Gnostic G0NFism

Gnostic G0NFism is a sect of the religion of G0NFism, developed as the private religion of StoneyStoner_ (and to a lesser extent, his cousin GubeyGuber in Abexilas). Gnostic G0NFism is a monotheistic and pantheistic religion centered around the figure of G0NF, and a divine, all-encompassing representation of the forces of nature called the Heavenly Spheres. G0NFism is one of the oldest religions on Stoneworks, perhaps beat only by the small ethnic religion of Hallowism, and is the oldest religion still practiced today. StoneyStoner_ has claimed that G0NF was integral to the formation of Stoneworks as separate from any normal towny or factions server.
== Historical Summary ==
While early world of Jagdas was small and developing cities and kingdoms, it was plagued by an unmatched, hyper-violent group of raiders and marauders called Crab Season. Crab Season toppled several states and destroyed several cities, leaving players in terror of them. 
G0NF initially manifested into the server on the canopy of the dark oak forests, not in the standard spawn at the world's center. G0NF attracted great attention for his public works, his charisma, his strange and loud personality, and for his travel and gift giving. He soon grew a following around himself, and he began to preach and perform miracles for his followers and witnesses. 
Eventually, Crab Season became more and more violent, destroying larger towns and killing more people. Eventually, they grew tired of G0NF's preaching, and they attacked his base of G0NFtown, which had been settled by his friends, followers, and refugees from the Crabs' destruction. Crab Season burned down his forest and destroyed his town. G0NF was trapped in the lobby to his mine with two of his followers as one of the Crab Season warriors, The_Schlank, bust the door down. G0NF was able to escape and ran to a small river-island home nation of Dhufariya, but one of G0NF's followers named Katczynski001 refused to hide G0NF and turned him over to Crab Season. Crab Season put him on a dirt block, built a plus-shaped cross behind him, and decapitate him with an axe. 
G0NF's execution made him a martyr to the good people of Jagdas, so they rallied together in the castle Regilmold. When Crab Season attacked them, they were able to finally defeat them, take their powerful artifact weapons from them, and destroy their home base. 
On the third day after G0NF's execution, he returned to the server. The players embraced him and brought him to a mountain Temple near Vierina built by Starlorde123. He prayed at the altar there, gave his final sermon and recount of the afterlife, and ascended to heaven. After this, G0NFism became a widespread religion all over Jagdas, with his followers becoming bishops in their home cities. 
File:Vierina cropped.png|City of Vierina, a large city at this time in Jagdas, and a victim of Crab Season
File:The coup of Kaihyo Cho.png|Crab Season mid-attack on the city of Kaihyo-Cho
File:GONF.jpg|G0NF on the forest canopy
File:2020-08-20 20.42.11.png|G0NF during the Attack on G0NFtown
File:G0NF.png|The Execution of G0NF
File:Front gates of Regilmold.png|The front face of Castle Regilmold
File:G0NF asf asdf asdf saf .png|G0NF praying at the Temple of the Sacred Flame, right before his ascent to heaven
File:GONF-01.jpg|An icon used for worship by the G0NFist church in Dawn City
== Sacred Texts & Teachings ==
==== Primary Source Materials ====
All of Gnostic G0NFist literature and theology is an interpretation of the primary source material of G0NF and this period of history. However, the sect's theology and written tradition have underwent many large creative innovations and additions since the fall of Jagdas. While Gnostic G0NFism is the G0NFist religion most closely adherent to the core source material, many of its ideas and philosophies (best shown in the Epic of G0NF, composed some 290 years after the fact) are later concepts and innovations. 
The primary source materials for the Gnostic G0NFist tradition can be found at these pages here:
* G0NF
* Gonfism
* Execution of G0NF
* The G0NF war
* The First Crusade
* The Battle of Regilmold
* Political History of Crab Season
* Sack of Crab Season
* Chronicles of Jagdas
* Yimmu-Audal (Jagdas)
* An in-game, 6 page book called "The Book of G0NF" by Starlorde123
* Oral testimony from StoneyStoner
==== The Epic of G0NF ====
The only canonical piece of literature for the Gnostic G0NFists is the Epic of G0NF, written by StoneyStoner_, which is a literary interpretation of the events of the Crab Wars and the teachings of G0NF. The Epic of G0NF was composed sometime around 280 TE, but was not widely read or published until GubeyGuber opened StoneyStoner_'s vault in Rathnir around 20 VE.
The Epic of G0NF is a 17 part story that is traditionally broken up into 5 parts:
* 3 chapters on the Prelude and chaotic disorder of contemporary Jagdas
* 6 chapters on G0NF's arrival and 5 episodes of his miracles and teachings
* 4 chapters on G0NF's passion narrative and execution
* 3 chapters on the crusade against Crab Season
* 1 chapter on G0NF's final sermon and apotheosis
==== The Book of Stoney ====
The Book of Stoney is an influential epic story, and is considered supplemental material to the Epic of G0NF. The Book of Stoney covers the Traveler's Era period of the server, from Stoney's genocide of the Villagers in Rathnir, to the War of the Comet. Notably, these events played a significant role in fusing the basic G0NFist theology with that of the native Villagers, forming into the beliefs of the Makerist Church. This influence could be seen as a Gnostic G0NFist adaptation of Makerist beliefs into their own more conservative and esoteric theology.
The Book of Stoney covers StoneyStoner_, a controversial figure in G0NFism and the server at large, and addresses the issues of other gods co-existing with G0NF and the Heavenly Spheres. StoneyStoner_ is an unsympathetic anti-hero who genocides the innocent villager population and begins the destructive War of the Comet, but he is also a powerful protector figure that helped cultivate the civilizations of Rathnir and Eldham. The story is most relevant to G0NFism because Stoney was taken up to heaven by G0NF himself, even after committing all of his atrocities. The book argues that Stoney was a complex figure, and given the powers of a half-Paxian mortal, his impact on the world was inordinate in both good and bad directions. Therefore, G0NF forgave Stoney for his misdeeds, and decided to play an active role in punishing and rehabilitating him after his death.
== Theology ==
==== Spheres of Heaven ====
The theology of Gnostic G0NFism holds that the universe itself (including all the worlds from Paxia to Abexilas, the veil, and the supernatural beyond realms) are controlled by underlying forces of nature called the Spheres of Heaven. None of the Spheres of Heaven are personified or named except for G0NF, who is believed to have been transformed into the Sphere of Heaven of goodness and moral virtue upon his post-resurrection ascension and apotheosis. The Spheres of Heaven are seen as an impersonal, uncontrollable force that one must take great lengths to study, understand, and abide by. G0NF is thought to have brought true understandings and teachings (gnosis) about the Spheres of Heaven.
==== G0NF ====
G0NF was an angler-fish person who materialized on top of a dark forest biome in Jagdas, as opposed to the normal spawn-birth that players undergo. G0NF is believed to have been formed from the Spheres of Heaven, but was not initially one of the Spheres of Heaven himself. G0NF is not seen as being an omniscient or omnipotent god figure, but he has intimate understanding of the Spheres of Heaven, and therefore has access to supernaturally powerful wisdom and intelligence. 
G0NF's role in Jagdas was to teach the players there what it meant to be good and virtuous. He was later executed by the marauding players of Crab Season in order to imbue the moral imperative of his teachings onto his followers, who were then motivated to destroy Crab Season and therefore defeat the embodiment of evil in their time. G0NF was then resurrected from the dead and ascended to heaven, becoming one of the Heavenly Spheres itself. G0NF's preaching and learning (particularly, learning and appreciating the flaws and sins of man, notably pride) was a necessary condition to his becoming one of the Spheres of Heaven, for goodness and moral virtue could exist in mankind without education, examples, and sacrifice. With this fulfilled after his death and the defeat of Crab Season, G0NF could ascend to heaven and be a permanent fixture as a Heavenly Sphere, eternally presiding over the moral life of the universe.
==== Miracles ====
G0NF is believed to play an active part in the world as the Heavenly Sphere of virtue, sometimes even physically manifesting again in very sporadic episodes. There have been four canonically accepted miracle events, and others unconfirmed, where G0NF's intervention is directly observed.
* The many miracles of the Epic of G0NF
* The Levitation of G0NF
* The Blessing of the River G0NF
* G0NF taking the soul of StoneyStoner_ after his death
* Several apparitions of G0NF in Rathnir, Eldham, and Abexilas
==== Afterlife ====
Gnostic G0NFism posits a passive and broadly content afterlife, where the conscious soul of the deceased goes on a journey through all space and time, eventually fully reuniting back into the Spheres of Heaven. The person's conscious soul experiences the effects of their time alive as a part of this reunifying journey, and so they will intimately witness, understand, and experience the positive and negative impacts their life had on the world around them. Additionally, the conscious soul dissipates during this journey, and parts of it (memories, personality traits, genetic factors) ma end up in other places where there is a conscious soul, like new born babies, animals, and supernatural entities. The breakdown of separation between the individual conscious soul and the universal divine soul of the Heavenly Spheres is why Gnostic G0NFists see death as a liberation from an ultimately illusionary reality.
== Relationship with Other Religions & G0NFist Sects ==
==== Other Religions ====
Gnostic G0NFism does not deny the existence or reality of other gods or supernatural forces. However, it classifies them below the Heavenly Spheres and therefore below the post-resurrection G0NF. The other gods and religions may be freely practiced and believed if they offer positive understanding and action of the Spheres of Heaven. This position is official doctrine to those whom take the Book of Stoney as canonical literature, as his Paxian ancestry and relationship with other gods is treated as manifest out of the forces of the Heavenly Spheres. However, attributing an all-powerful or monotheistic status to these gods is seen as naïve and misunderstood.
==== Makerism ====
The Makerist Church claims their tradition to stretch back to the Villager populations of Jagdas which adopted G0NF worship, but did not survive long after the destruction of the world and the player colonizations of Rathnir and Eldham. The Makerist Church was reinvigorated during the Blessing of the River G0NF and the later events of the War of the Comet. There are six main facets of Makerist religious life that Gnostic G0NFists disagree upon:
1. The existence of a personal, four-part monotheistic creator god, of which G0NF is the mortal aspect. 
2. The Heavenly Spheres are a collection of twelve realms
3. The inclusion of theology and sacred literature derived from the ancient indigenous Villager Lore
4. An active, location-based afterlife
5. The portrayal of StoneyStoner_ as the incarnation of the satanic Emen, who genocided the villagers and rules over the End to torture people in the afterlife
6. The hierarchical church structure with bishops, councils, and rites
While the Gnostic G0NFists have very different interpretations of the religion, they have only ever conflicted with the Makerists during the War of the Comet, which was only incidental due to the leadership of the Gnostic Stoney on Eldham's side, and the Makerist church leaders joining the Rathnir coalition as rebellious Eldhamites. Most Gnostic G0NFists condescendingly see Makerist doctrine as a very strange absorbtion of G0NFist history into an entirely separate religion, so they do not like to be lumped in with them under the label of 'G0NFist'
==== Reformed G0NFism ====
Reformed G0NFism is a supposed new sect / heretical movement of G0NFism that recently diverged from the Core Makerist Church in the summer of 9 VE (May 9 2024). Following proclaimed revelationary experiences by its leader Efan and his public accusation of 9 theses which criticized the Core Makerist Church, the Makerist tried and found him guilty of heresy. Efan was then burned at the stake, when it began to rain and he was struck by lightning. The Makerists received this as a sign of his guilt, whereas the Reformationists believed this to be a sign of his innocence. After this, Efan's leaders fled the lands of the Makerists, and settled the secret colony of New Genova.
The Reformed G0NFists claim to be a reformation into the "Original G0NFist church" (presumably that of the Jagdasian Villagers), but have kept much of the same scriptures and ideas prominent in core Makerism. The Reformed G0NFists elevate different practices and passages of their canon, such as the 11 Commandments of the Player's book, Sola Fide, a hierarchy of angels, a middleground of predestination vs. determinism, and the present transcendence of the Maker.
Gnostic G0NFists are largely unaware of the Reformed G0NFists, and would likely see them as no different from the Makerists.
Category:Religion