You’ve never seen your Avatar, and probably doubt that such a thing exists. Sure, you have a shadow, and a reflection, or maybe a little dog who’s followed you around since you were a kid and seems no older even though he should have died of old age years ago, but an Avatar? Nah – that’s a buncha New Age hippie crap! You have yet to encounter any such thing, you don’t go on “seekings” or whatever they’re called, and you get your metaphysical insights the same way any normal person does: through everyday events in the everyday world.

Essentially, this Merit grants a “silent” Avatar – one that, for whatever reason, does not hound or guide your character but merely drops hints, cues, and clues that the mage either figures out or doesn’t figure out on her own. Seekings and Epiphanies take place in the physical realm, typically as puzzles and dilemmas that happen to be related to issues that the mage needs to sort through in order to advance to the next level of understanding. During such situations, the Avatar may indeed appear (possibly even manifest – see the Merit: Manifest Avatar, p. 71), but only as some apparently mundane person, creature or thing, not as an obviously paranormal entity. You could, for instance, get a call from your mother that sends you into

an introspective mood which, in turn, leads you to figure out an important riddle from your past; Mom, of course, denies even having called you. Huh. So who could that call have been from, anyway? Or did you, perhaps, just imagine it after all?