We of the Old Religion have our own particular
compact with our
deities that charges simply, "An it harm none,
do as ye will."
And our gods do not despise us for being human
but delight in our
celebrations of life and love. We are ageless
souls, only for a
while within bodies - merely visitors upon
this plane. We are
brothers to the gods and only temporarily
cousins to the ape,
and our lives belong to us, not to this world
nor to its earthly
governors. We are not doomed to shame and
decay; not lost; not
indentured to perish with earthly manifestations;
not disposed
to eternal misery for any past or present
lapses of courage or
wisdom. We are as children in the school of
life who must learn
our lessons, on life at a time, before we
graduate. Our lives
span the march of time, striving upward, subordinate
only to our
individual probity and growth.
But in this mortal life, greedy, trivial hierophants
and mundane
rulers have perpetrated a fraud upon humanity.
They have purloined
for profit and temporal power, our legitimate
heritage, and that of
all society, and have substituted for it shame,
despair, and fear,
inventing evil deities to terrify and to constrain
mankind from the
exercise of his own native conscience.
Still we take our uncertain portion time and
again, joining with the
species on this plane, only to meet with earthly
disunity and distress;
only to be told by bogus, uncelestial shepherds
that we are deficient
and fundamentally iniquitous; constantly rebuked
that our natural
birthright is insubstantial or even sinful,
and that we must cleave
to the pious injunctions of reigning mortals,
no matter how oppressive,
or suffer beyond measurable time, yearning
for some mythical golden
glory just out of reach, but somehow never
quite worthy of it.
That is the apocryphal hell and the fabled
satan; they are of mortal
creation; they are now, not in some remote
bye-and-bye; and those who
choose to believe in them perpetuate them
in this earth. But nevertheless,
by sublime design, despite narrowness, folly
or fear, we all, each
and every one, possess this wondrous legacy:
that each of us sustains a singular covenant
with the cosmic, in that
the soul is and ever was, one with the universe,
conducting itself in
concordance with the absolute. And whatever
paths it may walk, or
whichever faith it may follow, on sojourn
at a time, each shall as a
consequence of that oneness, and attuning
with its destiny, eventually
return on its own to its source to again be
part of that totality,
atoned, aware and unshackled.
