Hi everyone!
I'm not sure if the Dark Heresy forum is best for the questions I've got in store, but I reckoned this would be the place where the lore buffs could answers some things I've been wondering for a very, very long time regarding the Eldar and their gods.
I really like the Eldar mythology, and the variety of Eldar gods, but I'm mainly informed about them from the wikis and the Eldar Codex 6th Ed. One thing I read recently was about Asuryan and his deeds just before the Fall of the Eldar, and his fate after Slaanesh devoured him.
Here
it is stated that before Slaanesh devoured Asuryan, he was able to bind most of his psychic might into the Eldar race, so that She-Who-Thirsts would not consume his titanic psychic power. As a result, the Eldar's already potent innate psychic power increased, as did their lifespans, but their fertility sharply dropped. And now Asuryan is in a comatose state, somewhere in the belly of Slaanesh. Can anyone confirm if this story, this great deed of Asuryan is actually cannon for the Eldar? I didn't read anything like this in the 6th edition codex, and most people say only 3 gods survived - Cegorach, Isha and Khaine (sundered, but "alive"). Personally, I would like to think that the there is still hope for the Phoenix King, that Eldrad's theories might have been right and a resurrection of the lord of lords might be possible. Any thoughts?
Another myth that intrigued me was the separation of Isha and her children by the Great Barrier, and how her tears turned into waystones. This myth appears to be very old, as it happened before the War in Heaven, as Vaul allowed Isha to secretly communicate with her mortal children through the waystones. Yet, I read somewhere that Craftworld Eldar regard the myth as an allegory of how the leaking warp energies in the Eye of Terror crystalize into waystones on the lost Crone Worlds. Now, the Eye of Terror, as a phenomenon, is relatively new, compared to the history of the ancient Eldar. If we assume the mythological War in Heaven is related to the actual war between the Old Ones and the Necrons, then the Isha-tears myth must be even older, and must be predating the Eye of Terror. So, have waystones existed even before the Fall, or they are a product of the Eye? We don't really know if the ancient Eldar had a specific purpose for waystones, or if they used them at all, whereas they are now central to the lives of Craftworld inhabitants as spirit stones. Can anyone elaborate on this discrepancy between how old the Isha myth seems to be, and how it is used so literally, and how does it relate to the waystones of old?
And speaking of the War in Heaven, my last question is - do you believe that the Eldar actually regard their mythic stories as true, or simply as metaphors for real-life events? If that is the case, then can we assume that the Eldar Gods are not real and are instead metaphors for the Old Ones? There is no Khaine or Cegorach or Isha, but simply ideas and metaphors? I know the Eldar are a very psychic race, so if they could create Slaanesh, they certainly could have "created" the Eldar pantheon (or maybe the Eldar pantheon created them?!!). But still, whenever I think about how the Eldar perceive their own gods and whether they even think of the Old Ones, I get confused. Do they conflate the two? How reality and myth connect?
If you have any ideas and thoughts I would be more than happy to discuss, this part of the 40K lore is probably one of my favourite parts!