Supporting material for Aristasia 101 course

Dialogue: On What Level Does Aristasia Pura Exist?

I order to show a range of Aristasian views on this matter, we reprint a discussion from late 3325 (Mar 2006).

ARISTASIA PURA

A discussion at the old Blondes' and Brunettes' Club on the nature of Aristasia Pura.

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Caridwen

Mar 3, 06 - 3:44 PM

Dear Ladies,

I've been visiting the Club here for quite some time, and find it a fascinating and mysterious place. There are some things I take readily to; the philosophy and culture, for example.

But there are some things which I still don't understand. I wonder if you would mind explaining to me exactly what is Aristasia Pura.

I've been reading recently about an Empress and wonder who she is, and how one comes to be an Empress in Aristasia.

I would be very grateful for your help.

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Chancandre Aquitaine

Mar 3rd, 2006 - 10:16 PM

I am glad that you are enjoying your experience of Aristasia.

Aristasia Pura is the True Motherland - where the Empress reigns, where blondes and brunettes make babies together and where men do not exist.

Some people consider Aristasia Pura to be a fiction. We consider it to be our Homeland. While it may occupy a different plane of being, it is nonetheless a spiritual reality and one to which we are honoured to owe our allegiance.

The Empress is Her Imperial Majesty Celestia III. She is the direct descendant of Sai Rayanna, the Sun-Daughter and first Cairen Empress. She is regarded, in her function if not in her person, as the incarnation of the Sun herself. This is the meaning of the great salutation:

Rayati Raihiranya - Hail to the Empress (as an incarnation of the Sun).

The position of Empress is therefore a hereditary one although it does not necessarily follow the Tellurian law of primogeniture. All daughters of the Imperial Family are Imperial Princesses and all are brought up in seclusion and with considerable rigour in the great temple-palace at the heart of the Imperial City. The slightly modern way of life adopted by some Westrenne Royal Families is out of the question for the Imperial Family. An Imperial Princess is one of the most highly-trained, profoundly cultured and rigorously disciplined maidens in the Empire. Those who are unsuited to this demanding life are usually allowed to withdraw. They then become Serene Highnesses whose functions are purely ceremonial.

The selection of the Imperial Princess who is to become Empress takes place according to tests and rituals that are unknown to any outside the highest Haiela and Raihira who make up the Traditional hierarchy of the Imperial Court and Sun-Temple.

I hope this answers your questions. Do feel free to pursue them further (or anyone else). I shall be speaking at the White Rose Room on Sunday the 12th of March, if you should wish to ask questions in person.

In the meantime do feel free to post further questions here.

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Caridwen

Mar 5th, 2006 - 3:14 PM

Thank you very much Lady Aquitaine, for your detailed reply. I particularly like the descriptions of the Empress's rigorous training and qualification for her post. It would be good to see that in modern-day monarchies.

Is Aristasia Pura on an imaginary plane, then? I take it that it doesn't exist here on Earth. Has it come about through the imaginations of earthly Aristasians? And yet, you describe it as a 'spiritual reality' - do you mean that it seems very real to those who live an Aristasian life, although it doesn't actually exist? But imagining it to exist helps one to live a life according to the spiritual principles of Aristasia? I feel I'm fumbling in the dark, rather, trying to understand it!

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Lady Aquila

Mar 6th, 2006 - 1:46 AM

I am sorry you are finding this puzzling. It is a little tenuous at first. I suspect lhi Raya is a touch cautious about making a definitive statement on something that is not so far officially defined. She is after all an official representative of the Haiela function.

I am not bound by such scruples and I wish to put it on record that I fully believe Aristasia Pura to exist. If by "imaginary" one means a thing created purely by and in our own minds, I cannot accept it. I know that Aristasia Pura is more than that.

It is a reality that many of us have seen and felt. There are girls among us who have always known they were not of the Tellurian world and who have memories and experiences of Aristasia Pura; some to whom Pura is more real than their lives in Telluria. Some who feel sure that they have come to Telluria purely to serve the Motherland.

Now admittedly this raises as many questions as it answers. Why should the Motherland even want a Bridgehead in Telluria? My guess is that it has something to do with a balance of spiritual forces in the universe and the effect of the maverick hyper-masculinism of late-patriarchal Telluria upon that balance. A counterbalancing Bridgehead is required.

The trouble is, all this starts to sound rather science-fiction when put so baldly, and it is in fact something much subtler. Exactly what plane Pura operates on and how it is translated to us are things upon which we can only speculate, and probably not very profitably. There are many levels of being in this multiverse we inhabit, of which the material plane is but a tiny fraction.

Officially it has always been said that one is free to regard Pura as "imaginary" (whatever precisely that means), and of course one is. But for my part, and I know I speak for many of us, the Motherland is my home and the Empress is my final liege-lady.

Whatever anyone tells you about "imaginaries", the adoption of Aristasia-in-Telluria by Pura in Operation Bridgehead has made a huge difference to Aristasia and to all our lives. We are now under the direct rule of the Empire. I don't know all the details of that and I can't tell all I do know. But be assured, the protecting arm of Mother Empire is now about us.

And it is far from imaginary.

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A Home-come Wanderer

Mar 6th, 2006 - 12:34 PM

Coming Home

Let me tell you my story. Some day I shall write it more fully, but I feel that I am called upon to share a little of it at this point. It may help make things clearer.

I was born a certain number of years ago in Telluria. What I thought as a baby I cannot tell, but as I grew to more explicitly thinking-years I was profoundly aware that this place was not my home. The people were strange and alien to me and never became less so.

As I grew older, I saw up-to-date ('30s to '50s) films sometimes and saw a world that made more sense to me. It was less insane, but it was still certainly not my world.

I had a constant sense that I had come from somewhere else, and that I had a reason for being here, and that reason was somehow to serve my Homeland.

Mentally I often felt in contact with people from the Homeland. They reassured me when I felt terrible. They told me that there were others in Telluria and that I should be united with them. I met people who assured me that I should know them later. I knew snatches about my Homeland. Even a few words of its speech.

I told people I was not from this world. Some laughed and some were interested, but none seemed to be my countrymaids.

I had spiritual yearnings and tried for a time to be a Christian. Despite all my efforts the religion felt terribly alien to me. I could only approach it at all by seeing God as feminine.

I heard about the goddess Aphrodite and felt I must give myself to her. To me she was not a sxual deity (I understood little about sx then and not much more now). She was the quintessence of pure Divine Love. Later I understood that the Angel I belonged to was Sai Sushuri.

Finally in my later 'teens I met with Aristasians. I had looked into many of the things that exist in Telluria (In a theoretical sort of way - I was too shy to go out and meet people, and anyway they never seemed like the right sort of people) and none of them had seemed even remotely right. Now things began to fall into place. I was doubly fortunate (or, more accurately, I was led) to find an Aristasian who was fully conversant with the way Pura touches on those of us who are exiled here. She believed a hundred percent in Pura and knew that she also came from there.

This was my homeland. This was the place I always knew I had come from. I was sure now.

I asked my new friend "Have I met you before? Did you tell me when I was fourteen that you would meet me in your physical body in a few years?"

She said "I believe so. I have met several people in the aethyr. Of course it is cloudy there for those accustomed to looking with the physical eye. But I feel you must be one of those I met."

There are many kinds of Aristasian in Telluria. Some are children of Telluria who dip their toes into the waters of Aristasia and a few eventually take the Full Plunge. But some are Purans who never were at home in Telluria. Some, like myself, were always very conscious of the Motherland. For others it was merely a vague uneasiness that became clearer as they grew up and eventually made sense upon encountering Aristasia.

But I know well that I was guided by daughters of the Motherland from the day I set foot on this strange world, and I know that others were too. And I know now that the Empire has finally taken a fully active part in guiding and directing Aristasia-in-Telluria. And I think that is why I am here and why others of us are here.

So I want to say two things. Please understand that Aristasia Pura is real, and that its daughters are looking after us; and if you are one of our lost sisters who never felt at home in Telluria and had even a small hint of the Motherland, please come home. You need us and we need you.

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Caridwen

Mar 6th, 2006 - 6:19 PM

Dear Lady Aquila and Miss Home-come Wanderer,

thank you very much for your kind replies. I think things are becoming clearer now, although I haven't much acquaintance with the idea of other planes and aetherial places, so it has given me some food for thought.

I'm sorry if I seemed dismissive in asking if Pura was an imaginary place; I didn't mean it in the sense of "merely imaginary"! I escape to imaginary worlds often and know they can seem as real as anywhere else. But I see that Pura is not understood as imaginary, anyway.

I found your account quite moving, Miss Home-come, and thank you for the telling of it. I know the feeling of not belonging in this world, although not the experience of having come from somewhere else; it all seems even more fascinating, now! I don't yet know if I belong in Aristasia, but I am very attracted by it, and glad to have come across you all in Elektraspace.

Thank you, once again!

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Lady Aquila

Mar 6th, 2006 - 6:40 PM

Referring back to the suggestion that the rigorous training of the Imperial Family might profitably be applied to Tellurian royal families, one might reply that in Aristasia those members of the Imperial Family who are unsuited to such rigour are deprived of authority. Conversely, royal families that have been deprived of authority may rather reasonably wish to dispense with rigour. In the Aristasian sense, every member of a Tellurian royal family is a "Serene Highness" whose function is purely ceremonial and who is for that reason subjected to minimal rigour (or vice versa).

Having said this, that "minimal rigour" is still far greater than that exercised by bongo royalty!

Honoured Wanderer, I should like to ask you this question. Since being with actual physical Aristasians, has your contact with the aethyrial Aristasia tended to diminish?

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A Home-come Wander

Mar 7th, 2006 - 10:04 AM

It has varied, my lady, but the answer overall is definitely "no".

There has been less of that kind of contact that was essentially for the purpose of comforting a lost exile, because I no longer am a lost exile, praise be to Dea!

On the other hand, I have received much guidance and have also met in the aethyr other exiles whom I know I shall meet in the flesh - or perhaps in Virtualia - later.

Since the start of Operation Bridgehead, activity for almost everyone who has any contact with Puran outposts has been increased.

It is my belief that for many girls contact with Puran outposts is not as conscious as it has been for myself and others. Perhaps it takes place in sleep and is but vaguely remembered if remembered at all. I think this is why when girls encounter Aristasia for the first time it often "rings a bell" for them and seems like something almost as much remembered as discovered.

Since part of the Bridgehead initiative is, as they so poetically put it "gathering the scattered doves", I feel many girls will over the next few years, become more conscious; perhaps remember childhood contacts with Puran "angels" and recognise the Motherland as their home.

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Chancandre Aquitaine

Mar 7th, 2006 - 11:40 AM

I should perhaps mention here that the use of the term "Serene Highness" to mean non-authoritative royalty is something of a Westrenne joke.

The honorific "Serene" is in fact used, upon the proper occasions, for all royalty, up to - and a fortiori including - the Empress herself. It denotes the "unacting action" of the Spiritual Principle, and is expressed in the Scriptural passage:

Earth moves but Heaven is still. The rim revolves, but the Centre remains without motion[1]

The still point from which all movement arises, like the point without extension from which all space proceeds, is represented on earth by the Her Serene Majesty; and her governance of the Empire is likened to the actionless action of the Spirit.

It is from this central idea that the term "Serene Highness" is accorded secondarily to the whole Imperial Family.

However, in the Westrenne lands there is a certain spirit of "activism", "individualism" and "exteriorism" akin to, but by no means as extreme as, that in modern Western Telluria and this spirit, at its most gross, can see serenity as simple inactivity.

The pretence that the "Serene" in "Serene Highness" denotes lack of authority or active participation in Government is thus a humorously deliberate "misunderstanding".

Actually the reason they are often known by this title is that it is one of the fundamental titles belonging to the Imperial Family and held by all its members, as opposed to some other titles which derive from particular functions.

Incidentally, the term "All serene", used in Aristasian military and other circles, means "all in order": and while its superficial meaning is "all quiet, nothing wrong", at a profounder level it implies "all is right" - i.e. all is in harmony with the serenely unchanging Principle, and thus with the Will of Heaven - and by extension of Heaven's daughter, the Empress.

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Caridwen

Mar 8th, 2006 - 8:30 PM

Dear Ladies,

this topic grows more interesting by the day! I hope you don't mind the literalness of my questions; it is important to me for things to be clear. I'm very attracted to Aristasia and am enjoying learning more about it.

I have some more questions, if that is alright.

It's been mentioned that Aristasia is a place in the "aethyr". It is a real place. Is it like a planet? And are there other aetherial places, too? Is it a place between earth and what people call heaven? A higher sort of place than earth? Do pure Aristasians belong there eternally, even though they may come here to do special work?

Are there similar places where non-Aristasians belong? What about men, where do they belong? What happens to people who don't come from Aristasia?

It is all so fascinating, I spend a lot of time thinking about it all, and hope you don't mind my inquisitiveness!

Thank you.

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Chancandre Aquitaine

Mar 8th, 2006 - 11:11 PM

Yes, it is becoming a very interesting thread.

The questions on Aristasia's nature and whereabouts are profoundly fascinating. We can only speculate, of course, but there are some points worth considering.

The term Aethyr refers, of course, to the fifth element from which the four material elements proceed. When used "topologically" (when we say something is "in the aethyr") it has two senses. 1) because the aethyr pervades all things, even where the other four elements are absent, the term is sometimes used to describe the "vacuum" of outer space. 2) It is used to mean levels of being that are not physical, and therefore are aethyrial.

To some extent, in such contexts as Aristasian science fiction, Aethyr in the first of these "topological" senses may be taken as a metaphor for the second sense.

My own belief is that Aristasia Pura is not represented by a different physical planet, but exists on another level of being. I could, of course, be wrong about this, and even if I am not it does not invalidate the research Miss Clarissa refers to. We must remember that late-Tellurian researchers, with their rationalistic and scientistic culture, are bound to interpret traditional data (from the Dogon people and others) in a sense that may be childishly literalistic. For traditional peoples the stars and heavens are the natural representatives of higher states of being, not physical entities.

A does Aristasia occupy higher level of being? In all probability, yes. The question of whether Aristasia is a Paradise has been discussed in Girls' Town some time ago (in Archive 4 and the preceding ones). The conclusion was that it is not a paradise in the technical sense, being an Axial world, but that it occupies a higher position on the Axis than does the Earth.

This being said, one must also consider that the actual Paradises aspired to by those in Aristasia Pura are feminine Paradises, so there is also, from our point of view, something very like Aristasia that is a Paradise.

The guidance that has been received of late from Aristasia Pura has at times seemed to be that of other Axial beings like ourselves and at other times to be closer to the Angelic. The need to distinguish between these two may be less great than at first it seems. In a Celestial Empire like Aristasia, whose Empress is regarded as the Supernal Sun Incarnate, Spiritual influences are much more directly and actively at work than in a profane world such as late-Telluria.

As for men and other realities, we really are getting into the realms of conjecture here. There are certainly other realities in the multiverse than Telluria and Aristasia. We regard feminine realities as the highest, but that may only be our perspective. There may be people in Telluria with homelands other than Telluria or Aristasia, but that is something that does not really concern an Aristasian.

Girls who don't come from Aristasia are as welcome in Aristasia-in-Telluria as those who do. All of us may be adopted as Aristasians if we truly desire to be

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Petite Sorciere

Mar 10th, 2006 - 12:29 AM

I do understand our honoured Raya's need to be judicious in her statements, but really, we all know that the superiority of feminine worlds is not simply our perspective.

Mascûli are ruled by the principle of discord. They kill their own kind. In every age and every nation where mascûli rule, they have devoted endless ingenuity to cruel ways of inflicting death and pain. Their spiritual doctrines include hells and tortures that reflect their real-life cruelty. Men commit crimes and violence many, many times more frequently and more severely than women.

Of course feminine realities are higher and purer than schizomorphic ones.

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To this we add a brief question-and-answer from a more recent discussion at the White Rose Room:

Q: Is Aristasia a whole planet or is it a sort of continent?

A: The world is known as Sai Herthe. The Empire is mostly on one continent. There are not shizomorphs on the same "planet". We are not certain if much else is inhabited.

Purans speak of the Blessed Isles over the Western Sea. Modern physical geography is not really their way of thinking - and indeed only holds true under certain specific conditions. The idea that with sufficient propulsion one could travel anywhere in the universe is one of the delusions of Tellurian rationalism.

Places are only physical up to a point. That is, they have a physical element, but that does not wholly define their place-ness.

Q: Is Aristasia, then, more like a "state of mind"? I mean, an ethereal place that only the mind can reach?

A: Possibly - but so is Telluria.

Q: Oh? Telluria is also like that? Why?

A: All places are. Their physical place-ness is only one aspect of them. One is not saying that Aristasia does not have a physical aspect - or something akin to one.

The plane of matter is only one of a thousand planes. And nothing exists only on that plane - because it is incomplete in itself

Q: The separation of matter from mind is a illusion - or perhaps a delusion?