Ketisk

Ketisk is the Kivish God of Abundance, Prosperity, Luck, Joy, Love, Health, and Good Tidings. She is the manifestation of the world's love, joy, and compassion. She is the shining and statueesque Kobold of made of the most precious deep earth metals and gems, who protects people both on and under the ground.    Ketisk is one of Kivishta's two entirely-good Gods, called the Aspirant Gods - the other Aspirant God being Kivay God of Wisdom. Of the two Aspirant Gods, Ketisk is less important for formal religion but is more often invoked by normal people in daily life. Kivay may be the ultimate good god that guides people to enlightenment and allows people to escape the cycle of suffering and rebirth, but Ketisk is there for everyday problems and worries: she is there to make you healthy and safe enough to pursue enlightenment without risking an early end. For the average commoner that everyday safety and health needed to pursue enlightenment is very much a day-to-day struggle, so Ketisk is a very comforting and useful divine presence.    Kivish religion is not really about the Gods on an intellectual level: the Gods are useful symbols and many believe in their tangible reality but any God worth worshipping should want to liberate their followers by empowering them to walk their own paths to enlightenment. Kitesk is not often more of a means to an end rather than a figure of focused devotion.    Kitesk is the God of all good things material, emotional, and unintentional: security, good fortune, emotional balance, compassion, calm, love, and joy. Kitesk helps people pursue enlightenment through safety and comfort, and is the go-to God for things relating to safety and comfort.    As a note, Kitesk the god is not a real entity in this world. She is a character in Kivish imagination, refined by centuries of meditation, politics, and cultural exchange. This does not make her unimportant. Emesh, spirit of knowledge, often empowers paladins in her name and falsifies evidence of her existence, as part of his campaign of cultural plurality. As discussed below, some Kivish people are aware that Kitesk is not real - but Kitesk has always been semi-symbolic anyways Kitesk is often portrayed in two forms: Kitesk the Maiden and Kitesk the Matron. The Maiden and the Matron are intertwined, two stages of an eternal being that are in an eternal cycle. This eternal cycle is often artistically represented in the Matron carrying the Maiden as a baby - Kitesk having given birth to herself. This self-birth is often gawked at by outsiders to the faith, who fail to realize that this is intentonally disconcerting. Kitesk's self-birth and self-mothering is intended to make the viewer uncomfortable with reincarnation and the cycle of existence. Kitesk knows that the cycle should make one unhappy, though she sets an example of someone doing their best to virtuously survive and comfort through that cycle of suffering.    Kitesk the Maiden represents the innate goodness and desire for goodness inherent in all people; her joyful and wholesome innocence is the sinless purity that all people could be with the right choices and conditions. Kitesk the Maiden is the ideal student as well as the unassuming teacher, capable of great wisdom through her clear eyes and genuine curiosity - and capable of seeing moral truth that others have obscured in unnecessary complexity. Kitesk the Maiden embodies and channels the raw potential for goodness and awakening that all people are born with.   Kitesk the Matron represents mature emotional virtue and the skills that enable people to protect and comfort others. The Maiden inspires hope, but the Matron takes away pain and helps the wounded recover. The Matron is an authority figure, the compassionate power of benevolent domestic leadership. She is the ideal guide, friend, and example for people.   The Kivish Pantheon divides Gods into neat categories based on old theological categorizations of the mind. All Gods are understood as aspects of the Dreamer - Rumek - whose mind hosts the shared delusion that we perceive as reality. Different schools of thought understand this differently, but all agree that the pantheon generally correlates to impulses and elements of Rumek's mind and dream.   Gods are divided between Good (Aspirant), Neutral (Mundane), and Evil (Profane) - two for each. These moral categories unsurprisingly represent the moral capacity inherent in each person and all things. Only the Good, Aspirant Gods are actually capable of spiritually protecting people, though, as even the Neutral Gods will lead worshippers to eternal suffering by accident. Each of these pairs is divided between an Orderly God and a Disorderly God. Orderly Gods represent the parts of the mind that are intentional - the Lightened Mind. Disorderly Gods represent the parts of the mind that are unintentional or hidden - the Darkened Mind. Least importantly, every pair has a Cthonic (earthly) member and a Celestial (heavenly and oceanic) member, representing the divide between emotional and immediate minds. Cthonic gods relate to our immediate minds, the things in front of us. Celestial Gods relate to our emotional, less visible stimuli. Kitesk is Aspirant: she seeks to improve the world and refuses to accept suffering as the only fate for mortal souls. Kitesk is Disorderly: she embodies emotion, impulse, unintentional thought, and subconcious belief. Kitesk is Cthonic: she represents the immediate, the physical, the experienced.    While Kivay is long-term gain, Kitesk is immediate protection. When a problem is sudden and pressing, Kitesk does her best to bless and guide her followers to the path of least suffering. Kitesk helps take away pain and fear to allow the mind to think clearly, and helps people survive when they otherwise would not. Kitesk is embedded into the cycle of reincarnation and the illusions of reality, but she represents mercy and best-case-scenarios within the suffering of mortal life. In this way, Kitesk embodies mercy and forgiveness. She knows that all people have failed to live up to her purity, and she aids them anyways. Just as she shows mercy to us despite our flaws, she allows growth and positive renewal for those seeking to do better in their lives. Kitesk's immediacy reminds us that all people can do better now, even if they are impure and sullied from a thousand lives of sin. The Maiden can purify, redeem, and renew, as the Matron can guide, protect, and comfort.    Kitesk, like the rest of the Kivish Pantheon isn't really a mythological actor like the Uvaran Pantheon are: Kivish stories tend to follow mortals.   When Kitesk is in stories, she is either a distinct aspect (Maiden or Matron) or in her holiest form she is both at once as two people. Kitesk is the guiding light of salvation, renewal, and desperate last chances. She is also the boon-giver, presenting gifts to the righteous to help them accomplish their goals.