Ok, as promised, here's the more detailed look at Cedonia's cosmology. Caveat: This is represents the Cedonian State Church's attempt to wrap its collective head around something that does not readily lend itself to human comprehension. Other representations may be, and probably are, equally valid. * * * * * An unforseen consequence of the formation of the Cedonian State Church was the way in which it allowed the various orders of priests to compare notes and share information about the Dreaming and its denizens. It had long been known that Beings in the Dreaming could be classified by power level or by Spheres of Authority, but twenty-five years after the formation of the Church, it was discovered that Dreaming Beings could also be classified by attitude and behavior, by the way in which they interacted with Celandrans. It was also found that certain correlations could be made. In general, the Beings with the least power interacted the most often, the most readily, and the most easily with Celandra. As Beings gained in power, they tended to become more distant, with the Creator being the most powerful and absolutely unreachable. However, the relationship was not a simple one. The Cedonians eventually divided the Dreaming Beings into the categories of Gods and not-Gods, the latter category containing the vast majority of Dreaming entities. The category of Gods they then divided into three groups: The First Gods, the Elder Gods, and the Younger Gods. The First Gods were said to be the Creator and the Principles of Order, Chaos, and Time. The existence of these Beings was largely a matter of postulation rather than perception, as they were unreachable by any means available. Several theologians argued that these Beings were not gods as much as they were the essential fabric of the Universe. The Elder Gods represented elemental forces. While they could be contacted by humans from Celandra, in many ways their needs and concerns were too alien to sustain a church. The four most important and accessible of the Elder Gods were the Lady of the Wind, the Lord of the Sea, the Lady of the Flame, and the Lord of the Earth. Accessibilty is a relative term, of course; the communications of the Lords and Ladies were notoriously cryptic. Only the Lord of the Sea and the Lady of the Wind ever had great numbers of worshippers, and those worshippers were usually sailors or those who lived by the sea. However, their potential power was enormous. Celandra itself was counted as an Elder God, but one who could be perceived but not communicated with. The Younger Gods were those that dealt in human concerns. They represented/controlled concepts that were meaningless in the absence of humans(or, at least, the absence of intelligent life). As an example, the concept of Justice is not inherent to the universe without the presence of intelligent life. They were much easier for Celandrans to deal with and understand, but even with the Younger Gods, some aspects of their thought remain alien and incomprehensible. In a way, the Younger Gods were the "children" of the Elder. In Cedonian religious belief, this was made explict in the case of Marmdal the Storm King, who was said to be the child of the Lord of the Sea and the Lady of the Wind. Whether or not this was true in any sense beyond the metaphorical was not an answerable question. Cedonian religious thought on the subject of good and evil held that the Gods and humans were not inherently good or evil. Good and evil are functions of the ends we desire and the means we use to reach those ends. As an example, Demerhaze as Goddess of the Night and Vengeance facilitates actions that many would consider evil, but She is also a protector of children, particularly orphans, which many would consider good. Of all the gods known to Cedonians, Yaga comes closest to being inherently evil, but then, starting wars is almost always an evil act. The general rule of the Cedonian Church(heavily influenced by the Order of Lucia) was and is: When you treat living beings, including yourself, as if they were soulless things, you commit evil acts. Killing animals for food is permissable, but one must not do so wastefully or whimsically; the Cedonian Church strongly frowns on trophy hunting. It may be necessary for a general to conscript troops and force them to fight against their will; but he must never lose sight of the fact that both his soldiers and those of the enemy are as human as he is, and he must not waste them by treating soldiers as pawns in a game of kings. Of course, humans being humans, perfect obedience to the rule doesn't happen. * * * * * There's more things rattling around in my brain on this topic right now, but that's enough for one post. Andrew __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/careermakeover ---------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, send mail to celandra-off@phoenyx.net.
