a thought on Seraphim

[Matthias Wasser]

(This is a repost of something I sent to the mailing list some time ago, but since I want to talk about each of the Choirs and how to make them weirder, it seemed apposite. Decidedly non-canonical. Powers next.)

Seraphim tend to get lost in contemplation. They stand before the Throne of God, which is to say that their phenomenal experience of reality-God-Symphony is identical to what they consider Its noumenal form, which being a set of propositions. These propositions don't correspond to useful statements about the sort of objects that one typically interacts with - there's some interpretation involved, and finite minds can't instantly sift through the raw data for the facts they need - but it's their basic mode of apprehension, and one they find euphoric. Whenever not distracted by some other task, the Seraphic inclination is to behold the Imago Dei. Describing things in terms of anything else is, if not exactly a lie, at least disgustingly imprecise, and so time-insensitive chats among the Most Holy have an incomprehensible quality:

"For all x such that F(74,124,566,027)x, there seventh-order-obtains some y such that there is marginal potentiation over F(1,860,342,299)xy," one will quote, and the other will nod sagely, as if it means anything at all. Some "conversations" consist purely of each Seraph paying attention to the propositions corresponding to data about what propositions other Seraphim consider interesting. Although as ideologically collectivist as anyone else in Heaven, the Serpents tend to get offended when this is described as a "hive-mind;" for the Truth, of course, is that the Truth is God is the Symphony is everything that is the case; perfect, beautiful, and consistent.

Except... well, except when it's inconsistent, and sometimes rather vulgar, too. Sometimes, when contemplating Ultimate Reality, a Seraph apprehends as True that God is incarnate as Bob the Balseraph, an outwardly unremarkable Liar running Ponzi schemes in Peoria. Or that Supreme Being is actually manifest most wholly in another unremarkable Balseraph on the run from Malakim in Tibet. Many incongruities appear to be of this rather specific form. Logic says that this must be because Balseraphs must be exulting out their worldview to the whole Symphony, loud enough to override it. The Seraphim have difficulty wrapping their minds around this; they accept what their Resonance tells them as foundationally true and cannot do otherwise. At best, they can accept that Balseraphs have done something like transubstantiation: changing the essential Truth about things without altering their phenomenal form. Thinking too hard about this can lead to Dissonance; and so when a Seraph consults an Elohite about this, the Power is most likely to reply with a platitude: it's healthiest just to accept the mysteries of the universe, blah blah blah.

But then the incongruities aren't limited to the autotheism of podunk Liars. A veil of static surrounds Jesus, the freedom of the will, the provenance of the Quran... although the Seraphim Council is cognitively incapable of understanding it, those who can must conclude that Lucifer or some other mighty Balseraph is trying to hide something. But why? Just to sow confusion? Or is something else at work?

[JCD]

A bit...cerebal to actually play.

If I wanted to throw a wrench into my Seraphim, I would have them bandy about, in hushed tones and discussed ONLY as a rumor, that Lucifer knows a Truth so horrible that any Seraphim he tells it to would become a Belseraph in self defense.