The Church in the East
"To understand Magic is to understand yourself. When undertaken as a spiritual practice, Magic can bring one closer to God in Heaven."
The Church is organized into three branches, each headed by a Hierarch. While they all agree on the worship of God in Heaven, each Hierarch creates their own rules and traditions, and the religious practices of each branch can be quite different. This is particularly true of the Church in the East, which has long embraced Magic as a spiritual practice, while the Churches in the North and West have banned all Magic outright. This has allowed the Church in the East to better withstand the ravages of the Church Wars, and it is the strongest and healthiest component of The Church today.
Structure
The Church in the East is led by the Hierarch of the East, a member of the Triumvirate which rules the Church as a whole. However, this role has less authority over the individual congregations than their counterparts in the Western and Northern Churches. The Hierarch of the East is considered a "first among equals", and leads the Eastern Synod, but is not vested with absolute authority over the other Eastern congregations.
Instead, each region in the East is self-governing. When the Church in the East was first founded, the Prophet of the East created seventeen dioceses (also known as eparhiyas), roughly based on the major nations of eastern Elbid at the time. While the political landscape has shifted many times since then, the eparhiyas remain and shape the religious landscape.
Each eparhiya is governed by a synod of bishops, with the most senior among them as the Primate. A Primate does not submit to any higher authority save God in Heaven, and is considered a member of the Eastern Synod. Seniority within an eparhiya is considered a local matter, although it is typically either the amount of time since ordination as a priest, or time spent since being appointed as a bishop. When the Hierarch of the East dies or retires, the longest serving Primate of the Eastern Synod ascends to the role and the Triumvirate.
History
The Church in the East was officially formed in 86 ID, when the Council of Alo laid out the three branches of The Church. The Prophet of the East was the only one of the original Triumvirate still living at this time; she was the youngest of the three Prophets, and had only been 16 years old when they founded the Old Church. She convened the Council of Alo, and it was her plan for the division which ultimately prevailed. It assigned the entire eastern half of Elbid to the Church of the East, while western Elbid was divided between the Churches of the North and West. At this time, this division was largely theoretical as it would be centuries before the worship of God in Heaven became dominant across the continent. Since then, the Church in the East has grown to be the largest branch both in territory and population.
In the five years after the Council of Alo established the Church in the East, the Prophet of the East laid out its foundations. She established the Eastern Synod and the seventeen eparhiyas, appointing Primates to each one and charging them with spreading the word of God in Heaven. She also began the practice of Prosviětomagíya, the spiritual practice of Magic as a form of self-discovery and devotion.
When The Church Wars began in the Northern Church and then spread to the West, one of the major complaints was that the wealthy and powerful were ignoring the prohibitions against Magic for their own ends. Both secular and religious leaders would patronize clandestine establishments that would provide access to Magic, for healing, youth, or entertainment. But in the East, those who sought Magic could access it through the auspices of the Church, traveling to the remote monasteries known as Světomolchalívtsy where religious magicians retired from the world to study Magic and seek an enlightened connection to God in Heaven. Healing was available to all the faithful who presented themselves, and other magical gifts might be bestowed at the discretion of the abbot. Furthermore, the practitioners within the Světomolchalívtsy were better able to find those establishments who offered Magic not sanctioned by the Church in the East, and these were quickly and thoroughly wiped out. Those who sought to practice Magic without the oversight of religious authority found it easier to do so in western Elbid, where the total prohibition against Magic left those inclined to persecute them ill-equipped to do so.
Magic, Old and New
The spiritual practice of Magic (known as Prosviětomagíya) was created long before Sir Edwin Harlowe published the Principia Arcana and laid out the foundations of Universal Magic. It is based in the idiosyncratic practice of Magic, where the practitioner is an irreplaceable component of each casting, and no spell can be taught to another. In Idiosyncratic Magic, it is necessary to understand your own role in the working, and adepts must spend years in introspection and self-discovery to achieve any level of mastery. This is not the case with Universal Magic - these spells are identical for each caster, and can be easily taught. Practitioners of Universal Magic can advance in skill much more rapidly, building on the discoveries of others and avoiding decades of tedious meditation and contemplation.
Many of the Primates in the Eastern Synod are deeply concerned by the rise of Universal Magic. To them, it represents all the dangers of Magic without the commensurate spiritual benefits that accompany Prosviětomagíya. While none of the Primates have gone so far as to ban Universal Magic in their eparhiyas, they have made it clear that they disapprove of the new wave of industrialized Magic.
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