Talk:Olden Ones

Ancient Ones vs. Old High Ones vs. Olden Ones

I know The Colour of Magic refers to these beings as "Old High Ones"... The Light Fantastic also refers to a group of beings described as the "Ancient Ones", who know everything about all the universes- and how Ankh-Morpork has the strongest smell of all cities, everywhere.

Same group of beings? TC01 23:19, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Sure; how many gangs of ancient super-gods could there be? That we know personally? --Old Dickens 23:33, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Alright, then, I'll redirect Ancient Ones here, as is done with Old High Ones. TC01 00:19, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

"As is done", Grasshopper, "as". --Old Dickens 00:54, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

How many of them are there (1, 7, 7a)? (unsigned question by User:Confusion, 00:40, 6 July 2011

Only one left of 7a as far as we know (Azrael). --Old Dickens 02:55, 6 July 2011 (CEST)

Similar in another universe?

In my Internet wanderings I recently stumbled across The Endless of The Sandman Comics by Niel Gaiman. I haven't read the comics, nor delved deeply into the references to the Olden Ones of the Discworld, but to my uneducated mind there seem to be certain similarities between the two (and to a lesser extent some aspects seem similar to other supernaturals of the Disc). As a brief example, taken from the intro to their Wikipedia page, they are described thus:

"The characters embody powerful forces or aspects of the universe... They have existed since the dawn of time and are thought to be among the most powerful beings in the universe. They are distinct from and supposedly more powerful than most gods". The page goes on to say they "spend most their time fulfilling their functions as embodiments of natural forces... none of them are "representations" or "personifications" of their function, they simply are their function".

Their number consist of Destiny, Death (who, I cannot help but add, is female, wears black (and those three associations alone remind my of a lady of the Disc) and wears an Ankh), Dream, Destruction, Desire, Delirium and Despair (so thats one less than associated with the Disc). It seems on the Disc these forces have got personifications to fulfill their roles for them.

Among the other things that strike me as somewhat similar to other beings of the Disc are the fact that "If one of the Endless is destroyed, then he or she will be replaced by another aspect of their role" - a little reminiscent of the Auditors to my mind and how their speech is represented in different ways (which immediately draws to mind THE VOICE).

On a completely different note, the Dictionary.com word of the day recently was "Ogdoad" which suddenly reminded me of how among the Ancient Egyptian deities and creation myths were these eight beings who represent the "primal, fundamental state of the beginning" and who (along with Ra) made everything else. Now, the Egyptians may have had these eight deities, but paired them up so they represented four concepts: "the primordial waters (Nu and Naunet), air or invisibility (Amun and Amaunet), darkness (Kuk and Kauket), and eternity or infinity (Huh and Hauhet)". This, to me, sounds as if the Discworld idea slipped through to our Roundworld, but as so often the case we didn't quite understand or only caught half the message, so knowing there were eight but only having four concepts to attach them to we just we just did the best we could with the information we had.

Interesting parallels, at the very least, I think. --Verity (talk) 22:50, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

It's not very unusual to find parallels in Pratchett and Gaiman. It's interesting, though, how far up in the mountains are the headwaters of that stream everyone fishes from. --Old Dickens (talk) 02:27, 10 September 2015 (UTC)