{"id":116923,"date":"2016-01-24T22:04:38","date_gmt":"2016-01-24T22:04:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2016\/01\/24\/hobbitystmarymorstan-penmeetspage-so-youre\/"},"modified":"2016-01-24T22:04:38","modified_gmt":"2016-01-24T22:04:38","slug":"hobbitystmarymorstan-penmeetspage-so-youre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2016\/01\/24\/hobbitystmarymorstan-penmeetspage-so-youre\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

hobbitystmarymorstan<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

penmeetspage<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

So you\u2019re telling me that the Jedi and the whole Force-based religion thing has been around for thousands of years, in a galaxy with a huge population and immense diversity of culture, and there\u2019s never once been a schism or a splinter group or another group of light side-aligned sentients who aren\u2019t in some way affiliated with the Jedi? That it\u2019s Jedi vs. Sith right down through history?<\/p>\n

Come on<\/i>. You can do better than that.<\/p>\n

Somewhere in the galaxy there\u2019s a culture that regards Force ghosts as the most important part of the whole business and has developed a kind of ancestor veneration, one where your Force-using ancestors occasionally pop up and give advice and watch your progress. People regard them with a mix of reverence and fondness because they\u2019re old (some of them are very<\/i>\u00a0old indeed) and wise and so on, but also they\u2019re family<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Somewhere in the galaxy there\u2019s a planet\u00a0whose sun burns so hot that few living things can survive on the surface during the day, where the people live in houses dug out and swept like burrows and live their lives after nightfall, when the harsh sun sets and a warm wind blows off the nearest large body of water and fills the air with moisture again so they can breathe without masks\u2013and\u00a0what they call the Light or Day Side is blinding, burning, impetuous, controlled by the passions, fierce and unforgiving, and it consumes its users like a pool of water at noon, and what they call the Dark or Night Side is calm, warm, perceptive, not easily understood, but nurtures life\u2013not just survival\u2013and encourages the search for truth.<\/p>\n

Somewhere in the galaxy there\u2019s a culture with a pantheon, like we think of the Greek and Roman pantheons, only these gods sometimes bless ordinary people or families with gifts beyond mortal ken, gifts that connect them to the world and the life around them but also make them powerful and perilous.<\/p>\n

Somewhere in the galaxy there\u2019s a culture that focuses on the the\u00a0\u201cenergy field created by all living things\u201d part, that teaches respect for all living things, that speaks of the Force as our essential connection to the rest of the world, that honors the life\/soul\/spirit in everything the Force touches, a little like we think of animism or nature spirit based religions.<\/p>\n

As it stands, religion in the Star Wars universe seems to be a large helping of pop-Buddhist philosophy ladeled into a\u2026 kinda medieval Catholic structure (holy orders of knights, monastic robes, material poverty as a discipline for individuals but the order having lots of power and influence anyway, self-discipline to celibacy, the Temple being basically Space Vatican)? Plus some Space Atheists, both the condescending kind (\u201dyour sad devotion to that ancient religion\u2026\u201d) and the skeptical\/free-will\/rebellious kind (\u201dthere\u2019s no mystical energy field that controls my destiny!\u201d).<\/p>\n

That\u2019s great\u2013it\u2019s an interesting combination. But there could be so much more variety<\/i>\u00a0and richness<\/i>. (Definitely more than I\u2019ve come up with here.)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Well, there are always the Witches of Dathomir. (Or, were, I guess. Since the EU has been scrapped.)
http:\/\/starwars.wikia.com\/wiki\/Witches_of_Dathomir<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

hobbitystmarymorstan: penmeetspage: So you\u2019re telling me that the Jedi and the whole Force-based religion thing has been around for thousands of years, in a galaxy with a huge population and immense diversity of culture, and there\u2019s never once been a schism or a splinter group or another group of light side-aligned sentients who aren\u2019t in … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[79,14145,4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116923"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116923\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}