The Spark
Your original, unedited vitality. The part of you that is real, wild, feeling, and alive. The Spark is not perfect — it is human. It is what remains when the Machine burns.
The Machine
The internalized systems of urgency, control, fear, and performance. It is not a person or a government — it is the structure we’ve inherited and reinforced, often without knowing. It is made of Avatars — masks we wear to survive, voices we’ve mistaken for truth.
Avatars
Each Avatar is a distortion of human emotion or behavior — a survival-mode mask that once protected us, but now keeps us bound. There are 12 in total, like Chronos (Urgency), Mammon (Capitalist Worth), Cureon (Toxic Healing), and Virexia (Curation). They each whisper false truths to keep the Spark suppressed.
Archetypes of Liberation
Each Avatar has a corresponding Archetype — the embodied counterpoint that represents liberation from that distortion. These Archetypes are not ideals to achieve, but truths to remember. Examples include Aeon (Living Time), Thessa (Inherent Worth), and Sola (Uncorrected Witnessing).
The Emberplay
In the beginning, there was only Flame — infinite, radiant, and whole.
This was the Great Spark, formless and fully present.
To experience itself, it did not fall or fracture.
It played.
It folded itself into fragments — not in sorrow, but in joyful curiosity. This act of radiant experimentation is called The Emberplay.
The Emberplay is the Spark’s first game — the sacred moment when life divided itself, clothed in forgetting, just to discover itself again in form and contrast.
It is not a myth of punishment. It is a myth of wonder.
Each Spark is a player in this cosmic peekaboo, where the goal is not victory — but remembrance through improvisation.
Whispers
Short internal phrases that represent how each Avatar distorts our thoughts. Recognizing and countering these whispers is key to unmasking. Every liberatory Archetype has its own counter-whisper — a line of truth meant to be remembered in moments of distortion.
Rituals
Rituals in Ash & Signal are symbolic actions rooted in real psychological practices like CBT, ACT, and trauma theory. They are not performance — they are process. Some rituals target acute experiences (like The Signal of Seeing for anxiety), others confront deeper patterns (like The Blueprint Burn to unmask internalized systems).