Skeloric's Orrorsh Thread

[skeloric]

ORRORSH
=======

The Sacellum is more early protestant in appearance.
Puritanism is a source material, I strongly suspect.
--
I think the statement was more upon their sparsity of presentation and overall unadorned altar/background than their role in Gaea's world events/history.
That is certainly where my focus was being placed.
Anglican might be too "cluttered" rather than the simple placement that has been seen in several Orrorshan backgrounds featuring Sacellum.
Calvinism/Methodist/Presbyterian imagery/visual presentation -- at least the predominant American variety -- with the moralistic pretense of "suffering grants worth/value" that plagues Missouri and Wisconsin synod Lutheranism among its more "Hellfire and Brimstone" preachers. (Maybe its elsewhere as well but that is where I experienced it while growing up.)

As such, there are no "indulgences" to be bought.
No fancy ecclesiastical raiments.
No sign of great wealth being displayed or being used to place the preachers in a state of idle luxury.
No great amassing of "holy relics" or similar.
It is as if the great schisms that brought Protestantism into existence had instead been successful in reforming the church -- all of the disparate movements instead have REPLACED the Roman/Victorian Catholicism as the default singular religion.
If one were to employ a presumption of Roman Catholicism (at least one told me my enough different Roman Catholics to make it a potentially prevalent belief) that Protestants are not of "The One and Only TRUE Church" and thus "not saved" and will be eventually excluded from Heaven -- it would make sense for the Gaunt Man to force those changes through and have the Faith transform into the "anti-Faith" that -- as assumed by above example -- granted nothing.
It would make up a very strange confused amalgamation of Roman Catholic power with the most severe of Protestant attitudes.
--

I see the Protestant reforms having moved the church rather than splintering.
Its the severity of attitude that even the book has a habit of remarking upon again and again.
It is the Sacellum that takes up the role the Puritanical beliefs that brought about the Salem Witch Trials (Orrorsh P. 14) and it goes on to say that Cotton Mather is the spiritual ancestor to the current world view of the Sacellum.
Cotton Mather becomes the voice inside the Sacellum that argues against much of what were the 'excesses" of the church. (again Orrorsh P.14)
Coupled with the statement that North America became the "ground zero" of a holy war and Cotton Mather at the forefront with miraculous power.
Cotton Mather takes on the yoke of a prophet.
The church would certainly swing around towards a much more severe and uncompromising and very sparse presentation.
Adopting the extreme parsimony that Mather would have certainly extolled as a virtue would warp the church considerably.

They would see the previous generation as lax and dissolute and ultimately what caused the Gaunt Man (whom they recognize as an aspect of Satan) the ability to walk the world with impunity free from the restraints placed by God.
They would begin a vicious cycle of increasing severity and self denial that would become sheer insanity to maintain and thus certainly to cause more harm than good -- as it was intended when such was put into motion by the Gaunt Man. (page unknown but it is in there. Somewhere around the time when the Gaunt Man allowed the "corrected" (rewritten by Gaunt Man) Sacellum Bible to be discovered.)
--

[skeloric]

Due to the recent upswing in interest in discussing Orrorsh, I thought I'd bump this up for perusal.

[Stormchild]

I once heard a history lecture about Puritanism, where the professor stated that what we call puritanism has nothing to do with the puritans. It is based more on the settlers that came later, members of religious sects that where only called protestants in lack of a better name. But they had not much in common with calvinist, lutheran or hussit faith.

Many of them were radical biblical, more like gnostics or albigensan than protestants. What Luther stated was: a christ should look into his own consciousness for the right way. What the biblical sects stated was: you find all the answers in the book. This is the opposite to Lutheranism. Not to forget English protestantism is nothing more than a newer version of the catholic faith without the pope. Of course it was changed a lot especially by the puritan revolution of Cromwell, but only to integrate calvinistic foundations.

The lacmus-test to see if it is biblical or protestant in my opinion is to look on how these people are arguing. Are they using mostly old testament especially leviticus, they are biblical, exactly the same way wandering monchs in the middle ages argued. Are they using the new testament, especially the apostels, they are protestant. Are they using revelations, they are probably end-world sects that could come from any church.

So, what do we have in Orrorsh-North America. Probably the biblical version and the end-worlders. There is not much difference between these protestants and catholics and confronted with horrors, there is no reason to fight against each other. So look in revelations and leviticus on how these people see they could be spared from the hell that has come to Gaia by leading a pious live.

The whole community would look for anyone who is falling from the flock and bring him in line or burn him. In essence they bring new horror to their people, horror the Gaunt Man finds as an additional boon. Why should he destroy them, when they further his goal so much better. I think, the Gaunt Man could even spare them of Horrors as long as they inflict that horror on themselves, giving them the reason that their piety works and advising others to use the same methods.

[Stormchild]

I love the idea of Cotton Mather being a prophet of a new puritan-end-world faith. This is a good explanation for sacellum. I didn't see that in the few words on him in the Orrorsh sourcebook, but as you put it, it is definitely in it.