Path of Cathari
A Sabbat adaptation of the Road of Sin
Nickname: Albigensians
The Path of Cathari is ironically named. It draws its technical and spiritual terminology from the so-called Albigensian heresy of the Middle Ages. The path claims to accept one of the core consepts of the mortal Albigensians and then, heretically, twists it to its own ends.
Historical Note: The Catharist or Albigensian Heresy: The Catharist Heresy was a Medieval flowering of a much older set of spiritual and religious beliefs. Mortal scholars trace the heresy's development from Persian Manicheanism to Bulgarian Bogomilism to the more familiar Catharist Heresy of Languedoc. Manicheanism was a revival of much older Zoroastrian beliefs. The Manicheans believed that the Holy Spirit appeared in the shape of an angel to a Persian prince named Mani. The spirit said that he was the last in a long line of prophets (including Zoroaster and Jesus). Oddly enough, this is similar to what the angel of Gabriel would tell the Prophet Muhammad a scant few centuries later.
The Manicheans married Gnostic tradition with zoroastrian myth. God 9as both the Tetragrammaton IHVH or "Jaweh" and the Lord of Light "Ahura Mazda") stood against Sakhlas (the Lord of Darkness, Satan, the Ahriman). The Lord of Darkness created the physical world and God stood outside it, in the spiritual world. God was being tortured by the darkness. Thus, the manicheanists said, those who followed God must suffer, too. They rejected the flesh - total celibacy, poverty and vegetarianism. Those who were holy transcended to be with god, and the weak were doomed to suffer and reincarnate until they too achieved holiness.
This heresy survived in various forms until it blossomed in A.D. 950, in what is now Bulgaria and Serbia. It presented itself as a unifying alternative to the fractious Orthodox and Roman churches, but preached a form of Manicheanist belief. The term "Bogomillism" meant "dear to God" but most of its followers merely described themselves as Christians. By the turn of the first millennium, Bogomil missionaries arrived in southern France - at Languedoc. Their teachings found read converts. There had already been a long tradition of Manicheanist belief there. By 1200, this new flavor of manicheanist doctrine was powerful enough to challenge the established church.
Centered on the French cities of Toulouse and Alibi, the Catharists (meaning "those who are pure") spread their beliefs throughout western Europe. By 1149, bishops held Catharist Mass in defiance of Rome. The Cathars taught that the Devil, whom they named as the chief Archon Jaldabaoth was the Demiurgic spirit that created te Earth to entrap and enslave humanity. This Demiurge masqueraded as God and led humanity away from the beliefs and spirituality that could free them from the worldly prision.
The Church of Rome called a crusade that saw the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in an effort to stamp and the heresy. Indeed, the crusade resulted in the official formation of the Inquisition.
Basic Beliefs: The path of Cathari is heavily influenced by the religious dualism of the Cathari creed. The faith holds that there are two creators, a good one (God) and a bad (the Demiurge). The good creator was responsible for the spiritual world. The bad creator was te son or the creation fo the "good" God, and the Evil One created (or is) the material world. The Cathari believe the body to be evil, but the soul to be good. They accept the physical world, but consider all within to be evil.
The path teaches that vampires are Lesser Aeons, Archonic spirits of the Demiurge. The undead are God's jailers and torturers, placed on Earth to ensure that humanity remains trapped away from the Sophic light of divinity. As instruments of spiritual imprisonment, vampires are set above humanity. Mortals are lesser, there to be used.
Vampires are the creation of the "evil" god, or Demiurge, to try the souls of mankind and force them to lose hope and succumb to the corruption of the material world. The God who cast Caine out of the Garden (obviously a metaphor for the spirit world) was teh evil God, who damned Caine to physicality and mortality. The Sabbat on this path practice the same philosophies as their mortal forbears, teh medieval Cathari, but they believe vampirism must be predestined. To have been chosen for the Embrace means one was fated to be. If you are so fated, one was weak or evil in a past life. Now, as punishment in this life, vampires are tied to the material world. The evil nature of vampirism only adds credents to the belief in the innate evil of the material world.
As jailors, vampries should explore and enjoy the "false" world and the decadent pleasures of flesh and sin. By experiencing the delights of this world, the Aeons work to strengthen the bonds that trap mortals. By seducing humans and awakening their innermost desires, the Cathari ensure that mankind will never transcend this plane.
Followers of this path wholeheartedly accept evil as innate to their immortal existence, since they are denied the spiritual plane after death. To the Cathari, Earth is hell and they want to make the best of it. They have developed a religious morality based on original Cathari beliefs on how to avoid the evil of the world. The Cathari seek out the evil against which their predecessors acted, and accept it.
Vampires are creatures of hunger and physicality. Their passion is dark, exploring extremes of eroticism and obsession that mere mortals are incapable of. Perversion is inherent to undead existence - a reductionism, a state of voyeurism that demeans the human participant and dismisses humanity itself to a mere caricature. The Cathari revel in this dominance and depravity. It means they are doing their job.
