Aristasian Essays and Audio Lectures
Aristasian Essays
In addition to fiction and music, Aristasians produced a lot of content about metaphysics, religion, and philosophy.
They published a few books, and even recorded some audio lectures that others have archived. The essays tend to either focus on an application of Aristasian values to Telluria (Earth, IRL), or on theology. The audio files are largely sermons on Aristasia's feminine religion, many of which were directly recorded from gatherings hosted live online. This page seeks to collate those.
Each document either links to the published material (ie, Amazon, in the case of books) or an Internet Archive version. Providing these links does not constitute agreement with the contents on my parts, and I contributed to none of these. Anything (and it would be scant) that I added to Aristasia would've been in a forum thread, not an essay. I don't include forum threads here because of their ubiquity and the difficulty of sorting through them, though there was plenty of similar material that did appear on Aristasian forums.
I was present for (if I remember right) the live presentation of some of the sermons, and recall the original uploading of many others, but didn't contribute, obviously. They are not my work. They do rather destroy that rumor that Aristasian church services (in Second Life and elsewhere) were just like Protestant ones with the pronouns swapped.
A lot of these documents, though obviously from an Aristasian perspective, explain Filianist concepts. Many present-day Filianist and Déanic groups still find these essays and sermons important. I am including them here because of the Aristasian references only. I won’t be including any essays that are only about Filianism, except those I can confirm were produced by the core group of Aristasians.
- The Earth Mother: A Fallacy For All Seasons Aristasians often criticized modern neopaganism, despite having similar (unsupported) notions of a worldwide primordial goddess-religion. Here, they argue that the two ideas are different.
- The Feminine Universe - Alice Lucy Trent. Primarily focuses on a sort of feminine-themed an esoteric-infused perennialist philosophy. It describes itself as “feminine essentialism” and never mentions Aristasia until the end, but got so much mention that I simply must include it.
- The Gentle Way. Described as a “Winter Address by an East-Novarian Ranya" (queen), this discusses the concept of an ascetic lifestyle in Aristasia (and, presumably, elsewhere!), and suggests a more gentle approach to reaching the Divine.
- The Gospel of Our Mother God - authorship unknown. These are (a version of) the Filianist scriptures, also known as the Clear Recital. Given that this was the version linked on absolutely all the Aristasia sites, I’m pretty sure it was the official Aristasian version. I’m including it here for that reason.
- Groosh: That Dreadful Word. An Aristasian explains the notion of groosh, a word which here refers to overly-wholesome, bright style of the New Age movement, which they detest.
- Harmony Point. A whole website devoted to Aristasian essays criticizing the modern world, but much of it wasn't archived. Named for a brand of stockings.
- Nursery Rhymes and Meaning. Shares some common Aristasian nursery rhymes while also explaining their deeper lessons. Most of these are spiritual or reference history and mythology.
- Novarian Game Friends. Explains why, by the mid-2000s, Aristasians were desperately keen on lightgames, also known as video games. Explains that, yes, they’re a thing in Aristasia Pura, and technics (technology) has never been an enemy)
- The Pattern of History - Golden Order Press. The Aristasian take on perennial philosophy, the notion of time as cyclical, and other concepts related to the history of human civilization. Extremely ahistorical.
- The Primordial Maid - Golden Order Press. So many Aristasian texts, when speaking of history, describe it as some kind of decline from a mythic “Golden Age.” This text talks a bit more about that concept.
- A Sermon in Outer Space. This piece discusses the metaphysics of space travel from the perspective of a Novarian religious figure addressing Aristasians about to take flight.
- The Seven Great Janyati. The Janyati are Angelic beings or intermediary forces in Aristasian spirituality. This article discusses their IRL parallels and why they are important in Aristasia.
- The Spiritual Symbolism of Archery. Exactly what it says on the tin, and makes some seemingly Aristasia-specific claims, such as the bits about ceremonial archery.
Audio Sermons and Lectures
As far as audio is concerned, I’ve hunted up quite a few thus far, and there is likely more to come. They are scattered and poorly-organized within the Internet Archive. It seems that the bits that got uploaded the most were, as one might expect, the most serious. In particular, a lot of them are sermons that were given throughout the mid-2000s by an Aristasian priestess, Raya Chancandre. I had the privilege of knowing her, and she was quite a nice person.
Many took place on Filianist holidays. I won’t say which ones, but I was present for some of the ones which “debuted” live, so to speak, but didn’t exactly participate beyond an occasional “Rayati” in the text chat. Below, you can listen to all of the ones I was able to find!
In certain notorious places online, it has been said that Aristasian "sermons" in Second Life (Virtualia) sounded like what you'd hear in any church on a Sunday, but with the pronouns swapped for those of a feminine sort. These recorded lectures and such really show that wasn't true; the experience was quite different. It was difficult to describe or qualify, though - that may just be why people have claimed otherwise.
Here we go...
- The Good News of God the Mother - Raya Chancandre. Explains the basics of Aristasian religion, and God-as-Mother religious belief in general, but makes claims about non-Aristasian history/etc too. Available on Archive as a video, too.
- Conception and Hail Mary Sermon - Raya Chancandre. A sermon given in 2007 in an early Aristasian voice chat, on a Filianist holiday.
- Children of the Princess - Raya Chancandre. Audio sermon held in Second Life (if I remember right) on the Filianist holiday known as the Day of Our Sovereign Lady, in 2008.
- Into the Heart - Raya Chancandre. Sermon given on the Filianist New Year (the Spring Equinox) of 2008, celebrating Sai Sushuri, the tutelary Janyati of the year.
- The Feast of Regeneration A sermon given in 2009 on the Filianist holiday known as the Feast of Regeneration.
- On Free Love - Raya Chancandre. What do Aristasians think about the “free love” concept? Spoiler: they’re not thrilled. This is a little talk given by Raya Chancandre amidst a lecture in Second life, in January of 2009.
- Who is Our Mediatrix? - Raya Chancandre A sermon delivered for an Aristasian audience, about the Day of the Passion of Our Lady (a Filianist holiday) in 2008.
- The Lotuses - Raya Chancandre New Years sermon from the Spring Equinox of 2007, focusing on the symbolism of the Lotus within Aristasian and Filianist traditions.
- Filianism and Non-Dualism - Chapel of our Mother God What do Filianists, and particularly those of an Aristasian bent, have to say about dualism and the issues surrounding it? A sermon on the subject.