My Lakhabrech and Rakhebuitya don't believe in an afterlife as such, or at
least it isn't the focus of their religious life.  Their pantheon is based
around the Sun Goddess, the Sister Sun Goddess, the Father Earth whose
response to the extra warmth and love of the Sister Sun, is to push the
daisies higher - ergo the Earth is a male, because as Akhriech would say,
what is it that a female can cause to rise when her beloved male catches
sight of her?  (The Father Earth and the Sister Sun were lovers, apparently,
until the Mother Sun cast her Sister outside into the darkness to keep her
away from the Father Earth.  Family quarrels!! ;)

But then, that's a religious consequence of living in a binary solar system,
such as Alpha Centauri.  On the planet of the other star, the suns are two
brothers, and the Earth is the Earth Mother.

Wesley Parish

On Wed, 11 Sep 2002 18:29, Arthaey Angosii wrote:
> Emaelivpahr Roger Wills:
> >Very nice.  Hope you won't mind if I steal/adapt something like that for
> > the Kash, who are also telepathic, and don't really believe in an
> > Afterlife.
> Sure! ... But only if at the end of your adapted ceremony everyone chants,
> "Hail Arthaey the Asha'illen." ;) But to be serious, I'm pleased that you
> like my idea. Let me know what you do with it!
> Speaking of a (dis)belief in an afterlife, how are you handling religion
> for the Kash? The Cresaeans' planet has a "lifeforce" sort of thing -- I
> don't like any words for it in English; I prefer the Asha'ille word
> <lor'an> -- which binds them together and creates the basis of their
> telepathy. (Different species have evolved different types of interaction
> with the lor'an.)
> I don't know what the Cresaeans did, religion-wise, before humans settled
> on their planet. Terran religion may have more followers on Cresaea [1]
> than on Earth because there are more visible results from prayer. For
> example, if there are n number of people all praying that Little Johnny get
> well, the concentrated effect of everyone sending get-well patterns into
> the lor'an may actually have a physical impact on Johnny. He miraculously
> gets well! But this only applies to the humans who have been living on
> Cresaea for many, _many_ generations and have adapted to the lor'an. In
> other words, pureblood Earth humans would barely interact with the lor'an
> at all, being totally foreign to the planet's ecosystem. As for having more
> religious followers than Earth, the larger percentage of scientists among
> the settlers might have lowered the number of religions/religious followers
> imported to Cresaea, perhaps it evens out to about the same number...
> Anyone have any numbers on percentage of religious scientists as compared
> to the general population?
> [1] Cresaea is the planet's name as interpretted by humans. <cresdin> means
> "home" and <aea> means "land". Therefore, <cresaea> originally meant
> "homeland". The humans took this to be the planet's name even though the
> Cresaeans themselves didn't think about their world in such large scales.
> I've only recently been told by the Cresaeans :) that the term "Cresaean"
> was a human invention and that they called themselves something else. So
> far, my Cresaean contacts refuse to tell me what the native term is.
> ::grin::

Mau e ki, "He aha te mea nui?"
You ask, "What is the most important thing?"