On the Apostasy of the Pure Beast
From LanceaSanctum
Delivered unto the Sanctified of Delaware and the World, by Bishop J.W.Ghoren on 28 June, 2006.
Every night, each of us who know the importance of our Purpose and the divinity of our Curse struggles to become a Predator of men. We must ever conceive new, more effective ways of effecting the Purpose, that we may shepherd more mortals back to Him. Doing so, as we know, requires a careful balance to be struck between the terror we are obliged to provide and the shadows which must hide our existence. How often do we drink the sweet Vitae of the kine, and then fight with our Beasts to keep from taking it all, knowing that we must not preempt their redemption? We work long, lonely nights, Brothers and Sisters, often with only the Blood and our Faith for companionship. Yet we know we must refrain from creating more of our own. And for those among us whose age has refined their taste only to the blood of Kindred, do they not suffer always the Hunger for the blood of their very kin? The Requiem may be a Danse in the eyes of many, my Brothers and Sisters, but we know that any who take it seriously Danse only the solemn music of our Purpose.
Essential to our purpose is our ability to empathize with mortals. While we came from among them, our own wickedness and the inertia of our unlives can too quickly erode our understanding of what it even means to be a good person. Without such knowledge, based in the mortal Faith of Christ, how can we hope to know how best to keep the mortals in line? We can not. As it is said, "it takes one to know one."
When a Kindred loses the last traces of his Humanity, I shall argue herein, he loses several key aspects of the Creator's design for us as Predators, chief among them the loss of human empathy and understanding mentioned above. Those Kindred who, through a lack of self-discipline or the failure to find a moral compass in Faith, lose themselves to the Beast simultaneously lose fully half of what makes us the ultimate Predators of Men - the man within. We are precisely made to affect the faith of men because we were men, and still are in many respects. Beyond the struggle of Faith, the greater struggle all Kindred engage in is that between the Man and the Beast. In succumbing entirely to his Beast, a Kindred gives up: the very consciousness that focuses his Predations through his Faith; the empathy required to read humans' righteousness in the first place; and the understanding of men that enables us to know how best to lift their hearts to God. This loss is results in: an inability to effectively Predate within the Divine Purpose; a lack of any understanding of or reverence for God, as Blood eclipses even Him; and a powerful danger to our Traditions, particularly those of Masquerade and the Amaranth.
Consciousness is utterly essential to our being, Brothers and Sisters. Without the human mind to temper our monstrous souls, we are ravening, thoughtless brutes, basically useless to God and the Purpose he made clear to Longinus. The mind enables us to understand that purpose, and to study over our many years how best to apply the Gifts of our Curse to it. The mind shapes the world our senses reveal, allowing us to grasp the living world even as we resign ourselves to its shadows. Without the focus and will manifested in the consciousness that was, after all, God's special gift to Man, how can we hope to be equal to the task of surviving unto the end of days as Predators for Him, to be judged by the Son and perhaps offered salvation for our unlives of Faith and sacrifice? We can not. Consciousness - and, to some degree, conscience - is required for us to be Complete Predators. Yet a Kindred lost to the Beast is at the mercy of his two accursed desires: feeding on the blood of mortals, and avoiding the sun and flames at all costs. Within that regimen of eat-sleep, there is no time for contemplation of our Purpose, nor of how we may affect it.
Empathy is essential to our Purpose, Brothers and Sisters. Ours is an existence removed from the normal, possibly happy world of light and life. We know only the darkness, and know only the companionship of other Damned, or perhaps that of mortals we will consume when we tire of them. Yet, in our Divine Purpose, we can find fulfillment. Though we have been cast from God's light, we can help the kine to find it by making the shadows we inhabit as terrifying as God himself. We do this in myriad ways, Brethren, each of us differently, often in a new way for each mortal we find who needs guidance. A mortal who has given in to Pride is taken low by means far different from one consumed with Lust. Without an ability to empathize with the kine, we cannot hope to know who needs what kind of nudge to move them in God's direction. When a Kindred becomes a Pure Beast, he is incapable of contemplating the vices of the flock, and thus incapable of properly addressing them. The Masquerade exists because only despair and useless, abject fear of US result in mortals when we do not keep our work targeted and careful.
Lastly, understanding is essential to our Faith. Brethren, quite plainly, the mind we lose when the Beast takes control of us is the very tool God has let us retain from our lives to help us understand his new plan for us, and how to live within that plan. Understanding of the Testaments gives so many of us hope, and more importantly, the truth about our unlives. Do we not pity the Kindred whose inability to choose their path leaves them drifting unbound through their Requiems? Like such a fool, a Pure Beast cares not for why he exists, nor for how he should exist. The Pure Beast has no care but for its own Hunger and Fear. Such a creature is of no value to mortals' faith, for it is incapable of even understanding its own.
These failings of a mind lost to the Beast result in the loss of that vampire's usefulness as a tool of God. I know many of my Brethren impugn the Crone and the Ordo from time to time, but they are superior Predators to one lost to his Hunger. Those within my diocese feed discretely and respect the Masquerade that enables us to affect our Purpose. Yet a Pure Beast will run through a packed airport if that's where its next snack is running. And, if that snack be Kindred, what is there to keep the Pure Beast from devouring said snack's Heart's Blood? Nothing.
Before I conclude, I want briefly to discuss the Beast among the Sanctified, in particular. I believe, Brethren, that we who have been entrusted with the Wisdom of Longinus have a special duty to be vigilant in the balance we find between Man and Beast. We must be monstrous, to an extent. We must be monstrous AND moral, Brothers and Sisters, and so it is especially sad when even our true Faith cannot help us hold onto the remnants of our Morality. Failure to maintain some level of mastery over the Beast is, for the reasons given above, in light of our sacred duty, egregious Apostasy in a Sanctified.
Pure Beasts are a waste of Vitae. While there are, of course, scattered rumors of Kindred regaining their composure, I have found no confirmd case ot this, and for no less than decades until such monsters do gain control, their only purpose is to eat, and they do so indiscriminately. When they kill or consume righteous mortals, or those of us who are righteous and good Predators, they relegate themselves to a level below Kindred, below Man, to that of mere, unthinking beast. Such a loss of control flies in the face of our God-given Purpose as Kindred, and any who becomes a Pure Beast, should be put down like a beast.
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