Shireroth

A couple of years back you guys essentially went and more or less formalised the concept of Immoti in Cedrism while I, due to being in the army, wasn't looking. Eoin even got partway through a nifty story about the first Immoti. Now, I registered my disapproval earlier this year but didn't take the time to seriously explain just *why* I didn't like it... now that there seems to be a chance Cedrism is spreading beyond Shireroth, I'd rather get it over with.

The Path of Immobility was created to solve the problem that the choice between the Paths of Transcendence and Descendence is too black-and-white - that if there's a "good" path and "bad" path, even if they don't correspond exactly with our usual notions of morality, there should also be a finitely large space of ways to live your lives that put you in the "middle" path.

I would like to argue that not only did the problem not really exist before the introduction of the Path of Immobility, and that even in a universe where the problem had existed, the Path would only have made it *worse*. I also propose an interesting solution to a related problem I discovered while investigating this issue.

The universe of Cedrism is approximately based on a threefold symmetry: There's the Divine Realm, there's the Mortal Realm, and there's Balgurd. The Divine Realm and Balgurd are both populated with immortal souls AFAIK, it's only the Mortal realm that contains, well, mortals. In general, the immortals don't have to travel between the realms if they don't specifically want to - it's only the mortals who keep discovering themselves through reincarnation, until either they move on to one of the other realms or the End Times roll around.

It's that last clause that I'd like to point your attention to. Read up on what happens at the end, folks - there's still mortals around, in fact it seems the mortals will be the real soldiers (and real heroes?) in the final fight, with the Gods and Transcendi being around mostly to just provide support and leadership.

Consider these poor souls still within mortal bodies at the end. I'm going to presume that the universe keeps working approximately as it always did all the way until not less than ten years or so before the end - in other words, there's still going to be souls around that might be walking the Path of Transcendence or the Path of Descendence, but which had simply been too indecisive or come in too late to get to the end before time ran out.

With this in mind, consider the problem of black-and-whiteness again: It's not really there, is it? Even if *everyone* walked one of the Paths - and where does it even say you have to do that? - there would still be people around who never get to the end of their Path, because they only have a limited amount of time to get there. The Path of Immobility is unnecessary.

What happens to those who die in the final fight and have neither anywhere to reincarnate to nor enough good or bad karma to move out of the Web of Life? Since it's unknown to us what comes after the End Times I don't have the full answer, but I think I might have a part of the answer in the solution to another problem:

Consider Buridan's principle. The eponymous story tells of the hungry ass that, placed equidistant between two bales of hay, could not decide which one to eat and starved to death. The somewhat mathematical way to describe the actual principle is that it is not possible to make a discrete decision based on continuous input in bounded time.

What happens when you die and it is time to decide what happens in your next life? In most cases it's going to be obvious - if you've been really wicked, you'll drop out of the Web of Life, etc... but occasionally you're going to get a strange soul that remembers just enough about how to hold on to the Web to keep dodging the demon fish for perhaps a very long time - and similarly, while a soul will usually either transcend or not transcend at death, some fellow who's only so good and no more will end up having his application on the fourteenth round through the Committee for Acceptance of Beings as Transcended because they just can't arrive at a decision.

(again ignoring the boundedness of time - the mistake that was made when the Immoti were first conceived - realise that adding a "middle way" between Transcendence and Descendence wouldn't help. Oh, it would remove one boundary, true - thing is, it would create two more: one between the Transcendi and the Immoti, and another one between the Immoti and the Descendi. That is, it only makes the problem worse.)

What state is a soul in after it has given up its body but before it has reincarnated or found its way to one of the non-Mortal realms? To provide a name and inspiration for what this state could be like, I offer a quote of extraordinary insight about Unix:

Most people aren't aware of the fact that UNIX actually dates back to the Cthulhuvian epoch, and was widely used in R'lyeh. The R'lyehish word fhtagn is actually a technical term, and literally means "sleeps on an event". Thus, Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn literally means "in his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits blocked on I/O".

While we don't know what really happens between lives, I think "sleeping on an event" (or, in less Unixy terms, "existing but not actively doing anything, instead just waiting for a certain event") is a suitable description - that is, souls that haven't yet been able to reach a decision on where to go are fhtagn. What kind of an existence this is I can only guess - but it seems oddly appropriate to think of it as some kind of a twisted space following a set of rules not entirely like the Euclidean ones we're used to, populated with fell creatures - spiders on the Web of Life, perhaps, or Daemon Fish swimming around in the distance (assuming distance means the same thing for those fhtagn than it does to us!). Most souls prefer to avoid this state and forget it existed once they're reborn - conveniently, we could still have the Birthsight with this space, only instead of being "granted" to people who are really neutral about everything, it'd instead be given to those souls who decide and are able to remember what they saw before reincarnating.

What say you? Is it time for a good ol' reformation? Or will I have to expect to be burned at the stake?

Most interesting. I myself knew nothing of the path of the Immoti ... most of my Cedrist knowledge has been gleaned from looking at the Wiki, and I gather the Immoti, and Neharab, were never uploaded to it. But I agree with your solution and the original thoughts of AngelGuardian - what's the good of a religion if you don't have moral absolutes/constants? The path of the Immoti sounds nice enough to be made into a religious principle, but really the much simpler solution is to say "it's a cop out" - and all actions are either good or bad, and some people just don't get enough of either to get anywhere ... but that's their problem.

Personally I'm not a big fan of reincarnation but that's just because I suffer from this terrible desire to fit everything together, even though very clearly a Christian understanding of the universe and a Cedrist can't both be entirely true at the same time. Of course, that never stops me trying, and I've done a darn good job of reconciling every great magical problem with God, and thought I'd managed Cedrism by making gods merely immortal beings who fed off belief (rather like Small Gods in Discworld, a concept I still think is absolutely brilliant) but were, on a multiverse scale, still underneath God ... but reincarnation still didn't quite fit in (though transcending to God status by mortals is easily explained as a mortal gaining enough understanding of Spiritual Magic to sustain his soul after death with it). Anyway, it's only a micronational religion so it doesn't matter ...

In short, I'm in favour of not burning Ari at the stake.

Maybe some quantum effect on those in a kind of limbo.......we do not know what state they are in until SOMEONE attempts to measure them, and the waveform collapses......

I wholly agree with Ari. And think that the idea didn't make much sense. As it's not even in the wiki, it's all good then. It never happened.. you never saw anything.. I honestly had half forgotten about it. And was thinking about it the other day and decided to let the idea slip away into the ether.

But I do like Ari's analysis of the cycle. (though there isn't any sentient being who chooses if someone is good enough to go one way or the other)

On other points.

There is no "god" above the Cedrist gods. The universe simply is. To be honest, Cedrism was designed to be a very scientific religion. Putting aside the idea of divine magic, the gods are just beings on a higher plain of existence. Even the demons are the same, but they went a different route with different goals. If you watch Stargate, think the Ancients/Lantians vs. the Ori.

Transcendence is in part a mental evolution and part an act of will. (The Alejia story actually violates this) And among the Transcended the ones we call gods are just the big whigs, there are MANY lesser transcended, one's not quite as powerful as the Gods, or just with smaller egos...

The gods don't "feed off belief" as in discworld (never read).

I think a small overhaul of the religion might be in order. A redeclaration of how it all works. A rewording of how the rhelms and planes work. etc..etc.

(never read)

If you're going to read any Discworld novel it should be Small Gods. Either that or Men at Arms. Or Reaper Man, or Mort, or possibly Eric. Sourcery's also good... oh I'll just be quiet.

Oh, any of the later Witch or City Watch ones are awesome ...

You are all slaves of Zurvan and he does not particularly care what happens to you.

But surely Ahuramazda is constantly working against the forces of Ahriman and The Tudeh Lie for the good of all the faithful?

I much prefer Solarism...

Heathen. That religion takes itself to seriously...

I had no idea you were Solarist Jess. Where did you pick that up?

I haven't seen Bill around in a long time. However did you pick it up?

The Gralans are digging around after Jasonian tech - god alone knows what they've picked up.

Like a disease for the soul.....

The Khan of Vijayanagara wrote:The Gralans are digging around after Jasonian tech - god alone knows what they've picked up.

Please don't include me in that (nor very many other Gralans). It's pretty much just Andreas doing something else.

I've spoken to Bill via AIM...

@Jess - Oh, ok then.
@Liam - Well, it's more Novatainia, but Bayen, North and Cathbahd are helping too.
@Ardy - don't worry, we're more interested in their magic than their religion.

Andreas the Wise wrote: @Liam - Well, it's more Novatainia, but Bayen, North and Cathbahd are helping too.

After my exams, you get the support of me that you need.

The problem with Cedrist concepts in general is that I dont have the authority to finalize anything, and Erik's too busy to bother (which I understand).

Personally, I can accept a new idea of the Immoti, or the current idea, or not having the Immoti at all (Andreas hit my nail on the head). But Erik, for the love of good religious fiction, either let me have final say in the concepts and the shape of the religion, or pen a complete version please!


...please?

Sounds good to me ...

I tend to approve what you do.... if you had not noticed.