Karma
Karma is a force that rewards you or punishes you according to your past actions. If you mostly do good deeds, your karma shall rise, and you shall be rewarded. This also works vice-versa, where if you perform bad deeds, your karma will lower and you will be punished. Diviners also believe in the Tao, the balance of the world by maintaining a certain balance of Yin, and Yang, two forces that represent good & evil, man & female, light & dark.
Karma Chart
Notes
Scum's random note on Karma: It is rumored that rarely (once per month or less) a character is born with the highest level of karma. I had never heard of this until I got a karma reading on one of my low leveled mage characters. I had never done any mentoring, or any other actions that would bring me good karma, but oddly enough I was Angel karma and able to get a Faerie light. I talked with numerous Geomancers, and none could explain how I had such a high karma level. After receiving my Faerie light my karma was lowered to Tiger level karma.
Also, many people don't know this but once you are Angel karma you must mentor once more and that is how you initiate the pop up asking if you would like to sacrifice your karma for a Faerie light.
KillerAltoid's comment: I would like to say that this is not a rumor, in fact I have a friend(real life and in game) who was also born with Angel karma. My feelings are that a new character's karma is randomly decided at the time they are born.