Way of the Warrior Saints/Saint Issik

Life

Issik was a peaceful man, who preached poverty and humility. He carried a jug that was empty, as a symbol of his commitment to destitution.

To test him, he was put to the rack, and tortured for many days, before he died.

In later days, a priest of Issek acquired a Northerner Warrior as a follower....

Rites and Rituals

The adherents of Saint Issik invariably take vows of poverty, devoting themselves to lowliness and subjection. As such, they have no material possessions of their own, and forsake all ties of land and lord. For this reason, they are outcasts.

Moreover, each morning, the adherents of Saint Issik roll themselves four times in the dust, to symbolize the four quarters of the body in mortification, as when Issek was stretched on the rack by his four limbs.

Notable Scripture

"A man may feast in peace, or fight in conflict, and be an animal for it: yet a man alone may refuse his drink, and still be jovial; a man alone may fight without conflict. For in this we find the Sleeping Father: that even our wildness is an ordered thing. We who are aware of the Sleeping Father ourselves meditate on his rest, and in so doing forget all things of the world, and, in that forgetfulness, become like to the Father himself." (Meditations on the Jug, Med. 4, Reply to Obj. 3)

"If a man looks into an empty jug, does not the jug peer also into an empty soul? Or has a man some fullness, even when the jug is empty? It is only when the jug is empty we should know it; only the sober man shall perceive intoxication." (Meditations on the Jug, Med.17, Resp.)

"Is a man wealthy who may lose his wealth suddenly? No; he is a man in a place of weakness, and weakness is not a form of wealth. Thus he who is wealthiest is he whose wealth cannot be taken from him. Now a man's life may be taken from him, and his goods, and his freedoms; but the wealth of a man's soul is such that even his death shall not rend it from him; and even the jug, though he forget his mind, shall not deprive him. So he that is wealthiest is he who has nothing which can be taken from him, but has everything which can never be taken. The wealthy man is the man of outward destitution, and inward abundance." (Meditations on the Jug, Med. 30, Resp.)

"Let wisdom be sufficient: the attainment of wisdom is the goal of existence." (Meditations on the Jug, Med. 30, Reply to Obj. 5)

"It is the Father who sits in the deepnesses of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, Who stretches out the seas like a curtain and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in. He it is who reduces rulers to nothing, who makes the judges of the earth meaningless. Scarcely have they been planted, scarcely have they been sown, scarcely has their stock taken root in the earth, but he merely blows on them, and they wither, and the storm carries them away like stubble." (My Days on the Rack, Day 40, the 22nd hour)

"Gird up your loins like a man, oh sufferers of time by time suffered!" (My Days on the Rack, Day 26, the 5th hour)