Reflection on the Achuran faith

I have been reflecting on my stay in the Achuran monastery. I've been thinking about their religion, and why it doesn't fit me.

I noticed that they are very open to exploration and understanding the universe, and I admire that. They try to see through the bias and refute the illusions that our mind adds to reality. Also that appeals to me.

All our sensory inputs are preprocessed by the mind before they enter our consciousness - otherwise we wouldn't be able to make sense of the cacophony of inputs that overwhelm our senses every second of every hour of every day. But this preprocessing also distorts and colors reality around us. We have evolved to see only cause and effect, and to divide the world into boundaried objects and categories. We create mental narratives to order incoherent impressions into a coherent framework. Through these narratives we are impelled to attach importance to certain silly things, such as pieces of paper with numbers printed on them, in order to infuse our life with an illusion of meaning and importance.

The Achuran monks want to pierce these illusions. In particular the monastery of the Seeing Blind that I stayed at tries to do this by exposing us to absurd stories, of which I have received my share. They are meant to shock us into dropping our filters and seeing raw reality.

What is the goal of that? I think it is do free us from the desires that stem from our constructs, the desire to be rich or powerful or popular. The desire to possess things and people. These desires are illusory, so they must stem from the filters and narratives that we put up in our mind, according to their reasoning. And these desires are what leads to our unhappiness and to evil. That last part, I can agree on.

Even though I can agree with these tenets, there was something that bothered me, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Until now. I realized that what I miss in Achur faith is the social dimension. As I understood it (imperfectly, given my extremely short exposure), it is most focused on freeing oneself, on personal improvement and growth and reaching enlightenment by and for oneself.

Our faith is not so much about raising ourselves up, our faith is much more about our relation to the others around us than it is about our own enlightenment. Of course both faiths talk about self-improvement as well as relations to others, but I'm discerning a nuance in focus. Our faith is more about lifting your neighbor out of the darkness. It's about sharing the fragile flame of faith with others, rather than freeing yourself from pain. 

That's what I missed, I think, in the Achur faith, or in what I could glimpse of it during my short stay with them.

White Song

My last couple of days in Saisio III. I feel that I've finally adapted to the temple routines. How typical for travel - just as you start getting the hang of a place you have to leave again. 

Don't get me wrong: I'm looking forward to returning to the library, I've missed it. But I have to admit that in Mehatoor it seems there is always some sort of emergency at hand. Here I enjoy the fact that there is nothing special to do - prayer and contemplation. I enjoy the rest and the quietness of this monastery, its mild-mannered monks, the interesting polite discussions on theology and the patient explanations of rites and customs. It is nice to pray and meditate while resting my eyes on the views of the lake from the mountain.

As a parting gift, and because master Drellken noticed that I like to go for a walk in the forests surrounding the monastery, he has fixed me a guide who could bring me to see Achuran White Song birds. They are beautiful creatures, completely white as their name suggests. Around dawn and around dusk they sing their songs, in always new enchanting variations. 

They are rare, and indeed I had not spotted a single one during any of my walks. They are also quite famous in the history of Achura. Long ago, when Achura was an independent empire, the White Song was a symbol of imperial power and purity. Commoners could not keep them in captivity, only in places like their Royal Tower they were kept. A war was fought over this, when one contender to the throne started keeping White Songs in his own palace. Nowadays, these birds still command the respect of the Achur people, who protect the populations and try to increase their numbers in the wild.

We left before dawn and it was good to have an experienced guide with me, to navigate the mountain paths in the dark. Saisio III does not have moons, and its asteroid belt is but the faintest trace of light on the sky. The guide took me to a grove where trees grow that bear a fruit the White Song love.

We could hear the birds already singing as we arrived at the grove. We found a good spot, and sat down. It is hard to see the birds in the trees, but I caught a few glimpses of them. Their song is definitely more impressive than the little birds themselves! Sometimes they appear to have a conversation, singing tunes one bird after another. Sometimes they make a choir, they synchronizing their songs when they sing at the same time. It was a beautiful dawn, I felt as if God had been granted me a few hours in paradise.

Data on the shard

Any ore that is mined contains a unique mix of rare element impurities, including radioisotopes. The particular relative abundances of these elements is like a fingerprint that can reveal from which system the ore comes, and sometimes even from which mine it comes.

On top of that, the radioisotopes will decay over time, resulting in a chain of decay products many of which are long-lived rare isotopes too. The ratios of the decay products in turn allows you to date the time when the ore was mined. The more unknowns there are, the more ratios need to be measured to provide a closed set of equations. It is an art on its own, at the crossroads between astrogeology, nuclear physics and history, to identify isotopes with useful decay chains for dating.

I was hoping to use the data from my ocular filter to do such dating and tracing on the shard, but the error bars I got on my estimates were still massive. 

Yet, it turns out that no subterfuge was needed to get such data. Master Drellken was happy to talk about the dating efforts on the relic. The Achur investigate their relics with great scientific rigor, and what he shared agrees with my own scarce and imperfect amateur measurement. 

They date their shard at 15000 years old, give or take a milennium. The rare element composition cannot be matched to any known system (excluding wormhole space and Jovian systems). The relic is nano-engineered with a precision not matched even by the Jove. 

Master Drellken explained that this is not unexceptional for relics found on Achura, especially the relics attributed in folklore to the "old Gods". The Elder Visionaries speculate on their origins, with a popular theory being that these relics are remnants of an advanced civilization that spanned the entire cluster before the dark age, before even the Talocan or the Jove. This would be the "Cradle of Mankind" civilization - the common ancestor of Amarr, Caldari, Gallente and Minmatar. Some, like the Goners, claim these ancestors come from beyond the gate.

While the relics may corroborate such theories, they are of course no proof!

According to the Achur themselves, Achura would have been an important planet for that ancient civilization, maybe even their homeworld. Some Achur patriots see themselves as the heirs to that mythical civilization...

I confess that I am curious whether our own Amarrian older relics have a similar composition - with my scan of the shard and the additional data I was given, I could figure out in principle. But I have to contain this unhealthy curiosity - it might invite the demon of pure thought to attack my soul. After all, the Code of Demeanor teaches us that the sin of pure thought is science that forgets the spiritual context of our relics.

A shard of the Rod

It was in the middle of the night when my exchange mentor, master Drellken, appeared at the cabin where I stayed, in the company of four armed guards.

A rude awakening.

I feared I had unknowingly made some unforgivable cultural misstep, maybe said some blasphemous thing by accident? Or maybe I failed to properly sign all the correct forms back at the immigration office? Was I going to be executed on the spot, imprisoned, or merely banished?

Luckily, it was nothing of the sort. The Elder Visionary leading the temple of the Seeing Blind has decided I am allowed to see their shard of the Rod of the Creator. As a precautionary measure they did not tell me in advance, so it would be more difficult if I were a thief preparing a heist.

I could not bring any scanning device to investigate the relic. In fact I could not bring anything else but the sandals on my feet and the pajama I was wearing - my favorite one with the sleeping kittens print. However, capsuleers never come fully unprepared, and this particular clone's implant slot 1 was equipped with ocular filter augmentations specialized in materials analysis. It would have to suffice.

The ocular filter wasn't much help at the start though, since I was blindfolded and led on a walk. I think I am pretty sure where we went, I came to know the grounds a bit, but I will not write it down here should rogue eyes read these logs.

The relic was displayed for me on a table, we were in a vault when my eyes were uncovered at last. The guards were tense. Master Drellken was here, as well as some other older monks I have not seen before. They were looking at me like an exam jury scrutinizing a student.

I offered a prayer of gratitude and meditated a bit in the presence of this relic, so holy to the Achur. I meditated a bit more as the ocular filter took its readings. To the unaugmented eye the shard looks deceptively unimpressive. A small black shard with a metallic shine, similar to black hematite or obsidian. On one side a few lines that were part of a carving of sorts, but nothing can be made from these line segments - they do not reveal the grander design that was covering the entire Rod when it was still in one piece. 

After a short while, the guards blindfolded me again. I thanked my hosts, and the guards took me back to my cabin. 

Of course I couldn't sleep any more.

The challenger

I was still thinking about the grand master who thinks he is the best archer in the universe but doesn't know it is because his apprentices carefully paint bull's eyes around his arrows wherever they land. 

When master Drellken came to see how I was doing, I asked him if no-one ever told grand master Nori about the deception.

He thought for a bit, and then said, "Actually, one day, a young champion archer came to challenge the venerable Nori. He came to the training field, and showed off his skill. He shot an arrow right in the bull's eye from certainly one hundred meters. Then the took a second arrow, and shot it with an aim so good that the second arrow splintered the first arrow. He yelled out at master Nori to come and do better."

"So, grand master Nori took him to the forest, to a place where an old tree bridges a deep ravine. The tree is not stable and mushrooms feast on its rot. Master Nori carefully stepped on the tree and walked to the middle of the ravine. The tree creaked and cracked and shook and pieces fell into the deep, but master Nori didn't fall. He shot an arrow which landed in a tree trunk farther away. He then carefully stepped back and with a little leap made it back to the safe rock at the side."

"The challenger may have been an excellent archer, but he did not dare to stand on the rickety tree. As the champion bowed his head in defeat, master Nori explained to him 'you have trained your eyes and the muscles in your arms, but you forgot to train your mind'."

I guess that was my lecture for the day, as my mentor left and I still don't understand how master Nori can be thought of as the best archer in the universe.

The role of idols in Achur faith

Life at the Achur monastery is peaceful and contemplative. It is strangely dissonant with anything I associate with Caldari corporatism. I've always mentally pictured the Caldari as a kind of "ant colony people", where the individual worker ants exhaust themselves for the good of the industrious colony. This monastery is about as far removed from that mental picture as possible. It is as if all the modernity and space technology cannot reach this ancient place. It doesn't want to build something new, or produce something tangible, it is meant to help individuals to discover some truth about themselves.

I've asked if I could be given a simple task to help my brothers. And so I've been tasked with maintenance work on the myriad of statues and idols that are on the monastery grounds. Some need cleaning of cobwebs, moss or leaves. Some wear blue knitted caps, and the caps must be replaced when they become too weathered or winds blew them off the statues.

I inquired with master Drellken about the statues. I thought that the Achur faith did not worship gods or saints, as I was told it ponders the universal truth and the redemption of the self.

He explained that while this is indeed so, common villagers don't care all that much about the deep practices of Achur faith and they think worshiping the spirits or old gods in the statues is a good deed. But in fact, the statues are just symbols, for example to pay tribute to wise men of the past who taught about the truth. They can be like images of a loved one you keep near and can look at to bring back memories. The monks don't worship them and know they cannot reach the truth by worshiping them. They use them in their rites to remember teachings and to help focus.

Something similar goes for relics, but they have in addition the property that maybe still something new can be learned from them, so they are treated with even more respect. Our discussion thus turned in a natural way to the topic of the rod of the creator shard they have in the monastery. My mentor will inquire if I may visit it - they are afraid of theft as many pieces held by various monasteries have been stolen and are still missing.

Matins

I am settling in. I have been housed in a very comfortable wooden cabin, with all amenities I could wish for. It has a deck with a magnificent view over the mountains, towards the lake that sometimes can be seen in the distance. The view lends itself to sitting down and meditating. I realize this cabin is a privileged lodge for pilgrims, and even though I marvel at the view a regular cell would have suited me just as well.

The day starts with matins. The monks gather at the temple and chant in front of their idols and relics. One of the monks, a man with the build of a tall wardrobe, beats a drum. The rhythm is rather fast, two beats per second. The others chant one syllable per drumbeat. From time to time - I haven't been able to discern a pattern- another monk strikes a cymbal. I been given a hand missal, but it is a translation so I cannot chant along, just listen. In addition, I am not sure it would be proper for me to do so. There are villagers and visitors attending the morning chanting - I have not seen many during the other hours.

After this morning liturgy, we have breakfast porridge. It is the only meal of the day that is not taken in the refectory, but in the public hall of the temple. Each monk sits at a table with one villager family or visitor group and they eat the breakfast porridge together. This is the occasion for the visitors to talk to the monks, to tell them their stories and plights and to ask for prayers.

Achur that have problems with their eyes visit this particular monastery, many come from far away to place offerings and pray in front of the statuettes of the eye idol. The monks give them a flask with which they can scoop up water from the temple source, as this water is said to have healing powers for eyesight troubles.  

I take breakfast with my mentor, master Drellken. We talk about our faiths and rites. I haven't yet brought up my main question - my request to see the piece of the rod of the creator that they keep in the inner temple.

The stairway of a thousand steps

I slept like a log last night, tired, but in a good way. So, I shall finish yesterday's story. 

I arrived at the stone lantern in the late afternoon. A monk was there, I do not know if he was waiting for me or if they saw me coming and had sent him down. Their clothing is simpler than our robes, and I did not see any signs of body augmentations. Next to the lantern was the start of a stone stairway that led up into the forest on the mountain slope.

My monastic colleague told me that this is the staircase of the thousand steps, and it is the entrance to the Monastery of the Seeing Blind at the top of the mountain. My courage sank at the prospect of having to climb it. I was starting to feel the exhaustion of the walk in the heat. But he insisted this was the proper way to go the monastery. 

He had some duties still at the lantern, but would come up later and rejoin me. I started the climb. To my surprise, the stairs were not well maintained, there are stretches were the stones are broken up and scattered, and this makes the ascension difficult. I wondered if the monastery would ever get visitors. There were also snakes in the cracks between the stones, so I had to tread carefully, which hampered the climb. I had to stop several times, to catch my breath and drink the last sips of my water. 

There's this compulsive thing I do - counting the steps of stairs. In this case, thousand. It's hard to stay focused, but usually I am within a few steps of the actual correct number. Here, I counted two thousand two hundred and fifty five. "Thousand steps", a figure of speech, indeed. Dusk was falling but the heat was sweltering by now. There was no breeze and the air was humid, despite being in the mountains.

After great effort, I arrived at the top of the staircase, at the entrance to the monastery. There was a water well nearby, and several peasants and monks. Also the monk I had met at the bottom was there. I hadn't seen anyone else on the staircase, and he never passed me, so I asked him how he got there. 

He said he just took his ground transportation vehicle along the road a little bit farther from where the stairs started, it leads to the parking lot of the monastery. I was dumbfounded - "But, wasn't this the proper way to enter the monastery? You told me so yourself!". He answered, as if he was talking to a kid, as if it had been plain and obvious: "Yes, proper way for you. Not for me, I live here."

I was parched so I wanted to drink from the well, which was equipped with a row of cups on a long stick. But I was not allowed to drink yet: the well is meant for ablution, you scoop up water and rinse your hands and arms. Actually, the cold water flowing over my arms gave relief from the heat.

After that, I was given water to drink and brought to my lodgings, where, as you already know, I fell asleep shortly after.

Reaching the monastery

It has been a long day, but I have reached the monastery. I've been welcomed by my mentor and shown my lodgings. I am tired, and feel I will fall asleep soon, but I want to record my day.

Early in the morning, I left Nizunpaska. There is and old railroad for plasma maglev trains that circles the lake. It is a bit of a tourist attraction, and there is a museum of plasma maglev technology at the starting station, where one can marvel at the old engines. 

image credit: Christian Chihaia

The track goes along the shore of the lake, offering nice views. I took the northern route to one of the many valleys where a mountain river meets the lake. The station where I stepped off the train was not much more than a platform - and it was deserted. As I stepped off, I felt the day was already starting to get hot. 

I started my walk following the river up the valley. There is some farming, mostly hydro-culture grain fields. I only saw one farmer, knee-deep in the water between his crop. He looked up and stared at me, I think he had never seen an Amarrian before.

The valley is rather wide at the start, and flat at the bottom where the river meanders. After two hours of walking, I came across a hill, in the middle of the flat valley. It was maybe thirty meters high, and looked very much out of place. There was a shrine at the top, and despite the heat I climbed up to the shrine. It was deserted, but there were nice statues of old gods and there were relics scribbled all over with undecipherable writing. It looked well maintained, even if there was no-one there at the time. I rested a while, praying and taking in the quietness of the place.

I continued my walk up the valley. It narrowed down and became more woody. My mentor for the exchange had told me to walk all the way up, past the foothills, until I arrived at a large stone lantern at the base of a mountain. 

Ah, I am falling asleep as I write, I will continue tomorrow once I'm rested.

The lake city

Today I took the "fast" land transit to Nizunpaska, the city by the lake. I put fast in quotation marks since it took most of the day to get there, crossing a large and desolate mountain range. Nizunpaska (its Napanii name as indicated in the stations is not the local name) is not a large city by any planetary standards. 

While its core districts are still markedly Caldari in the way we know it from Jita, the old lakeside part has a different feel to it. It is more relaxed and less efficiency-focused. The remoteness of the city with respect to major metropolitan areas also shows itself in the demographics: there are markedly less Deteis and Civire here than in the main hub I was yesterday.

The city is located at the eastern tip of the lake, so the sun sets over the lake. Right in front of the city, there is a small islet in the lake, deemed a holy place by the inhabitants. In the evening, they gather at the lakefront to watch the sunset. Even though it was a bit cloudy, I took a picture to remember this place.

After sunset I went for dinner, and had a simple meal, the local soup. It is a fish stock with fermented soybean, to which they add small clams from the lake and local vegetables. I was explained that there is quite an art to serving the soup, as the serving (in a bowl) must balance greens and non-greens in the soup, as well as balance floating elements (a kind of fungus) and parts that sink to the bottom of the bowl. Also the clams must have opened in exactly the right way. I hope I did justice to the dish...

Arrival on Achura

I traveled to Achura today, third planet in the Saisio system. Eager to start this adventure, and wondering about my counterpart heading to Mehatoor. For sure, he will have a more easy travel - he can just dock up and walk to the library, where mr. Jensen awaits him. 

Me, I have to travel to a mountain monastery, in a more remote part of the planet. Today, I stay in the large metropolis where my shuttle made planetfall, and where border officials checked my paperwork. I got a free Sukuuvestaa Mass Transit pass, allowing me to travel around for the duration of my stay.

The city is immense, but it and reminds me more of Jita than of Dam Torsad. Things are geared towards efficiency and industry, and there is less emphasis on historical relevance and of religion. The Sukuuvestaa corporation and its subsidiaries appears to be present everywhere. There are billboards and advertisements everywhere, and they try to personalize them to those who walk by. Mass transit is very well organised. I had difficulties orienting myself, but a mass transit employee went above and beyond in his efforts to show me exactly where to go.

I will rest up at a hostel for pilgrims. Tomorrow I will take the fast rail system to the city closest to the monastery. The town's name can be loosely translated as "water city". It is located at the top of a large inland lake, right at the mouth of the main river that feeds the lake. This will require me to take a long trip over land, over a mountainous range.

The Rod of the Creator

The Achura are a deeply spiritual people, which I find a bit at odds with the rest of the Caldari State. The Achura homeworld, Saisio III, is also the home of many relics. 

Those who believe that some long-lost civilization colonized our cluster through the Eve Gate often point to Saisio III as an important planet for that lost civilization. In their minds, the relics of the Ancient Gods are nothing but leftover technology from a thriving world before the Dark Ages.

There is one particular relic that interests me a lot - the Rod of the Creator. It is not one piece, rather it consists of different relics scattered over several monasteries. Some of these pieces have been stolen, some even hunted down and returned by loyal Caldari capsuleers. I've been fascinated by this relic, and in my mind I have come to link it to the Ametat, the Sceptre.

Now that my road forward with the Takmahl corpse is blocked, as I can't legally obtain a clone from someone else's DNA, this is the next route of investigation that I will pursue. Layla Accadis' corpse has been waiting for a thousand years, she can wait a bit more.

Could it be that the Sceptre, through some winding and mysterious path, at some point made it to Achura? They barely left the iron age a few centuries ago, so they would not have known its significance but surely they would have felt its power. How did it become fractured? Do the Achura have myths or tales of how it got there? I want to find out.

The monasteries on Achura are not readily accessible to visitors, at least not the interesting ones. But I have a plan.

To strengthen the ties between the Empire and the State, especially since the fall of Niarja, there are several cooperation and exchange programs. ACRE is one of these programmes, the "Amarr - Caldari Religious Exchange". The idea is that monks (friars are also eligible) from the Empire and the State trade places for a while. I would spend time in an Achura monastery, and an Achur monk would come to Mehatoor. 

I'll have to discuss this with Directrix Phonaga (yes, she took Franco's name). She'd be reluctant to let strangers into the SFRIM offices in Mehatoor, I think. So, maybe I'll first get Aria on my side. She is also from Achura, and linked to the monastic tradition. I have time, I suppose Lunarisse is now enjoying her honeymoon.