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