Irony, perseverance, or tolerance? - 30k Catherics

[Olis]

A gentle reminder: Avoid using real world references, brothers. This thread balances very carefully between real world and in-game religion. Beware the slippery slope we could so easily fall victim to here. It would be a shame to turn the melta on what appears to be a mature discussion.

[Plague Angel]

Except for the fact Khaine, Gork, and Mork ARE Khorne. There used to be Khorne Orks, etc.

 

There are Nurgle orks too. That doesn't mean Gork and Mork are Nurgle.

 

And there are pieces of Eldar fluff that have Khaine and Khorne interacting. Saying that every other god in the setting is just one of the Big Four wearing a mask is possible, but it isn't confirmed unambiguous fact. And there's still Asuryan and Vaul to account for.

[Wade Garrett]

Wasn't Lorgars whole spiel in Aurelian and TFH that angels and daemons and gods are all just aspects of the Chaos Gods? I distinctly remember Ingethel talking about humanity misunderstanding the gods.

 

Daemons say lots of things. Whether or not we should believe them is another matter entirely. On account of them being in some cases literally MADE OF LIES.

 

And Lorgar came to believe the Chaos Gods were the truth behind the benevolent creator spirits of the Covenant of Colchis, not every religion ever. He never claimed, for instance, that they were the inspiration behind his penning the Lectio Divinatus.

[tdemayo]

Supposition: By my reading of the background, Chaos gods are formed from humanity's emotions, principally the negative ones. They would continue to exist even if all of humanity were atheists, I'd think. The real danger of worship as I see it is that worship might allow -contact- with daemons. So the imperial truth was probably less about starving the chaos gods than about keeping fools from punching holes to let them into reality?

[Marshal Rohr]

I'm just saying, it makes a lot more sense for chaos to truly be chaotic. Always being evil is just another form of order.

 

If you think about it, if you know when given a choice between killing everything or exalting a martial culture Khorne always chooses to kill everything, that is neither random nor unexpected. Meaning it is it's own dogmatic code of action that prevails over any other choice. So there is nothing unexpected.

[Scribe]

The real issue isn't that Catherics practice religion, it's that in the 40K universe ALL worship of any kind is fuel for the Gods of Chaos. Benevolent dieties don't exist, only the chaos Gods. So any worship by Catherics FEEDS chaos. It doesn't matter if they believe in God, since there is no God in 40K, all their prayers go to one of the 4.

 

This doesn't make much sense, given that the guy who invented the Catherics also wrote about how hymnals and faith kept the chaos gods at bay throughout human history which directly contradicts A DBs all gods are chaos thing.

 

Yeah I would kill KILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL to go to the HH weekender and ask around this stuff.

 

1. All emotion flows to the Warp. All Warp Emotion fuels 1 or more (borders) of the Gods. This is pretty much as central to the setting as it gets. The War in Heaven (Eldar/Necron/Chaos/Old Ones one) had some pretty cool allegory around just what happened. Avatars being shards fallen to the Material after Khorne told Slaanesh forcefully...not that one.

 

2. I like the occult flavour of there being ritual (hymnals/faith) which is anathema to the entities of the Warp.

 

Now, you then have to look at the recent Grey Knights codex, and see that as far as THEY are concerned, all powers of the warp are they same, and they will wield them. Which brings us round full circle.

 

Is whatever faith Ol' holds to pre-Chaos as a thing? Are we talking 'Creator of the Universe' worship as per the Freemasons? Obviously the War in Heaven would throw that perspective in a bad light, but there was an epic thread on Portent...maybe it made it to Warseer, about timelines, from the author of the Liber Chaotica series....

 

I dont know, till further notice its warp ritual, bound up in something humans can digest without corruption - ref: Grey Knights.

[Warsmith Aznable]

A gentle reminder: Avoid using real world references, brothers. This thread balances very carefully between real world and in-game religion. Beware the slippery slope we could so easily fall victim to here. It would be a shame to turn the melta on what appears to be a mature discussion.

 

Well, that's part of the problem, isn't it? In 40k we have a fantasy world where all human mythology and history in one way or another is fodder for the background in various incarnations, because in-game it's normally given to be alien history misinterpreted through human ignorance and superstition, or Warp manifestations playing inscrutable, vague, and generally nefarious games.

 

And then along comes Dan Abnett and he gives us a super special magical man who apparently is un-ironic about being a totally-not-Catholic-wink-wink.

 

To me it's a jarring, off-key note in an otherwise smooth symphony.

 

Which I could say about the Perpetuals in general, actually.

[tdemayo]

 

A gentle reminder: Avoid using real world references, brothers. This thread balances very carefully between real world and in-game religion. Beware the slippery slope we could so easily fall victim to here. It would be a shame to turn the melta on what appears to be a mature discussion.

 

Well, that's part of the problem, isn't it? In 40k we have a fantasy world where all human mythology and history in one way or another is fodder for the background in various incarnations, because in-game it's normally given to be alien history misinterpreted through human ignorance and superstition, or Warp manifestations playing inscrutable, vague, and generally nefarious games.

 

And then along comes Dan Abnett and he gives us a super special magical man who apparently is un-ironic about being a totally-not-Catholic-wink-wink.

 

To me it's a jarring, off-key note in an otherwise smooth symphony.

 

Which I could say about the Perpetuals in general, actually.

I dunno. I think the Perpetuals are an interesting twist, myself. I do find it somewhat irritating that their every other memory is to a historic event. What about the other 28 thousand years? Don't any of them ever think about long centuries of solar expansion? The Dark Age of Technology? The Long Night? Doesn't Oll ever miss his automatic quantum bidet from M19? Have nightmares about Narthan Dune? Dream of Mars?

 

For that matter - what was human religion like in these millennia? Sure that has some bearing on how much continuity we should see in the Catherics?

[Kol Saresk]

Except for the fact Khaine, Gork, and Mork ARE Khorne. There used to be Khorne Orks, etc.

Actually, no. If Khaine was Khorne, then who did Khorne fight Slaanesh over?

 

All of these share the same..... What's the DnD term? Domain, I think? But they are still separate, individual entities.

 

And not "all" worship serves Chaos, the same way not all actions serve them. If I worship a stick, then it serves nothing. If I worship a stick by saying that it teaches goodwill and selflessness, it does nothing to serve Chaos. But if I say the stick is a god of war and must used as a holy weapon to kill those who do nothing to contribute society, then we are start moving towards Chaos. Since I'm human and I'm devoting it to Khaine, Gork or Mork, the energies would default to Khorne, who is the embodinent of human wrath, anger and etc.

[Marshal Rohr]

 

The real issue isn't that Catherics practice religion, it's that in the 40K universe ALL worship of any kind is fuel for the Gods of Chaos. Benevolent dieties don't exist, only the chaos Gods. So any worship by Catherics FEEDS chaos. It doesn't matter if they believe in God, since there is no God in 40K, all their prayers go to one of the 4.

This doesn't make much sense, given that the guy who invented the Catherics also wrote about how hymnals and faith kept the chaos gods at bay throughout human history which directly contradicts A DBs all gods are chaos thing.

 

Yeah I would kill KILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL to go to the HH weekender and ask around this stuff.

 

1. All emotion flows to the Warp. All Warp Emotion fuels 1 or more (borders) of the Gods. This is pretty much as central to the setting as it gets. The War in Heaven (Eldar/Necron/Chaos/Old Ones one) had some pretty cool allegory around just what happened. Avatars being shards fallen to the Material after Khorne told Slaanesh forcefully...not that one.

 

2. I like the occult flavour of there being ritual (hymnals/faith) which is anathema to the entities of the Warp.

 

Now, you then have to look at the recent Grey Knights codex, and see that as far as THEY are concerned, all powers of the warp are they same, and they will wield them. Which brings us round full circle.

 

Is whatever faith Ol' holds to pre-Chaos as a thing? Are we talking 'Creator of the Universe' worship as per the Freemasons? Obviously the War in Heaven would throw that perspective in a bad light, but there was an epic thread on Portent...maybe it made it to Warseer, about timelines, from the author of the Liber Chaotica series....

 

I dont know, till further notice its warp ritual, bound up in something humans can digest without corruption - ref: Grey Knights.

The BL team doesn't really deign to explain the universe to us all that often. Other than A D-B and Laurie at TFE, we won't have many questions about the way the universe functions because of the reluctance to 'nail down' anything because of loose canon. It's incredibly frustrating because it means the fans can't align their own stories with the 'laws' of the universe.

 

 

Except for the fact Khaine, Gork, and Mork ARE Khorne. There used to be Khorne Orks, etc.

Actually, no. If Khaine was Khorne, then who did Khorne fight Slaanesh over?

All of these share the same..... What's the DnD term? Domain, I think? But they are still separate, individual entities.

And not "all" worship serves Chaos, the same way not all actions serve them. If I worship a stick, then it serves nothing. If I worship a stick by saying that it teaches goodwill and selflessness, it does nothing to serve Chaos. But if I say the stick is a god of war and must used as a holy weapon to kill those who do nothing to contribute society, then we are start moving towards Chaos. Since I'm human and I'm devoting it to Khaine, Gork or Mork, the energies would default to Khorne, who is the embodinent of human wrath, anger and etc.

Hey, I'm just saying, from my comprehension of A DBs stuff, all gods are chaos in disguise. I may be totally wrong and I accept that, see my above frustration with loose canon being taken too far.

[Marshal Rohr]

 

A gentle reminder: Avoid using real world references, brothers. This thread balances very carefully between real world and in-game religion. Beware the slippery slope we could so easily fall victim to here. It would be a shame to turn the melta on what appears to be a mature discussion.

 

Well, that's part of the problem, isn't it? In 40k we have a fantasy world where all human mythology and history in one way or another is fodder for the background in various incarnations, because in-game it's normally given to be alien history misinterpreted through human ignorance and superstition, or Warp manifestations playing inscrutable, vague, and generally nefarious games.

 

And then along comes Dan Abnett and he gives us a super special magical man who apparently is un-ironic about being a totally-not-Catholic-wink-wink.

 

To me it's a jarring, off-key note in an otherwise smooth symphony.

 

Which I could say about the Perpetuals in general, actually.

The only part that requires scrutinization is that if Oll Pious is a 'Christian', who the hell did he worship when he was trucking around with Odysseus? I mean it's cool that all the old pagan pantheons were actually just chaos, but for Oll to be a perpetual AND a Catheric doesn't make much sense. Unless of course we find out Oll was St. Paul, or Jesus himself, or something else suitably Abnett.

[Piano_Sam]

 

 

A gentle reminder: Avoid using real world references, brothers. This thread balances very carefully between real world and in-game religion. Beware the slippery slope we could so easily fall victim to here. It would be a shame to turn the melta on what appears to be a mature discussion.

 

Well, that's part of the problem, isn't it? In 40k we have a fantasy world where all human mythology and history in one way or another is fodder for the background in various incarnations, because in-game it's normally given to be alien history misinterpreted through human ignorance and superstition, or Warp manifestations playing inscrutable, vague, and generally nefarious games.

 

And then along comes Dan Abnett and he gives us a super special magical man who apparently is un-ironic about being a totally-not-Catholic-wink-wink.

 

To me it's a jarring, off-key note in an otherwise smooth symphony.

 

Which I could say about the Perpetuals in general, actually.

The only part that requires scrutinization is that if Oll Pious is a 'Christian', who the hell did he worship when he was trucking around with Odysseus? I mean it's cool that all the old pagan pantheons were actually just chaos, but for Oll to be a perpetual AND a Catheric doesn't make much sense. Unless of course we find out Oll was St. Paul, or Jesus himself, or something else suitably Abnett.

Why would the various Pantheon's of mankind's past have to be Chaos, though? I mentioned it earlier, the Eldar had their pantheon which, at least as far as I'm aware, Order-aligned. The Necron, sorta, had the C'Tan, also Order-aligned, if of the more stern and malevolent variation. The Emperor can't have been the only supernatural agency in all of mankind's history, right? I dunno. It's nice food for thought, but was only ever meant to be something to add a little extra 'crunch' to the fluff (the Catheric stuff, I mean). What I'd like to know is, was it really the Emperor who inspired Keeler, sub-consciously maybe, or was it some other agency acting for Order?

[tdemayo]

 

 

A gentle reminder: Avoid using real world references, brothers. This thread balances very carefully between real world and in-game religion. Beware the slippery slope we could so easily fall victim to here. It would be a shame to turn the melta on what appears to be a mature discussion.

 

Well, that's part of the problem, isn't it? In 40k we have a fantasy world where all human mythology and history in one way or another is fodder for the background in various incarnations, because in-game it's normally given to be alien history misinterpreted through human ignorance and superstition, or Warp manifestations playing inscrutable, vague, and generally nefarious games.

 

And then along comes Dan Abnett and he gives us a super special magical man who apparently is un-ironic about being a totally-not-Catholic-wink-wink.

 

To me it's a jarring, off-key note in an otherwise smooth symphony.

 

Which I could say about the Perpetuals in general, actually.

The only part that requires scrutinization is that if Oll Pious is a 'Christian', who the hell did he worship when he was trucking around with Odysseus? I mean it's cool that all the old pagan pantheons were actually just chaos, but for Oll to be a perpetual AND a Catheric doesn't make much sense. Unless of course we find out Oll was St. Paul, or Jesus himself, or something else suitably Abnett.

 

It _is_ possible he converted. People do that.

 

Or perhaps he has seen many religions, and he identifies the good ones over the years with an underlying God or otherwise amalgamates them with his faith?

 

Do you remember the scene where he sees Horus about to battle the Emperor?  As I recall, he sees the "Light" fading and remarks that "it isn't what it used to be."  If the Light is the Emperor, does that mean Oll in some way regards him as a God, or as God, or some sort of divine instrument?  How can this imagery be reconciled with his "Cathericism"?  He doesn't seem to like the Emperor much, but he is on a suicidal mission to save him anyway, and regards it as critically important to humanity. 

 

Anyway, I'm still thinking the Catherics arent any specific historical religious group,  but are instead some future religion, from after our time, with roots in Christianity. 

 

 

 

[Marshal Rohr]

Oll doesn't like the Emperor though. I'm of the opinion that if bad thoughts psychically manifest as evil then good thoughts have to have an outlet, which is why Keeler can banish a daemon etc.

[tdemayo]

Aha!  Able to check my sources now.  Caspar Hawser from _Prospero Burns_ was raised Catheric.  IIRC, the community he was raised in was building a perfect city called Ur.  As they worked on it, they lived in what seemed to be a kind of commune.  (Then they all got wiped out.)  His adopted father-figure was a Rector.   His frenemy Murza was also Catheric.   Ur is a word drawn from Mesopotamian history. None of this strikes me as very much like modern Catholicism.

[Marshal Rohr]

Catholic just means universal. Cath being the root. So whatever Catherics were it was meant to be universal.

[tdemayo]

Could well be. Many religions claim universality.

 

I'm sure the play on both "Cathar" and "Catholic" in "Catheric" is deliberate, whatever it actually turns out to mean.

 

One thing I've noticed about Abnett is that he is very good with root words and languages.  He has a knack for reassembling older words in new ways for 30 and 40k.   He likes to take unusual roots and create an equivalent for a modern term.  For example, counterseptic instead of antiseptic.  Or Medicae instead of doctor.  If I'm not mistaken, he first introduced Vox to the 40k Universe to mean an audio transmitter.  He uses Middle English occassionally  -- in both the Eisenhorn and Gaunts ghost series. 

[Kol Saresk]

Aha!  Able to check my sources now.  Caspar Hawser from _Prospero Burns_ was raised Catheric.  IIRC, the community he was raised in was building a perfect city called Ur.  As they worked on it, they lived in what seemed to be a kind of commune.  (Then they all got wiped out.)  His adopted father-figure was a Rector.   His frenemy Murza was also Catheric.   Ur is a word drawn from Mesopotamian history. None of this strikes me as very much like modern Catholicism.

Ur was also the land of the Chaldeans Abraham and Job were from. Like you said, Abnett is very good at making subtle connections.

[Scribe]

Oll doesn't like the Emperor though. I'm of the opinion that if bad thoughts psychically manifest as evil then good thoughts have to have an outlet, which is why Keeler can banish a daemon etc.

 

The most potent weapon against the Warp. Is the Warp. Again, see Grey Knights. Its not 'good' warp, or 'ordered' warp. There's no basis for that unless you go allllllllllll the way back to Warhammer Fantasy RP, and the Gods of Law/Order (but that gets too much into the Moorcock multiverse...) so yeah.

 

I think its just Warp stuff, its not good/bad, after all even the Emperor at his best is still a pretty heinous dude.

[tdemayo]

 

Aha!  Able to check my sources now.  Caspar Hawser from _Prospero Burns_ was raised Catheric.  IIRC, the community he was raised in was building a perfect city called Ur.  As they worked on it, they lived in what seemed to be a kind of commune.  (Then they all got wiped out.)  His adopted father-figure was a Rector.   His frenemy Murza was also Catheric.   Ur is a word drawn from Mesopotamian history. None of this strikes me as very much like modern Catholicism.

Ur was also the land of the Chaldeans Abraham and Job were from. Like you said, Abnett is very good at making subtle connections.

It does get confusing though, like -Max- says.  Usually, when Abnett uses words that suggest the ancient and medieval connections, it's to indicate the archaic elements of the fake future history of 30/40k.  But with the Perpetuals, it might be a literal reference to real history of our own past. 

[Warsmith Aznable]

 

 

A gentle reminder: Avoid using real world references, brothers. This thread balances very carefully between real world and in-game religion. Beware the slippery slope we could so easily fall victim to here. It would be a shame to turn the melta on what appears to be a mature discussion.

 

Well, that's part of the problem, isn't it? In 40k we have a fantasy world where all human mythology and history in one way or another is fodder for the background in various incarnations, because in-game it's normally given to be alien history misinterpreted through human ignorance and superstition, or Warp manifestations playing inscrutable, vague, and generally nefarious games.

 

And then along comes Dan Abnett and he gives us a super special magical man who apparently is un-ironic about being a totally-not-Catholic-wink-wink.

 

To me it's a jarring, off-key note in an otherwise smooth symphony.

 

Which I could say about the Perpetuals in general, actually.

The only part that requires scrutinization is that if Oll Pious is a 'Christian', who the hell did he worship when he was trucking around with Odysseus? I mean it's cool that all the old pagan pantheons were actually just chaos, but for Oll to be a perpetual AND a Catheric doesn't make much sense. Unless of course we find out Oll was St. Paul, or Jesus himself, or something else suitably Abnett.

 

If the "old pagan pantheons" are actually just chaos, then it's just as cool for the Abrahamic mythos to be just chaos too. That there is a distinction between the two is part of the problem, partly coming from Abnett including an apparent space-Catholic without elaboration to fit inline with the established premise that there is nothing beyond the Warp.

 

As far as who he worshiped while trucking around with Odysseus, it's possible he could have actually met the historical figures behind modern universalist religions after that. To apparently have adopted one of those universalist religions under those circumstances, and to have held on to it after learning of the nature of the Warp and all the other gods and religions, is unique in the 40k universe. In my mind, it begs for further explanation, which detracts from whatever story he's involved in. At least to me, anyway. Is he (Ollanius) doing it for philosophical reasons, as a message to other Perpetuals, or because he really isn't sure that the Warp is the End of the Line because he's lived so long he can't be sure of anything anymore? Did he just find faith at some point and has refused to give it up in the face of apparent evidence to the contrary? If it's going to keep popping up as a character trait, then it should be explicated.

 

And does Catharic = Catholic/Christian? If it doesn't, he's gone beyond "subtle reference" and into "bizarre coincidence," which I think he's probably too aware to have done. And I may be crazy, (and I don't have the book anymore,) but isn't there a reference to him wearing a small, gold cross in one of his first appearances?

[Scribe]

Yeah I'm pretty sure he wears something, is it called out specifically as a Cross? I dont remember.

 

I may have to dig out KnF again...

[Aegnor]

The fact that the Perpetuals memories ALWAYS seem to refer to stuff that happened in M2. Just like fragments of ancient texts always seem to be from M2, or at most from M0-1.

 

Obviously no plays/songs/poems were written between 2000 until the Age of Strife... ;)

 

Interesting that all the Perpetuals we've met so far (I think,

excluding Cyrene

) were on Earth during the Age of Strife and the Unification. I wonder whether some of them first went out to the stars during the initial expansion and returned before interstellar travel collapsed? I wonder whether they deliberately gathered on Earth to be at hand for either the Age of Strife OR for the Emperor's ascension. Many of them have encountered Him before, maybe they wanted to stay close? (on the other hand, Grammaticus was maybe only born during the Age of Strife and met the Emperor during. Unification? Or was he born earlier? Away from my copy of Ur at the moment to check).

[Plague Angel]

I'm just saying, it makes a lot more sense for chaos to truly be chaotic. Always being evil is just another form of order.

 

If you think about it, if you know when given a choice between killing everything or exalting a martial culture Khorne always chooses to kill everything, that is neither random nor unexpected. Meaning it is it's own dogmatic code of action that prevails over any other choice. So there is nothing unexpected.

 

While I agree with you, I think the same problem is true of saying "every god with a martial domain is always and automatically Khorne in disguise." Even discounting the mythologies in question (Khaine exists in avatar form as a result of being shattered after losing a duel with Khorne) as proper mythologies, so simply being mysterious religious metaphors for the deeper truths behind how the universe is instead of literal historical this-happened-then-that-happened accounts, you bump right into the same problem of Chaos being too ordered and too predictable if that's the case.

 

As for Catheric being Catholic, I think the architecture, crosses, rosaries, and direct citation of Christian scriptures as Catheric, I'm fairly confident in the correlation. I even think the degradation/evolution of the term, from Catheric to Catholic, is consistent with how the names of other M2 artifacts are shown in the novels. While Cathericism will have inevitable differences from Catholicism, it seems to me that those evolutions, too, are consistent with the soft ironies of any other M2 artifact and how it's remembered or mentioned or name-dropped in the HH novels.

 

I could be convinced textually that it's a broader interpretation, or Catholicism-plus-something-else, etc. But at least from my own experiences reading, the easiest interpretation to go with is that it's just Catholicism as remembered and reinterpreted by the future Imperium, twenty eight thousand years later.

[Beta galactosidase]

that complaint is pretty uncompelling.

This is completely on topic, though.  There is this lament that Khorne is not about martial honour anymore, and that the good are not interesting because they have lost that sort of virtuous aspect and are exclusively evil.  The alternate perspective, the correct perspective, is that there is no difference between bloodlust and honor to be nostalgic for.  A society with elaborate rules and intensive training for the correct use of violence is one that is still devoted to bloodshed, and has actually achieved a pathological state that is identical to chaos corruption.  Compare it to a person who is so excited about his gun collection or his martial arts that he fantasizes about a villain threatening or harming his family, so that he can enact righteous vengeance or self defense.  Any state that harps on about honour is constructing a rationale for putting all of its money and people to ritualized or industrialized bloodshed.

 

It is possible, even crucial, to act as a society when incoming chaos.  There were always slaaneshi eldar before slowness was born, but the fall only happened when the dominant character of Eldar as a society became slaaneshi.  The same is true for the eurocentric births of khorne and Burke during the crusades and the Black death.  Of course there were warfare and disease, famine, and suffering before those events; they just hadn't completely preoccupied societies.

 

Now, slight change of topic.  The catherics in knf were ok because their cathericism was an individual cultural practice and as a society their activities were settlement of the frontier, and not organization around a cathartic structure.