Cult of the Inner Light

Alinyoun taquu in 7633.

The cult of Inner Light is a new-age Wolgos faith that emerged in the southern Shangti archipelago, more precisely, the island of Khudat. The faith has some cosmological ideas from Dlroch'veldr and Akchacknism. From akchakanism, the faith borrows the ideas of a celestial firmament but expands on it by proposing the existence of a worldly firmament. Dlroch'veldr, the faith borrows the concept of ethereal spirits that inhabit both firmaments or realms as the faith calls them.

Unique to the faith is the lack of a conscious, powerful deity or deities; instead, the faith proposes that life, creation and the very essence of the soul and spirit arise from the conjunction of the essentially static and dead worldly realms. Both realms are intrinsically incompatible, and only through a will can they form a conjunction, the conjunction representing the creative chaos of existence with its manifestation of light. To the faith, light is the pure essence of existence, life and creation. Syncretic Wolgos view the conjunction as the emanation of Dlrocha and light as his manifestation and will of creation. Meanwhile, syncretic Akchacknism views the conjunction as the fire within the celestial deities coming into being and its light as permeating the cosmos and celestial firmament.

Hominidity is seen as occupying a tangent below the conjunction on the earthly realm, close to the conjunction to be alive and conscious but adjacent to the worldly realm, where all must return to a dead state through a process of physical and spiritual decay. Light cannot permeate the opaque worldly realm, and as such, within its sphere lies only death and spirits, staving off their demise by pulling hominid souls to the depths of the realm to devour. Only the celestial realm can be permeated by light, and its spirits glow and illuminate the hominid tangent.

The faith rejects emotions and physical drives that harm others and the hominid tangent, which it believes emanates from the will of worldly realm spirits. Practitioners must actively reject them and conduct rituals to purge the souls and achieve spiritual catharsis. The purity and enlightenment of the celestial spirits of light are sought through meditation and spiritual purging to seek exaltation from the tangent and closeness with the loci of the conjunction of the realms.

Cosmology

Diagram of the Inner light cult cosmology

Non-Existence

Non-existence is the metaphysical boundary of all there is. Beyond the realms, nothing lies, not even a void as understood by hominids, but truly nothing, no death, no life, no intelligence, just a complete lack of reality and a domain beyond conceptualisation. The light that pierces into non-existence nourishes nothing, fills nothing, lights up nothing, and loses all meaning and conceptualisation.

Celestial Realm

The celestial realm is a metaphysically translucent sphere and is the realm of dormant higher beings. Since creation, the celestial realm has been filled with the light and essence of life emanating from the conjunction. The realm has been awoken and the beings are active and exalted, serving as a guide and illumination for the path of exaltation to the loci of creation. The beings from the real do not interact with the beings of the tangent; they bear no ill will and serve as an example of harmony.

Worldly realm

The worldly realm is the sphere of the physical, the perpetually dead, and it is a realm metaphysically opaque that the essence of life light cannot penetrate beyond the shallows of the realm. The realm is home to beings that are eternally dormant due to the lack of life; only those closest to the conjunction are active and ravenous. They seek to thrive and beckon the souls of hominids that, having been bathed in light, will satiate the hunger; they beckon souls by obscuring their path to the loci of creation and sinking them beyond the tangent and surface of the worldly realm.

Dark impulses and emotions are the manifestation of their will, and only by purging them can the dark mist on the path to the loci be driven from one's path.

Conjunction

The conjunction is where both spheres of reality meet; the antithetical spheres of creation meeting produce metaphysical friction at the loci of creation where the spheres meet, and the infinite repulsion from the spheres and friction leads to the light, the essence of light that animates reality. Light is pure, and the chaos leads to renewal and dynamicity, which is what drives time, life, and nature.

Loci of creation

The Loci of Creation is the infinitely small point between the spheres and where the antithetical metaphysical forces of the spheres are at their strongest. A point whose infinite pureness and powers make it infinitely hard to reach, but only through this point can exaltation happen to the celestial side of the hominidity tangent. In the celestial side, exaltation has been achieved, and immortality as a serene being is lived at the highest point of catharsis for eternity.