this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2024
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Worldbuilding
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I'm going to flip the question on its head and ask something else, how closely does the religion of your world describe how your world works? Most religions were developed on the dual idea of trying to explain how everything worked and how to justify the desired political order.
A lot of mysticism is generally fought against by organized religion since it allows for multiple sources of divinity, which is something that a singular organization may want to fight. You may also have people fighting against mysticism as out of date folk knowledge.
It sounds like the world you're describing is that the religion accurately reflects the world, with mystics acting as scientists and engineers operating beyond the law. It would be akin to some random person in modern society working with radioactive or disease research.
That's a good question. I haven't fully worked out all the details of how the religion started, but Transformatsiya has its origins around 47,000 or 48,000. The latter might be more feasible since it gives around 700 years of development before the revolution.
I'm going to go though a bit of the lore to get to the part about how the religion works.
Tanisha Reznova is a spiritual being that was created in the Shadow Realm in 2004 from the collective consciousness of the Americans. She initially hated America because she experienced unimaginable suffering when she was created. The Shadow Realm is the name of the supernatural or spirit world. Even within the Shadow Realm, there's no strong evidence that the God of Abraham exists, but Tanisha came to the conclusion that He does and worked to convert people to Christianity and Islam. She has never been sure which is correct. Tanisha is part of Reflection archetype of Americans, which is things that are hidden or repressed about oneself.
Around 48,000, a lot of people in the technocratic Union of Slavic Socialist Republics on a dyson shell begin to "hatch" themselves from the endless depression of the lifestyle given to them by the tsarist overlords. They have untouchable depression they later call "spiritual dysphoria" that goes away after they turn to religion. In the beginning it starts out as a spirituality. After Tanisha discovers them, she begins revealing stories to them through dreams and altered states of consciousness. Tanisha gives direction and form to their religion and reveals stories about Judaism, Christianity and Islam and also tells stories about ancient "Merika" as the early Transformniks.
Transformatsiya takes shape over time and eventually the general concepts of the religion are:
While living under the tsar, all religion was suppressed and there was no knowledge of any religions prior to the development of spirituality among the early radicals and later after the revelations by Tanisha. When the early Transformniks explore the galaxy and find evidence of Abrahamic religions, it affirms their belief.
Their attitude toward religion is they believe it because it "works" at curing their spiritual dysphoria and creating the foundation of a society. They believe that even if their religion is wrong, it still "works" and has benefit in believing it. Many people also have spiritual experiences where they truly believe it.
Part of the teachings of Tanisha include strongly cautioning them against wasting away gazing into the spirit world. It's a similar idea to the concept of "terminally online." People need to stay grounded to reality. She describes "terminally occult" mystics as "getting high huffing jinn farts." Tanisha has to organize similar interventions as the time when Joe Rogan said that the DMT jesters had to sit down one of his friends and tell him to stop showing up all the time. (We live in a weird timeline.)
As part of their mystical beliefs, agnostic prayer is much more evil and severe and punishable under Zakon Law then prayer to idols because agnostic tend to pray to "any deity listening" which means they're likely to pray to an evil demon or false god.
Spirituality and mysticism are encouraged as long as they help bring people to the "correct" realizations about God.
Psychology is also considered a spiritual field. Medicalization of psychology is often rejected by Transformniks as capitalist and they reject capitalism because many believers consider it inevitably lead to association with God. Consumerism takes greater importance then God.
So it seems like there is a spiritual world, but that the religion doesn't conform to the spiritual world, which creates a conflict.
It's mainly intended to be accurate for describing the path toward salvation, especially the first salvation that happens after death. Tanisha mentions the day of judgement, but this is based on faith. There's more stuff in the holy book of Transformatsiya that describes various "islands" in the Shadow Realm. Everyone has their own personal island that exists while they are alive. Sin causes it to become a form of Hell. Atheists get trapped on the beach of the island until they accept the existence of the spirit world. Richard Dawkins is still trapped on the beach because he has faith that he's trapped inside a simulation.
Transformatsiya is largely based around the idea of achieving peace though following the path of God and that people should be servants and messengers of God.