Here are some more tidbits about Cedonian religious belief. The usual caveat applies: this is a strictly Cedonian interpretation of some of the Beings of the Dreaming and their interactions, and may or may not bear a resemblance to the "truth" of the matter. A second caveat: not everything discussed below is common knowledge to all Cedonians. The general outline of the processes of reincarnation and ultimate judgment are common knowledge, but some of the details are closely held by the Cedonian Church and are not common knowledge to the general public. Andrew * * * * * The Nature of Souls and their Fates ----------------------------------- While humans are largely creatures of the material world, Celandra, they are possessed of a portion of the spirit world, the Dreaming. That portion is what is called "the soul". Souls are initially created raw and unformed from the essence of the Dreaming by the god Coron. The soul is bound to a body, and the unformed soul is gradually shaped and formed by its life-experiences in Celandra. At the moment of the death of the material body, the soul is collected by a coriel, a psychopompic(soul-escorting) servant of Coron. The soul is taken to the Halls of Judgment, where Coron and Lucia dwell. Coron judges whether the soul's life-experiences have completed its formation, or if potential for growth or change remains to be tapped; Lucia then passes judgment on the moral state of the soul. A soul's fate is determined by the judgments of these two gods. Souls whom Lucia finds to have led lives that were either good or neither good nor evil, and that Coron finds to be incomplete or unfinished, are reincarnated. This is often the fate of those who die as children or adolescents, or whose initial life was in a body that was severely handicapped in some way, or who otherwise died untimely deaths. The gods are patient; Coron will reincarnate a soul as many times as is necessary to complete it. As long as some aspect of the soul retains a capacity for growth, it will cycle through incarnations. The unfinished soul of someone who led an immoral or evil life is also reincarnated. However, Lucia will not let an evil soul go unpunished. The souls of those who were evil in their past life are generally reincarnated into circumstances where, it is hoped, they will learn the virtues of empathy and compassion. When Coron judges a soul to be complete, Lucia's judgment of the soul's bias towards good or evil determines its final destination. The finished souls of those who led upright, moral lives have one of three fates. If, in its past lives, a soul was particularily devoted to one god, it goes to that god's Halls in the Dreaming. An example would be a soul that was a merchant in every incarnation going to Cedon's Halls, or a soul that always incarnated as a musician going to Kaskasoevin's Eternal Party. The second alternative applies to those souls that, while living moral lives, never adhered to one particular god. They become servants in the Halls of Judgment. The third and final alternative applies to those who might be called 'great-souled'. Those souls that were in some way exceptional in life, embodying some special quality beyond the normal human capacity, become part of the gods' Great Work. These Great Souls are the Cedonian gods' greatest servants, often acting as messengers or intermediaries to the living. If, when a soul attains a completed state, the balance of its incarnations were evil, it is normally cast into the Halls of Nightmare, the dominion of the goddess Demerhaze. The Halls are a place of madness & torment for those souls incarcerated there. However, even here there is one last chance at redemption. Part of Demehaze's 'portfolio' is the development of self-awareness(see Jefferson's excellent prior posting). Souls moving through the Halls of Nightmare have the opportunity to show remorse and repentance for their past actions in life, one last chance to learn empathy, compassion, and altruism. If a soul does achieve this redemption in the Halls of Nightmare, it is released to become a servant of Demerhaze. Demerhaze, through her servants, may send nightmares to those currently leading evil lives, giving them a chance to repent in life and avoid the Nightmare Halls in death. Souls sentenced to the Halls of Nightmare are those which Lucia believes have the capacity to repent, given time. It may take a thousand thousand years, but any soul in the Halls of Nightmare will eventually attain redemption. There are those souls, however, which are ultimately irredeemable out of arrogance, pride, or selfishness; or that committed acts in life so vile as to shock the gods themselves; or were evil in every incarnation without exception. For those souls, Coron and Lucia feel it to be more merciful to simply destroy them, rather than subject them to eternal torment for no good purpose. The souls are merged back into the fabric of the Dreaming whence they came. Some gods and Beings of other pantheons have argued for casting such evil souls into the Void outside the Dreaming, but such suggestions are no longer considered since the Alatta/Sin-Alb Incident. ---------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, send mail to celandra-off@phoenyx.net.
