I dreamt I was a Priest in a Monastery somewhere very far away. On this world, in this place, this monastery is on the Precipice of the world - a peak location snowy and isolated but not so bitterly cold and inhospitable as we would imagine here. A long and elegant mountain at the crown of the world. This planet, this world - had only two nations. The world split into two.
The capital city of my people was below this mountain, an incredibly massive city with parallel themes to Buddhism and themes in Tibet. Our people were peaceful and abstained from violence as much as possible though were mostly pescatarian.
I did not leave the monastery often if at all. In the dream I did not. I was someone else. Someone that felt like me but was not me. I was uneasy and uncomfortable for I had just became elevated to High Priest a lunar cycle ago. I was uncertain of myself as it was a very sudden change. The Monastery itself was like an incredibly vast catacomb. Bones and remains were embedded into the stone mountain halls. The entire monastery was split into two, technically. Where we were located, this point in the world, only half of the mountain saw daylight. We could watch the sun rise and fall in circular motions every 19 hours. It never reached past the “Halls of Darkness” which were forever shrouded in shadow. There was one section of the Monastery, fully exposed to the outside but kept “sacred” in the dark half by an incredibly massive dark red velvet curtain which was drawn down from the impossibly high stone ceilings. It kept the heat in to begin with but also served to completely cut the light off from that side of the sacred space to ensure there was a literal perfect half of our Monastery that was shrouded in darkness while the other would get light when the sun was up.
Our Order was operated by what we called the Tribunal. Skilled and Specialised High Priests that formed a council of fifteen. We were peaceful and kept to ourselves and focused on maintaining both the Monastery as well as archaeological studies. The monastery itself is incredibly ancient. So ancient we do not know who came before us. We had built around the main central chamber and a part of our library as well as the personal quarters / chambers that now were the rooms and chambers of all of the Tribunal.
My master I had been studying under had suddenly passed away due to illness. Something that we did not conduct properly but allowed him to pass naturally.
Within our culture, no one died of “natural causes”. When someone was on their deathbed and when they no longer were able to take care of themselves, we instead ritually killed them.
Despite our peaceful nature, ritual sacrifice was Commonplace. We did not seek conflict and were good with one another and had a very Buddhist way of viewing the world. Though we did not force religion on others at all. We were exceptionally zealous of our spiritual beliefs. While we had gods, we also had many smaller “Spirits” of sorts, I cannot recall what we called them. But they were similar to Saints and they served as guides to the Center God that was like the all consuming void of both the cosmos beyond everything as well as the connection from the cosmos to our world.
We believed that when you were ritually sacrificed, it released your soul to the whole cosmos. If you did not die of ritual sacrifice, you would be cycled back through our world, guaranteed. But we believed it was important to leave our whole world and universe behind and move onto what we viewed as Infinity. Whereas being trapped back here would mean you may not be reincarnated as a human again for an unknown period of time. Being alive as a human was sacred and invaluable and treated as very Divine thing. For there was such a low chance of you being reincarnated as a human in all technicality on the “cosmological scale” of things.
I had spent the last several weeks adjusting to the sudden change. While there was nothing but immense support from the rest of the Tribunal, my old teacher had experienced a very rare and immense ritual upon their death to ensure their transition from here to the cosmos beyond for they sacrificed their right to move on by teaching me until near their dying breath. But the first ritual sacrifice I had ever performed was then thus on my Master who was just barely alive enough for it to count.
I was recovering from the exhaustion of everything. One of the contributions I performed was the literary resources and the collection of our immense library including the execution and performance of old and sacred rituals of sacrifice and penance. I contemplated a motif we had at one of our shrines of what was similar to the wound man but twisted and contorted into a horrific display of twisted agony. Various parts of the body suffered various types of wounds. Some of fire. Some of ropes and blades and some of his own teeth. There were fifteen different forms of torture upon this figure. All represented a self inflicted and impost sense of self torture. They symbolically correlated to different parts of the “human condition” and how we self sabotage. It was a motif that represented the perpetual wheel of self suffering and how self inflicted it was. This figure was one of the other lesser gods or spirits. He never appeared to be in actual agony or pain in the facial expressions. But focus and awareness which represented being self aware of the self imposed suffering. While this was not my main god / spirit I interacted with, I *recently* had spent time focusing on this one more.
Traditionally, I focused mostly on what was considered the Spirit of Blood (edgy I know). A figure that was supposedly the “Thought and Heart” of the Central God. Represented by a crown of bleeding stars that “blind” the spirit’s eyes as four sets of hands are held in prayer and meditation with a singular “spear” thrust through the centre of its body. The spear, however, seemed to be that of a whole spinal column with blossoms erupting from it. A plant I did not recognise.
All of these motifs were engravings or carved from stone plaques and mounted into the walls. They were incredibly massive motifs that spanned somewhere between 10 metres across and high with incredible details and notches where candles and offerings were meant to go as well as space on the floor for people to come and meditate.
Each was very detailed and unique. With fifteen different Spirits. A theme of a number that was not lost on me. The epicentre of this Monastery was an incredible statue of a mummified figure. The theme was not missed on me of course. It resembled some of the ideas of Catacomb Saints and wore a similar crown of stars but was different from the motifs of the spirit I primarily worked with.
We had begun to receive “Sacrifices”.
The only other nation we shared our world with considered us unusual and were terrified of us. From what I had learned, though I never left the Monastery, they were predating us and attempting to invade us because we were mostly pacifists. They thought us cruel and terrible, awful people and sought to take us over and eradicate us to bring us under their own nation’s rule. However, we technically possessed the most impressive military. We had a religious military full of exceptionally hell-bent and overly zealous cavalry and militia. They were impressively organised and very strict as well as well disciplined. They were tactful and more skilled. But our enemy did not know this as we never needed to use them.
The invading country seemed to avoid anything that didn’t produce a resource that could be capitalised on. So our military took to taking as many prisoners as possible and brought them to us.
Every lunar cycle we sacrificed one. We kept as many as we could and we took very good care of them in our dungeons. They thought were were rather unhinged and insane. But what magics and spiritual practises we practised were no joke. We were collecting an essence from their sacrificed lives beneath our sacrificial altar as they died. This essence was then bottled and sent to treat and heal the ailing and wounded. Like a literal magical elixir it could revive and heal all wounds and all ailments with a full “cup” of it. To us, we considered that the soldiers that had come to invade and kill our innocent people must now be held responsible and accountable for their actions. If they were going to cause so much harm then they must atone by helping us heal and mend our people that they harmed. To make good use out of them and force them to help where they had caused harm.
We offered some a chance to repent. No spiritual reasons at all but they’d be lashed for 15 days and nights so they had to bear the weight of suffering they caused innocent people upon their backs and have a permanent reminder of the deeds they had done. They then would be allowed to stay in our nation if they so chose (given that they would probably be executed by their own nation for being a deserter).
For some reason, I was in charge of these particular rituals and ceremonies. My fellows of the Tribunal had very busy and incredible jobs that they performed to keep the Monastery running and going smoothly. Including several teachers, two were medicine Priests. Others were shrine cleansers and tended to the cleansing and maintenance of the energies of the whole monastery. Some took care of matters in the city and had to walk the path down to the city every day and return. I handled carrying certain ritual traditions including the tending to sacrifices as well as the historical documents and library resources. Which meant reviewing many things to ensure everything was as intended and working with a large amount of acolytes and initiates to help attend to what I needed to do these Monthly Sacrifices.
There were a lot of other “events”. But this was the gist of it. It felt so *long* of a dream.