Aftadon

Aftadon (known in Elven as Aftayon and in Dwarven as Aftaon) is one of the seven souls, the pericardium. Lover of Adno'b, he is the source of life, the center of the conscious mind. It is considered essential that Aftadon survive death through physical embalming, because it is he who provides the spirit its post mortem home.

Metaphysically, Aftadon is the most private room, which is simultaneously the innermost sanctum of the universe and the womb of the earth, not to mention Ra, the Sun. Accordingly, Aftadon is considered to be a solar king in heaven during the day (as Apollo,) and a Lord of Death in the underworld at night. In this latter form, he is called "The Spirit of the Pit," and is the serpent deity in the Pit of the Sifled oracle, who inspires the seeress with mystic vapors from his nether world.

Like Abroa, Aftadon lends his name to an element of the temple. Aftadon is a pit in which worshipers incubate (sleep overnight in magical imitation of the incubatory sleep in the womb). While doing so, worshipers are visited by a subucni, a spirit who brings prophetic dreams. Novice priests go down into the pit for longer periods of incubation, pantomiming death, burial, and rebirth from the womb of Mother Earth. Once initiated in this way, they are thought to gain the skill of oneiromancy: the ability to interpret dreams.

The prophet Sefjo earned his oneiromantic talent by incubation in Aftadon. The "brothers" who put him there seem to have been fellow priests. He could interpret Pharaoh's dreams only after he had submitted to the ritual. He then assumed the priestly coat of many colors, signifying communion with Aftadon under his oneiromantic epithet of "Interpreter of Dreams," given to him by a "father" who was actually the high priest. It is also said of the Pythagorean philosopher Selath of Sutelim, accounted one of the Seven Wise Men, that he derived his intellectual skills from communion with the "God of Wisdom" in Aftadon.

Inspirations: Afterlife (Black and Green), Ab (Rehmus), Abaddon (Walker)