Ok, wierd one today.

As some of you may know, when I'm not creating fantasy universes, I help people to deal with drug and alcohol problems through counselling and psychotherapy, and whilst this career brings many blessings, it is also quite the curse.

After a while, it becomes nigh on impossible to hear things in non therapy terms and my most recent experience of this was listening to the audiobook of the Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien.

In a recent email I said that I was about to take the plunge on Tolkien's masterwork and consume the vast backstory of Middle Earth. After creating the five dimensions of the Arcverse, I thought it was time to listen to the original world building foundational text itself.

The whole point of a deity, is a being of such order and perfection and power that it lies beyond human comprehension. When people write about imagined gods, we tend to create entities that are as neurotic as we are.

Case in point. The great creator god of the Tolkien universe is Eru, and one of his offspring, Aule the Smith, maker of things.

Deciding that he wanted to try his own hand at creating, Aule brought the Dwarves to life without mentioning it to Eru first.

Eru found out (omniscient gods always do) and asked Aule to explain himself, to which Aule said (and I paraphrase):

"You made me the smith, the maker of things and so you can't be surprised when I do what you created me to do. This is your fault, I only did it because you made me."

Sometimes, when I work with whole families in therapy, I hear things like this.

But it gets worse.

Aule then took up his hammer and said that he would kill the dwarves that he had created (classic guilt move), if that's what Eru wanted (placing responsibility on to someone else and creating an impossible dilemma, textbook stuff).

"Wait, WTF!" says Eru, walking straight into Aule's trap, "I didn't say kill anyone, you can keep your dwarves."

Game set and match to Aule, who has played Eru like a fiddle.

As you can see, the therapy 'ear' spoils everything, thanks a bunch Carl Rogers.

Now, if you want to learn about the disfunctional celestial family in the Arcverse, you can check out The Book of the Graces here.

Catch you soon,

Nick at Team Verse