Stephedism

> "This is what I see."
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> "So shall it be."
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> *- Stephedist declaration*
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The major Esshian-Solemnic world religion of **Stephedism** is an ancient, storied monotheistic system of beliefs and practiced traditions that boasts the largest global presence in Hephestia. *Stephedists* worship the creator deity Iden (or God) and subscribe to the prophetic lessons and fables authored by various oracles and seers.

Stephedists are commonly called **moths**. Stephedist moths seek the Light, the future promised as Destiny, instead of the Darkness, discovered by Essha in his defiance of Fate.

The major Stephedist holy text is the Book of Oracles.

## Key Concepts

### Sight of God

*The Light, Sight of God, God's Vision*

In Stephedist lore, the jurisdiction, infallible will, all-encompassing love and protection, and deific power of Iden is unanimously described as the Sight of God. All of Mankind lives within the Sight of God and is subject to Iden's judgment. To be within the Sight of God is to exist and be acknowledged by Him, and thus accounted for in Iden's Master Vision. To be without the Sight of God is Oblivion—the Esshian version of eternal damnation, being forsaken and shunned in the Outer Dark.

### Oblivion, Outer Dark, Darkness

All places that are covered in shadow are outside of God's line of sight. Varying degrees of shade limit God's vision in places, described as "blurriness" where the shadows are diluted.

The Outer Dark is the chthonic underworld where sinners and the enemies of God are banished to, denied the Sight of God for eternity.

Darkness is described as the "absence of God" or any place the Sight of God does not reach.

### Master Vision

The ultimate fate and future of the universe as conceived and specified by Iden, trusted by Esshians to be the perfect, paradisal gift promised by God. After the Violations, God withdrew Humanity's fate from his Master Vision, and has left it to its own destructive devices. Esshians long to redeem themselves and win back Iden's favor to re-install their place in the context of the Master Vision.

The Master Vision is the timeline of the universe as predicted by Iden, ending in paradise, a destination called Destiny which resides at the end of Time. Mankind is destined to arrive at Destiny as Time progresses, a process inaugurated by the transmission of heavenly alms (moments of time) from the shores of Destiny across the Sea of Sorrows to the Temporal Lands (the mortal world). The Master Vision is the order in which the angels send Iden's heavenly alms to be experienced by Mankind, the phenomenon recognized as the passage of time.

### Destiny

The Stephedist afterlife is called interchangeably **Heaven** and **Destiny**, where God resides and awaits all His creations after death.

Oracle Solemn introduced the idea of individual Destinies, which were cultivated to each single soul to celebrate their righteous life or punish their wicked diversions.

### The Vigil

To Stephedists, the Vigil has two meanings, both similar in nature and abstraction, and related in a way. Stephedists believe that God is omnipresent, watching over the world and giving it His protection.

Iden's Vigilance is divided into two phases:

**Day**, when Iden can only see what people have done.

**Night**, when Iden can see what people will do.

Vigil is an activity carried out by Stephedists to express and share their faith. One "upholds the vigil" and stays "vigilant" by living righteously, piously, and attentively for the purpose of staying within the Sight of God. Stephedists (particularly the clergy) are obligated by God to remain on vigil, meaning they are actively seeking out signs in nature or through provoked auguries that can relate to anything mentioned in any of the hundreds of unfulfilled prophecies (of which monks and many priests are required to memorize) observed by the Vistern.

#### Vigilance of Solemn

x "Ministry of Jesus"

Mundane Vigil = "Holy See"

- The Witness is tasked with maintaining God's Sight on Earth, upholding the vigil for the benefit of Mankind.

### Vigilance

*"Respice, circumspice, prospice"* ("Look behind, look around, look ahead")

Examine the past, the present, and the future. A virtue embraced by Stephedists, vigilance implies the individual's obligation to God (worship daily, etc.), alertness to the dangers around them, a mindfulness of the world's affairs, gratitude for God's blessings, and a healthy opportunism to improve the world or the lives of others whenever possible. The Rite of Surveillance is a ceremonialized form of vigilance.

### Sin of False Witness

*"Thou shalt not bear false witness to thine fellow man."*

Observing the truth, God's glory, and then denying or distorting it for personal gain.

### Sin of Ignorance

*"Thou shalt not neglect the glory of God's alms."*

In contrast to the virtue of vigilance is the anathema of ignorance. Stephedist dogma is intolerant of the willfully uninformed or the insular. Being unaware of what is going on in the world or the lives around you is considered an affront to God, a squandering of His precious gift of inquisitiveness to Man. Doubly, Iden takes personal offense when His works go unnoticed or unappreciated, and to waste one's ability to learn by ignoring God's wonders is unforgivable.

### Binocular

The overlap of God's visions of past and future create a transition phase called the present. To comprehend the present, to exist in the moment, to perceive motion, and to evaluate the causality of past-and-future is related to the depth of vision made possible by binocular vision (two eyes instead of one).

>> 1 eye allows for monoscopic vision

>> 2 eyes allows for 3D perspective

### Divine Insight

Certain people are blessed by God with this inherent ability which grants them supernatural cognition and precognitive faculty. They are able to discern anything without any prior context. Oracles and seers are said to possess this. Also known as omniscience, although the ability is constituted as conditional to the specifics of an asked query.

### Fate

A person’s fate is ultimately determined by God. Stephedists believe the future one finds is determined by one's actions in life. Each individual is rewarded a Destiny that suits their actions and honesty during life.

### Obscurity

Obscurity in visions is explained as a corruption of God’s original image as a result of human dishonesty or imperfect understanding. Visually, obscurity is described as blurry, indistinct details, gaps of perspective, which would require a veter’s expert eye to examine and decipher to render an interpretation. Liturgically, obscurity is interference between the querent and God caused by significantly volatile coming events, the gravity of the event echoing into the past as scrying interference.

Some theologians have postulated that since Iden could not reclaim His eyes from Essha, He cursed the oracles with Obscurity, making their stolen visions confused and incoherently abstract.

Another popular belief is that the world seen through a god's eyes is inexplicably incongruous to the terrestrial mortal perspectives dimly trying to grasp and then make sense of angelic knowledge that is, by its very nature, beyond human comprehension. It is not a curse, it is simply a borderline of the divine and the temporal.

In art, obscurity is depicted as clouds or opaque, cloudy textures. Representations of the Sinister Eye that have a milky, solid appearance are said to be obscured.

### Inner Light

According to Essha's Oracle, all of Humanity was vested with a "mote of Destinyly fire" (animus or soul), a portion of Iden's spiritual essence, which tied him or her to God, and was entrusted to each individual to help guide Humanity "across the deserts of Dark and the Unseeable to His pearl-salted beach that is touched by His warm waters. This water that comes from His Kingdom is sweet to the taste, a stream of honey between the bitter salt. This water that comes from His Kingdom flows here, to Eloviden, O City of Light, and we needs only to trust, when Night lowers her veil, that in His Ever-Knowing wisdom that He Who Lights the Sky can see the candles He lit within us from high above, Iden Our Creator will ford the murky waters and await us across the sea."

## Practices

* Noontime Prayer
* Midnight Prayer
* **Weekly service** – Every [Sunday] afternoon, the congregation attends a mass at the vistern for a sermon and liturgy reading from the veter.
* **Divination** – At the beginning of every month, the veter will survey the vistern’s oculus and provide an augury for the month’s term, decoding portents, good or bad, for spiritual matters as well as temporal, and will also cater to special interest auguries that vary by region, such as as weather forecasts for farmers. During this ceremony, the veter originally would inhale fumes from the hallucinogenic Liashan dollowin that they burned as incense.

* **Query** – Querents are able to ask the veter, privately or publicly, about future events and their standing in the Sight of God, which would determine their placement in the afterlife. Query requires a querent to divulge any information about themselves or others to facilitate the veter’s augury, ‘refining’ the image the veter claims to be observing from their querent's aura which is supposed to indicate one's spiritual merit. Historically, this service was widely abused and exploited for economic and political gains, and with the Council of Honheil, was abolished.

* **Rite of Surveillance** – A practice universal to all Solemnics. It is a contemplative ceremony performed privately or communally intended to strengthen the querent's rapport with God through thoughtful reflection on the good and bad things in their lives to inspire a sense of stability and calm. A veter may sometimes counsel a querent through this rite.
* **Rite of Umbrage** – A ceremony performed once a month, where the congregation gathers in the vistern for an hour and strives to symbolically experience Solemn’s suffering through sensory deprivation. The windows of the vistern are closed so that no light can enter, no candles are lit, and speaking is forbidden.
* **Rite of Oblivion** – A punitive decree that can only be issued by the Witness. It is an official exclusion of an individual from the Vistern, visterean sacraments, and from the Stephedist community as a whole. ‘Oblivion’ in this context means that the sentenced individual no longer exists in the eyes of God, who has literally turned His gaze from him. The obliterated pariah is then shunned from society, and for centuries, not entitled to any legal protection whatsoever; he was utterly and completely forgotten, and free-game for anyone to rob, rape, or murder with impunity. People living in Oblivion would be marked publicly with a large black circle branded into their forehead—the Blind Eye. Anyone caught helping an obliterated person automatically joined him in Oblivion.

* **Novianno Omen** – Annually, on the first day of the new year, the Witness surveys the [Great Oculus] at the Grand Observatory and proclaims an augur for the year’s events and fortunes. Before the Rising, the *Centianno Omen* occurred every hundredth year and included the naming of the next period for the [Julian] Calendar by the Stephedist Vistern.

* **Identification of God's Witness** – With the death of every witness, the College of Diviners is called to receive a vision from God that shows whom He has chosen to represent His Sight. The diviners collaborate on discerning the identity of the successor, as the image is always said to be ‘blurry’ and ‘indistinct’ when first received. According to Vistern doctrine, the new witness has already been decided by God, and it is the responsibility of the College of Diviners to discern his identity. The procedure of a Witness’ Identification is by all means a political election, where a diviner’s 'interpretation' equals a vote. And of course, he may always second-guess himself for the right price.