Furanism

"Those with perverse hearts, whose souls hath been led astray into darkness, shall be sat in cold, while those who seeketh You shall be warmed ever in Your loins. They shall be shown Your mercy great and everlasting, spared the dire reckoning of the Liar Gods."

—Donapse, 6:3

Furanism is a henotheistic religion centred mostly around the Donapse (Varaso: Donapsão, lit. "given work"). It was begun in the early 21^st century by Haír of Túnis, whom Furanists view as a prophet who ascended to be with Furana upon his death. Worship revolves around the veneration of the goddess Furana, usually referred to by Furanists as “Dea”, or the equivalent in the adherent’s language. It is henotheistic insofar as it recognises the existence of other gods, such as those in traditional pagan religions, but explicitly forbids and condemns their worship or veneration.
In its traditional cosmology, Furana was the first of the gods, responsible for creating the other gods. The world and the planes were then created as a collaborative effort between Her and the other gods. However, Furana, as the first of the Gods and the only one capable of creating that which is itself capable of further creation, also created life. She began to nurture and cultivate life, and the other gods grew jealous. In their jealousy, they conspired against Furana to imprison her away from her creation, and sever life of its connection to her. She was unable to resist her imprisonment, but as her last action before she was rent away, she created fire and gave it man, the greatest of her creations, to light their way and guide them back to her. The other gods, enraged at this, sought to deceive man and turn him away from Her and Her light, establishing religions that venerate them instead of man’s actual creator. In this, the other gods have been termed the “Liar Gods” by Furanists. By this, then, the Furanist conception of salvation is the rejection of the Liar Gods and a return to Furana, their creator and shepherd. As a henotheistic religion, Furanism avoids the problem of evil by Furana not being omnipotent, and in some traditions, being benevolent, but not omnibenevolent.
According to Furanist history, Haír of Túnis was originally a priest of Colus in the Varaso city of Túnis. One day, his temple inextricably burned down, and as he watched it burn, he heard the voice of Furana in the flames, who said she would reveal the true nature of reality to him to write down and pass along to the rest of humanity.

Furana

Furana is seen as the architect of life, responsible for creating the divine spark of life, usually envisioned as a divine fire, and likely influenced by the Chagic concept of samum. For this reason, She is usually associated heavily with fire, and fire is itself revered with divine significance as an aspect of Furana, and her final gift given to humanity before her imprisonment to light their path back to Her and their salvation.
Furana is sometimes identified with the archaic Tira Vellan agricultural goddess Fyrēnē, possibly brought to Eussis with the Tratians and eventually spread to and reinterpreted by the Vallarans, possibly through Fridian intermediation. In this sense, as agriculture and life are usually linked in traditional worldviews, the jump from agricultural deity to life deity makes sense. The aspect of fire may have been innovated, based on traditional links between life and fire, or the process of syncretic blending with a fire deity.

Furanist Mysticism

The simplest way to contrast the views of orthodox vs mystical Furanism is to view the orthodox as fundamentally Aristotelian and the mystic as fundamentally Platonist. While both orthodox and mystic interpretations of Furanism both derive from the same base texts, they have varying exegeses. While orthodox traditions were more heavily influenced by more conventional interpretations that reality, being, and experience are a product of the fusion or union of equal physical and spiritual substance, mystic traditions were more influenced by the Tratian mystery cults, and hold a more idealistic (mind-over-matter) worldview.
Rather than simply viewing it as the perverse rewards of obedience to the the Liar Gods, as in orthodox Furanism, mystic sects contends that magic, insofar as it defies expectation and the divinely inspired natural order, or Ordos, diminishes the qualia of being of those exposed; its absurdity and arbitrary nature contrasts with the Ordos. Magic is thus seen as a sort of pneumatic or spiritual anarchy that challenges and perverts the Ordos.
The relationship between magic and the Liar Gods is usually present in mystic traditions, however, due to its monistic worldview, the relationship between the Liar Gods and reality, as well as between the Liar Gods and Furana, are different. In mystic traditions, the material world and the planes are seen as refractions or emanations of pleroma, the higher world of form, either inhabited by Furana, or embodied by her in a pantheistic manner. The liar gods, then, are seen as the inhabitants or architects of kenoma, the lower world of phenomena. As pleroma is conceptualised as embodied or full, and kenoma as empty or vacuous, in an ontological sense, the phenomena of magic are conceived to be the manifestations of the substance of being, Essentia, leaking through a small hole into the vacuous kenoma. There is disagreement between mystic traditions whether Essentia is infinite or finite. While no tradition contests the traditional eschatology of Furanism set out by Haír of Túnis, those that view it as finite envision a reality that, conceiving of Essentia as bound by something like entropy, will osmotically reach equilibrium, and all possibilities will become equally possible or impossible, and that this is how Furana will escape Her imprisonment.
Orthodox interpretations view Furana as the first among the gods, however, She is still co-substantial with the Liar Gods, having been created by Her. As well, while she is seen as good and compassionate, and the Liar Gods as evil, corrupt, and jealous, their motivations are very much the product of traditional anthropomorphising of divine motivations: the Liar Gods restrained Furana and deceived humanity out of their jealousy of man. While some mystic traditions hold to this interpretation, most associate the Liar Gods with ontological evil and Furana with ontological good, at least insofar as they associate being with good, and non-being or imperfection as evil. While orthodox interpretations hold that Furana consciously made the Liar Gods, dualistic mysticism holds that they inevitably arose from Furana, as light begets dark.
Orthodoxy also holds the gods to be independent in their motivations, with the Liar Gods conspiring together out of emergent unity of motivation, while in mystic traditions, they are inherently unified in purpose as the Prince of Darkness, a concept originally borrowed by the early Tira Vellans from the Arxian concept of Angra Mainyu, also seen reflected in the good and evil sides of the eight faces of God in Octonianism.

Type

Religious, Organised Religion