Marselism is a post-flood Abrahamic religion based on the teachings of Marsel Pavelovich, most common in Novistrana and other European states. It is a syncretic faith, combining aspects of many local monotheistic traditions, but especially Orthodox Christianity and Sunni Islam. It has been called esoteric, occult, or heresy by its critics, though its proponents would defend it as following the mystical traditions found in early Islam and Christianity. It has an extreme gnostic streak, and some secular observers have noted its similarities to Catharism. It rejects orthodoxy, dogma, and centralized religion - as a result, despite its youth, there are hundreds of separate sects and no prominent centralized structure.
Beliefs[edit | edit source]
Marselists believe that God is locked in a battle with Satan over the nature of reality; God holding dominion over the souls of mankind and their spiritual energies, while Satan holding dominion over the material world, which some sects call Hell. They believe that Satan aims to bind mankind to the material world, Earth, and deny them ascension and unity with the Godhead of creation. Similar to Buddhist or Hindu belief, they hold that man's soul is trapped in the material world and can only be liberated from Satan and ascend into heaven through meditation and prayer. In Marselist cosmology, mankind has been imprisoned by empiricism and materialism, which are literally Satanic doctrines, and that the Godhead has continually attempted to teach mankind how to live in unity with it through prophecy and doctrine. For Marselists, all religions share aspects of this primordial and perennial Truth, most recently the Christian Messiah and the Islamic Prophet, but stretching back to Adam and Eve, who's casting out of the Garden of Eden represents mankind on Satan's world, separate from God.
While drawing on previous traditions, they hold that Christianity and Islam were fundamentally flawed and became perverted by materialistic concerns, as a result of their centralized structure easily prone to corruption by the clergy. They hold that Christian and Islamic doctrine is impure, or fallible, ultimately being twisted by religious authorities to address material concerns or protect their power, and not the true Word of God, though inspired by it. To Marselists, the Flood was the result of an attempt by God to cleanse the material world and as a spiritual rejection of mankind's hubris and belief in scientism, an era of history they call the Kali Yuga.
Marselists hold that any individual, with proper meditation and education, can learn to commune directly with God in what they call trances. These individuals are known as Teachers, and through their communion with God come to learn the primordial Truth. As a result of this, there is no standard doctrine, but a few common beliefs can be identified:
1. There is one God, the Creator and Godhead, who wants to be in communion with his creation but is prevented by Satan. He has visited this world before, as Jesus, and will again, during the Second Coming. God has communicated with his creation since the Dawn of Time, either directly or through His prophets.
2. The Earth is a material prison for man's soul that Man must escape.
3. Man must engage in spiritual jihad and rise above material concerns to liberate their soul and rejoin the congress of Heaven. Man is the victim of the eternal struggle between Truth and Falsehood and must be an active warrior in that struggle.
4. Man must submit to God, and aim to be in conference with him as much as possible, though whether this is done through prayer, meditation, or even sex or drug use varies by sect.
Practices[edit | edit source]
Due to a wide variety of sects with doctrinal and structural differences, practices are rarely consistent across all Marselists. Some consistencies can be observed - Sunday is set aside as a day for reflection, prayer and meditation, with a long service at a meeting house following by a communal activity usually focused around public charity. There are daily calls to prayer and meditation, five times a day, with some meeting houses choosing to continue the Arab practice of the call to prayer. Marselists also celebrate the birth and resurrection of Jesus, following the Orthodox calendar, and observe a week of Ramadan, as well as keeping up with some other holidays, such as the week of Marsel's Revelation, which involves many communal activities and celebrations.