Upon Returning to the Ocean

Upon Returning to the Ocean is a book of magic attributed to the pseudo-historical thaumaturge Morogyad. Part of the "Oluz canon" of the Esoterica of Morogyad, the book is written in Oluzpek and is an account of Morogyad's various adventures living as a fish. This makes it problematic as few of these adventures are attested in the extensive biographical tradition dealing with him.

Contents

Upon Returning to the Ocean is divided into nine chapters, one an introduction and each of the remaining eight each dealing with Morogyad's experiences as living as one of a variety of sea life. The introductory chapter is a philosophical treatise recontextualising the sea as an exemplar of the world, being the most effective means by which life can travel and an apt metaphor for the magical and spiritual location of humanity in the world. People really ought to consider themselves less as land animals than as a school of fish in the ocean, Morogyad argues, though debates among thaumatologists about what he actually means by this remain unsettled.
The second chapter is the only one whose content is supported by the existing biographical tradition surrounding Morogyad. It tells of his arrival in the city of Tyros in the form of an octopus, after a long journey. This is the longest chapter, as Morogyad sees fit to discuss what each of the octopus's eight limbs did at each stage of the journey - a tiresomely precise read but something to which various scholars have attributed considerable significance.
The third chapter deals with Morogyad's time as a shrimp in the rockpools surrounding Tyros. He claims to have used this time to keep a very close watch on the fluctuations of the tide around the city and thus developed a very clear sense of the rhythm - and cyclical nature - of time.
The fourth chapter discusses Morogyad's time cruising the open ocean as a shark, in which he killed and ate various other fish. About half the chapter is devoted to a lengthy, seemingly rather paranoid assertion that he did not eat any sailors in this time, which have led some scholars to speculate that he doth protest too much.
The fifth chapter tells of Morogyad's time spent living in the sea as a clam, which he characterises as a cheerful, meditative period of his life that he wished he had more time to revisit. He ascribes considerable intelligence to clams and espouses them as intellectual kindred spirits, claiming he never ate another one after this experience.
The sixth chapter tells of his time living as a member of a school of sardines. One of the longer, more philosophical chapters, this passage is mostly devoted to long, poetic descriptions of the school of fish moving as a body and as a collection of individuals, and meditations on the relationship between the two paradigms of thought. This chapter has been linked to the introduction in some far-reaching, esoteric ways.
The seventh chapter is an account of Morogyad's life as one of the petrels that nest around Tyros, a pursuit that resolves into a meditation on the dichotomy between days spent scavenging on by-catch from the city's fishermen and those spent flying out over the open sea hunting by diving. Morogyad reserves final judgement on which of these lifestyles is superior, citing the former as more reliable but the latter as more fulfilling.
The eighth chapter relates Morogyad's experiences living as a crab in the harbour of Tyros. It is in fact an in-depth discussion of an ongoing war between the two crab empires which existed or exist in the harbour, a matter on which Morogyad admits he can provide only an incomplete account, but which he characterises as a noble and ritualised affair. Artists, particularly in Morogyad's adopted home of Oluz, have made considerable visual capital out of this account.
The final chapter deals with Morogyad's life as a seahorse, which resolves into a sentimental memoir of his time raising children with a seahorse wife, far from humanity.

Commentary

In the context of writings attributed to a son of Zargyod, a book focusing on a "return" to the ocean (Morogyad's writing is very specific) is interesting. Although the culturally prominent southern cities tended to worship Zargyod as a god of fortune and wealth, and the insular cities as a god associated with metallurgy and chemistry, whereas the northern cities of Oluz and Halumay tended to view him primarily as a god of the sea. Thaumatologists observe the connections between these three related portfolios, and also the interesting point that Morogyad, known for his works on gesture magic and metallurgy in Tyros, suddenly began writing about a "return" to the sea once he arrived in Oluz. This has been used as evidence that the two main branches of the Esoterica of Morogyad, those authored in Tyros and Oluz, are in fact the works of separate people. Conversely Halumayan thaumatologist Noqol Oss Myqalos has observed that it may equally be used as evidence that Morogyad is some sort of earthly representative of Zargyod, and that he was worshipped as a cleric of his father, turning his intellectual objectives in the directions in which Zargyod was worshipped in each place. This is a controversial point, made no less so via Myqalos's assertion that the Oluzian version of Zargyod is the original, though his observations about the seaborne cult of the god among the Sailors on the Sea of Jars back the idea up fairly convincingly.
Myqalos also argues that the introductory essay of the book refers to an 'ocean' pool of invisible power that surrounds the universe and that Morogyad's earlier works on gesture magic provide guidelines on how the hand can be used to manipulate and harness that energy. Whether Myqalos has conducted any actual experimentation on this is not known.

Availability

Oluzpek copies of this book are fairly common in the northern cities. Its availability declines sharply the further south a searcher looks, and the only known translation into another language is that into Old Zolian, copies of which are known to be standard issue for the libraries of the Commercial Guilds.

Type

Manual, Magical / Occult