Consider Purity: A Heretical viewpoint
Oh, sit down.
We're in a restaurant, remember?
Pulling out a flaming sword will attract attention.
Yeah, that was an order, not a request. Fine, call it a 'command' or, I don't know,
'Jedi mind trick' if it makes you feel better.
I'm not here to kill you, so stop sweating and finish your soup. We're
just going to have a little chat about some things of mutual interest to us
both.
Of course we have items of mutual interest;
we're both celestials, after all. The
fact that we're on opposite sides of this ridiculous 'War' is immaterial. You have your delusions, and I'm sure that I
have mine - I try to keep an open mind about things - but we're the same, in
ways that these ludicrous humans could not hope to duplicate. The fact that you're a Mercurian of Destiny
and I'm the Demon Prince of Heresy isn't nearly as important as you think it
is.
Will you keep still?
We both know that I wanted you dead, you'd be dead already. Allow me to demonstrate. See that man over there? Well, I happen to know something about him:
to wit, that he is an abusive husband and father, a habitual white-collar
criminal and a surreptitious kicker of puppies. I also know that in three days he'll meet his Fate in a
complicated scenario involving a shady mutual fund and a financially strapped
orphanage. All of this Kronos knows, of course. The second to last thing that I know - and that Kronos doesn't -
is that he somehow managed to unaccountably achieve his Destiny last week by
passing fifty dollars to a beggar in a fit of drunken generosity. Probably he thought that he was handing over
a single.
The last thing that I know about this paragon of
humanity? Why, that his heart just
exploded. Be sure to say hi to him the
next time that you get to Heaven, if you can.
No, that wasn't a threat, either. I'm just trying to get it through your head
that while I have the whip hand here, I'm not going to use it on you, for my
own reasons. Eat your soup.
See how easy it is?
While we're waiting for the salad - I think that service may be a little
slow today, for some reason - I'll finally be able to explain why I'm
here. It's professional courtesy:
you're about to start uncovering some information in your research that is
directly under my Word, and I thought that I'd save you some time. After all, what's the point of chasing your
own tail?
Ah, you're starting to look less confused. After all, Heaven should have a wealth of
information about any period in history that one would care to name - but there
are odd gaps, here and there, and you've gotten interested in one. To wit, the religious practices of mainland
European Germanic tribes just prior to their conversion to Christianity: there
is no definitive study that you can find in Heaven, and God knows that the
talking monkeys down here haven't done anything worth reading, so you've taken it
upon yourself to do the necessary research.
Here's the first secret: you aren't the first. That carefully scraped together bibliography
that you've accumulated so far? Let me
save you some time. If the author is
still alive, don't bother reading his or her works: their continued survival
demonstrates their incompetence at scholarship. In other words, people who end up going down the right path
invariably end up getting waylaid on it.
Well, it's certainly tempting to say that
they were killed by the forces of Heaven, but... no. I'll be fair. That
humorless toad Dominic has nothing to do with this: in fact, I suspect that he
has no idea that members of the Host tend to wind up dead whenever they
seriously study this particular time period.
There haven't been all that many, after all - certainly not enough to
make any sort of statistical blip.
After all, most of the serious researchers interested in the immediate
post-Roman period specialize in the Purity Crusade, anyway...
Which leads me to my next point. What do you know about Arianism?
Fair enough assessment: they did more or less
deny that Jesus Christ was coequal to God the Father. There was a lot of fairly boring verbiage about the Trinity - it's
astounding how much trouble monotheist theologians will go through to avoid
looking like they're letting polytheism in through a side window - but we'll
work with this definition for now. At
any rate, it was one of those heresies that had its day, and eventually went
away - at least, within the Roman Empire.
Outside was another story.
Yes, that's right, the German tribes converted to
Arianism when they were Christianized.
This is highly important to remember.
You may also want to think about the similarities between this belief
and basic Islamic theology. Well, not
quite similar, really - but an Arian Christian church hierarchy would have
found it much easier to incorporate Muslim thought, especially if the former
had also already come to terms with the Eastern Monophysites.
But that didn't come to pass, did it? In the West, the Arians were successfully
suppressed by what would later be the Catholic Church and the Monophysite
strongholds in the East vanished under proto-Eastern Orthodox persecution and
the first Muslim expansions. The side
effects persist to this day, fueling wars along the borders of at least three
continents. A real pity, don't you
think?
Well, it depends on your viewpoint.
Let me float a theory by you. Suppose there was an Archangel - I won't say
his name, but his initials are Uriel - who had decided that Christianity was,
indeed, a divine religion. Forget
everything you might have heard about how he only supported the faith for its
unifying aspects: the fanatic used to be a Seraph, and I really doubt that
having his wings seared black made him less appreciative of the Truth. So, if he supported it, it was because he
believed that there was something to it.
The thing is, Arianism makes inherent sense
to us celestials. After all, it's hard
enough to believe that God would directly interact with the world without
telling His putatively loyal servants - but for Him to take up full
residence? The Symphony itself should
have rolled across the corporeal plane like a wave, incidentally obliterating
any of us evil, disobedient demons that happened to be in the way. But a Christ that, while divine, was somehow
subordinate to the Father - a semi-autonomous subroutine, if you would - well,
that would explain matters handily, and clear up a few mysteries, like why
there seemed to be two different revelations.
Well, possibly three: I'm still not sure about Queztalcoatl.
So, we-won't-call-him-Uriel was almost certainly an
Arianist - and that's the reason why information is informally restricted about
the Germanic gods, because there is an organized group out there that doesn't
want anyone to realize that Uriel slaughtered them a good three centuries
before the formal Purity Crusade even began.
You see, he wanted a virgin field, as it were, and the German tribes
were perfect: they had contact with Rome but were not really part of it. I presume that his plan was to encourage the
growth of the faith both inside and outside of Roman-controlled territory until
it was paramount. For that to happen,
the old German pantheons had to go.
Three guesses how much that bothered our hypothetical Archangel.
Unfortunately, this entire scheme was doomed pretty
much from the start. Always watch out
for talented subordinates. Let's say
that there's an angel: we'll call him, oh, I don't know, Larry. Larry is a shit-hot prodigy who's made a
major splash right from the start; in fact, he's so good that he's jumping up
the ranks with indecent speed.
Unfortunately, thanks to this crazy-quilt feudalistic society that's the
bane of any sane celestial, his ascension up the greasy pole of rank comes to a
sudden stop just before the main prize.
You have no idea how frustrating that is to the Dukes of Hell, and no doubt
to whatever your own equivalent is. You
have to wait until somebody gets killed before you even get a shot at
apotheosis.
Unless, of course, you make your own shot.
Now, bear in mind that I-didn't-call-him-Uriel had
never made it clear about his own beliefs about the Trinity: why should he? There's no sense in giving political ammo to
your enemies, and believe me, that Archangel always had enemies on the
Council. Besides, the Host wasn't quite
prepared to do ethereal housecleaning at the time, so any little genocide
happening in the sidelines would have had to be done pretty quietly,
anyway. You end up with a situation
where there's potential multiple levels of reasons for any actions.
This suited Larry to the ground. First, he made damn well sure that any
Arianistic theology got hammered down in the Empire itself. Once that was done, the next step was to lay
waste to the outer regions: that took two centuries or so, and incidentally lay
waste to the entire western Mediterranean, but what's a plague or two when it
comes to the Great Game? Larry was
doing so well that he was even able to use the rise of Islam to his own
advantage, using their conquests to keep any form of Arianistic thought from
existing in a Christian matrix. I don't
know whether no-not-Khalid was maneuvered into being exposed to Islam, or
whether he came to it on his own, but either way Larry ended up with his boss
being stymied and his greatest rival out of the Christian arena for good.
And, of course, while said-boss was still
unbalanced, Larry found it amazingly easy to instigate a Purity Crusade a mere
half century or so later. Great name
recognition there, as my buddy Nybbas would say. Faster than you can say 'SNAFU', a large section of Heaven is
howling for a certain Archangel's blood and trial proceedings are underway -
and large chunks of metaphorical real estate have been clear cut for further
Christian expansion. Why God apparently
went for all of this is open to interpretation: I mean, I know my
opinion, but then I'm a Demon Prince who battens on selfishness and exudes evil
with every foul breath.
Anyway, when the smoke cleared, all was rosy for
Larry, now an Archangel himself and - happy day! - leader of the Armies of
Heaven. That was probably Michael's
doing: that sneaky bastard has fingers in every pie. I mean that as a compliment, of course. God knows that the new Commander didn't leave many loose
ends. Khalid? Out on the sidelines, openly attacked by Laurence within a
century, but now back in the fold - if I were him, I'd sit with my back to the
wall at all times. Then there were the
Tsayadim: ever wonder why they left? Or
why Laurence didn't join them? Well, it
helps if you realize that the Tsayadim didn't actually leave: they were thrown
out for their own Arian beliefs, unofficially of course - and that Laurence has
made sure that they stay thrown out ever since. Not that he wants them dead, of course - it
makes more sense to have a public angelic boogeyman out there, especially when
you need a convenient patsy for your own dirty work.
Not bad work for a 'sublimated Boy Scout', huh?
So, that's why you're in so much bloody trouble,
now. Well, you would have been, anyway
- this scenario's crystal clear to anybody with access to the right information
and half a brain - I've just accelerated the process, as it were. It beats me how much the Council knows: I
can't quite see Dominic going along with it, but then he's always had a blind
spot when it comes to Malakim. Read up
on the Grigori exile for a good example of that. I wouldn't be so sure about your own boss, though. In case you haven't heard, let me tell you
another secret: Yves really isn't a celestial... which means that you
can't trust him like you could another angel, or even a demon.
What are you going to do? Sorry, that's not precisely my problem. I could be lying to you: indeed, by your ideology I have to
be. Maybe I am, and maybe I'm not. Maybe I'm telling you this because I want to
set Heaven on its ear with a vicious rumor campaign. Maybe I'm telling you this because you're the first angel to
start researching this academic field since I became a Prince, and I hate
seeing other celestials unknowingly die to amuse our tyrannical Creator. Maybe both reasons are true. At any rate, I
do have one piece of advice for you: finish your steak. It may be your last hot meal for a while.
Mind you, I really don't think that you have time
for desert.