I’ve been thinking seriously about putting together a collection of the spiritual wisdom of an ancient race from one of my books. This started me poking around a bit on the Internet, looking for ways to frame this work. I mean, would it be on its own web site? Would it be kept here on mine? Really, I don’t see any point in creating an entirely new web site at this point. It can always be moved later, right?
Anyway, this seems as good an opportunity as any to start putting together some of my spiritual philosophy, hidden diabolically within the mythical religious texts of a bunch of fictional characters. If that doesn’t keep me from getting into trouble with my devout Christian mother, I don’t know what will.
Not only would this be a good writing project, but it would provide a wealth of background material for an entire group of characters whose basic spiritual beliefs mirror my own. Of course, the devil is in the details, and there is a lot of fiction here; at least in terms of what is real spiritual belief and what is conjured allegory and parable. But what is a religious text, if not a collection of improbable stories? The Flood in The Bible shows up in several other religious traditions besides Christianity. So it’s clear that certain stories are Universal.
Long story short, this religion is called Borealian, and is drawn from the literal name of an ascendant being who, when human, was named Asria Bor. I won’t bore you with details, but suffice it to say that Asria transcended her human form and became a being of energy, and existed for centuries as the unquestioned leader of her people. Two schools of spiritual thought rose up around her teachings. The original religion was preserved by Asria’s aides and priestesses and was called, simply, Asrian, or sometimes “The Way of Asria”. A more popular, less restrictive and generally more fun version of Asrian philosophy arose many centuries after Asria Bor’s final ascendancy, which used her named and called itself the Borael (based partly upon ancient myths about Asria Bor’s country of origin – the mythical Boraeli; which she was said to have named herself after). “Bor” in the original tongue meant, simply, a dedicated citizen of Boraeli – as in “I am not only Boraelian. I am Bor.”
I won’t go into any more details than that, since a lot of the possibilities are swirling around in my head. But I definitely like the idea of The Book of Boraeli – the collected wisdom of an ancient race. Hopefully we’ll soon get to see just how wise these people were.
