I just have to say, BaalsamaeI, I just love your threads. I have tin foil hat theories that have no creditability they are just based on personal knowledge and one of them is about Illgynoth’s whispers which are entirely an enigma but here it goes:
So, “Drown yourself in the Circle of Stars and you will find Him.” Everyone and their mom has accepted that this meant drown yourself in Nazjatar and Azshara’s palace is the Circle of Stars and you will find Him, meaning N’zoth. sure, great, that’s totally plausible except there was no “circle of stars’ or any reference to it anywhere in Najzatar or the Azshara boss fight or Eternal Palace.
The Eternal Palace was just built by the naga in the vicinity of N’Zoth’s prison. It doesn’t mean anything, it’s not even old enough by WoW scale to be something as relevant as the circle of stars.
Then Ny’alotha came out, after N’zoth is released and he says:
“She is not the first but the last, The Circle of Stars made flesh.” The Circle of Stars isn’t a place, it’s a person, it’s a “she” and she was made last. The Circle of Stars is something that was made into her, but what is The Circle of Stars if it’s no longer a place but a thing?
Accepting these whispers as solved is the most ignorant thing the greater fandom does and they throw out any new information.
With my small background of interest in mythology, theology and classical history, one of the things that really stood out to me is the wording of circle of stars. I studied the Papyrus of Ani, aka The Book of the Dead, The Egyptians had a concept for the afterlife that was depicted in hieroglyphics as a circle of stars. This image represented The Du’at/Da’at or “The Abyss” that every soul needed to cross on it’s seven day journey after they die, the Abyss is also a concept in Judaic mysticism in relation to the journey of the soul through the sephirot which was heavily influenced by Egyptian mysticism, you “cross the abyss” to reach enlightenment and those themes are presented in Shadowlands as rejecting the purpose and joining the Maw, on to be faced with trials and disillusionment and find your way “back to the Light” by crossing the abyss. In Egyptian mythology this realm was actually on the dark side of the moon. That stands out to me because of how WoW seems to have connected this storyline of Elune with Shadowlands, especially with Tyrande’s Night Warrior arc. These themes of the Egyptian and Judaic, Islamic and Eastern Mysticism are heavily referenced in Shadowlands, in everything from the Arbiter, Oribos to even the framework for soulbinds, that looks like a “lighting flash” which is the path travelled along a sephirot.
Another part of the story that correlates is the fact that Shadowlands is loosely based on H.P Lovecraft’s Dream Quest of the Unknown Kaddath where the story literally culminates on the Moon as a facet of the Dreamworld. It’s this kind of writing framework that makes me interested in the origin of Ardenweald, or Ardenweald as a zone or the greater mythology of the origin of the Shadowlands.
So I guess my point is, what if “She” who was created last, made flesh of the circle of stars, is actually Elune (goddess) and the Moon, or the Universe is The Circle of Stars. and we will find “Him” whoever he is on the surface of WoW’s moon, or in the Maw as a manifestation of the abyss (presumably he’s the first of the Pantheon of Death, and the REAL threat of this expansion and of the whole greater universe and that’s why he’s chained) Flesh is the opposite of the Titans, and the void manipulated life to create Flesh, there’s mythological meat here to connect Elune to the Void. The Egyptians believed that the Moon was the Mother of the Universe. And we do see paralells between moon worship and Death, most notably with Ner’zul’s Shadowmoon orcs, especially in WoD’s AU, who were basically bran washed by K’ara, a void naaru they worshiped as “The Dark Star” again a reference to Judaism, Venus and Lilith, or better known as “Black Moon Lilith” or the Dark Goddess archetype… again not unlike how Tyrande’s arc is reflecting this archetype.
Azshara was merely a reflection of “The Tidemother” in service to Elune, she had no real love of N’Zoth, meaning all of this is just setting up Elune as a Sargeras level (or higher!) cosmic entity, and quite possibly, the youngest in the greater pantheon of Death. {I can see this eventually leading to a confrontation between Tyrande and Aszhara but I’m not holding my breath)
Also Oribos is not only a nod to the concept of the Ouroboros, the allegory of the cycle of the Life and Death, Oribos is a 8 pointed star. The eight pointed star began to appear in Islamic art in the Middle Ages. It is referred to as khatim or khatim-sulayman, meaning “seal of the prophets” These stars are known to denote life, from birth to death. In Chinese tradition, the eight pointed star was a way to concisely depict the entirety of the Universe. It was believed that the Sky Emperor T’ai-Yi resided in a palace at the center of Heaven, at the top of the eight pointed star’s axis, from which he ruled the eight divisions of Heaven. As another person pointed out, the Jailer and the Arbiter share something in common: they are both have a hole where their heart should be. The Jailer is flesh, the Arbiter is mechanical, there a correlation there we just don’t know what it is yet but the Arbiter is in the seat of power at the top of Oribos. It’s the Arbiter that controls the Machine of Death.
Oribos is quite literally possibly the center of the known universe., existing in the upper realms of consciousness. Which also explains the creation of the Shadowlands as being whatever it needs to be, creation is not material it’s simply consciously manifested based on the needs of the one manifesting it.