Many Minmatar belief systems include the Amarr God. The one interpretation I’ve most commonly ran into is Amarr God as an elder spirit of the True Amarr. Almost all Minmatar spiritual systems include the Seven Gods, or Seven Elders, or Elder Spirits in some shape or form: one Elder for each tribe, the embodiment of that tribe’s essence, a pantheon among, sometimes above, other spirits.
While some belief systems state that what makes the tribes tribes is the existence of such Elder Spirits, it is not a far-fetched notion that other peoples too have their own God, even if not quite up to the job of making their people a Minmatar tribe. There are many stories and myths about the Evil God, the Nameless God, God’s Hunger, shedding a spiritual light on the relationship of our nations.
Renouncers go a step further in these beliefs. The Renouncer teachings hold that the Amarr God is not only a god among others, but the God, the one most powerful among all spirits. Most Renouncers believe that in some shape or form the Amarrian religion that teaches that the Rite is the way to God’s favor and to avoiding oblivion after death is true. Some go as far as to state that the universe is rightfully God’s, in life and in death.
The core tenet of the beliefs of the Renouncer clans is that even if God is powerful and even if he has the right to judge us all, we should not submit. One does not give up freedom or abandon one’s own spirits for the promise of reward, or in the fear of punishment. Better a dead wolf than a live dog.
Some say that while the universe is God’s, there is a place outside the universe, where those who follow their Fate, who live andesh, who fill their obligations to the ancestors, can flee when they die. Or that oblivion is not to be feared by those who have lived a life with Fate, because what is oblivion but the dissolving of one’s mind and body for the spirit to join the All-Spirit, to join the Elder of your tribe?
But we all say it does not matter; whatever God’s punishment, we still should resist.
And that is why Renouncers are not heathens, unknowing of God’s will; they are heretics, twisting the meaning of it away from its intended purpose.
There are many gods in this universe And the Amarrian God is the most powerful of them all But strength does not equal wisdom And might does not make right
I now and forever renounce the Evil God I will not obey His commands I will not follow His followers I will not fear His punishment
May I live a dutiful life May I find my Fate and fulfill it May my ancestors smile when they see me Today, and on the day of my death
God forgive you, one day you will understand and weep, as I have.
God’s will has been done, the Matari and all the people of New Eden have suffered according only to how they stray from God’s righteous will. Even the choosen are tested, them most of all for of them more is demanded.
What is it inside you that makes you reject the idea of the perfect love of God? Is it because only the choosen can feel God’s love and light?
Ask yourself these questions, turn and be saved. Take the free gift of life God has offered you all.
Or burn your own homes down and suffer the flames.
Watch, for ten thousand years if you choose. All those who embrace God are blessed. All who reject God are judged. Matar grows stronger and God’s grace grows among her people. I have walked there, I have seen the heart of her rebellion and the halls of her oppressor both, truly I tell you that to embrace God is the only way to escape destruction.
This is pretty much how my clan and most of my subtribe seem to view the Amarr God. We interpret things such that the Amarr Elder Spirit is about as powerful as all seven of the minmatar tribe’s elder spirits together, but when united the spirits of the seven tribes do edge out the spirit of the True Amarr.
The other thing is that we believe the Spirit of the Amarr is unnaturally bloated and fattened on the souls of its followers in a rather grotesque and eldritch fashion, turning it from a regular spirit into this slobbering and hungering abomination lurking in the borders of Empire space and gobbling up any souls of those who die within its domains without the protection of another spirit.
From here, at least among the Vele’kor, the interpretation splits. Some clans, like mine, see the Amarr God as evil, having intentionally led the Amarr people to spread its power and grow its influence, manipulating them, controlling them, ordering them to feed it a steady supply of souls and grow the Empire’s borders so its insatiable jaws can spread further and further.
Other clans within the subtribe however see the Amarr Spirit as pitiable and corrupted by its followers, a sort of ‘tail wagging the dog’ scenario where the Amarr pumped up their spirit and turned it into this tortured existence and only by destroying the Empire and the priests who keep the Amarr Spirit unnaturally bloated can it be freed from its ongoing torture at the hands of its followers. Regardless of which interpretation is used, a common warcry among the more spiritually inclined members of my subtribe is the call to “Split open god’s belly and release those who have been devoured.”
Gird yourself in the Armor of the Spirits, for the Evil God Hungers for your Soul Arm yourself with the Weaponry of the Tribes, for the Evil Priests know no restraint Paint yourself in the Runes of the Ancestors, for the Evil Word whispers and corrupts Ready yourself, for the war has not yet begun Steal yourself in the knowledge that all Empires fall in time
Quildar tell a story of the Nameless God, that he lacks a name because he’s infinitely hungry, so hungry he eats all souls and has eaten even his own name, and wants to consume the world. That sounds similar.
Because God has told you non stop for your whole existence what awaits you.
Everything you and know is nothing but a conduit for God’s will.
He shows you the black and empty void that you fall into willingly and gives you the regrets you carry of all you cannot change.
When his work is done even the void will cease to be, why then do you weep so bitterly for the love you lost if you choose this nothingness to reject him?
Perhaps one day you will save yourself Elsebeth, you will realize why God’s will has become this.
You who reject his love out of awe of it’s glory also have a choice to turn and repent.
God ain’t told us jack. The Amarr told us that god told us, and that’s not good enough.
Then again, even if your god appeared before us and verified everything you stand for, I would still be inclined to unload an entire cargohold’s worth of artillery into him. No regrets.
I think this is fundamentally a terrible thing, because the last thing we should be doing after the days of darkness is humouring those madmen by adopting their deity into our written and oral traditions. What’s left of them after they tried to erase our culture, that is. I can safely speak for my clan when I say that such an act of syncretism would bring dishonour upon us.
I think I can safely speak for mine when I say that our original belief systems were lost or irrevocably corrupted by our time in bondage. We, as a people, have rebuilt them in many ways. This includes incorporating—and honoring—the verbal traditions of our people during their time in chains.
This is not done to humor the Amarr, but to honor our people, by remembering the traditions of resistance and rejection of the Amarr god. Many of those stories and traditions fit the Amarr god into our framework—as an elder spirit, or a powerful spirit of malice, or demon. Those traditions, stories, and beliefs, are part of what brought them through their ordeal without surrendering to the pressure to give up, to worship the god of their oppressors.
To ignore them, dismiss them, or try to expunge the beliefs, stories, and traditions our ancestors used to remain who we are… for us… that would be the real dishonor.
I am by no means saying everyone should be a Renouncer. It is also a core tenet of Renouncer - and many other - Minmatar beliefs that there is no one true spiritualism, but what is right for you depends on who you and yours are.
My belief is that trying to deny history is not the living tradition I should live. For me and mine, tradition is about taking what your parents and grandparents and their parents and grandparents and – THANK YOU translator implant – what your [translate as: Amarrian: direct ancestors] did and applying that to your own living life. For me, ignoring the centuries of darkness and pretending they had no effect and no spirits exist in and of that dark time, and trying to go back to some book-learned or barely-passed-on version of old, old customs like the Revivalists do, that would not be the right way. Book-learned, ever unchanging ways are Scripture, not Tradition.
Do not take me wrong. I am glad Revivalist clans exist, too. We can learn from them and their ways and find out what there is they have found out that will mesh with our ways. But for me, it would be a dishonour to cast aside all the ancestors in between.
We are but particles of dust quivering before God. Do as you will and it would be in vain against his might.
It is clear we Amarr have failed categorically in shepherding the Minmatar people; we have nourished resentment and hatred rather than inspiring awe and humility. It is the highest calling of our station to serve as guides and teachers, ushering the disparate peoples of New Eden into the presence of a righteous God with reverence and humility; a calling that we have clearly failed to measure up to in recent generations which is not the fault of the Minmatar but of the Amarr.
The purpose for our faithful crusade is to dispel the notion that many roads lead to salvation. There is but one path to salvation and those who possess the truth are charged with sharing that truth; for no greater hatred could one have for another than to deny them the truth and willingly let them wander into damnation without attempting to save them.
A righteous god1 would not demand obedience and abasement, nor unquestioning, craven obsequiousness and kowtowing toadyism.
A just god would not teach his followers that sin is generational, and hereditary, that newborn children, not a minute out of the womb, are to be held responsible for transgressions committed over ten thousand years before.
A wise god would know that compulsion breeds resentment, and all such forced states inflict trauma, and wound the victim, often unrecoverably. To inflict such wounds on children, generation after generation, is to guarantee that they will all be maimed—either broken, simpering, or defiant with rage.
A god worthy of reverence would, indeed, not create a universe where such things would occur. Creating such a universe and setting innocent victims within it is an act of wanton cruelty, or at best, neglect. To do so, and yet still claim infallible perfection, is vicious, and sadistic.
A god who does all those things… can only ever be… ‘Evil’.
1. Rather, a righteous god would know that subjugation is never righteous. It is oppressive. It is base, and thuggish, and cruel. A righteous god would be a leader, not a tyrant, would inspire love, not demand it like some petulant child. Instead of demanding obedience, such a god would leave followers aching to emulate its example. Rather than abasement, it would challenge the faithful to exalt the most base among them, to make of themselves servants of those they meet and welcome them as guests, not force servitude upon them, and drag them off in chains.
A righteous god would motivate the devoted to themselves be righteous. And that is a very different thing from the self-righteous, condescending paternalism of men like you.
You have chosen to take offense where none was intended. I must apologize from the outset as this response is likely to be lengthy and verbose but I am quite uncertain how to respond succinctly and it is a topic for which I am passionate. Should you take the time to read it through, I would be appreciative but will not fault you should you choose not to.
God has the only right to demand obedience being creator and lord over all. It is his law that has been laid out before creation and it is therefore by his law that rebellion and sin are penalized. It is a system that is reflected in the governance of every nation; in which the leadership of that nation establishes and enforces the laws of that nation. Obedience is expected and compliance enforced. To God, all of creation is one nation over which he governs.
God does not demand abasement and the use of such to try and enforce obedience is a failing of those charged with overseeing. Nor does God demand the sort of blind groveling you’ve described; he demands faith which leads to righteousness. This is found through a recognition of God’s authority over creation and subsequently submission to that authority. We could again use the comparison of this relationship to that of a nation and its leader with the qualifier that the faithful understand God to be beyond mortal failing.
The Scriptures do not teach that sin is hereditary but rather that we are all beset by temptation and prone to rebellion and it is only through a conscious pursuit of righteousness can we fulfill the purpose that God has given to each of us by his will. It is because of this that we require instruction and mentorship; we must be taught discipline and guided toward understanding. This begins at childbirth and carries on throughout our lives.
A wise God knows that compulsion only breeds resentment in the rebellious and that contrition to just governance leads to fulfillment. A child may resent their parents for a time as they are compelled to obey them and a child’s ignorance may lead them to rebel against the will of those who seek naught but their good. Yet a child brought to understanding and instilled with principle and righteousness through the dedicated instruction of their parents gains appreciation, respect and fulfillment.
You attribute to God sadism and viciousness because he has imparted upon you the freedom to rebel, were you a puppet incapable of acting contrary to his will do you believe your existence would be an act of benevolence? God has established an order to his creation, he has imparted upon us the knowledge of the consequences of our rebellion and set before us a path by which we may fulfill the purpose he has given us yet he has left us with the will to choose obedience or rebellion.
In closing, it is not my intent to be condescending, rather informative, and before you judge me as self-righteous perhaps we would both be better served by getting to know one another.
Let us say, for a moment, that these assertions are true. That still does not make him righteous. It only makes him powerful. Righteousness is not a function of power. Most often, it is found in the abrogation of power, in restraint. For do we not all have the power to harm others, casually, capriciously? Do not the very seeds of righteousness stem from our decision to not harm others, but rather to set aside whatever whims we might have, in service of greater ideals?
Regardless of whether or not an all-powerful creator has the right to demand obedience, it is not righteous to do so. The fact that such a being might be entitled to demand such does not make it virtuous to make that demand.
He does. Your god demands worship. Worship is abasement. It is exalting the object of the worship above the worshiper, which means it is simultaneously abasing the worshiper before the object of worship.
Your god very much demands precisely that. Obey, without question. Obey those above you, who obey those above them, and so on unto the throne, whose occupant claims unquestioning obedience to your god. And it roots this obedience in fear. Fear of god’s wrath, of retribution, of damnation, of… honestly, 2/3 of the Amarr ship line.
Obedient supplication born of fear. That, sir… is groveling.
I will completely agree with this. Should such an entity exist and be the creator of all that is… that entity is beyond human failing. No human could fail so spectacularly on such a cosmic scale.
The doctrine of ‘holy Amarr’ is that sin is passed from generation to generation. These doctrines are established by the throne and the theology council. The throne, in consultation with the theology council, is held to speak the received Will of God. It then follows that, by the doctrine of the Empire, your god says sin is hereditary.
I submit to you, sir, that a child can only be brought to understanding and instilled with principle and righteousness through the dedicated example of parents who display those traits. Parents who instruct a child on righteousness while displaying none themselves only serve to teach the child that those in authority are hypocrites, who are not to be trusted.
More, parents who make for their child a dwelling where 99.99999999999% or more of the dwelling will kill that child without warning or exception are not displaying principle or righteousness. And outside of very, very tiny areas on only slightly larger balls of dirt, or inside flimsy cans of air that we ourselves have made, a very nearly complete percentage of this universe will kill you outright, if you go there as you claim your creator made you.
Parents, as well, teach their children through their own faults, flaws, and mistakes. The most important lessons children can learn, they will learn from failure. They will learn what not to do. They will learn how to be careful. But more, they will learn how to cope with failure, how to find resolve, how to pick themselves up and face adversity without being destroyed by it.
That, more than any scripture, more than any platitudes, is how parents teach their children to be people of good character. They display good character themselves, though the world be crushing down upon them. Where does your god admit failure? Where does your god face adversity, or struggle to achieve?
Do not presume to conflate your god, who can have anything he wants, whenever he wants, with parents. Parents have to work at what they do. Parents have to try. They have to care. Your god does none of these things. Your conceited, self-obsessed deity has nothing to teach, and nothing we need.
No. I attribute to your god sadism and viciousness because an all-powerful creator, which is what your god claims to be, need never have created a universe where failure to live up to his demands is inevitable.
I can think of no other term for a god who claims that all those who do not worship him according to the one, proper orthodoxy will be damned and punished for all time, even though hundreds of generations must have lived on all of the worlds that were not Amarr, who had no concept of your god that they could worship, much less the complete collection of declared orthodoxy.
Well, that’s not true. I can think of a lot of other terms for a being that establishes an environment where billions of people are inescapably doomed to eternal torment, a thousand years before any ancestors they could ever recognize are born. ‘Sadist’ is just one of the more pleasant ones.
Your god claims to be all-powerful. That means your god claims to be all-knowing, because an all-powerful being can instantly know whatever it wants to know. It has that power. After all, it’s all-powerful.
So your all-powerful god chose to make a universe where people would suffer. It chose to make a universe where billions would find eternal damnation inescapable. It could have made a universe where people—even given the capability to rebel—would be judged not on their adherence to orthodoxy, but on the quality of their character. Where people of good intent, regardless of their belief in it, would be rewarded for that good intent, and eventually brought into the knowledge of their creator.
Ten. Thousand. Years. According to your scriptures, there are some eight millennia between the crowning of the first Emperor and first contact with the Minmatar. From the First Prophet to the First Emperor is at least another two. So for at least ten thousand years, your faith claims that your god condemned my people to eternal damnation without any knowledge of ‘the consequences of our rebellion’ or even that there had been a rebellion.
You would think, if your god was a righteous god, prophets would have been cropping up all over New Eden, all across every world, in every generation, a thousand per planet, just to give those people a chance to escape divine spite. After all…
and I’m sorry, but a god who hates us all like that, for things none of us did? I can’t call that ‘righteous’.
It is clear to me that I have made an error in judgment. I have underestimated the degree to which you have had to contend with this and am likely doing nothing more than spewing more bile that you’ve heard countless times before which serves neither of us.
While my intent was not hostile I can see how it would have come across as such and while we could continue to go back and forth it would serve nothing more than a derailment of the topic at hand which would be a further disservice.
I would, however, like to extend an invitation to meet one another and continue the discussion if you’re amenable.
I have no qualms about discussion, but understand that right now, there are a small number of capsuleers attempting to invade my home. Time, at any given moment, may be at a premium.
Given the vastness of the Scriptures, it is perhaps unsurprising that many of we who follow the Rite have passages to whose words we find ourselves particularly connected; for my part, most passages with which I have such affinity are found in the Book of Trials, or in the Book of Missions.
While I could certainly find passages within those Books to support what I am about to say, I will rest my correction of your error upon the Book of Reclaiming, in particular the forty-fifth verse of the fourth chapter, and the tenth verse of the twenty-fifth chapter.
Even where The Word is at its most adamant, it is not ignorance that is condemned, but rejection.
