He left us, destroyed our faith, abandoned us, what good is a Maker whose presence is filled with absence? Thedas is lingering its remaining thread of hope, and yet He himself is gone...
Hello Thedosians and welcome back to my channel. Today is the day for us to really talk about the most worshipped God in Theadosian history. The Maker, I will jump right into it since we have a lot of ground to cover...
Disclaimer:
My personal faith has no relation to the existence/nonexistence of this Maker. As spoken in my Andraste video, she is tied with the relations of Christ and Joan of Arc. So yes, contributing this Maker would position his reference to God-like attributes.
However, faith/agnostic belief we have, should not influence us either as I will be talking about traits that belong in the likeness of Theology and even the Bible, the Chant of Light lines closely to them.
However, I hold no absolute truth except what's already been spoken throughout the game. But hey, to each to their own...
With that out of the way, let’s talk about the Maker.
Lore:
If I can be honest, the long reign of the Chantry has made
the recording of reality at times a trial.
Most common histories have been rewritten
through the filter of my religion.
Everything has meaning as it pertains to the Maker.
— Brother Genetivi, In Pursuit of Knowledge: The Travels of a Chantry Scholar
The Maker is a supreme being, if not the supreme being. A God who sat on the throne of the Golden City. A creator who bestowed gifts upon spirits and man alike.
From the waters of the Fade, you made the world. As the Fade had been fluid, so was the world fixed.
— Threnodies 1:4
As we know, this Maker was not first called this name until the rise of the Chantry. To be honest, most of the people of Thedas were looking for an answer after the creation of the Veil. We would assume that the Evanuris would be closest to the Maker, but, we know that the Evanuris were only powerful mages and could not have created things out of thin air like the Maker really could.
Let's start at the beginning, which is a problem, we don't know the beginning.
Much like Genesis, the world started as really nothing, the Maker had only the emerald waters of the Fade. But things were created through the Maker's Word:
There was no word
For heaven or for earth, for sea or sky.
All that existed was silence.
Then the Voice of the Maker rang out,
The first Word,
And His Word became all that might be:
Dream and idea, hope and fear,
Endless possibilities. — Threnodies 5
The Maker then went on to create spirits, His first creation,
And from it made his firstborn. And he said to them: "In My image I forge you, To you I give dominion Over all that exists. By your will May all things be done." — Threnodies 5
The Maker then went onto the creation of the Golden City, He 'called' upon the center of the heavens to create golden towers and cobblestones. Then he sat on the throne in the palace to watch His own creations.
You have been given dominion Over all that exists. By your will All things are done. Yet you do nothing. — Threnodies 5
To his awry, The Maker was not impressed by what the spirits did, they had dominion over the world, yet emulated their Creator. The first problem, turning away from His firstborn, and turning to man:
To you, My second-born, I grant this gift:
In your heart shall burn
An unquenchable flame
All-consuming, and never satisfied.
From the Fade I crafted you,
And to the Fade you shall return
Each night in dreams
That you may always remember Me. — Threnodies 5
Other than the fact of creating man as we know of God and Adam in the flesh, The Maker now gives purpose to the second-born and then observed. The Maker then 'sealed the gates' of the Golden City to observe His creations:
I guess what I will begin to say, is that the problem of the Maker's first creation, is that spirits were now envious of the second-born.
To compare, spirits are much of the likeness to angels, and how when the spirits turned against the Maker, they became much like Lucifer and the 3rd of the angels turning against God's purpose, and then dwell on the earth.
Now, with their Father's eye elsewhere, the firstborn
At last created something new:
Envy. They looked upon the living world and the favored
Sons and daughters there, covetous of all they were.
Within their hearts grew
An intolerable hunger.
Until, at last, some of the firstborn said:
"Our Father has abandoned us for these lesser things.
We have power over heaven.
Let us rule over earth as well
And become greater gods than our Father." — Threnodies 5
Traits:
This is where we begin to compare the traits on a God to see if they actually represent this itself. The Maker, like all other Tevinter and Elvhen beliefs, could also correlate, but not as frequent as the Chantry proves...
The first trait to compare of the Maker is to:
Omnipotence means all-powerful. Monotheistic theologians regard God as having supreme power. This means God can do what he wants. It means he is not subject to physical limitations like man is. Being omnipotent, God has power over wind, water, gravity, physics, etc. God's power is infinite, or limitless.
Comparing this trait to the Maker seems quite the same in retrospect to how he is. Therefore, the Maker is capable of being omnipotent.
Omniscience means all-knowing. God is all-knowing in the sense that he is aware of the past, present, and future. Nothing takes him by surprise. His knowledge is total. He knows all that there is to know and all that can be known.
As for this trait, I don't have anything that could prove this, since we cannot ourselves get into the Maker's head to tell. However, the Chant does give a sense of tone, that the Maker is watching, and all-knowing of his plans to come, whatever that might be.
Omnipresence means all-present. This term means that God is capable of being everywhere at the same time. It means his divine presence encompasses the whole of the universe. There is no location where he does not inhabit. This should not be confused with pantheism, which suggests that God is synonymous with the universe itself; instead, omnipresence indicates that God is distinct from the universe, but inhabits the entirety of it. He is everywhere at once.
This is the one trait that I believe correlates to much of who the Maker really is, he is everywhere. However, to those without the faith cannot see this effect, and claim to be their own power, or another divine being itself, much of what is like in the real world.
The one thing that sticks to the Maker and could potentially make out his presence is that he is the entirety of this small universe, Thedas. Could he actually be the foundation of Thedas itself? Or are we just stuck on a made-up figure who can represent all traits of a God because the Chant only portrays him to be so?
That itself is a problem...
Redeemer:
How in most cases we have seen, will this religion redeem itself to be true? For one thing for sure, we now know the Elvhen Pantheon is real, but the Dalish tends to half - know the truth, and fill in the gaps with their over-exaggerations and tales to get them through their years.
As for the Maker, I believe that this itself, is this God's problem, he doesn't seem to want to redeem himself. The only time we have seen this action is with Andraste and her devout followers, and like I have said before, the rebellion itself was a failure, hence the betrayal of Andraste was given to her more easily than ever; she was unstoppable.
So now we are here, left in the dust of a God who barely knows his people, he watches and somehow knows what's to come, but for now, a redeemer is not this God, and that is a problem for the present and past of Thedas. I cannot speak of much of the future in itself...
And around it, a chorus of spirits sang:
"Whatsoever passes through the fire
Is not lost, but made eternal;
As air can never be broken nor crushed,
The tempered soul is everlasting!"
And I looked up and saw The seven gates of the Black City shatter, And darkness cloaked both realms.
— Canticle of Exaltations
The Problem:
And yes, the problems that surround the Maker, I bet we were skipping to this point just to see what I would say about this God.
The Devs:
Yes, I have said it. The dev's are responsible for creating this Maker who I thought isn't much of a God, but hey, they seem to think so. I don't blame it all on them, but for them to create a new narrative to not mention the Maker's identity leaves me to compare the traits of a God itself. That in itself, with no identity, brings the Maker in the lore so much more power but complete irrelevance in the next Dragon Age games...
The 'turned his face away' God:
There's a big problem surrounding this Maker of being a God who turned his face away from his creations. Now I know I'm not a God myself, but if you are disappointed in your creations, why not destroy them and get it over with? So there's the problem, the Maker is not a God who turned his face away from humanity or spirits, but turned away to leave them to become fully capable of whatever they will need to do in order to survive...
Finally, The Maker's identity:
This all falls into so many theories, so many beliefs, and so many codices surrounding the Maker. He has no identity, he is himself. He is not a Titan, not Solas, and certainly not Sandal...
So yes, the problem with the Maker is that his identity is just as unfamiliar as the Void itself, and therefore, we cannot disprove or approve of his existence. It's frustrating because in Thedas he just seems to be more neutral. Yet we disprove of his movement each and every quest throughout the Dragon Age series.
So on an end note, what do you think about the Maker? Is he believable? Do you believe he exists? Or is it quite the opposite? Let me know in the comments below...
Thanks for watching, if you have any questions or comments please leave below. If you want to follow me on any other social media, check out my blog or Tumblr for the written portion, all of those links are in the description down below.
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