Dark Grandeur: Our Role in the Completion of Men
From LanceaSanctum
Originally given by Bishop J.W.Ghoren of Delaware.
Brethren,
I wish to begin this discourse with an oft-quoted but nary-well understood selection from the Malediction, the first book in the Testament of Longinus:
I am God's Holy Monster, the drinker of mankind. For so long, I could not see the role I would play because I looked for it with human, mortal eyes. So I put forth the truth in these pages, for you who seek as I have sought. I am not some godless beast who stalks beneath the dark grandeur of sanctity. I am the grandeur. I am Sanctified.
"God's Holy Monster, the drinker of mankind," ... what does it mean?
That we are Damned, cursed to lives sustained only through the blood of others.
That we are Vampires, ever leeches of human culture and thought along with the Blood.
That we are but Shadows, the fear mortals push away as they scurry home - not below their notice... beyond their notice.
We take so much from man beyond that which is our mandate. First and foremost, we take our own worst sin - our childer. Through the years, these childer bring with them their fashion, their culture, their prejudices and their worldview. We all must take these cues, however. An elder once used to the leeway granted nobles of kicking any begger they wished would today be arrested for such an act.
The acquisition of some of their customs and fashions is naturally required for us to maintain the Masquerade. To an extent, when mortal culture changes we must change with it or be left behind as we are already left out. We adapt, decade by decade, century by century. Yet what we are - and the role we play in Creation - does not change with mortal fashion or custom.
While we must keep an eye to mortals for the sake of our survival... we cannot look to them for guidance. Not to their institutions as the Carthians do; nor to themselves as power, as the Invictus do; nor to their religious heroes and idols, as the Crone do. We cannot look inward, either, my brethren; for within, we find only the Beast and the hunger - mindless and untempered by the faculties of man which God has left us. The Dragons apply their minds to their Damnation directly, and insodoing fail to see that our role is defined by the Curse they would circumvent.
Looking to institutions, ourselves or the religions of mortals will not show us the path. The path, my brethren, is in each of us... but we alone cannot see it. We are Predators of men, but we are still like men in that without God our existence is simply incomplete.
Fortunately, we have His words, "put forth [as] truth in these pages, for [we] who seek as [others] have sought." The Testament is the word of God, given unto us by an Archangel, through one of us who learned deeply and well the nature of our Damnation. With it, the Beast and the blood it craves can begin to make sense to us.
We are not "godless beasts." We worship and fear Him, and rightly so - for though we are cast into the shadows of this world, yet we remain within His Creation. However, in a sense we are godless - for we are without God. We are no longer his favored among the Earth, for our sins and the sins of our sires. Yet we believe He is there, though our prayers go ever unanswered, because one of us - Longinus - was touched by Him, and shown our Path by his agent, Vashtisael.
The base fact of our condition is neither proof nor denial of God's existence, my Brethren. But for those Damned who recognize their Purpose in God, it is an affirmation. Longinus has told us that we are to take the blood of men without mercy or pity; and we feel the hunger for their blood in our very souls as the Beast gnaws at us. The Beast is not proof, any more than an urge to help someone makes helping others right. We have faith in the Testament... our book, our guide.
We do not "stalk beneath the dark grandeur of sanctity." The grandeur of Creation has not been denied to us - only His attention and love. We are still a part of this world - we are part of the darkness in the testing ground for mortals' return to Him. And like all things in this world which find their Purpose in Him, we have a chance by fulfilling our Holy Mandate to be Sanctified unto Him by obedience to that Purpose.
What is our Mandate? To play our part in God's completion of men - of the awakening of their Spirit through the letting go of their worldly concerns. It is our duty to make that completion possible by seeing that none of His herd strays too far into the wilderness. The kine are to be made to fear sin. And does the Fourth Commandment not tell us that the Damned are to "[make] themselves known only to exemplify fear?"
There is no more in our Purpose. Much has been said recently about the role Christ plays in our Mandate. Though I believe in Christ, I do not believe that our duty to the kine involves Him. Rather, it involves his teachings. Jesus did not ask for men to worship Him. He asked men to live as he did and to be as he was - selfless. And no mortal church or religion has a corner on leading men to selflessness. Plenty of Christian and Catholic parishes are dysfunctional, while as many or more Synagogues, Mosques and Libraries show men the way to that heaven.
God's completion of men is a job we certainly have no chance at helping in. Man must find his way to selflessness and God on his own, with the help of beings far greater than we - such as Jesus, Moses, Muhammed, Aquinas, Aristotle ... you get the point. Man's salvation is not in our hands - it is in the hands of Man and God. We are neither of these. Our duty is not to show them the way to Heaven, but simply to make sure that they are looking for it and not reveling in what we represent - the sin, and the darkness.
We are the Grandeur - part of His Plan for Creation.
We are Sanctified - in our adherence to the Testament and - found in it alone - Our Dark Path.
Sum Sanctus.
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