A bit confused who is older. Pharasma or Desna. Can you help me with that?
Pharasma existed prior to the start of the age of creation and is sole survivor of the previous reality. Alone or with Desna?
After that, Pharasma becomes aware of Yog-Sothoth, who was the 'watcher' from the previous reality. So, this is clarify what Yog-Satoth is older than both this godes
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According the Windsong Testaments, Desna was one of the first eight deities willed into existence by Pharasma through the Seal.
Concordance of Rivals is substantially more credible as in-setting sources go, and it cites Pharasma as the oldest* being in creation. So even if Pharasma didn't create Desna or it didn't go like the Windsong Testaments described, Pharasma is probably at least older.
*(Yog-Sothoth is coterminous with all of time and space and is generally not counted.)
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QuidEst provides some excellent references here. But also if you're interested in a little more context, there is intentionally a little bit of ambiguity about the hard truth of what exactly happened in the earliest days of creation. The tale told by one deity or their followers may contradict the myths of another. One story may be slightly incomplete, or told from a different perspective, or might even just be a warped version how one source 'remembers' what happened, throwing bias into what was and wasn't important.
I'm terribly fond of this effect, because not being able to know for sure the hard truth of what happened in the Age of Creation really helps add that mythological feel to it. There are many things we know that are all probably true, almost all of them have gaps or require smoothing some details from one to the other.
One of my favourite examples is that when Asmodeus reportedly told the origins of the world to Tabris in the Book of the Damned, his version had him and his brother Ihys emerging as the first two motes of light from the Seal, eventually growing over millennia into the two most powerful beings among all others who could shape the power of the Seal into whatever they wished. In this tale, the brothers were the First and they discovered speech and symbols and created life, and Sarenrae was just a minor angelic goddess who doesn't even enter the story until they had been creating things long enough that their creations gained sapience and started worshipping them
Contrast to the Windsong Testaments (specific stories: Three Fears of Pharasma, and the Rage of Creation), where not only were they not the First to pop out of the Seal, but that minor angelic goddess is their older sister in that regard. This tale corroborates the claim that they did in fact create life between them and then get into a huge fight about it, but it's amusing to read how the two accounts differ in focus. Three Fears is concerned with a huge chunk of time, so when Pharasma does her first walk around the Seal, it glosses over how, "other divinities were birthed into the new reality" followed by a list of the first eight (including Desna, Sarenrae, Ihys, and Asmodeus) but if we take the Book of the Damned tale into account, it's possible that this simple sentence is doing a lot of heavily lifting glossing over eons of time as those motes grew from infant sparks that had to learn how to move much less how to choose their own forms.
I feel like if someone were to take every mythological reference to the Age of Creation spread across the last 20 years, they would have a lot of contradictory stories, but they could also probably iron out a fairly convincing 'true tale'... and if someone else did the same, their story might differ.
Another reason I like the comparative mythology approach is that I find it personally a little amusing that the BotD story is probably the most detailed account of how the universe got started, but yet if we take there to be any truth in the Windsong Testaments, it manages to leave out huge chunks of relevant information--and it strikes me that Asmodeus very much is that type of personality to be quite detail oriented about his part in the story and then entirely ignore or forget the contributions of the dozen other people around him
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Another reason I like the comparative mythology approach is that I find it personally a little amusing that the BotD story is probably the most detailed account of how the universe got started, but yet if we take there to be any truth in the Windsong Testaments, it manages to leave out huge chunks of relevant information--and it strikes me that Asmodeus very much is that type of personality to be quite detail oriented about his part in the story and then entirely ignore or forget the contributions of the dozen other people around him
I just wanted to add on that Asmodeus' misogyny may also be a contributing factor in his leaving out or down-playing any accomplishments of the female deities...
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Another reason I like the comparative mythology approach is that I find it personally a little amusing that the BotD story is probably the most detailed account of how the universe got started, but yet if we take there to be any truth in the Windsong Testaments, it manages to leave out huge chunks of relevant information--and it strikes me that Asmodeus very much is that type of personality to be quite detail oriented about his part in the story and then entirely ignore or forget the contributions of the dozen other people around himI just wanted to add on that Asmodeus' misogyny may also be a contributing factor in his leaving out or down-playing any accomplishments of the female deities...
True. Even though a deity as old and powerful as Asmodeus being specifically misogynist makes absolutely no sense.
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I have to admit, I definitely see Asmodeus' misogyny in direct continuity with these early events at the dawn of the multiverse. According to Asmodeus' version of the tale, the first time Ihys and he have an argument over Ihys' recent invention of free will, it's Sarenrae who comes to Ihys to encourage him not to give up on his ideals. This, as much as anything else, becomes one of the root causes of the War in Heaven when Asmo is infuriated to find his brother has not dropped the subject.
I shouldn't be surprised at all if in those early days Asmodeus specifically resented Sarenrae for turning Ihys against him. Without her support, he may very well have come around to agreeing about the evils of free will (for a time, anyway). And after sharing such an intensely close relationship with Ihys, he may well not be capable of being rational about any being who comes between them, simultaneously blaming her for everything and diminishing and minimizing her importance.
In short, I think there's a compelling argument to be made that his misogyny is in no small part because a goddess is the first thing that came between him and his brother--with clearly very little in the way of other interpersonal experiences to temper this polarizing reaction.
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I have to admit, I definitely see Asmodeus' misogyny in direct continuity with these early events at the dawn of the multiverse. According to Asmodeus' version of the tale, the first time Ihys and he have an argument over Ihys' recent invention of free will, it's Sarenrae who comes to Ihys to encourage him not to give up on his ideals. This, as much as anything else, becomes one of the root causes of the War in Heaven when Asmo is infuriated to find his brother has not dropped the subject.
I shouldn't be surprised at all if in those early days Asmodeus specifically resented Sarenrae for turning Ihys against him. Without her support, he may very well have come around to agreeing about the evils of free will (for a time, anyway). And after sharing such an intensely close relationship with Ihys, he may well not be capable of being rational about any being who comes between them, simultaneously blaming her for everything and diminishing and minimizing her importance.
In short, I think there's a compelling argument to be made that his misogyny is in no small part because a goddess is the first thing that came between him and his brother--with clearly very little in the way of other interpersonal experiences to temper this polarizing reaction.
I have no doubt Asmodeus absolutely despises Sarenrae. But I am not sure gender duality is supposed to be a cornerstone of the setting. Was gender even a thing at that time ?
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But I am not sure gender duality is supposed to be a cornerstone of the setting. Was gender even a thing at that time ?
In short, yes.
The Abyss, with Lamashtu as the canon goddess of demons and "mother of monsters," is cosmologically the opposite of Hell, with Asmodeus and all of the archdevils being male. Even the most powerful female devils (the Queens of Night) are only treated as the equivalent of the infernal dukes...
Asmodeus' misogyny was made even more obvious in the earlier publications (calling females "the weaker sex," the previous name for the Queens of Night*, etc.).
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I have no doubt Asmodeus absolutely despises Sarenrae. But I am not sure gender duality is supposed to be a cornerstone of the setting. Was gender even a thing at that time ?I have to admit, I definitely see Asmodeus' misogyny in direct continuity with these early events at the dawn of the multiverse. According to Asmodeus' version of the tale, the first time Ihys and he have an argument over Ihys' recent invention of free will, it's Sarenrae who comes to Ihys to encourage him not to give up on his ideals. This, as much as anything else, becomes one of the root causes of the War in Heaven when Asmo is infuriated to find his brother has not dropped the subject.
I shouldn't be surprised at all if in those early days Asmodeus specifically resented Sarenrae for turning Ihys against him. Without her support, he may very well have come around to agreeing about the evils of free will (for a time, anyway). And after sharing such an intensely close relationship with Ihys, he may well not be capable of being rational about any being who comes between them, simultaneously blaming her for everything and diminishing and minimizing her importance.
In short, I think there's a compelling argument to be made that his misogyny is in no small part because a goddess is the first thing that came between him and his brother--with clearly very little in the way of other interpersonal experiences to temper this polarizing reaction.
Whether gender existed at the time when Asmodeus was born is not entirely clear (after all, he was originally a mote of light in his own story, snd didn't learn how to control his form for millennia), but it almost certainly existed by the time of this conflict, which comes after life created by the gods had existed long enough to become sapient, when Ihys decides to grant his creations a choice whether to return to him or not.
There's an argument that, since Pharasma is the Survivor of the previous reality, gender has existence since the beginning, albeit Pharasma seems to have no specific memories of before, so if she had opinions on the matter she may have had to wait an eon before the words came to describe it.
But then I would never suggest that any kind of gender duality is fundamental to the setting in any way. After all, post-Pharasma the first entity to come into existence are the Speakers of the Depths, which even if all the original eight came into existence with their gender pre-loaded, these defy such facile categorization and make nonbinary identities just as primordial to the setting as any other.
EDIT - I also make no claim that because Asmodeus was once depicted as misogynistic, he must always be--I'm not sure if this trait has been mentioned anywhere in publication or official discussion in the last decade, I'm just operating on one old reference point and hazy recollections