Cult of Ecstasy

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Introduction

The Cult of Ecstasy (also known as Sahajiya, a term derived from the Sanskrit word Sahaja which literally means spontaneous or natural) is a Tradition of mages and visionary seers who transcend boundaries and limitations through sacred experience.

To achieve that the Cult use things like drugs, music and sex, but they're just means to an end. The objective is to achieve a mental state that transcends the physical world, a trance that allows the mage to see beyond his normal experience and go outside all the lines that keep most people and mages penned in. Cultists take the word ecstasy in its original meaning: a sudden, intense rush of feeling that catapults the subject into an altered state. It doesn't have to be a pleasant feeling, but given a choice, most Cultists definitely prefer it that way. The Cult of Ecstasy breaks down barriers and self-imposed limitations to give people a rush of eye-opening experience.

Paradigm

The Ecstatic paradigm incorporates numerous various traditions from all over the globe that use ecstasy and out-of-body experiences for enlightenment.

Lakashim

The heartbeat of the world, Dhambia, The Serpent Road... It has many names, but the concept lies in the idea that creation has a heartbeat, a pulse that everyone can feel if they want to. All the emotions, passions and uncouncious minds tap into this pulse, with the intellect blocking the perceptions, but also focusing them, being a perfect conciousness that sends the person above mere intellect and sensations, using both to achieve a communion with the Lakashim.

Achieving such a state means suspending time and being able to alter reality at a whim. The Ecstatic mage usually focuses to achieve that ideal whenever possible, with many paths being based on enhancing sensations past the normal human limits, as the Lakashim waits beyond all those boundaries.

Ananda

Human counciousness remains blind to the cosmos, as the vastness of reality and creation would drive human beings crazy. To avoid that, humanity looks at the world and the things in it, giving them names and looking at them in a way that they choose to understand. What the Ecstatics want is to break such self-imposed boundaries and take a peek at the vast scope of creation as it really is, even if such a thing can burn their eyes forever. Most Ecstatics would choose to go blind and be able to take a peek at raw reality than to live the rest of their lifes with a blindfold.

Being able to catch a sight at the true face of reality gives to the Seers indescribable moments of exaltation, a bliss that stops time. This is what they call Ananda. That bliss makes them able to work magic by side-stepping reality and gives them an understanding and newfound respect to all aspects of creation. Ananda can't be described, only felt, and most faiths and magics are just ways to capture this bliss. As most people are never able to catch more than a glimpse of it, they are driven into despair and fanaticism, creating war and conflict.

Ojas

The vital force, brought by fusing passions and perceptions, is what allows the Ecstatic to get to a higher state and look behind the boundaries that blind human beings all the time. Everyone can feel this, but most of the time is only felt during times of extreme bliss or stress. Time feels slower and everything is much more alive. The Cult of Ecstasy mages are able to tune into that energy, to perform miracles, and to focus on any task.

Avatar

The Daemon, the Muse. In a really Ecstatic manner, there is no common agreement as to what Avatars really are, but most agree on the obvious part, that they are an aspect of the mage that assist on the life's path. Some say it is the unconscious saying what the mage knows but doesn't want to hear, others think that they are future selves, spirit-totems, past-lives, demons, angels, platonic ideals or a wide range of other possibilities.

Ascension

When a mage is able to advance to the highest reaches of the path of enlightenment, it is when she is supposed to be able to discard the mortal blindfold completely and achieve an state of everlasting Ananda, comprehending everything in creation in a single eternal heartbeat. This is Ascension a personal moment so there is not a single way to achieve it, so each individual has to find her own way to find it. Even so, many Cultists find this whole idea terrifying, preferring brief flashes of truth than a single endless pleasure, with the ideal Heaven being that where you can get a moment of short break from the mortal world and after that go back for another ride. To them, life is more interesting than an eternity of anything.

Tools and Practices

Many see the Cultists as little more than wanton hedonists, but the truth is their behavior is far more sophisticated than that. While it is true that many of them employ sex, drugs, music and dance in their magic, their true goal is indicated in their name: Ecstasy comes from the Latin ex stasis which actually means 'out of stasis.' The Ecstatics seek to transcend the illusions of reality and see the world without boundaries, where their collective consciousness spans all of space and time.

There are many kamamarga, or paths of ecstasy, tools and techniques to induce ecstatic awareness. Even if few Cultists stay in one for long, all of them have favorites. Some use tribal inspirations like tattoos, piercings or rites of ordeal to focus their magic. Others use advanced gadgets to stimulate their own bodies, turning music, video, virtual reality and cybernetics into wild new art forms. Tantric and Taoist arts, sexuality, mass pleasure rites, ritualized self-mutilation, fasting and extreme physical activities, ancient yogi disciplines, summoning of zeitgeists (spirits of an era)...there are many ways to perform magic, and Ecstatics are there to experiment with all of them. The best description is as follows: "The Cult thrives in the eternal second at the height of an elegant dance, the shuddering sensitivity of total exhaustion, and the lateral thoughts of an opened mind."

Sex

Sex excites the body and mind in unique ways, in a glimpse of the unknowable, a rush, communion and social activity in one. Sex is also sacred in the form of the union of the female and male forces of Shakti and Shakta, so it is more than simple procreation and also a form of worship. During sex, being willing or not, the ojas are summoned and power circulates through both bodies. Most Ecstatics consider non-consensual sex as something monstruous and unforgivable. No form of consensual sex is considered taboo by the Cult, and many of them are actually omnisexual, as simple orientations are just barriers to break. They usually divide sex into high sex, lovemaking and low sex. The first raises the ojas and channels energy from one to another in a ritualistic and disciplining fashion. Tantric magic comes as an obvious way to exemplify it. Lovemaking is the sharing of affection and energy between lovers or friends, more spontaneous than the first, it expresses pure emotion and it is usually made by mentors and pupils as the Diksham bond between both it is usually that affective. Low sex is just an outright sexual relationship without nothing else, done for the sake of pleasure, but it can be powerful as the other if done right, getting to see the Lakashim during the climax.

Drugs

As their are powerful tools, many Ecstatic Initiates have a penchant for them, giving the Tradition some of their most common stereotypes. To Ecstatics they are not simple chemicals, they are tools to expand their minds and turn their perceptions inside-out. The danger of losing the sight of their way is there, so the trick us using them without becoming dependent on them and at some point growing beyond their usage and using kamamarga that doesn't need artificial chemicals to touch ecstasy. Cultists usually classify drugs into three categories, Running Toward, Running Away and Bad Shit. The first group are gateways to the uncouncious, drugs that create energy and foster activity, bolstering courage or action. The second group are the ones that relax energy, turn one into the self and leads to inability to act. The third group are uncontrollable chemicals that cause dangerous side effects, just causing problems and not helping magic at all.

Music

Music is one of the safest kamamarga, and even if slow offers an experience that no other focus can replicate if done correctly. Young Ecstatics consider that even if all music have potential, rock music brings a resonance only matched by primitive drumming. The most important point behind music is the passion, when there is caring and the artist is trying to say something with it, the music itself carries the power.

History

Being the Tradition that has taken the seat of Time, trying to describe their history in any sensible and continuous means is understandably difficult. Keep in mind that any Ecstatic that is asked the history of the Cult may, quite readily, laugh at the questioner. Some may take pity and attempt to explain a thing or two. Certain events can be pointed to, but fixing their exact location on the timeline is not necessarily even possible.

It is better to think of the Cult's history as a stone skipping across the waters of the timestreams and you've come to as close of an analogy as possible to the truth of it. Given that, some events and a timeline can be pointed out.

Ancient History

There were always people who felt the World's Heartbeat. Some were called shamans, others artists or madmen, but they were all the same. Some believe that the very first time that the human mind was able to grasp the Lakashim was when the primate ancestors ate hallucinogenic fungi and plants, so mystic insight and abstract reasoning were shown to them for the first time, but nobody really knows when it began. The few who continued down that path were masters of crazy wisdom and seekers of what other supressed in their fear. The Vedas, the oldest texts of Sanskrit literature, would be compiled later becoming the basis of early Hindu thought, becoming the basis to the people who lived along the Indus River and in some way to the foundations of what would be the Cult of Ecstasy. Religions were born around passions, with gods who represented them. Aphrodite, Astarte, Dionysus, Freyja, Tlaloc, Ga-Oh, Shakti, Shiva...

Greece and Rome

During Greece clasical age, the Dionysian tradition was inherited from Thrace and with it, wild festivals and reverly. They celebrated all the aspects of intoxicated insight, both in celebration and wrath, trascending their own mortality. Dionysus was a god of inspiration, one who brought joy and also roused anger, all while rejected normal vision to substitute it with fantasy. One its the most infamous followers were the Maenads, an all-female cult that ended all their festivities with human sacrifice, while one of the most friendly were the Roman Bacchantes, witty artists and philosophers with inhuman tolerance to alcohol.

Aristotle, even if not Awakened, would be one of the preponents of the Cult's ideology in the Nicomachean Ethics, claiming that the greatest goal of all human being is to achieve happiness. A society of happiness is one who strives to realize their greatest potential, being true happiness something eternal that requieres work and not just momentary gratification.

But finally repression arrived and in 186 BCE the Roman Senate, alarmed by the Bacchanalia, outlawed all lodges and play-houses of Bacchus (the Roman Dionysus), the communions and celebrations were ended and their followers were forced to flee or they were imprisoned. Separated, only a few were able to touch the Lakashim alone, and even them met with the government and were supressed. But even outlawed, the festivals continued in secret along the Mediterranean, in the form of communities of storytellers that discussed fantasy and imagination in a serious manner.

Mesoamerica

At this point in time Mayans were not part of the Cult of Ecstasy, as the Cult had not existed yet, but they had their own Ecstatic practices. Priests offered blood, burned it and gave it to heaven for the rejoicing of their gods, entering in Ecstatic trances without the need of other substances and the Lakashim flowing freely through them. They looked into the future to gain good fortune for their people's sake, so it was ecstasy tempered with responsibility, with the priest being the sole sacrifice of the ceremonies.

Dark Ages

It was a long time without actual organization for the Ecstatics. In Europe, the Roman Empire was dying, Christianity was spreading like fire and Ecstatics ideals survived in the theaters and philosophy even after the outlaw of the Bacchanalian rites. In America, the Aztecs subverted the previous ways and with their human sacrifices pushed other people against their wills into the position of the sacrifices.

Tantra

In Asia, Buddhism rised along with other obscure cults in Hinduism, and around the 500 AD the Shakti cults were arising. Those were fundamented in the divine and feminine power of a mother goddess, and they would be integrated into mainstream Hinduism. A confrontration began between the followers of Buddhism and Hinduism, getting the first esoteric knowledge and support from western China and the latter getting a hold in the caste social structure. At the end, Buddhism became a mystery cult in the Hindu doctrine, but Muslims invaded India and with that the Buddhism mysticism fused with the Hindu theology to create Tantra as the Cult knows it today. With it, the Lakashim awakened again in the form of spirituality, sex rites, dance, worship, meditation, alchemy and mysticism. Muslims had little patience for the Tantric ways, given that they stood against a lot of foundations of their own beliefs, so they had a special animadversion against it but the region that held all the centuries of development of Buddhism and Hinduism resisted against them.

Sh'zar the Seer

At the late Dark Ages, a conspiracy arose. It was one that denied ecstasy and other forms of mysticism, one that burned the Sanskrit writings of the Vedas and the Tantric alchemical recipes declaring all of them lies. It was the Order of Reason. A Seer saw the coming storm and his prophesy was clear, Magic would die unless all magicians banded under the same flag to counter this new threat. Nobody believed him at first, but soon they noticed they fooly and understood the truth in his words. He was the one called Sh'zar, and he would be the founder of the Cult of Ecstasy Tradition under the name of the Seers of Chronos.

Renaissance

The Council of Nine

Sh'zar spoke to 23 Masters, explaining that the Order of Reason would cast a net over humanity's minds and they will turn it into a world of Reason. Three Divyas, his Initiates Akrites Salonikas, Tali Eos and Kalas Jnana, followed him on his journeys through eastern Europe and finally reached France, where he met Masters using his own mastery of Time. Three Masters listened, Nightshade, Valoran and Baldric La Salle, bitter enemies who changed their own minds after hearing to what Sh'zar said them. By 1440, the foundations to the Council of Nine Mystic Traditions were ready. All of them traveled across the world to look for others of their kind, and Sh'zar knew he needed enough political power to force the Traditions to do the right thing, not mattering his own pride. His disciples found the Tantric Hindu and the Mayan Master Xiootan Iox among others. The second meeting was arranged, and after nine years of debate they finally founded the Council. Sh'zar melded all the different sects who knew the ecstasy into a single Tradition to stand along all the other who formed the new Council of Nine. Each Tradition needed a specialty, and Time was the most obvious for the Ecstatics, who were named the Seers of Chronos.

Sh'zar stayed as the representative of the Seers, while firmly believing that the abuse of power was a blasphemy to the Divine Gift of life, so he wanted to show that if people could just understand the miracle they lived in, they would live in harmony. He had an idea to the Seers, so after many debates he devised the Code of Ananda, a list of proverbs that illustrated the wisdom an Ecstatic should have and the responsabilities she should uphold. Sh'zar preached the Code with a real fervor, and his message of "do what you want, but never harm anyone" resounded not only across the Seers, but all the nine Traditions. They had their own freedom to explore their limits, but that was on their terms. They were to understand how what they do will impact other people and how they feel in that position. It was also when the Diksham, the mentor-student bond, was standarized. It was then when the Seers gained the respect of the other Traditions by the force of their personalities and arcane powers. Tali Eos bested knights, Akrites Salonikas debated with Christian priests and won, Xiootan Iox puzzled Hermetic magi with his astronomical knowledge... all while they also exemplified not the power-politics of other but a respect for their own Divinity.

The Great Betrayal

In 1466, after the Council passed the Compact of Callias, the First Cabal was formed. It was a group of mages from different Traditions who represented the hope of the nascent Council of Nine in the Ascension War. Akrites was the representative of the Seers of Chronos in this Cabal. They initiated the March of the Nine with the goal to revitalize wonder and magic with the inspiration of the deeds against the clutches of the Order of Reason and other enemies like the Infernalists. But in 1470, they were betrayed by their own leader, Heylel Teomim bani Solificati, and some of the other members of the Council blamed Akrites for it, saying that his own friendship with Heylel made him to cover the Solificati even if he should have known what would happen given his abilities as a Seer. Even if he, Tali Eos and even Sh'zar himself went to rescue the captured members of the Cabal, the Seers of Chronos had a stain in their name. Akrites did nothing to defend himself, no one knows if it was for as really wasn't able to predict Heylel's betrayal or if he just didn't do anything, and disappeared into the unknown. Sh'zar followed him and vanished. Xiootan Iox died about this time too.

The Nine Sacred Passions and the Sahajiya

The other Divyas refused to let the Tradition collapse. Eos and Jnana struggled to continue Sh'zar dream. Eos would complete Sh'zar's work with The Nine Sacred Passions, a book who described the connection between soul, passion and Ascension, reinforcing the Nichomachean Ethics and the Code of Ananda. The Nine Sacred Passions that she did completed the Code, as unlike it, explained to the Seers not only what not to do but what they should do.

It was during this time when Europe went crazy with religious wars, inquisitions, reformations and persecutions of all kinds, all while the Order of Reason fanned the flames of it for a while. Mages went underground, and the Seers of Chronos renamed themselves as the Sahajiya and most of them fled to India and the Middle East to avoid these conflicts. They choose this places because their strong roots with that lands and the other Traditions claiming Europe for them. The ones who remained in Europe where wanderers and considered mad beggars. In the Council, the Code of Ananda struggled to be considered an official protocol. Eos died in 1562, and Jnana's second son, Siddhu Asva, fought against the Aghoris, who were behind a plot to eliminate the Code as they thought there should be no limits in ecstasy. Siddhu defeated the greateast Divya of the Aghoris in a certamen, so they ceased their intents in 1573.

Age of Reason

Centuries of religious warfare were followed by centuries of colonialism and revolution, and the Council of Nine was shaken during all of it. Colonialism brought the loss of many allies within the Dreamspeakers ranks, and as enlightment spread across the world, the colonial powers encroached the Sahajiya with strongholds in India and the Americas and the Ecstatics counterattacked. The ideals of the Victorian Era didn't help either, as their strict moral stood against the ecstatic ways.

The Cult of Bacchus

In India, the Kali cults known as the Kalika Rajas violently fought against the British powers with assasination, madness, plagues and uprisings. The Sahajiya became a real terror to the Technocratic Union, destroying everything important before they could finish it up. These Kalika Rajas were disbanded in the 1840s, but supposedly still survive today in some form. In America, the Sahajiya ferociously fought against settlers, even using magic to cause whole cavalry units to dissapear. Meanwhile in Europe, Hellfire Clubs made its entrance and Romantic poets showed their disillusionment. The Tradition fell in debauchery and indulgence, and it was renamed as the Cult of Bacchus.

This sudden shift into violence after centuries of borderline pacifism made many mages in the Council to grow worried, so the Divyas in Horizon called a meeting in 1867 to discuss the problem. This brought infighting, over 150 Ecstatics came to the Council discuss the matter, with the older mages accusing the new mages of shattering Sh'zar dream by turning into a group of self-serving revolutionaries that caused conflict wherever they went and the newer ones calling the Divyas in their cowardice, saying that ecstasy was never supposed to be kind. That was when a miracle happened, and in a cloud of hashish Sh'zar suddenly appeared, making clear he was a Master of Time. Even if he didn't understood the times, he definitely knew the problem. He spoke for hours, reminded his descendants that the highest passion was supposed to be Joy and not Hate and poured the accumulated misery of all the victims of the renegades onto the crowd just for them to understand. He explained the that the cult was now a tool of vengeance and not enlightment, and their mission was to bring ecstasy to the people, to heal humanity and not just indulge in sensations and anger. He knew that the way the Cult was headed was only to end in the Cult own destruction, that instead of spread passion among people they were just fighting over national interests and propaganda. Like the Maenads of old, the Cult of Bacchus lacked vision, was violent and devoured others who could have been inspired. In other words, the Cult of Bacchus was devoted to self-gratification and orgies of violence, so Sh'zar final decision was to change its name to Cult of Ecstasy, one who would be devoted to exploration and breaking personal boundaries of enlightment and passion. The Tradition as a whole embraced again the Code of Ananda, and Sh'zar vanished as he appeared. Nobody knows what happened with him, maybe he jumped into a future crisis or maybe he is still floating in the realms of time, adjusting things here and there across history.