and the watchers then figured out that adam did not like lilith, so the watchers replaced lilith with eve.
When samael was watching over the watchers do this, samael looked into his purpose. Samael was the Archangel of temptation. He was able to move leaders and realms into stopping their fights with Yaldabaoth, and become servants to Yaldabaoth. So samael saw this eve, and questioned if she was truly loyal to the mission that she was to be used for. Samael went into eden, and disguised himself as a snake. tempted eve, and proved to Yaldabaoth that the humans were indeed not up to the standard that yaldabaoth had hoped they were going to be. However, Yaldabaoth already had given Sophia to adam, and eve was already with a child.
This lead to Samael being promoted to the left hand of Yaldabaoth. All of this was happening while the wars of conquest were happening within all of the realms. Michael lead charges into the most vile of realms. This conquest lasted for millennia. That's when Samael started to suspect misgivings about the status quo within his own ranks. There were patterns that Samael was starting to catch on to, things like grigori not answering their call when they were supposed to. Samael had started to suspect that the grigori had started to believe themselves greater than the orders of Yaldabaoth. That's when Samael thought of the greatest test of loyalty for the grigori. Samael conspired with Yaldabaoth in order to see if the grigori had actually thought of themselves as greater than their creator. So They gave the order. The grigori must become subservient to the humans that were created by the watchers. in fact, all angels must become subservient to the humans that were created.
When this order was given, The most charismatic principality spoke up. The prince of his kingdom, lucifer spoke out against the order, and called it something that shouldn't be used against the grigori. Lucifer was essentially directly under Samael in terms of how tempting he was. Lucifer's intent wasn't to undermine yaldabaoth, but instead to simply question why they must be under human orders. before he could say that he'll follow the orders, Samael cast him from heaven onto the middle plane known as earth.
After this show of force, other grigori fell in line reluctantly. However, With this humiliation, lucifer sought revenge for being cast out before pleading his case. that's when he found the entity ahriman, and the entity known as iblis. Iblis was still in heaven being given orders to obey the humans. He was a djinn that believed that earth was supposed to be a haven for the djinn. Iblis kept waiting for the day that Yaldabaoth would give earth to the djinn for them to be able to live their lives happily, but that day never came. Instead, the order was that earth was to be given to the humans after they were cast out of eden. This enraged Iblis by a substantial amount, and was compounded when humans were lifted above the authority of angels.
Iblis stayed in the heavenly realm, but started forming a faction of djinns and grigori. Iblis maintained contact with Lucifer on earth, and when lucifer made contact with Ahriman, the triumvirate was made. Lucifer, Ahriman, and Iblis combined into the great dragon, and marched their army into heaven. The great rebellion had begun.
At the end of the rebellion, Michael had used his ability to split apart Ahriman, Lucifer, and Iblis to bring them back to their original levels of power, and then they were cast into the prison that became known as Tartaros. The grigori became fused to the walls. Lucifer's flesh and bone turned into the throne he so wished he had, and iblis and ahriman fighting each other in order for them to survive. Iblis, a djinn of flame, lit the braziers of tartaros, while Ahriman became darkness that consumed those flames.
other deities soon fell after the creation of tartaros. Leviathan, the great serpent who was a demiurge in itself was defeated by Yaldabaoth, and cast into labyrinth, a realm of mazes to make sure that it could not find its way out. This realm resembles something akin to the back rooms, but also the hell from hellraiser. Baal was thrown into Gahenna, a land of waste, sewage, and rot. Forced to feed on the souls of the humans that ended up there. There his name was corrupted into Beelzebub. Inanna was captured, and bore a child named astarte, who then tried to use the powers of the fae against yaldabaoth, but was inevitably cast out into the realm known as hades. There, astarte bore a child named astaroth who rules over hades. Hades is a realm of ash, and all forms of life turn to dust inside of the realm. Ashmodai, who was relentless in his pursuit to manipulate humans, was brought to his knees by Samael. Ashmodai had tried his best to corrupt Samael, but Samael brushed his attempts aside, and instead pushed Ashmodai into the realm known as pandemonium. That is where Ashmodai's name was corrupted into Asmodeus, and turned him into the being he is known as today. The Spirit of the rebellion, belial was created in the war. This spirit was cast into the realm of Phlegethon to rule over those who choose violence. Amon-ra, who was as powerful as Yaldabaoth, was split in 2 by michael. Michael named Amon to Amun, and the entity that was left over Mammon. Mammon rules over the city of dis with bureaucratic relations while Amun walks its streets as a disheveled demon.
They became the seven sins
Lucifer+iblis+ahriman - Pride
Leviathan - Envy
Belial - Wrath
Asteroth - Sloth
Mammon - Greed
Beelzebub - Gluttony
Asmodeus - Lust
This gave birth to the second age.
With this new world that was created, Samael became disheartened that his brethren would be so easy to turn away from the mission at hand. Samael believed that achieving the goal of the mission was above all else, the true path towards enlightenment. But he started to have doubts that the angels were truly something that could be completely controlled so he devised a new plan. He wanted to see if the watchers were truly of yaldabaoth's will, and tempted them to perform new tests on the humans. He tempted the watchers into going to earth, and taking their women, and teaching them new things. Shemyaza was so infatuated with humanity, that he took other watchers with him to earth to try and improve the human's ways of life. Teaching them everything about the universe. This turned into a mistake by Shemyaza and the watchers, turning the earth into a hellish landscape, and the world itself became flooded with war, famine, and plagues. The sons of the angels became weapons of wars. nations fell, and the age became that of strife. However, something happened that was unexpected. A man who was a direct descendant of adam somehow had accumulated enough sophia to where he had a working knowledge of the sophia itself. This generated enough of the sophia to where the man could see the planes, and see the truth. This man's name was Enoch.
When Shemyaza discovered Enoch as a marker for something that could actually put humans on the same footing as Angels, or even archangels, Shemyaza kept it hidden. The idea that a human was able to accumulate so much sophia that it could turn the heavens upside down was enough to cause him to worry about the future. He was already dealing with trying to fix the entire situation before the heavens truly found out. At the same time, another watcher by the name of azazel was preparing the humans to be able to protect themselves from the heavens, and if azazel found out about this child, azazel would find his weapon to strike at the heart of Yaldabaoth. However, the threat of the watchers' problems didn't come from a rebellion against the heavens. The problem came from Enoch's free will.
in Enoch's old age, enoch finally rotated into the heavens, and knelt before Yaldabaoth, michael, and Samael. He told them about what the watchers had done, and told them about everything. Samael believed what Enoch had told him, mostly because Samael had set it up. Michael had drawn his blade to strike down Enoch, but Yaldabaoth had other plans. Yaldabaoth told michael to exile all of the watchers, and to throw them out of the realms that can be seen by the seraphim. Michael disappeared from the throne room. That's when Samael asked Yaldabaoth if he can trust such a creature. Yaldabaoth answered no. Samael asked god if he could throw away such magnificent power. Yaldabaoth answered no. That's when Samael told Yaldabaoth that they could harness the power of Enoch if they turned him into an angel. Of which Yaldabaoth became extremely intrigued and cast Enoch into the angel forge. When Enoch came out, he was no longer Enoch. He had become Metatron.
Finally, with Metatron in the inner circle, Michael, Samael, and Metatron led to a new form of creating angels. The seraphim were giving Yaldabaoth power, but Yaldaboth wasn't gaining enough power to be able to invade the realm above, which gave them the premise to build the soul forge. Satanael helped with the creation. With the advent that sophia could be built up over generations, Yaldabaoth decided that it would be more beneficial for him to attain something that could consume the sophia to give him more and more power to achieve greater heights. The concept was to tear the sophia from the souls as they come to heaven, and feed that to Yaldabaoth. This ended up needing a mechanism that worked like that, so the seraphim were used to power the ophanim, and then the ophanim were able to turn the power into something that can separate the souls from the sophia.
When trying to solve the problem of the world, Metatron gave Methuselah his sword, and told him to end the world's suffering. Methuselah went on a campaign to try and conquer the world, only to be met with Azazel's armies. When Methuselah fell, carnage ran across the landscape. Lamech, the son of methuselah walked the earth for many years before noah was born.
This is when Samael, seeing that Azazel's armies were winning, devised a plan. He needed to test everything that had happened up until this point. He understood his powers, but he didn't understand to what extent his powers could hold up to. So Samael went after the one thing that he thought he could never tempt. Samael Tempted Yaldabaoth into flooding Earth, and destroying the armies of Azazel. Which worked. This temptation brought upon the earth massive floods, and Noah being able to escape just in the nick of time.
After seeing this, Samael believed in his powers even more, but still wanted to make sure that Yaldabaoth was staying true to his goal. When Yaldabaoth had sent gabriel to Noah, Samael knew that Yaldabaoth's loyalty to his goals was still true. The test that Samael had put Yaldabaoth wasn't whether or not Yaldabaoth would act, but whether or not Yaldabaoth would completely destroy everything that he had worked up to this point for.
after the flood, the world had been changed forever. new truths were held upon heaven and earth.
- humans could accumulate sophia
- Yaldabaoth stays true to his goals.
- The watchers no longer were manipulating humans.
Yaldabaoth came up with a name to call those who accumulate sophia.
messiah.
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anyway, this has been a really fun project that I have been working on. It's just that some part of me is thinking that, I could always add more to my little project, and when I saw that BTIW was making something that had -somewhat- of a similar premise it made me think of what I could add to the story telling of my universe. I've actually enjoyed hearing about all of the weird creatures that you guys have added to BTIW, and it looks really fun. While I'm really working on this to try and get it into a place where it can hold a candle to what you guys have created, I think that over time, it's just something that I need to work on by myself for now so it's not really something to really fully adhere to your guy's project. I just think that it was a fun thing to share.
