Lux Madriana, Excommunicated.
There is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it bit of information that is sometimes mentioned in Aristasian history, and that is mention of an excommunication. Not just of an individual, but of all of Lux Madriana.
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This information is later repeated in the Eastminster Critical Edition and appears to have been backed up by one of the later Madrians and it appears to be related to the infamous "Schism of '83" that took place in Burtonport.
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But, this information has all been speculative and a bit mysterious, as many of the old-timers would simply rather not talk about it. Did it really happen? What did the excommunication entail? How was Lux Madriana excommunicated. Who the heck was Strave Ruethen? Documents archived in the Musueum of Witchcraft and Magic in the UK have been uncovered that appear to shed light on this! The transcriptions of these documents are graciously hosted on the Lambent Path blog, and you can read them in their entirety there, but there are a few parts I would like to point out. These letters have a particularly strange dating system: "13- v- 3722 AE" which I believe is using the "Temple of Artemis at Ephesus" system of dating, with the Madrian calendar. Fast forward through some math, context, and cross references, and I believe this dated is the Tellurian date of August 20th 1989. This is 6 years after The Schism, 5 years after the St. Bride's School punishment coming to light, a year into their public Romantia era, and just 7 months before news would break that one of their house-members was being physically abused. So there is a number of things that the letter writer could be vaguely referencing, but a big one that was soon to come. Now, onto the letters.
My! This is very familiar! It lines up with what the MadrianDeanicResources blog has said about the founders.
And even the writer of the letter, one Straven Reusen De Hesellum (also referred to as Straven Michael, among many other names I will get to in a bit) is shockingly similar to the rumored name "Strave Reuthen" as the man who "excommunicated Lux Madriana". Even his supposed real name of "Roger Haslam" is eerily familiar to "Hesellum". Is "Strave Reuthen aka Roger Haslam" a half remembered "Staven Reusen De Hesellum"? Was "Straven" a title as opposed to a name? Our mysterious Straven goes on to drop something of a bombshell:
It appears that the goings-on of the Burtonport household, which included the inner circle of proto-Aristasians who would later be known as Miss Martindale and Miss Priscilla Langridge, were found to be "deviants" who brought "outrageous disrepute upon the Madrian terms". What exactly this meant, we can only speculate, as by Summer of 1989 there were already several controversies surrounding the Burtonport girls. One could, perhaps, surmise that this was in relation to how they were Madrians, given he calls them "deviants" who brought "disrepute upon the Madrian terms". It doesn't seem to be something about their personal lives, but rather their teachings being tinged with the deviant. Could this be in reference to the corporal punishment that had been clearly going on in the Burtonport household under the guise of faith? I will admit that I am both a bongo and not a Filianist, but this seems like a very big deal, to be excommunicated from the Madrian community not just by other Madrians and the greater Matriarchal society, but also one of the very founders of the group. There certainly seem to be a lot of big deals in these few pages of letters, and I will certainly be circling back to them again.
