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Alright, so, I was told to read Grath's big post. Full disclosure: It's rather late here and I'm lazy, so I'll only read the other subsequent posts later. For this one, I'll just be focusing on the alleged crux of the evidence here. Right off the bat, I'll point out the part that concerns me:
So, that scan is suspicious to me. I'd draw attention to the wording here:
"Worse, time ceased to have meaning because her physical form had been ripped away, leaving behind only inchoate spirit."
This seems to suggest that Gaea and her physical form (And more generally, Gaea and the Earth, as the first paragraph seems to suggest) share a Soul-Body relationship. Said relationship also seems to be one where the two are pretty closely connected, seeing the usage of terms like "ripped away," and the narration saying the spirit left behind is "inchoate" (i.e. incomplete)
That is cause for worry, since, based on that scan, it's pretty easy to interpret things less as "Gaea is the concept of the Earth, and the actual Earth as a physical structure is her instantiation" and more as "Gaea is the Earth, and the Earth has both a 'body' and a soul." Under this reading, Gaea can still perfectly be said to be the Earth, just like verses with souls and ghosts usually tend to see both body and soul as being equally "you." The text seems to support this by saying Gaea is literally an incomplete spirit without her physical form.
So, we're not off to a good start here. There's also how Uranus literally "created the universe" by having it punched out of his face. Uranus personifies "the heavens," obviously meaning the sky as a space full of stars and the like. Yet the physical heavens (The universe) literally came out of his body, meaning that Uranus is as physical as the universe itself is, at face value. A far cry from him being the actual concept of "heavens."
Now, a valid objection to would be "The body that we see being punched, and which the universe came out of, is just his physical form, and he has a non-physical state just like Gaea does." I can concede to that, but it just leads into another problem: You can likewise just interpret Uranus as being an entity with a body and a soul. The giant dude being punched is his body, and the non-physical state would then be his soul. Again, "Uranus is literally the concept of the heavens" isn't needed here, either.
With that, the rest of the reasons for their Type 1 AE kind of breaks down. To quote the rest:
#1 is just "The Primordials predated the universe and time," which doesn't clash with the above reading of the evidence. #2 is partly useless and partly relies on the idea that magic in GoW is a Type 1 Concept, and the evidence for this isn't very good, either. Everything here only points to magic being some ill-defined cosmic "stuff" that permeates everything, which isn't sufficient for being considered a concept. A "concept" in our terms is an essence in the philosophical sense; the "what-it-is" of a thing. Very specific thing that the evidence given for it doesn't cover. Of course, there's also stuff about magic originating the Primordials too, but that would only be evidence for it being conceptual in nature if you presuppose that the Primordials themselves are conceptual, and it isn't a given that they are, exactly.
So, yeah, it seems the evidence given can pretty easily be interpreted as the Primordials being spirits attached to particular structures that come from them, and not in a "Universal –> Particular" relationship, either, but at best a "Soul-Body compound -> Physical structures emerging from said body" one. (To be clear: Souls can be concepts, but they aren't inherently so, and there being room to equally validly interpret all this as being just as a run-of-the-mill Body-Soul relationship dispenses with that reading of the text until more is provided)
That said: It seems there are Primordials whose domains are more abstract (Thanatos and Morpheus have been mentioned as ones whose domains are death and dreams). Any information regarding those at all?
Holding a more fundamental existence relative to their domains than gods, who are aware of all that would ever occur within their domains across time and space and are ever present throughout them, the aspects of the world they embody are merely the physical forms of their true non-physical selves.
So, that scan is suspicious to me. I'd draw attention to the wording here:
"Worse, time ceased to have meaning because her physical form had been ripped away, leaving behind only inchoate spirit."
This seems to suggest that Gaea and her physical form (And more generally, Gaea and the Earth, as the first paragraph seems to suggest) share a Soul-Body relationship. Said relationship also seems to be one where the two are pretty closely connected, seeing the usage of terms like "ripped away," and the narration saying the spirit left behind is "inchoate" (i.e. incomplete)
That is cause for worry, since, based on that scan, it's pretty easy to interpret things less as "Gaea is the concept of the Earth, and the actual Earth as a physical structure is her instantiation" and more as "Gaea is the Earth, and the Earth has both a 'body' and a soul." Under this reading, Gaea can still perfectly be said to be the Earth, just like verses with souls and ghosts usually tend to see both body and soul as being equally "you." The text seems to support this by saying Gaea is literally an incomplete spirit without her physical form.
So, we're not off to a good start here. There's also how Uranus literally "created the universe" by having it punched out of his face. Uranus personifies "the heavens," obviously meaning the sky as a space full of stars and the like. Yet the physical heavens (The universe) literally came out of his body, meaning that Uranus is as physical as the universe itself is, at face value. A far cry from him being the actual concept of "heavens."
Now, a valid objection to would be "The body that we see being punched, and which the universe came out of, is just his physical form, and he has a non-physical state just like Gaea does." I can concede to that, but it just leads into another problem: You can likewise just interpret Uranus as being an entity with a body and a soul. The giant dude being punched is his body, and the non-physical state would then be his soul. Again, "Uranus is literally the concept of the heavens" isn't needed here, either.
With that, the rest of the reasons for their Type 1 AE kind of breaks down. To quote the rest:
- The Primordials predate the universe and time, given that they existed in the primordial realm of Chaos, with the universe itself having been created by one of them, and would exist long after it is reduced to chaos.
- Chaos, and the primordial forces within it, predating time is something common across pantheons. The Ginnungagap, or Spark of the World, is the void that preceded Ymir's existence and thus time and space, being where chaos and order meet much like how the order was brought to Chaos by Uranus creating the universe. Sutr himself reminds us that the origin of primordial magic doesn't matter and holds the same nature regardless of mythical origin.
- They are responsible for creating the entirety of the Greek World and its contents, be it physical or non-physical, being the literal concepts of the aspects of nature that they represent. Primordial forces are also synonymous with magic, which itself is an Independent Universal Concept that predates time and exists throughout all of the reality of a given pantheon
#1 is just "The Primordials predated the universe and time," which doesn't clash with the above reading of the evidence. #2 is partly useless and partly relies on the idea that magic in GoW is a Type 1 Concept, and the evidence for this isn't very good, either. Everything here only points to magic being some ill-defined cosmic "stuff" that permeates everything, which isn't sufficient for being considered a concept. A "concept" in our terms is an essence in the philosophical sense; the "what-it-is" of a thing. Very specific thing that the evidence given for it doesn't cover. Of course, there's also stuff about magic originating the Primordials too, but that would only be evidence for it being conceptual in nature if you presuppose that the Primordials themselves are conceptual, and it isn't a given that they are, exactly.
So, yeah, it seems the evidence given can pretty easily be interpreted as the Primordials being spirits attached to particular structures that come from them, and not in a "Universal –> Particular" relationship, either, but at best a "Soul-Body compound -> Physical structures emerging from said body" one. (To be clear: Souls can be concepts, but they aren't inherently so, and there being room to equally validly interpret all this as being just as a run-of-the-mill Body-Soul relationship dispenses with that reading of the text until more is provided)
That said: It seems there are Primordials whose domains are more abstract (Thanatos and Morpheus have been mentioned as ones whose domains are death and dreams). Any information regarding those at all?