On the Nature of Religion
Chapter One
For the religions of the rich speak of the present, and the present is that which is the reward.
But the poor, and hungry and enslaved seek further, for life is a trial and horror. For the poor, the reward or ease from suffering must come from a life beyond this one, and so a vision is seen as through polluted water, of the riches and blessedness of an afterlife, or the great reward of a life to come.
Thus do humans make religions after their own needs and the circumstances in which they find themselves.
For true religions should be as a comfort, and an encouragement, but also they should encourage the spirit to look beyond the self into the needs of others, for the wealthy have been granted the obligation to share what they have been given, and to teach those who have not.
Perhaps it is only one life we are given, or perhaps many, and mayhap we go beyond this life into another in another realm and are luminous.
But if these things are true, the Gods have not seen fit to show us one vision and one afterlife, so we must make our way in life with faith and hope only.
We create faith so that we may have hope, and we create righteousness so that our own hope may seem more perfect than that of another.
To look on the faith or hope of another and call it false is the greatest crime, for hope is the only thing which is revealed to us and which makes the suffering of life bearable.
To remove hope and deny the true faith of another is to murder the soul of your brother or sister.
Behold the faiths that we create are none of them TRUE faiths, they are the hymns created imperfectly that reflect the single facet of the Jewel of the Universe that we are able to see, without ever seeing the Jewel.
These are all veils of truth and not truth itself.
To look past the veil, all creations must been seen as the veil, and all custom and all faith questioned and ultimately rejected. For they too are the veil.
But what of hope for the future, what of hope when life is hungry and struggle is a daily misery?
They too are a veil.
It is not in wanting that mankind suffers, but in believing that the struggle and the giving up of want are in vain.
The gods (and even they are a veil in themselves) would have each person learn their own lessons and choose their own paths.
Choose then the veils in the colors and textures best suited to your own nature, but do not limit the choices for others.
Do not forget that hunger and suffering are created to allow the wealthy to alleviate them.
Chapter Two
There is a day that is not a day that comes and the sun shall rise on an earth in which the hearts of humans are changed.
We shall feed each other and clothe each other, and the silence of our own hearts we may dance and remove our own veils so that the light of clear vision may come to shine brightly in the world.
This day is not far, but it is not the day of excuses that the weak use to avoid clearing away the wreckage of the destruction that they themselves have wrought.
There shall be no one to come and make us children, to clean up after us and to cook for us.
We shall be as our own parents, but we shall be as parents to one another.
For comfort we shall reveal our hearts to our brothers and sisters, who shall be all those who have come through the times of the changes.
But we shall be glad for the changes.
There shall not be wealth nor poverty, for there will be all wealth, as the glory of the sunrise and clean water running in the rivers is wealth.
And wealth shall be counted in the richness of one's being, and in the crops shared by all, and in the music that shall ring from the heavens for joy.
Put then away fear of the future, for that too is a veil and does not speak truly of what shall be.
What shall be is unwritten even until the moment that it occurs.
Turn then away from a path of selfishness and look to the path of service.
Know the true Princess and the true Prince by the service that they do for others.
To be royal is to be on the path of service and to alleviate suffering.
To be in poverty is to be one who looks only for self gain and not to the hearts and needs of others.
Not all needs are met with material things, no not even food nor shelter.
For the greatest need of humans is the need for hope, which each must create for himself or herself.
To encourage someone in the creating of the hope in the color and texture best suited to that person is a great service, perhaps greater than all else.
With hope can a person strive to feed and clothe themselves and others, without hope, food is not necessary.
Chapter Three
The woman went unto the marketplace and took with her a friend who had lost her best garment.
Her friend was dark and the color she loved was rich maroon trimmed with gold.
The woman was light and loved the green of spring trimmed with silver.
The woman did not press upon her friend a robe of green and silver, but instead sought out a bolt of silken cloth, the best in the market, and with her own money, saved for many months, bought for her friend the maroon and gold that her heart yearned for.
So were they both happy.
It is thus with religion.
Seek not to put on a garment which does not fit, or is of the wrong color or cloth.
Seek not to put on the religion of a friend or a great man or woman if it does not speak in quiet moments.
Shouting does not prove truth, nor writhing and crying.
It is when the soul is quiet and the spirit is quiet that a path may reveal itself.
All paths, even if they are of the same religion, are different paths.
All garments are unique and made to the pattern of the soul.
To create hope, to create religion, is to take cloths woven for you alone and to tailor a garment that is best suited to you.
Make the garment that is for you, and you shall find true happiness.
Your garment may not look or fit like anyone else's, but for you it is perfect.
The raiment of the true soul is perfect, and can not be sullied by the ravings of loud persons who seek to destroy the many hued Jewel of the Universe.
The facets of the Jewel are countless, but they are all true.
Truth then is for one alone and not for the many to cling to one truth.
The Jewel can not be destroyed, but it is being constantly created.
To create is blessed, to create beauty is part of the perfected work of the most holy.
On the Future
We have taken comfort in prophesy, and dreamed in the dark night that it would be enough.
Prophesy is the voice crying from anguish at the visions of ruin, and the knowledge that few would withstand the change.
Listen instead to the voice of the Mother, who sends her tempests to drown the lands, who sends floods and droughts and confluence of her creatures to destroy the works of uncaring man.
For the signs have been given and the Earth enters the long sleep beneath the snow and the dry cold wind will blow where now are fertile fields.
Mourn not for man, nor for woman mourn, but for the children who do not understand what must be.
Three times Atland died, and the homeland died before the daughter.
Forgotten now is the lesson of Atland, that lust for power brings only destruction for all.
Once the Earth convulsed and bled into the sea, and Her warnings were unheeded but by few.
The second was the work of man, of man obsessed with power and of control, of man who crumbled the building blocks of life for the sake of servants, for man who cared nothing for man.
Wars of energy broke the lands and left the great glass plains stretching where cities of crystal once had stood - war did not exist before.
There are those who hear the warnings and discuss them; there are those who hear the warnings and act upon them.
Some went unto the new lands and believed that to create again the machines and the lasers was like unto utter desolation.
It was they who kept the Mother sacred. It was they who kept the honor of the Beloved Son.
The third time Atland died, it died forever.
One man, with the governors behind him, sought out the master crystal.
We begged him not to commit this act. Riots and petitions and rebellion were too late.
He put out his hand and for the sake of pride and power and greed, he played out the note and the master crystal sang, for a single instant, in a voice too high.
The greatest and most beautiful civilization that this world has ever known vanished in a single instant.
Drowned beneath the waves is Atland the beloved. A world, an island, and then womb water unbroken from new land to new.
Survivors by chance, cast up onto the shores of the colonies, brought the song of sorrow for her palaces, and her green fields, and her marble and most, for all the maidens, fair and proud, who would never know love. And all the youths, brave and filled with passion, who would never know the touch of lover or son or daughter. And for the poets, and the music which never would be heard again, and the Mothers who could not save their children.
The Queens and Princes, the Priestesses in the Temples, the builders and the dreamers, the philosophers and the farmers and all their works and all their hearts poured out into the world is gone and gone unremembered.
Forgotten now is Atland, and its folk are spun out unto the wheel of time, reborn now in an age like unto the age of the Glory of the Drowned Land.
Shall we hear and act? Are the words of the Mother heard in the land?
Or shall we fade and be forgotten more surely than the crystal domes of Illurial, sundered and fallen beyond the reach of any memory?
Who then are the meek?