(Okay, yes I know you are all used to Kieran doing these. But, I decided I wanted to do this one. Because I wanted to write about concepts. So, I did. Or you have no idea what I am talking about because you have never read one before in which case I am just going to shut up now.)
Origins
The witches as a race were formed by the Goddess, Aine. According to lore, Aine was the first light, springing forth from the darkness to enter into the world. The darkness being the void, a realm all its own. Aine came into being a creature of creation and as such she created the first witches. These witches were the embodiment of the six concepts that she believed would be necessary for her new race to thrive on the world that she gave to them.
The concepts came in pairs of two each idea mirroring another. The first pair was life and death. As life is needed for a race to be born, death is needed for a race to move on back to the goddess, and the cycle to begin again. The next pair of concepts being nature and magic or the supernatural. Nature was the world and all the creatures in it. The seasons and how they affected the world. It was how one gets food and the very creation of life itself. Magic was the tool upon which witches used. It was their power. They drew magic from the natural world and bent it to their whim by applying their own will power. The stronger the will power the stronger the witch. The supernatural being those things that don’t fit in the natural world. The supernatural in the realm of dreams, fantasy, and illusions. The last pair being fate and imagination, sometimes known as free will, fate was needed to guide the path of the race, to ensure it remained on the desired path. Imagination allowed them to create things of their own and also gave them choices in their lives.
Beliefs
The witches believe in the natural world. So, much so that the concepts created their own races. These races were created for many different reasons. Nature created the race of the fae to protect the natural world and to make sure it ran smoothly. Nature is one of the most important things to witches. It is where they get their food, their water, the seasons come and go, and it is also where they come from, not to mention magic can be drawn from it. Witches believe in this idea of two sides of a coin. Each thing mirrors another and is not whole without its other part. This is seen in the light and dark concept. The dark father from whom Aine the goddess sprung from is just as important as the light from which she sprung. They do not view light and dark as concepts of good and evil just as opposite forces at work in the world around them.
The concept of nature created the fairies to protect the natural world. The concept of fate made mermaids to protect the oceans realizing that they needed someone to guard the seas just like the forests. The concept of magic made dragons, she made them as a companion and to test her magic, creating a different kind to represent the different concepts as well as the light and the dark. The concept of imagination made ice phoenixes to be the embodiment of ice—ice itself is creative and phoenix because like free will it flies free from all things—including death. Wolves were created when life died to protect the forests and to protect life when next it came to the world and death made vampires, something akin to him to keep the balance with in.
Witches believe in equality of the sexes. There were three male concepts and three female concepts and it is always so. Aine was a female spirit and the darkness a male spirit. They believe that male and female energies are needed for the world to work. So, both are equal in their eyes. A female can lead, a male can serve, and it doesn’t matter. As such the thing that matters is how strong you are. A man who marries a woman of a lesser clan will take her name, the same with a woman. If they have a desire to keep their name they can do so by added a hyphen, like Vesela-Giese. The name of the most powerful clan will be on the end. There are expectations to this rule, however, we won’t get into that. Those are usually up to the people getting married.
You are only limited by the power that you lead. Witches are structured by class and not by sex. There are many different class and slaves do exists in many clans. Some clans have servants and not slaves—but the idea if the same. The only difference comes in the matter of payment.
End of Times
The witches believe that all life is a cycle and as such it needs to be reset. This comes in the form of the six opposite concepts of the creative forces. The destructive forces that exist inside the void, the children of the darkness. They come when the cycle needs to be reset. They also come in pairs and mirror the creative concepts. The first pair is chaos and madness, chaos is the force that creates unbalance in the world. It the opposing force to fate. It throws fate out of whack yet it is needed to recreate the world once it is destroyed. Madness is what happens when a witch can’t control their powers. IT drives them insane and leads to their destruction. The next pair is disease and war, these are the destructive forces that mirror life and death. War is death on a large scale. Natural death is a part of life but war is unnatural death, the death the sweeps across the land ending nations. Dieses is when the body gets sick and life fades from a person, when it runs rapid it causes death on a wide scale as well. The last pair is decay and manipulation, the opposites of nature and free will. Free will is undone when someone manipulates it to their own means. And when nature breaks down it decays.
Death
Death for witches is a return to the goddess. The do not view it as a bad thing but another aspect of life. It happens to everyone and you embrace it when your time comes. It is a part of the cycle of life which is important. The dead are not burned, they are put in tombs and preserved. Doing anything to the body that destroys it ruins the dead person from being able to return to the goddess. It is the ultimate punishment to destroy any part of a person’s body since they need to be whole to return home.