Author's Foreword: This is one of a series of posts intended to show what various mage groups believe, how they think, and why they think the Sleepers ought to prefer their vision of reality. It is not intended as a complete picture of each group, or a 'fair' portrait. It's written as propaganda by each group, but honest propaganda. They won't lie, but they won't list their own flaws in detail either :) Naturally, these posts represent my own idiosyncratic views which I believe to be reasonably compatible with canon, but given my memory is at times rather sieve like, I may forget stuff. If you see a contradiction between this or the appropriate Trad/Conv book, it may or may not be deliberate. If you have suggestions for more questions that should be covered, please let me know. Akashic Brotherhood and a bunch o' other stuff is all copyright of White Wolf, of course. You can find the ones done so far at: http://www.maison-otaku.net/~rhea/WW/index.html Enjoy! Ascension 2000 Campaign Pamphlets: Celestial Chorus So, like, you people are like the 'Wrath of God' brigade, right? Going around calling down fire from heaven on the heathens and telling everyone not to have premarital sex, right? Isn't that a bunch of closeminded, old-fashioned hooey? While at times, we find it necessary to deal out the wrath of the One, there is far more to our Tradition than simply hellfire and brimstone, and more to it than Christianity. Were Science to somehow disprove the entire Bible, we would endure, for we predate it. From every continent and every culture we are gathered, those who hear the Song of the One, and our history is ancient. It is true that Christians dominated our fellowship in the Middle Ages, but times have changed, and so have we. Do not confuse us with the Moral Majority, for it would condemn many of our members to Hell if it could. We began in ancient Egypt, when Akhenaton raised his arms to the heavens and worshipped the Sun, calling together all who heard the Song of the One who made all things. We have counted followers of Zoroaster, Moses, Buddha, Christ, Mithras, and Mohammed among our numbers, sung our song with the Gnostics, Hindus, Baha'i, and a hundred faiths now forgotten except among our ranks. Different groups have risen and fallen in importance among us over time, but we welcome all who seek to follow the One and join the Song. And as for sex, we have rather diverse opinions on the topic. While we all agree that unrestrained carnality is bad, different factions within the Celestial Chorus take different opinions on when sex is a good thing. It is the Technocracy who are the closeminded ones. We know the truth: The One exists, created all things, and sustains them in existence. Despite overwhelming evidence, such as their own ability to perform Miracles in defiance of the 'laws of nature' they claim to study, the Technocracy has closed itself to the existence of the One or of anything beyond the natural world. Worse yet, it seeks to close the minds of all of humanity by convincing the Sleepers that religion is a pile of hooey, as you put it, instead of the truth. We seek to open minds by showing Sleepers the Truth, while they poke out their own eyes in the hopes that 'What I can't see won't hurt me'. Doesn't Science prove the Bible is full of inaccuracies and that religion is just the opium of the masses? To say that 'Science has disproved the Bible' is to fall into the trap which the Technocracy wishes you to be caught. We can perform miracles this very day as great as any of those in the past. We possess records of many miracles which the Technocracy wishes to be forgotten. Do not think that the truths they allow you to have are the only truths; the Technocracy does its best to destroy the evidence that would show you the truth. And as to the 'Opium of the Masses', what else can you call the mass entertainment provided by the Technocracy's pawns? 'Bread and Circuses' is what the Technocracy offers. Did the prophets have it easy? No, they were thrown into wells and fed to lions. We offer no easy comfort, nor do we seek to ensure that things remain as they are. The status quo needs to be smashed, not upheld, and the Song of the One calls us to act to change it. We offer not opium but a hammer with which to tear down the walls of sloth and contentment with which the Technocracy seeks to prevent humanity's Reconcilliation with the One. Why should we put you people back in charge after all the religious wars, persecution, and other things you did back in the Middle Ages? We have made many, many mistakes. But we have paid for those mistakes in blood. Those who directed the campaigns of persecution have died or fallen from power, and those who lead us now have renounced such measures. The Inquisition we helped to create nearly destroyed us. But we will not claim full responsibility for the atrocities you mention. Many of those atrocities were carried out by sleepers acting without the instigation of Choristers, and some of them took place against our will. I have gazed back in time upon the sack of Jerusalem by the First Crusade, and it makes me weep. Also, the worst of our atrocities pale in comparison to what has been done by those supported by the Technocracy. The acts of genocide that so heavily taint the Twentieth Century were carried out by technocratic means in pursuit of non-religious aims. We did not build Auschwitz. We did not starve and kill the Russian peasantry during the creation of the collective farms. We did not unleash the Cultural Revolution. We did not kill one of every three Cambodians in three years. Without the means handed over to evil men by the Technocracy, none of the atrocities of the Twentieth century would have been possible. The Technocracy supported Hitler...until they learned he had occult ideas. Not because he was wrong, but because he could have damaged their rationalist view of the universe, did they turn against him. I will not pretend we have not made mistakes. But the faith we teach is what humanity needs to gain the wisdom to wisely use the power it possesses. Without it, humanity will destroy itself, and Hell will laugh. If you're not Christians, what DO you teach? A very good question. I shall quote from The Hymn of the One, one of several sacred texts which deals with the origins of all things. (OOC: The following is quoted from page 10 of the Celestial Chorus Tradition Book) In the Beginning was the One. She Was, from the time before all time, but She was alone. She looked into the Void--a cold, dark, silent place. And it came to pass that She desired light and sound. So the One Sang A single, perfect note, And it was good. It was the Song of the One, a song She still sings, which created the world and all its creatures from the Void. The One created the world and the Many, Her children, and they sought to create other worlds and other creatures, who themselves created new life until all the world was peopled with life. In that time, Spirit and Matter were still as one, and all joined in the Song of the One. This lasted for ages, or perhaps only briefly (this remains disputed), but then disharmonies entered the song. Some singers rebelled from pride, or malice or anger or spite or weakness, and sought to disrupt the Song and remake all in their image. There was war in the heavens and the rebels were cast out, to become the first of the Fallen. It is these beings that the Dark Singers (oft called Nephandi) serve. As they fell, they cursed the world that the One and the Many had created, tearing Spirit and Matter asunder and creating a Chasm (known to many as the Gauntlet) between them, in what is called the Shattering. The Many, the faithful children of the One were trapped in the newly made Umbra, cut off from their youngest children, the many creatures of the physical world. Still, among those children, the First Singers walked, beings of great power, closer to the Many and the One than the others, who sank into Slumber and forgot the One. Through thousands of years, their heritage was passed down, though their descendants lost the power the First Singers had wielded, until finally in Egypt, during the rule of Ikhnaton, our Tradition was called together and united by an Egyptian Singer named Mentu-hetep during the time of the eighteenth dynasty, over 3300 years ago. Constantly changing as different groups within our number have risen to the fore, we are the oldest of the Traditions (for we alone preserve the full truth, though not the full power, passed down by the First Singers) and the first to possess a horizon realm, the Great Adytum, to act as a 'capital', though its physical manifestation has been moved many times. Our goal is to bring about the Reconcilliation, when all will be reunited with the One in the Great Song. This will require us to fill the Chasm, reuniting all the worlds of flesh and spirit to their primal state, and it will require us to Awaken all those who now sleep so that they might hear the Song and join in it. Then a new age of bliss will begin. That still sounds fairly Christian to me, but with a bit of an effort to make it generic. There are three reasons for that. Firstly, a detailed explanation would take far too much space. This is intended as an introduction to our Tradition, not as a theological treatise. And secondly, all the many faiths of our members derive from the Song of the One, though none perfectly reflect the truth. I have set forth what we all can agree upon--the Book of Ages contains seven major variants of the history of the First Age (from the Creation to the Shattering), and countless minor ones. Christianity contains much truth, and thus it is natural that it bears resemblence to the core traditions we have passed down through the ages. And thirdly, for a thousand years, Christians did dominate our ranks, and in many regions, still do. But there is more to us than merely a single church, we are a family of faiths united by our allegiance to the One. So how do you cast your spells? A Singer does not 'cast spells'. Rather, we perform sacred rituals which aid our Faith, by which we perform Miracles with the power of the Great Song. As we grow in Faith, we become able to channel more of the One's power, making mightier Miracles possible, and enabling us to dispense with some of the rites that were necessary to prop up our Faith when we first came to truly hear the Song. All Singers possess Faith, for without Faith it is impossible to defy the powers that hold this world under the grip of Stasis. While other 'magi' may use other methods and may not understand that they perform their 'spells' through Faith, the only true source of power is the One. Even the Fallen draw upon the Song, though they twist it beyond recognition, for they have invited the Void into themselves through their rebellion against the One. All magi are Singers, even the Technocracy, though the other groups have fallen into delusions and pride, and do not understand what they do. How deluded Faith can grant power, we do not fully understand, knowing only that they hear the Song in a distorted power, and the miracles they work are likewise distorted. All Singers, indeed all things that live, possess within them an Avatar, a shard planted in them by the One that enables them to hear the Song of the One, if they Awaken from the slumber into which most beings have fallen. Their 'spells' and 'foci' are but the distorted rites that strengthen their Faith enough to enable them to perform Miracles, though they fail to give the One proper credit for working through them. How would you cure my lung cancer? First, I would tell you to stop smoking, and require you to destroy all your cigarrettes and cigars. There is no point in healing you if you are just going to do the same damage to yourself again, and it would serve as an act of penance for your stupidity in spending several decades coating your lungs with tar and damaging the health of those around you. Then, I would take you to a sacred place, lay you down upon something comfortable, and take off your shirt. Once you were comfortable, I would place a table near your head and light some incense in a brazier, asking you to breathe deeply. While you breathed its fumes, I would annoint your chest with oil. Together, we would pray and sing songs of healing and renewed life. All told, this would probably take several hours. A really severe case might take longer. While the process could be rushed, that could result in failure or worse, we might both be smitten by the Scourge. Since lung cancer kills very slowly, we could afford to take our time. So, like, if you can cure cancer in hours, why haven't you all started a chain of hospitals and driven the doctors out of business? There are many reasons. First off, if we came into the open like that, the Technocracy would crush us. Until they are removed, we cannot act so publically and blatantly, much as we would like to. Secondly, the Technocracy has tilted the laws of the physical world against us. Their false Song has been strengthened by the Faith of the Sleepers in their view of reality. Thus, when we go against the 'laws of Science', we risk being smitten by the Scourge (called Paradox by some of our fellow Traditions). Such a chain of hospitals would be crushed by the Scourge before we could convince the Sleepers to accept them as possible. Thirdly, we are few in number. We do our best to work among the Sleepers, healing, teaching, and guiding, but there are not yet enough of us to meet all of our duties and take the place of the medical profession. As we Awaken more Sleepers, we will one day be able to replace doctors with true healers, but that time has not yet come. We have many other duties as well. If all magical power comes from the One, why does the One allow those who don't believe what you do to use it? How can a 'distorted' version of the Song work? We possess freedom of will, all of us. The One has implanted Avatars within us all, in the hopes that we might hear the Song and return to Him. Yet, many of us choose not to listen, or only listen to the parts they like, or have clogged their 'ears' with false beliefs. As a result, many Singers misunderstand the nature of their power and fail to realize their Avatar exists to guide them to the One. Yet, the One does not withdraw her Avatars, even from the Fallen, for She hopes they will, in the end, guide us all back to her. The One loves all Her children. That is why the Fallen were not destroyed, for He hopes that they will one day repent. They must repent, or the Void will swallow them in the end. That is one reason why the Fallen seek to corrupt the souls of Sleepers, that they might devour those souls and replace the parts of their own souls that they have lost to the Void. If they can devour souls fast enough, absorbing their Avatars into their own corrupted Avatars, they can grow in power. The mightiest among them hope to one day absorb enough Avatars to be capable of challenging the One and taking Her place. The day of judgement is postponed, but it will not wait forever. When the Reconcilliation comes, the Fallen and all their followers will be judged. The One will cease to sustain their corrupted Avatars if they do not repent and submit to purification, and then the Void will devour what is left of them. So, what is the Void? Is that like the Devil? The Void is the negation of existence. All 'being', all that exists, is sustained by the One. The Void is nothingness, the negation of existence. It has no mind, no self, no being. Originally, only the One and the Void existed. When the One began to create, She filled the Void with pieces of herself, the Many, which themselves split off part of themselves to create yet more beings and places. Yet the Void still existed. Yes, I know that to say that 'nothing' 'existed' is a paradox, but it is a sacred Truth. Perhaps if I had more Faith, I would better understand it myself. Before the Shattering, all beings faced the One and were unware of the Void, for it was always 'behind them'. When some began to rebel, they turned their faces away from the One, and the Void filled a portion of their vision, corrupting their sight and twisting their very being. When you gaze into the Void, it does not just gaze into you, but it gains a foothold in your very being and starts to gnaw away at you, for to look upon the Void you must turn away from the One, destroying a portion of your soul in the process. This hole becomes a part of the Void, and you begin to slowly crumble away into it. The Rebels used the Void to destroy and corrupt the creations of the One in their revolt, and when they were defeated, they fled to the very edge of the Void, and Sung corrupted realms into existence that fit their own Void- distorted vision, for the Song was weakest there in the regions furthest from the One. They must constantly ensnare fresh souls to repair their realms and keep those realms from crumbling into the Void and being devoured by it. Here is another way to imagine the Void, indeed all of creation. Imagine that the sum of everything that exists is an onion. The core of the onion is the One. All of creation radiates outward in a series of layers. The layers closest to the One are the True Heavens. Moving further outward, one finds the many worlds of the Umbra, then one strikes the physical world, many layers out from the One. Yet beyond that lies the layers of the Underworld, closer to the Void than the physical world and further from the One. The Void and its foolish servants are stronger here, and the taint of Death is upon everything. Beyond the Tempest and all the shadow worlds that lie within it, one would find the True Hells, where the Lords of the Fallen dwell, feasting upon the souls they have harvested. This layer of the onion is the outermost one. Nothing lies further away from the One than that, except the Void itself. The Void is the space in which the onion sits, a space which can only be defined through negation; it is everything which is not onion. But since only the onion exists by definition (since we said that it represents everything that exists), the Void does not exist. And yet, it does. Does your brain hurt yet? So does mine when I think of it. And it is best to not think of the Void too hard, lest one invite it in. So the Devil lives in the realms of the Lords of the Fallen, at the skin of the World Onion? The 'World Onion' is NOT official doctrine of the Celestial Chorus, it's just a metaphor I was using to explain the Void. Just wanted to get that straight. The Celestial Chorus does not, as a group, believe in 'The Devil', a single ruler of the Fallen. The Christians among us usually do, but we have no official position on how the Lords of the Fallen are organized. I could speculate, but it would both take too long and probably only confuse you. The Lords of the Fallen are among the beings whom the mages known as the 'Nephandi' serve. They have many names, most of which are lies, tricks, and deceptions. Only one thing is known for certain: they are all the sworn enemies of the One. We hope that some of them will repent, but they should never be trusted. The True Hells are beyond the power of any mage living to enter, though perhaps the Oracles could do so. There are 'hells' to be found in the Umbra within our purvey, but they are simply realms created by the belief systems of Sleepers. Similarly, we lack the power to enter the True Heavens and see the One face to face while still living. A great Chasm cuts us off from both, thankfully in the case of the True Hells, and sadly in the case of the True Heavens. So how many Chasms are there? How many layers does the World Onion have? Look, I said the Chorus doesn't officially call all of creation the World Onion! Usually, we simply refer to the sum of all things as 'Creation'. Or any of a variety of less bland terms from our specific religious backgrounds. Each Chasm has a specific name. What other Singers call the Gauntlet, we usually refer to as the The Chasm of Unbelief. The Horizon is the Gulf of Islands (a reference to the 'Horizon Realms' which float in it). The Shroud is the Chasm of Death. The Chasms that block entrance to the True Heavens and the True Hells are usually simply refered to as the Gates of Heaven and the Gates of Hell respectively. There are many lesser Chasms which seperate specific realms within the Umbra, but if I get into that, I'll talk all day. So what are these 'Nephandi' you mentioned? The Dark Singers, as we usually call them, are our greatest enemies. While the Technocracy has to absorb much of our attention these days, our feud with the Dark Singers vastly predates it. They are the Singers who have willingly given themselves to dark powers and corrupted themselves with the power of the Void. The Dark Singers come in several groups: servants of the Lords of the Fallen (and the shadows of those Lords to be found on our side of the Gates of Hell), the Malfeans, who serve corrupted nature spirits (rumored to be led by a corrupted worm of all things), and a third group which serves various incomprehensible alien entities which dwell in the Deep Umbra. All of them seek to tempt and corrupt everything that lives (and the dead and the undead too) and turn them to the service of their dark lords. They are anathema, the enemies of the One, and must be destroyed. What about other Singers? What do you think about all the other factions? With the exception of the Nephandi, who must be destroyed, we hope to one day reunite all Singers in the Song of the One, for the Reconcilliation cannot happen until all voices turn fully to the One and once more join in His Song. The Marauders are madmen, but we hope one day they can be healed of their insanity. The Technocracy is our second greatest enemy. They are the foes of faith, of hope, of the spirit. We hope to reform those among them who have not yet fallen completely into darkness, for we recognize that many among them mean well and wish to help humanity. Sadly, their methods can only bring about its destruction. The Dark Singers and the Lords of the Fallen cannot be wished out of existence by placing hands over the Sleeper's eyes and whispering, "God and the Devil are dead," into their ears. Until the Reconcilliation happens, we are all tainted by the Void, even the best of us, and there will always be cracks through which the darkness will slip. Only the One can preserve us from the Void, and so long as the Technocracy denies She exists, they throw open the doors used by the Void's servants which they seek to shut. Science can build a better physical world, but there is more to the One's Creation than simply the limited and flawed physical world in which the Technocracy seeks to live. Still, they are Singers, though they try to pretend the One whose power they wield does not exist. We will pray for them even as we must battle them to liberate humanity from their suffocating, delusional clutches. I turn now to our fellows among the Traditions. The Virtual Adepts and the Sons of Ether are both a source of trouble for us and a source of hope. Most of them think of us as outmoded bigots, for they have failed to fully liberate themselves from the lies fed to humanity by the Technocracy. Thus, we often clash with them. They still put too much faith in machines instead of in the One. Yet, they show that some Technomancers can be redeemed, for they have moved closer to the One than the rest of the Technocracy, and they are more open to a fair discussion than the Technocracy. We have much hope that we can one day bring them to the One. We respect the Akashics for their discipline, their serenity, and their combination of physical and mental perfection. However, they fail to understand that their power comes from the One, and many of them hide in monasteries instead of going forth to do the One's work. Still, they are the one of the best of the other Traditions, and we consider them friends. The Cult of Ecstasy are simply pathetic. Their mastery of Time can make them useful allies, but why the One has chosen to give them such insights into Her Plan, we cannot understand, for they wallow in the Flesh and neglect the Spirit entirely. They are not our enemies, more like foolish adolescent children. We tolerate their antics in the hopes they will grow up. The Euthanatos feed the Void with their foolish actions. They did not create the lives they take; what gives them the right to decide who lives and who dies? The best of them are barely tolerable, the worst of them are only an inch away from the Dark Singers. Only the desperate necessity of assistance and the hope of bringing them to the light keeps us from working to have them cast out of the council. There are three traditions with whom we have traditional feuds. The first of these is the arrogant Order of Hermes. The groups who founded the Order of Reason and brought down the Scourge upon us largely arose from their ranks, though we must regretfully confess to being the parents of the Cabal of Pure Thought. Their very paradigm is based on forcing one's will upon the world, rather than submitting to and channeling the will of the One. Our alliance with them is simply 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend', but in the end, they will have to learn morality and renounce their frequent dealings with Demons, or they will be destroyed when the Reconcilliation comes. The Verbena combine all the flaws of the Cult of Ecstasy with a history of human sacrifice, carnality gone mad, and a lack of understanding of the nature of the One. Their blood magick is disturbingly reminiscent of Vampires, and our feud with them is ancient. Still, there is some potential to turn them back to the true way, and I believe far more of them will join us in the Reconcilliation than will be the case with the oft atheistic Order of Hermes. The most tragic of our feuds is that with the Dreamspeakers, for we should be friends, not foes. The Dreamspeakers are descended from those among the First Singers who lost track of the One and turned to the service of the Many instead. They serve the spirits, instead of the One who created the spirits. In our pride, we too often shot first and asked questions later in our dealings with them, and the cultures from which we arose have damaged or destroyed the lands from which they arose. They have good reason to hate us, but I pray that with time we can atone for our past mistakes and bring them out of their error into the true service of the One. So what would the world be like if the Celestial Chorus ruled it? The One rules all of Creation, we are but Her servants. I will not speculate much on what the world will be like after the Reconciliation, except to say that all will find themselves in the presence of the One, that Spirit and Matter will be reunited as they were in the beginning, and the Fallen will be devoured by the Void they have served. The Reconcilliation, however, may be long in coming. I can say more of what the world would be like if the Technocracy was defeated and were were triumphant in a lesser way than full Reconcilliation. Unlike many of the Traditions, we would not obliterate science and technology. (To be more precise, the majority of us do not believe technology is evil in and of itself, but I must admit there is a fringe within the Chorus which would destroy all technology). In the ideal world we hope to create, there would be those who practice true science, the study of the world the One has created, rather than the Technocratic parody of science, in which one forces the world to conform to one's theories, even when those theories fail to explain all that exists within reality. While in the past we have often blindly opposed science, it is not wrong to wish to understand the reality created by the One. The flaw has been when people like the Technocracy have tried to make it the be-all and end-all of all things, abandoning faith and turning away from the one to worship themselves. In our society, faith would reign supreme. Rather than religion being what you do in your spare time, as it is in the modern Technocratically warped world, it would resume its rightful place as the guide to all of life. All aspects of our life would be guided by service to the One, Her love for us, and our love of Her. It would be a world of miracles, in which all who possess Faith (and ideally, that would be everyone), would hear the Song of the One and wield its power. Disease, hunger, crime, war, all these things would pass away as we grew in Faith and brought the Reconcilliation closer to happening. I do not claim it would be a perfect world, for only the Reconcilliation could bring that about, but it would be a better world where no one ever starved (for they would be able to turn rocks into bread) or died of illness (for their Faith would purge them of disease). It is hard even for I to imagine the economy of such a world, for when all can call upon the One to sustain them in their needs, what need is there for all the trappings of capitalism? Still, I imagine that trade would endure in some form, for different people would possess different talents. Artists would still create unique works that others might wish to possess, for example. Their trade would be closer to barter than modern capitalist exchange. Some things would be little different. People would fall in love, marry, and have children, who would need to be educated. They would attend schools where the truth about the universe was taught, to prepare them for service to the One and to learn how best to use their talents. There would still be books and art and walks in the park on Sunday. Above all, it would be a world of hope and Faith renewed. The Song of the One would be heard clearly, and all would know the Truth. The One loves you, loves all His children. He calls to you every moment you are awake and every moment that you sleep. Even if you Slumber, you bear a piece of his heart he has given you to sustain you and bring you to him. To Sing with Her is the reason why were were created. It is your first, best destiny. Open your heart and step into the Song with us, that together, we might bring about the Reconcilliation and heal the world and ourselves.