Brithini Atheists and the Creator

From: Nick Brooke <100270.337_at_compuserve.com>
Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 13:39:38 -0500



Thomas raises a thorny old chestnut (cf. V3#290):

> Are the Brithini real atheists or do they believe in the Invisible God?
> Do they believe in the IG (and therefore, are not atheists)? Do they
> worship Him? (i.e., do they have the Worship IG sorcery spell?).

You can find a long and laboriously-argued set of documents on the origins and schisms of Malkionism on my home page. In brief, Greg Stafford appears to have caused this confusion by oscillating between "Brithini = Monotheistic Westerners" and "Brithini = Amoral Atheist Immortals" at different stages in his writing career (not to mention the normal Staffordian inconsistencies we all know and loathe).

IMG, the Brithini are staunchly atheist. They say that the world was created, ergo there was a Creator, but do not see why this means they should "worship" this entity. They regard the antics of the Malkioni (in trying to intercede with an impersonal, all-powerful being) as ridiculous: like trying to talk to the laws of physics! The Malkioni, OTOH, claim to have a superior understanding of this entity, based on the revelations of their Prophet Malkion in the Great Darkness (revelations rejected by the Brithini as self-delusion). They ascribe ongoing actions and sometimes even emotions to the Creator, and thereby step beyond the Brithini pale.

If you like, the Brithini aren't "real" atheists: they regard it as proven that there is something which you or I would call a "God", but consider this quite irrelevant to the manner in which they conduct their lives, and so they make no attempt to commune or communicate with the Creator, instead living according to the perfectly logical Laws contained in their oldest scriptures. The Creator doesn't want (or not want) things to happen. He doesn't act (or refrain from acting). He simply *is*.

The Creator is a Prime Cause, First Mover, Transcendent, Impersonal, Great Architect of the Universe kinda guy: he/it set up the cosmos and then retired
behind it. He/it doesn't manifest, or answer prayers or invocations. Though maybe there are rituals that are pleasing to him/it. The Creator defined the
natural Laws, and therefore all Sorcery works through him/it. The Brithini and
early Malkioni believed in a non-intervening Supreme Power; the Brithini thought
of it as impersonal, the Malkioni as perhaps personal but certainly remote.

The Malkioni today still draw a distinction between the "Invisible God" (i.e. an immanent, personal, intervening entity of the kind the Brithini have never believed in, most likely discovered or codified by the God Learners reading between the lines of Holy Writ) and the "Creator" (a transcendent, out-of-this-world entity, plenty of mentions of which can be found in Brithini-authored scriptures, but one which by definition can never act within the created world).

Powered by hypermail