Continuing the discussion from [Excubitoris Chapter] God Does Not Forgive: A Rejection of the Recent Concept of Forgivable Generational Inherited Sin:
Thank you for sharing, Cain Aloga.
It is my impression that many Minmatar clans have “the Evil God” feature in their cosmology. Does yours? Would you like to share the myth?
To understand the stories that my clan tells, it first must be established that the concept of ‘god’ is not the same as the Amarr. our cosmology is filled with spirits. Spirits of the world and spirits of our ancestors. A ‘god’ is simply a spirit that has an outsized importance either due to its role or its strength.
The Amarr God is the Chief of a host of spirits that our legends tells us inhabited a group of inhospitable islands. Jealous of the worship that our people had for the spirits of our ancient lands, they sought out to steal us away for their own. They offered promises of power, strength, and wealth, all in return for forsaking our ancestors and spirits that have guided us. They bid that we make war against those who would reject them, for they could not stand not owning all there was.
Despite these false promises, we saw the curroption that they promised and they were rejected and forced flee. Hateful, full of resentment for being denied, they found the Amarr.
In my clan’s tales, the Amarrian God is also a spirit among other spirits. He is taken to be the Elder Spirit of the Amarr people, just like the seven tribes have their Elder Spirits.
There are many gods in this world
He is, however, a very powerful one. How he became so, our legends don’t say, but I know other clans have tales of that, such as the Quildar story of the God Who Ate His Own Name.
but the Amarr God is the most powerful of them all.
We assume that the Evil God has the power to judge over people, just like the Mary Faith claims. However, just because He can, does not mean He should.
But power does not equal goodness, and might does not make right.
We believe that the moral thing to do is to defy the Evil God, even knowing you’ll be damned by him.
I will 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
We also believe that there is a sliver of hope to those of us who do this: even though the Evil God controls all existence, the ancestors can help those who fulfill their Fate to escape to outside of all creation, to join them, instead of being judged by God.
Oh let me live a dutiful life
Oh let me find my Fate and fulfill it
Let my ancestors smile when they see me
Today, and on the day of my Death
This bit is interesting to me. Our traditions dictate that evil spirits will attempt to steal your spirit away when you [Translator: path through death]. Many of our funeral rites revolve on fortifying the spirit of the deceased for when they encounter these spirits.
Our legends are actually kind of unclear on how the “escaping the evil god” is supposed to go exactly - only that you can and that you need the help of your ancestors to. The legends on that center on what you must do in life to be prepared to go.
Our funeral rites tend to be more about letting the deceased go, so that living ties don’t keep them from going to the afterlife, and turn them into a vengeful ghost.
My clan isn’t terribly different from Elsebeth’s (surprise!), including the view that the Amarr god is a wayward Elder.
We honor spirits both of nature and of our ancestors, and we hold that after life, we go and join with nature, in the sense that a part of us joins the spirit of Matar herself and continues to live on through her.
We don’t have many stories about the Amarr God, and I can’t think of any. I’ll ask Chief Tiama whether she remembers some.
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