Author's Foreword:

This is one  of a series of posts intended to show what various mage groups 
believe, how they think, and why they think the Sleepers ought to prefer 
their vision of reality.  It is not intended as a complete picture of each 
group, or a 'fair' portrait.  It's written as propaganda by each group, 
but honest propaganda. They won't lie, but they won't list their own flaws 
in detail either :)

Naturally, these posts represent my own idiosyncratic views which I
believe to be reasonably compatible with canon, but given my memory is at
times rather sieve like, I may forget stuff.  If you see a contradiction
between this or the appropriate Trad/Conv book, it may or may not be
deliberate.

If you have suggestions for more questions that should be covered, please
let me know.

Verbena and a bunch o' other stuff is all copyright of White
Wolf, of course.

You can find the ones done so far at:

http://www.maison-otaku.net/~rhea/WW/index.html

Enjoy!

Ascension 2000 Campaign Pamphlets:  Verbena

Okay, now you guys are the witches, right?  Hooking up in 
covens in the middle of the woods, mixing eye of newt and toe 
of frog, and telling Macbeth he's going to be King of 
Scotland?  Do you guys really sacrifice animals and smear 
blood runes on each other and have orgies?  Do you worship 
Satan?

	We do NOT worship Satan.  We are Pagans, rejecting the 
Christian Churches which have oppressed women, forgotten the 
feminine half of the divine, and engaged in the hateful 
persecution of anyone who disagreed with them.  We do not 
have 'orgies', although some of our rites might be described 
as such.  The term 'orgy' actually comes from various 
decadent Roman practices by bored rich people, which does not 
describe us.  Our rites combine ancient traditions and new 
inventions to honor the Divinity, male and female, that 
dwells within all living things.  

	Our memory has been defamed, first by the Chorus during 
the Burning Times, when the Inquisition nearly wiped us all, 
and later by the Technocracy, who have ridiculed us and our 
ways, and hurt us almost as deeply as the Inquisition did.  
Yet we survive, for our roots are deep.

	You could call us witches, and sometimes we call 
ourselves that, though that term is but a twisted memory of 
the name of our forerunners, the Wyck.  Many among us prefer 
titles that relate more closely to the role they play in the 
dance of life:  bards, skinchangers, lorekeepers, 
priestesses, and many others.  Together, we are the Verbena, 
keepers of the Mythic Threads and guardians of the Tree of 
Life.

Mythic Threads?  Tree of Life?

	Humanity has yet to fully forsake its belief in the 
supernatural.  Indeed, in many areas, it has yet to really 
begin the process.  Mythic Threads are elements of the 
Tapestry of Creation which have endured from the past to the 
present.  Humanity does not want a cold, mechanical world, 
and so it holds onto supernatural beliefs which offer a 
glimpse into the world as it was and as it will be again.  
The continuing popularity of Astrology and Tarot cards are 
Mythic Threads.  The unicorn lives on in fiction and in hope.  
The Abominable Snowman, the Sasquatch, books about gnomes, 
and faeries, and dragons, the belief in 'the old haunted 
house' or 'Demon Row', all these things help to keep the 
potential for a return to a less static world alive.

	We work to guard the Mythic Threads by further 
propogating them through society and by protecting the 
creatures which embody them.  We have saved the unicorn and 
the dragon from extinction.  We form religious groups which 
spread our pagan beliefs, and run stores (which some might 
call occult) that propagate these beliefs as well.  Even the 
mass media has been turned to our aid at times.  

	The Tree of Life is both symbol and reality at several 
levels.  It is a symbol of our Tradition, in which different 
groups perform different functions that contribute to the 
health of our whole, just as the leaves, branches, roots, and 
trunk of a tree are all part of the same being, but perform 
different tasks for it.  It is a symbol of the universe, with 
the lands of the dead at the roots, the land of the living in 
the middle, and the lands of spirit among all the branches at 
the tope.  It is a living reality in every chantry, for each 
possesses a World Tree that stands at the heart of their 
rites.  And it is a living reality in the universe, for those 
who travel through the Umbra can find the Alder Bole, the 
axis of the world, from which hangs The Hanged Man, who gains 
wisdom through his suffering and self-sacrifice.  [OOC:  Book 
of Worlds, Midrealm, pages 125-9]

So what's your philosophy?  Why do you want to keep the 
supernatural alive?  So you can put hexes on your enemies?  I 
remember this cartoon about a Wiccan green bean who joined 
them to get even with people who made fun of him for being a 
talking green bean.  [OOC:  This was in fact published in a 
'cartoon' within a cartoon called 'Igdoof' at the University 
of Maryland.  The Wiccans found Igdoof and turned him into a 
frog after he published his cartoon about 'Pooshfa the Green 
bean' joining the Wiccans.  What the Wiccans did, if 
anything, to the creator of Igdoof remains unknown to me]

	Talking green bean?  I don't even want to know, I think.

	While some of us are certainly bitter (with good 
reason), we do not walk the path of magick to simply destroy 
our enemies.  Rather, we are the guardians and nurturers of 
Life in all its forms.  All living things are united by the 
Divinity that dwells within them, and all deserve to be 
preserved from unnatural destruction.  Think not that we 
reject predators, for it is their role to prey upon the 
animals we eat.  Rather, we reject and combat those who would 
reject nature, or warp it through unnatural means.  

	Thus it is that we frequently come to blows with the 
Progenitors, for they enjoy conducting horrible life-warping 
experiments, such as transplanting human brains into animals 
to use as guardians, or creating cats with frog tongues, or 
humans who spit acid and have poison for blood.  Animal 
husbandry and selective breeding is one thing, digging one's 
tools into the very tapestry of a living thing and rewriting 
it to one's egotistic vision is another.  

	We also come to blows with the Vampires.  While we share 
a common interest in blood magick, they are parodies of life, 
perhaps the ultimate warping of life into unlife.  Their 
blood magick uses blood stolen from helpless victims.  Though 
a few of us find them interesting, to the majority, they are 
anathema.

	Similarly, we fight those who seek to interrupt the 
cycle of life and the natural ways in other ways as well.  
Logging companies which turn forest into desert, 
fundamentalists who teach people to revile their own bodies 
and suppress natural sexual instincts, bigots and gaybashers 
who would crush out entire branches of the Tree of Life by 
wiping out other races or sexual preferences, and many others 
feel our wrath.  Our fighting with such as these rarely comes 
to blows, but it is intense nonetheless.

	Our power comes from our union with the Goddess (or God) 
within us.  The Chorus will tell you that the Divine is above 
and outside its creation, but we say that Divinity is 
immanent, springing from within every living thing.  By 
attuning ourselves to its flow, we gain power from the River 
of Life, which binds together every living thing.

	This is why we practice blood magick, for blood is the 
Fluid of Life.  Life began amongst liquid in the sea, and 
blood is the liquid which preserves Life in the present.  
Blood flows in a cycle through the body, as Life itself 
passes through the Cycle of Seasons, passing from the heart, 
where the cycle begins, to the lungs where it absorbs power 
from the Breath of Life, then flows out into the body where 
it does its work of preserving Life, then exhausted, it ebbs 
back to the heart to begin its journey anew.  Winter to 
Spring to Summer to Fall to Winter.  

	Only when the blood cycle flows unobstructed is a person 
healthy.  Similarly, creation can only be healthy when the 
cycles of life are unobstructed.  Every forest leveled, every 
society taught to fear their bodies, every predator slain 
simply for fulfilling his role, all these things clog the 
universe's arteries.  When the flowing of the blood slows or 
ceases, the body's tissues begin to die.  So it is with the 
universe.  Look at the portions of the world reduced to a 
wasteland.  Can you say this is a good thing?  As the 
Technocracy lays waste to Life and ravages it in the name of 
process, we come closer and closer to the day when the 
universe will have a heart attack, the Alder Bole will fall, 
and all of creation come crashing down.  

	We share some aspects of this philosophy with the 
Euthanatos, but interpret it differently.  They obsess over 
death, and they are far more likely to see it personified on 
an individual, rather than a  grand scale.   They are so 
concerned with death and when it is time for each person to 
die in order to get a fresh start that they forget how to 
live.  Death will take care of itself; while we may fight to 
protect Life, and even kill in its defense, we do not claim 
the right to choose who lives and who dies on the basis of 
their spiritual status.  Everyone has a right to live their 
life as they like, as long as they don't impose that way of 
life on others.  We will not force someone to remain living 
if they choose to die, as we recognize it's best not to cling 
to life too long either.  Death is also part of the cycle, 
just not the most important part. 

So, does defending life mean that you oppose Abortion?

	Can we discuss something else?

No.  Don't evade the question.  Do the Verbena oppose 
Abortion?  After all, pregnancy is a natural process.  
Wouldn't preventing it interrupt the cycle of life?  Also, 
what do you think about birth control methods and artificial 
insemination?  Would you say both of these are unnatural 
interrupts of the cycle of life?  If not, why not?  What 
about the use of genetic testing and ultrasound to determine 
whether or not to abort or carry children to term?

	I will say that debate continues on some of these 
issues, and that divisions do exist within the Verbena over 
these things.  I will move in order of degree of 
controversiality, from things we are firmest on to those 
where the largest degree of dispute exists.  

	With regard to artificial insemination, we oppose it as 
an unnatural process, especially since the Technocracy 
possesses the technology to complete bypass the whole natural 
process of pregnancy and to manipulate the tapestry of life 
of each baby to suit their own purposes in defiance of 
nature's methods.  This is not to say that we think infertile 
women should be left childless.  We possess lore capable of 
aiding women to heal their infertility, if only we could 
practice it without being smitten by society and the power of 
Paradox.  That is how we would solve that problem.

	With regard to birth control, we endorse a variety of 
healthy, natural birth control methods based on our 
traditional lore, while rejecting the technological methods 
propagated by the Progenitors.  Nature has provided means by 
which pregnancy can be avoided, so it is not a violation of 
the cycle of life to use those methods.  (The same applies to 
our treatment of disease.  Disease is natural, but if Life 
provides us with ways to avoid disease through the power of 
Life itself, then using those methods is not a violation of 
the cycle).  There are a few within our numbers who argue 
this is sophistry, but they are few in number, for the 
majority of us believe that while pregnancy is part of the 
cycle of life, it is not the duty of women to be constantly 
pregnant.  On the other hand, a Verbena woman who never once 
bears children will be regarded with some suspicion by many 
as one who is rejecting part of the cycle of life, especially 
among the Gardeners of the Tree, who watch over the Verbena 
bloodlines.  

	Abortion itself is a more argued thing.  Our birth 
control methods are designed to prevent conception, rather to 
induce miscarriages, for the most part.  Once conception 
takes place, the argument becomes more complex.  Should 
surgical abortions be supported as a woman's right, or 
opposed as yet another unnatural method of tampering with 
Life?  We do possess extensive lore on natural means for 
inducing miscarriages, so many who do support the practice of 
Abortion would simply oppose the technological way of doing 
it.  The Gardeners of the Tree, anxious to preserve the 
Verbena Bloodlines fanatically oppose the abortion of anyone 
in whom the old blood runs true, regardless of what the 
mother wants, while endorsing the abortion or even 
infanticide of those who lack the Old Blood, if the mother 
desires to do so, or even demanding the abortion/infanticide 
of one who possessed tainted blood or an already poisoned 
Avatar (a Widderslainte to be).   Indeed, we have practiced 
infanticide at times in the past when the local community 
could not support new children, or when children were so 
heavily flawed they would be unable to truly live.  Many 
among us now, on the other hand, find the idea of killing an 
unborn child repugnant, but at the same time do not wish to 
force women to bear unwanted children.  Others feel it would 
be justified under some conditions (such as not forcing a 
mother to bear a child whose father raped her, or a child who 
could only suffer when born).  Some would justify it by 
arguing that until the child is born, she or he is but a part 
of the mother's Tapestry, and subject to her control as a 
result, feeling no reluctance to aid in abortions.  Yet 
others might simply point to the existence of natural 
substances which enable a woman to induce a miscarriage and 
argue from that that Life endorses the practice, or else why 
would natural substances which enable it exist?  (To which 
others argue that one can use a tree branch to beat someone 
to death, but that doesn't mean Life endorses beating people 
to death.  To determine what is and isn't a natural use of 
things found in nature remains a heavily debated topic among 
us.)  A few look at the Technocracy's support of Abortions 
and simply reject it for the reason that the Technocracy 
likes it.  In general, I would say that the large majority of 
Verbena support a woman's right to an abortion, but that many 
of those have doubts and almost all of them would prefer to 
see it done through natural means rather than unnatural.  

	All of us would reject the technology of the Technocracy 
as a tool for deciding whether or not to get an abortion, for 
machines cannot truly comprehend the true nature of Life, its 
ebb and flow, nor should one allow a machine to tell you who 
lives and who dies.  Still, many Verbena would use natural 
and magickally equivalent divination methods to help them 
decide whether to carry a pregnancy to term.  

So how does your magick actually work?  How does one use the 
power of the Divinity Within to do something?

	Where the Technocracy teaches how to control things from 
outside them, we teach how to control things from the inside.  
To call upon the Goddess Within, one must become the Goddess 
by living in the way to which we are called.  That way is the 
way of Life.  Our bodies can teach us the way to live, if we 
will only listen.

	It is a way of passion, and of carnality, not in the 
usual negative sense, but in the sense of accepting one's 
body's desires and needs.  We eat when we are hungry, cry 
when we are sad, and make love when we are horny.  It is the 
abandonment of pretenses and the false fronts of 
civilization.  We learn to attune ourselves to the cycles of 
our body, to know it as we know our mind, for we ARE our 
body.  It's not something we possess, something distinct from 
mind.  We reject the Cartesian duality which helped to 
further divide and shatter the universe.  I listen to my 
body, for I am my body, and it is part of the universe around 
it.  The tides that flow and ebb within me are the tides that 
crash upon the shore, that drive the winds and move the Earth 
round the Sun.  

	Our magick works by realizing that we are within the 
flow of the great lifeblood of the universe, and that because 
we are divine, we can control that lifeblood.  And whoever 
controls the lifeblood of the universe, can control all 
things.

	Blood is the key to our magick, for it represents the 
flesh and the universe, standing as both symbol and 
incarnation of the cycles that govern the universe.  It can 
be a tie between living things (Correspondence), a symbol of 
the energies that flow through the universe, making it work 
(Forces and Prime), a force for change or preservation within 
the body (Life), a way of breaking down things whose time to 
pass has come (Entropy--think about what white blood cells 
do), a tool for contemplation and alteration of the stream of 
consciousness (Mind), a symbol of the cycles that mark the 
passage of time (Time), a bearer of Iron and other elements 
which make up the world (Matter), and the heart which pumps 
it is often seen as the seat of the soul and emotions 
(Spirit).  Is it any wonder that it is one of our most potent 
tools?

	The creation, extraction, sharing, spilling, and 
destruction of blood form the core of our magickal practices 
and the reason why we sometimes conduct sacrifices.  
Sacrifices have power, though self-sacrifice has the greatest 
power.  We die symbolically when we enter the tradition, and 
are reborn like the year is when it dies on the longest night 
of the year.  Life rewards those who sacrifice themselves, 
like Odin on the Tree of Life, or Forethought, who hangs even 
now from the Alder Bole.  To them is granted wisdom and a 
return to Life with greater insight than before, bearing a 
gift to benefit those for whom they sacrificed themselves.

	So the core of how we practice our magick is this.  Our 
Love of Life enables us to merge with the Goddess (or God) 
within our self and use the power we find from our union with 
Divinity and the Cycle of Life to direct that Cycle to our 
will.  We do this though various ritual practices which help 
us to focus our Love of Life and increase our state of union 
with the Goddess.  Many of these practices involve blood, but 
they can also include meditation, the carving of runes, 
gardening, dance and song, sex, running and swimming, tarot 
cards, candles, incense, sacrifices, self-sacrifice (such as 
spilling one's own blood, ritual hanging, fasting or 
abstention from sex in order to heighten our desire for food 
and sex respectively), and many other 'foci'.  In time, one 
learns to bypass such rites and foci due to an increased 
state of constant union with the Divine, due to a rise in 
one's Love of Life.

So how would you cure my lung cancer?

	First, I'd recommend switching to herbal cigarettes.  
Tobacco isn't very healthy to smoke.  Unlike modern medicine, 
we don't just treat the current problem; every health problem 
is part of a larger pattern of behavior that led to the 
problem and also must be fixed.

	Secondly, I'd want to perform a thorough examination to 
make sure there weren't any other problems also in need of 
being fixed.  So I would make a small cut on your arm and 
extract enough blood to fill a tiny cup, then heat it until 
the liquid part evaporated, studying the pattern with 
remained.  In this way, I could examine the tapestry of your 
life and see which threads were out of place.  Other Verbena 
might drink the blood, cast it upon the ground and study the 
resulting pattern, or pour it into a horn carven with runes, 
which would glow to indicate what problems you have.  

	Assuming no other problems, we would have three things 
to face.  First, your likely addiction to nicotine.  
Secondly, the gunk in your lungs.  Thirdly, your lung cancer.  

	For the first, I would prescribe specially prepared 
herbal cigarettes which would ease your cravings and help you 
to adjust your habits.  There are several potions as well 
that might be of help.  Still, they would only help you 
change yourself; you have a duty to take an active role in 
your own healing.

	For the second, I would prepare special incense, or 
possibly even a large bonfire, and make you sit there in a 
tent and breathe them, letting the good vapors gradually 
loosen and break up the tar inside you, enabling you to vomit 
it up.

	For the third, I could adopt any of several methods.  If 
the damage was not too advanced, I would have you alter your 
diet to include various foods and drinks good for stimulating 
healing, along with several herbal potions which would aid 
the process. I would have you come in once a week so that we 
could bleed off a portion of your blood into a copper bowl 
prepared with runes.  It would then be purified with fire, 
herbs, and incense, and then you would drink it to 
reintroduce it into your system.  Over a period of ten weeks 
(or possibly less), we could then purge your system of any 
taint built up in the blood, and prevent the cancer being 
spread by your bloodstream.

	If your cancer was more advanced, we might have to take 
drastic measures.  The time scale of the blood purification 
could be compressed to days or hours or minutes, though it 
becomes riskier.  Appropriate sacrifices might have to be 
made, such as a domesticated animal that you own, a pet, or 
even a body part, such as a finger or toe.  

	If you were on your last legs, then we would have to 
undertake heroic measures.  I could drain off a large 
proportion of my own blood (or that of several Verbena), 
ritually prepare it, and feed it to you as we remove a large 
portion of your own blood.  If you found me desirable, and I 
could muster the will (given that by that time, you would 
likely be in poor physical condition), we could engage in 
ritual sex, for sex is an act which generates new life by 
mimicking the cycle of life in miniature.  If you survived 
it, you would be on the road to recovery.  There is, however, 
some danger of 'dying on the table' with that method, even 
more so than others, for orgasm is a little death, the end of 
one cycle and the beginning of a new one.  Your body might 
get the wrong signal in its weakened state, so to speak.

Hmm.  It sounds interesting, but isn't learning to control 
and restrain our bodily urges part of humanity's advance to 
civilization?  We don't treat the street as a bathroom, 
eating all we want makes us get fat, and listening to one's 
gonads is a good way to get in all sorts of trouble.  I mean, 
rapists are listening to their lust, which comes from their 
body, and people who commit murder are acting on anger, which 
is perfectly natural.  How do you plan to keep society from 
collapsing in a tide of blood and lust?

	It is important to realize that our body's messages to 
us often become distorted by the mind.  We try to hide from 
what our body tells us because it doesn't fit our 
preconceptions, or we use the body's needs as excuses to 
fulfil desires that actually arise from the mind, not the 
body.  For example, we may tell ourselves we are hungry, when 
really we just want to experience the pleasure of a good 
taste, despite our stomachs being full.  A man who rapes a 
woman may tell himself he just can't resist his natural 
desire for her, but actually he is acting on his desire for 
power over others, which is not natural and comes from mental 
dysfunction.  Because we try to split ourself into mind and 
body, instead of keeping it an integrated whole, we often 
find it difficult to hear the 'voice of conscience' from the 
body.  Part of Verbena training is understanding what our 
body is really telling us, not what we've been taught to 
think it is saying.  

	And what the body wants is moderation.  Lust is a good 
and natural thing, but only humans try to go into heat all 
the time.  Starving yourself is bad, but so is glutting 
yourself.  Too little pleasure, and you will be miserable.  
Too much pleasure and you will both burn out on it and 
accomplish nothing with yourself.  Too much heat bakes us, 
too little heat and we freeze.  Though we share little with 
the overly rationalistic Greeks, we agree with them on the 
idea of the Golden Mean.  
	
	Listening to your body does not mean simply only 
attending to one's physical needs and animal desires.  Humans 
are higher than animals, and we have mental and emotional 
needs as well.  Verbena enjoy both physical and mental 
activities.  We enjoy creating things, watching sunsets, 
reading, and writing,  and travelling.  We simply assert that 
one must reunite one's fragmented self and meet all of its 
true needs, in order to truly live.  

	In addition, we recognize that every action has 
consequences, and that one's rights only extend so far as 
they can go without hurting others.   Whatsoever you do will 
return to you threefold.  The good you do will come back to 
aid you, and the ill you do will return and punish you.  

But how do you KNOW what your body needs?  How do you tell 
between its true and false desires?

	How do you know how to think?  I cannot express it in 
words, it has to be experienced.  And it is a constant 
learning process.  I am always learning more about my body.   
To say more would be like trying to describe a smell to 
someone with no nose, or to tell a deaf person what sound is 
like.

So what would your ideal world be like?

	We seek a world in which society would renounce all the 
ways in which it interferes with the natural cycle.  Women 
would no longer be oppressed, and their role as the renewers 
of life would be revered and accommodated (An end to the 
glass ceiling and the punishment of career women for having 
children).  The Divine would be seen to manifest itself in 
both men and women, and all the oppressive churches would be 
dismantled.

	Cities would shrink, and the wilderness would be allowed 
to grow.  The endangered species would be nurtured, and the 
creatures of myth reintroduced to the wilderness.  By living 
in smaller communities, we would all be able to attain the 
early contact with nature necessary for healthy living and a 
proper love of wild things and wild places.  It is hard to 
remember and experience the cycle of life when one lives in a 
womb of stone.  

	We do not reject all technology and tools, but 
technologies which warp or destroy Life instead of enhancing 
or preserving it would have to be abandoned.   Every 
manufacturing technique which produces toxic wastes (and that 
is many) would either have to be abandoned, or means found to 
cleanse those wastes completely.  Solar, thermal, and water 
power would provide the energies for the machines which 
remained, for those are natural sources.  The burning of the 
Earth's lifeblood and the consumption of its bones would 
cease, for though such sacrifices do have power, they also 
have ill consequences, and the World Tree NEEDS its roots and 
sap.

	We would end marriage, for it is but a relic of the time 
when women were forced to sell themselves to men or were sold 
by their families.  Mothers and fathers would take an equal 
role and responsibility in raising their children, possibly 
in communal arrangements.  We would end all the taboos placed 
on healthy sexuality and love, whether it be between men, a 
man and a woman, or women.   No woman would be forced to bear 
children, or denied the right to bear them, if she can 
support them.  

	All would learn to love their bodies and live in harmony 
with them and with nature, for that is our way.   All would 
learn the ways of our lore, though no doubt some would know 
far more than others, as many people are not suited for being 
loregatherers.  Every person would have the role best suited 
to their talents, free to do what they love, rather than 
being forced to take some mindless job, simply to survive.

	 
So what do you think about other mages?

	The Marauders are the ultimate example of mind/body 
dualism taken to an unhealthy extreme. They ignore their body 
completely, and by extension, the material world, listening 
only to the voices in their head.  Yet, somehow they derive 
power from this.  Steer them towards our enemies if you can, 
destroy them if you cannot.

	The Nephandi have similar problems, falling prey to the 
dark delusions of their mind, and corrupting the minds and 
bodies of all around them.  Do not listen to their lies, for 
they seek to ensnare and corrupt you.  Destroy them, for they 
are allies of the serpent who gnaws at the roots of the Alder 
Bole, seeking to topple it.  

	The Technocrats go to the other foolish extreme, denying 
the mind exists, and by extension the soul, saying that we 
are all body, all matter.  Yet, they cannot even get by 
without ravaging the very world they say is the sum total of 
creation and interrupting the cycle of life.  They must be 
smashed, especially the Progenitors who warp human bodies, 
Iteration X, who poison their bodies by fusing them to 
machines, and the New World Order, who seeks to rip the 
Mythic Threads from the Tapestry.  Not that the other two 
Conventions are much better.

	Our closest friends among the Traditions are the 
Dreamspeakers and the Cult of Ecstasy.  The Dreamspeakers are 
our younger siblings, the ones who did not quite fully 
understand the lessons taught by the Pure Ones and the Wyck.  
Still, they fight to preserve and protect the natural world.  
The Cult of Ecstasy understands that the body and the mind 
are one, and they are liberators, not oppressors, though they 
sometimes become lost in their carnality instead of empowered 
by it.

	We are still learning how to deal with the Virtual 
Adepts and the Sons of Ether, and trying to figure out if 
their technomancy is in tune with Life or opposed to it.  The 
jury is still out.  The Gardeners of the Tree certainly don't 
like them.

	The Akashics often confuse us as well; they have great 
mastery over their bodies and great harmony with their bodies 
and nature, yet their methods bear little to no resemblence 
to our own.  And trying to talk to them is only slightly more 
comprehensible than randomly drawing words out of a cup and 
arranging them in alphabetical order.  'Do is like a bird 
snatching a bagel from a street bum, then plunging to his 
death under the weight.'  Or something like that.

	The Euthanatos are a bit of a mystery as well.  We share 
some common roots and ideas, but they seem a bit too obsessed 
with death.  The Twisters of Fate and the Lifeweavers seem to 
have interesting discussions with them, though.

	The Celestial Chorus and the Order of Hermes are old 
enemies of ours.  The Chorus doesn't approve of our religion 
or morals, while the Hermetics act like they're more 
civilized than us.  We weren't the ones burning people at the 
stake for daring to disagree or using peasants for 
experiments in the Mythic Age, guys.  Try pulling the log out 
of your own eye first.

	As we look at the world, we can see it is passing from 
fall into winter, though we fight to make sure the wheel of 
time will turn and that winter will one day become spring 
once more.  We seek to join with the Divinity Within us, in 
order to become Kings and Queens, but we recognize that the 
King and Queen must at times sacrifice themselves to renew 
the land.    We reject the false dichotomies the Technocracy 
asserts, we seek to heal the gap between mind and body, 
people and land, spirit and matter, in order to insure the 
cycle of Life continues.  The Technocracy seeks to stop the 
wheel of time, but if the cycle of Life ceases, then the 
world will die.  Will you join us in learning to love Life, 
so that spring can come again to a world in desperate need of 
it?