The book I’m reading now (last of the the triolgy that Jen got me for my birthday, Kushiel’s Avatar) has a lot of religion in it. Actually, the whole trilogy was steeped in ficticious religions of different kinds.
The book takes place in a world sort of like ours - an alternate Renaissance. In place of France is Terre D’Ange, the homeland of the main character. She travels all over the place, mainly in what we would call Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. A good portion of this third book takes place in Africa.
Anyway, all through the books, the main character talks about this Elua person. I don’t remember the mythology exactly, (and I’m not sure how this is possible, since the author seems to repeat it ad nauseum) but it’s something like this: Someone who is not named “Jesus” but suspiciously crucified and suspected the son of the One God bleeds onto the ground. His blood mixed with the tears of the Magdalene (once again, only a barely implied connection) and is absorbed into the mother Earth. From the love of the Earth is born Elua, who is ignored by the One God who favors his son. Elua wanders around “preaching” his precept, which is, “Love as thou wilt.”
Although the One God does not hear Elua, the angels in heaven do, and twelve angels flock to follow Elua in spite of turning their backs on the One God. There are some trials in their journeys, as there might be in anything vaguely spiritual, but they eventually settle down in Terre D’Ange and mingle with the people there practicing (in some cases more literally than others) the precept of Elua.
There is a lot more, but that’s the jist. I’ve read about 2000 pages of this stuff now - I’m sure you now appreciate the short version.
In spite of worshipping this Elua person, Phedre (the aforementioned protagonist) pays respect to everyone’s gods as she travels from country to country. Being marked by one of her own gods (one of the angels, Kushiel, the books’ namesake) she sees the wisdom in making offerings to any god that would hear her, especially those native to the region through which she travels. As I said, she travels far, and makes offerings to many people.
It amuses me that while so many people in this book are so strict in their religious beliefs, Phedre manages to bear the mark of Kushiel and pay homage enough to these other gods that they bless her repeatedly on her journey. I amused by the malleability of her beliefs, and how she is free to do good and be good and praise good things and not settle on any strict way of being, yet have a good grasp of what is and still believe in the many stories that are told of the different deities whose people she encounters. I suppose that it’s somewhat easier to craft a novel where all the stories fit together well than it is to see the same parrallelism in real-world religions.
The point to all of this rambling: I was wandering around on another web page - a gadget page, of course - and saw a phone that was designed for Muslims. It has features that help schedule alarms for prayer times (since there are 5 daily prayers) and also has the capability to help you discern the direction of Makka (long story short, it used to be called Mecca, now it’s not, sort-of). The method in which a phone would accomplish this eluded me, so I looked up some information on the feature that the phone calls “Qibla Direction”.
Even if you don’t worship or believe as some other people do, you have to respect the devotion they put into it. The page I found that describes the process of finding the correct direction in which to pray is fairly informative.
The intersting and sad thing about the page is that there is a photo available there of the site itself. It is a really beautiful place. It’s rare in a religion that there is a thing you can go see or touch that affirms your faith, and these people have it. But to see it in person, you must be Muslim. That this picture exists at all is fairly amazing.
Anyway, the inability of non-believers to visit this place to see for themselves got me thinking about how much more tolerant and unrealistic the people in my book are. And so I’ve shared with you this unique vision of a pleasant alternate world where it’s easy to hold true to your own beliefs and respect those of others as well.
Only 150 or so pages left and then I’m free of it…
