Celestii Magni (Religion)

Celestialism includes four major schools of thought or denominations, each with its own variation of the Prime Celestials, its own saints, feast days, terminology, liturgy, monastic, priestly and nun orders, and holiday calendar. For the purposes of game play not all of this needs to be identified, and players are encouraged to fill the gaps with names and stories from their own imagination, but certain standards are outlined here as a basis for future development.   Though the denominations are divergent, there are certain aspects, even of the heretical sects, that unify them under the common term of Celestialism.   First and foremost, to be clear - there is no Jesus, no concept of a Messiah or any of the trappings of Christianity; This is not intended to be a reinterpretation, substitute for, commentary on, simulation of, or alternative to any actual, real religion.   Secondly, the objects of adoration in all of Celestialism is a pantheon of Angelic beings. Each variety also has its own saints, though there is often significant overlap between the two 'acceptable' denominations, Valentinian and Basilidean Celestialism. It has no single God or multiple Gods, per se, rather the Angels are the stewards and manipulators of the forces of nature, of time and space, of life and death, filling a role created by the cosmogony of the ancients who then abandoned this creation and left the Celestials to run it. Three of the branches posit that the nature of this first creator or Demiurge was only to create, not to shepherd anything, and the forces of creation are not available for nor interested in any worship from their creation. The Carpocratians, on the other hand, believe that the Angels are in fact evil, regardless of their apparent interest in and care for mortals; They believe that the power of the angels must be broken by the commission of every sin, and only then can mortals reconnect with the demiurge, who is the real creator and who exists above and beyond any childish concepts of morality.   Thirdly, while religious persecution was the primary cause of dozens of not hundreds of wars in the past, the modern age is relatively tolerant and relatively enlightened, and military action against or between those of opposing faiths is not generally a thing at the moment. The Valentinians and Basilideans tolerate each other fairly well, and over the millennia good portions of the east have taken in Valentinians and likewise many Basilideans can be found in the west. However both of them agree that the Carpocratians and the Ophitics are anathema. The nature of the cults is to live secretly among others who don't share their beliefs, and no war is likely to be fought against either because no nation is entirely, or even significantly, a follower of either of those paths. Most members of the two main heresies appear to practice Valentinian or Basilidean rites to the casual observer, and their loyalty to the secret rites is kept, well, secret.   Of course, for purposes of running a D&D game, the last thing you want to do is saddle a player with this kind of burden; the memorization alone is unreasonable and more to the point, in a tactical sense the specifics of the lesser 64 generally aren't mission-critical. They should be seen as gateways for richer storytelling and more can be created as needed to be used as potential allies or BBEGs of campaigns, and as a basically limitless resource to build your own characters' and game stories with. This is not intended as a laborious master list of sublists that needs to be memorized in order to use the system.   The enormous size and depth of the campaign world, and its use in games since the mid 1980s, should give plenty for lore-lovers to chew on, but the 'sacred texts' are not themselves sacred. Use what works and jettison what doesn't.