Priestcraft (Order of Priests)

"Priestcraft is easy to understand, just use some external authority figure to act as God's mouthpiece. Than declare that you are that person's designated disciple, which transfers God's power to you from that long-ago religious figure. Once people believe that model, you are de facto God's mouthpiece."
 -George Casteen, Order of Tricksters. 
== The Great Secret & Priestcraft?: ==
There is a darker side to the Order of Priests, one of necessity and possibly even subversion. The first members to the Order of Priests, all those eons ago, quickly learned that the beliefs of the people somehow affected reality. In time, as more and more people carried the same belief, the Priests realize just how powerful belief is in determining our reality.
The Order of Priests doesn't claim to understand how exactly this works, but they've seen it first hand: what the masses believe is reality has a powerful determination on what is real in our world. In extraordinary cases, Priests have been able to cause things to 'pop' into existence (not literally, mind you...) just by getting enough people to believe in it, however the number of people required to do that is enormous.
In the time before written history, the people followed shamanism and paganism and many other venues of belief which led down an increasingly darker path. As the belief of the masses came to resemble the dark and twisted fantasies of so many, that affected reality - and thus life in our world became increasingly darker. To reverse this, the Priests seized control of the belief systems, at times literally taking control of organized religion and turning it towards a higher calling.
Priests have long devised methods in how to whip people into the right belief system, whether they claimed to be doing it for the best or worst reasons. From fire and brimstone sermons, to careful campaigning and elbow-rubbing with the elite and powerful, the Order has been careful and fervent in ensuring that history does not repeat itself, and the dark side of human belief doesn't return to dominant our world.
== The Great Apostasy: ==
Sometime after the legalization of Christianity in the ancient Roman Empire, the Great Secret was revealed to a small but dedicated core of non-Priestly Adepts. A Librarian Adept, Hypatia, had discovered through philosophical inquiry the truth of the Great Secret. In her goodness, she confided in a following she had developed so that the Orders of Adepts could come into the light of truth.
It failed spectacularly.
The Adepts, whose names and Order membership have been stricken from history, proceeded to 'free' many people from their belief systems. People started believing in all sorts of things and the world was temporarily plunged into chaos. The servants of Darkness took advantage of the crises and instigated Arianism, the belief that Jesus was not fully God.
The Priests had never concluded or really believed that human belief was strong enough to affect God, but they were still horrified by it nonetheless. What was then known as the whole world was plunged into anarchy and carnage as rebellions broke out and the collective mind of man went haywire.
And as if things couldn't get any worse, the Adepts who had been clued into the Great Secret began to have an adverse affect - on the other members of their Orders! Adepts began reporting a lose in Kenosis, some began losing their powers. Without the right belief, the Adepts ability to connect with their Divine Aspect on their souls was being seriously impinged, in some cases obscured completely.
The Order of Priests took steps to instill order once again. The Adepts who had been granted knowledge of the Great Secret were removed (rumor has it by Excommunication, although the Senior Members of the Order insist it was not so) and the world eventually repaired itself from the damage. But not the Priests, since then they have never trusted anyone, not even their brothers and sisters outside the Order, with the Great Secret.
As for Hypatia, she was murdered by parties unknown while Alexandria was in the grip of anarchy.
== Hidden Guilt: ==
In time the world healed, but the Priests as a group have forever been left isolated in their knowledge of how belief determines much of what we come to know. The Order of Priests, from top to bottom, want nothing but to do what is right and best for their flock, for the whole world, but with people unwilling to take charge of themselves they are forced to cajole people, at times even manipulating them. Even their fellow Adepts.
This has left the Priests riddled with self-doubt and shame, a sense of guilt which often gnaws at all of them. For the average Priest Adept, the battle going on inside of them is often every bit as real as the external one.
== Coming of the Shepard Kings: ==
Repeated attempts to throw off the shackles of the institutionalized church, which the Order of Priests was largely responsible for, were in fact carried out by political defectors from within the Order itself. Calling themselves the Shepard Kings, this minority sect within the Order of Priests fought for a way to make all Adepts aware of the Great Secret and to do so without a repeat of the Great Apostasy.
The Shepard Kings believed that the Great Apostasy occurred because those Adepts were too used to being instructed in the right belief, or the right belief they were supposed to have. Once freed, they ran amok the way children do when let loose from the house after weeks of confinement. If people are free to know God personally, they will carry within themselves the right religious notions all on their own. But that must carry with it the risk of some people choosing a darker path. Such is the price of freedom.
Despite the attempts on the part of the Order of Melchizedek, the Protestant Reformation succeeded (although not without much calamity). The world is now robed in a mantle of independent churches. That means in the modern world the Order of Priests is sharply divided into two factions, the pastor-based Shepard Kings and the priest-based Order of Melchizedek. One guides, the other instructs.
Category:Church