The Need for Humility

I visit the palaces and halls of my kind, and find cold welcome there. 2 My attempts to bring to my brethren the truth that I have witnessed are met with public scorn and laughter. 3 Yet I persist in my efforts. Surely this willful ignorance must be provoking to the Lord! 4 Few and far between are the Kindred who humor me with a receptive ear or a kind word, 5 and they are reviled by the Romans for this conduct. 6 Yet I persist in my efforts. 

7 I cannot couch my message in the language of the philosophers and the arguments of Senators, and my speech is unimpressive. 8 Yet I persist in my efforts. 

 - Torments 4:1-8

Each of us have our strengths and weaknesses, our abilities and our shortcomings. As is evidenced by the failings of Longinus after he has received the message of his purpose, even those with righteousness on their side do not always succeed. A thing being right and just does not mean that it will come to pass in this fallen world. Yet conviction may drive us to strive ever harder in the face of adversity.

The fact is that though Longinus bore a message from God on the purpose of the Damned in this world, he did not have the skills to convey it at first. He persisted in his attempts until at last he proclaims in Torments 6:7 "I am too lowly a servant for this task."

In frustration and despair Longinus travels for a time, He wanders aimlessly, wrestling with these emotions. He admits to doubt in himself and his ability to succeed. He calls out to God. He weeps. He debases himself. In Torments 8:8 he has reached his lowest state: "I lie in earth like a pile of dung."

Longinus receives no word from God. He receives no sign of the rightness of his course. No angel visits him to spur him onward this time. Instead, he must reach within for wisdom, acknowledging his failures, but knowing that they need not persist forever: "I have failed in my ministry, but I cannot succeed while lying in the dirt." (Torments 9:2)

Longinus turns for solutions not to himself, for he has failed, nor to God, who has not answered his prayers directly. Instead, he turns to mankind. Though Longinus slew Christ, was Damned by God, and was visited by an angel to reveal his purpose in the past, he humbled himself before men so that he might learn. "With humility and faith I approach the teacher. 2 I come to him as yet another student and I beg him to impart to me his wisdom." (Torments 12:1-2)

Many nights pass as Longinus learns and studies at the foot of his teacher, a mortal man. When at last he has learned enough that he might better fulfill his purpose, he retreats to pray. "I fast and pray and beg the Lord for an answer, but all is silence. 2 I call upon my newfound wisdom, and decide that I must trust in man’s free will and God’s holy purpose." (Torments 14:1-2)

While guided by his experience with the divine, Longinus ultimately finds that God does not give us all the answers of how we might fulfill his will. That is for us to find. We find it in recognizing our shortcomings and in reaching out to others. We find our way in listening and learning, in the bountiful knowledge of humanity, and in ultimately placing trust in others. None can go it alone in this world. It is only with humility that we can ultimately succeed.

Sum Sanctus,

Simon Patterson Gloveli

Inquisitor Generalis de Lacus Magni

On External Threats

Many view the Testament of Longinus as solely a religious document, but the fact is that it contains a tremendous amount of information on the kindred condition, kindred history, kindred abilities, and the matter which will be addressed here: external supernatural threats to the Damned.

A third night, Vahishtael came to me again, and said to me, “Come, and I will show you the creatures that you must know of, and understand. 

2 You shall teach your disciples of their existence.” - Eschaton 13:1-2

Within the Book of Eschaton, we find information about several threats to kindred, their creation, their abilities, and the means to combat them. Many of these threats remain with us today, nearly two millennia after they were first recorded in the Testament.

Larvae are the mindless kindred-like husks that can arise form sloppy feeding to the point of death. Belial's Brood are kindred who have "sold themselves to their sin" yet hold more reason than a draugr, including a cunning tongue with which they seek to convince others of their course. The half-Damned are part mortals who lure kindred with the most intoxicating scent of their blood, yet those who drink find it a poison. VII are those who bear the blood of Satan, which awakens every seven generations.

The strix, or Owls, are a most grievous threat which can inhabit the bodies of the dead, even kindred bodies, and bend them to their terrible will. Consider what the Testament has to say of them:

40 On the last page, I saw an Owl made of smoke. I trembled, for I knew that the Owls were more dreadful than any of the other monsters I had seen. 41 The Owl flew towards a dead man hanging from a tree and became smoke and entered into the corpse. 42 The corpse moved, and came down from the tree. 43 The Owl was in the corpse’s eyes, and they glowed. 44 The corpse with the Owl inside it waited by the street and ambushed the living who passed, and killed them and drank their blood. 45 And each time, it stole a new body from the people it had killed, now a soldier, now a Holy man, now a young woman, now an old woman. And always, the yellow gleam was in the Owl’s eye. 46 Presently, one of the Damned came by, and the Owl beat him down and entered him, and the Damned became his slave. 47 The Owl kept the body, and wreaked havoc with it, and the Assembly of the Sanctified was in ruins, as I saw the Owl whisper and make strife among the faithful. 48 And it opened the doors of the courts of the Damned, and a flock of the Owls came, and flooded into that place, and stole our bodies and crushed our souls, 49 and made the living suffer ten or a dozen times what we had, and not for the Purpose of God, but for the pleasure of it. Vahistael said, “Fear the Owls, and always remain vigilant. 50 Drive them into the sunshine, and do not allow the ones who deal with them to have any hope of survival, or any trial, or any forgiveness. 51 The Damned who deals with the Owls is cursed, and doubly cursed, and has no right even to Hell.” - Eschaton 13:40-51

This is but a hint of the knowledge contained within the Testament. Each of the threats above has at least a paragraph of information about them and the Church of Longinus has more recorded besides. This is one of the many reasons that the Testament's study is so vital to kindred society. Within its pages we find answers to questions that many who walk tonight have not yet even thought to ask. Yet here, for nearly two millennia, that wisdom has been recorded. Know that this body of wisdom is a thing to be shared with all kindred, that they might understand more of themselves and the dangers of the world we inhabit.

Sum Sanctus,

Simon Patterson Gloveli

Inquisitor Generalis de Lacus Magni

On the Great Heresies

If any community shall be found to be in practice of heretical faith, they shall be expelled from the body of the faithful. Yet if they and their abbot shall make penance and recant all heresies, they shall be welcomed back to the community of brethren. - The Rule of Golgotha 7:19

A number of profound usurpations of the Longinian faith exist. These greatest heresies are persistent things, taking the essential truths of the Testament of Longinus and the teachings of the Lancea Sanctum and perverting them. What makes a matter heretical is that they adopt and twist aspects of the Covenant with God, rather than asserting their own separate and independent belief. While there may be spiritual errancy in a course that does not accept God or his plan for us, such matters should not raise the true ire of the faithful in the way that heresy does. Heresy is a blight that exists within the Church itself.

There are a number of great heresies, many of which commit the essential sin of taking the trappings of the Longinian faith and combining them with the practices of the more temporal covenants. These heresies are then a threat and affront to not just the Lancea Sanctum, but to the other covenant they seek to usurp and twist as well. I will present a brief overview of four great heresies and the manner in which they commit this usurpation of both covenants.

The Livian Heresy is the most familiar to many kindred. Livians combine the trappings of faith of the Lancea Sanctum with the reverence of the mother of Longinus as the Crone of the Acolytes. Livia is elevated to a state akin to Mary, but given the dark appellation of the Mother of Vampires or sometimes the Mother of Monsters. Livians seek to mingle the blood sorcery of the Circle of the Crone with the dark miracles of the Longinian faith. This mingling is clearly seen as antithetical to proper members of both covenants and has been seen as such for nearly two millennia.

The Crimson Cavalry is a much more recent heresy, born a little over half a century ago. It combines some parts of the Longinian faith, particularly its most eschatological aspects, with the most violent and anti-establishment impulses of the Carthian Movement. The Crimson Cavalry seeks to bring about the biblical end of days by overthrowing all established order in the world. Only once the world of kine and kindred alike is in a completely anarchic state, do they believe that the Second Coming of Jesus will occur. Clearly the extreme and violent nature of this heresy is an affront to the two covenants from which its ideology derives.

The formal Icarian Heresy is one which endured for a number of centuries from the late Middle Ages to the early Renaissance, with the threat of its originators dispersed. However, its general trappings are seen from time to time even unto this night. The Icarian Heresy is a blending of zeal of the Lancea Sanctum with the starkly political breeding and hierarchy of the Invictus. The heirs of Icarius created a familial dynasty, toppling rulers across broad swatches of land and replacing them with those who believed they were divinely gifted to rule over all kindred. This blending of the temporal and the spiritual is properly an affront to both the First and Second Estates, each of which should be kept distinct on focused on their own concerns.

The Masonic Heresy is another profoundly disturbing example of the inexcusable blending of covenants, one which appears alive and active in pursuing their agenda in these modern nights. The Masonic Heresy was founded by a former Cardinal of the Lancea Sanctum who named herself "The Carpenter" and began to utilize the secret practices of the Ordo Dracul in an attempt to seize God's power for her own. The Masons seek absolute dominion over kine and kindred alike through manipulation of occult forces to bind all in accordance with their will. They worship "The Carpenter" as a messianic figure. Their bastardization of the Longinian faith and the practices of the Ordo Dracul ought to make clear that they are antithetical to both.

One thing that is hopefully made clear in this discussion of four of the greatest heresies is that they present not just a threat to one covenant, but to all. Each seeks to upend the proper ordering of kindred society and assert their own misguided zealotry upon our society. While the Lancea Sanctum often engages in the most devoted efforts to identify and route out these dangers, they are a shared danger and one on which all kindred of good conscious should oppose and offer information where they possess it.

Sum Sanctus,

Simon Patterson Gloveli

Inquisitor Generalis de Lacus Magni