User:Squirrel/Holos

Holos (Greek: όλος, whole) is a concept religion blending medieval Gnosticism, Neoplatonism and Hermeticism, with little bits borrowed from modern esoteric philosophies.

In character, the main tenants of Holos are:

1. Everything in existence was created directly or indirectly by a single divine power that is entirely good.
2. The material world is an imperfect reflection of a higher-order divine world that is not physical.
3. All humans have an immortal soul that is trapped in the material world and seeks to rejoin the divine world.
4. True knowledge brings humans closer to the divine; false knowledge binds humans deeper in the material world.

That's it. Anything that does not contradict these four tenants is fair game in Holos. The idea is to create a religion that is highly decentralized, very flexible, hard to kill and extremely likely to piss off other religions that don't like having their beliefs hijacked by somebody else.

Borrowing from Gnosticism

Every religion needs an Adversary. In Holos that adversary is ripped straight from Gnosticism in the concept of the Demiurge, a flawed copy of the divine power. Long story short, in Gnosticism the original Power emanates several other gods and goddesses in pairs that are each an aspect of the Power. The last of these, Sophia, wants to emanate on her own without the permission of her creator. She secretly creates a god of her own (the Demiurge) but it is flawed and blind and arrogant. Thinking itself to be the only god in existence, the Demiurge creates a world to rule over (our world, imperfect) and people to worship it (us, trapped here).

This by itself should be enough to annoy most other religions because it's the reverse of the usual creation story; usually the god who creates the world is the hero of his religion. Calling another religion's god flawed and blind is the spiritual version of, "Yo momma's so fat."

Borrowing from Neoplatonism

If you've never heard of Plato's allegory of the cave, you might want to read about it now. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Did you get all of that? The important part is this: The things that we see and hear and touch are not the true reality. We don't see reality directly, we see and hear and touch things that are shadows of reality, like shadows cast on the wall of a cave. To see the true reality is hard (like Neo waking up from The Matrix) and not everyone can do it. But once you see reality, you can't ever go back to the cave.

Among other things, this means that followers of Holos can't depend on science as a source of knowledge. Let me say that again for emphasis: "KNOWLEDGE" IS NOT THE SAME AS SCIENCE. Knowledge of the divine world is the only true knowledge and learning how the material world works is only useful if it helps you gain insight into the divine world.

This is mostly an RP thing based on medieval concepts of knowledge. Remember, the scientific method as we know it today doesn't exist yet. Having a philosophy that is beautiful and elegant is more important than making predictions that can actually be tested.

Borrowing from Hermeticism

Holos, like Hermeticism, declares that all religions have the same foundation and all gods are aspects of a single supreme Diety, God, Power, "All" or whatever else you want to call it. You could call it "soft polytheism". All kinds of gods, angels, demons, spirits and such are accepted because in the end they're all just parts of the same divine thingy anyway. In game terms, this means that Holos should consider every other religion a Variant.

Hermeticism agrees that humans want to return to the divine power but it also adds another goal: Create something. The biggest sin in Hermetic morality is to pass through life only taking experience and never giving anything back. In Holos, this means that anyone can become an Elder but only if they contribute something new to the faith. Come up with a nifty new concept to add on and you too can be in charge.

Keep it coming

We have a lot of work to do if we want to catch up to the heavies like Sanguis Astroism.