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