Sevenfold Method

Zafira lit the final stick of incense with her taper, a thousand different thoughts roiling in her head like the tendrils of heady smoke that coiled in the still air. The shipments were late, the workers were lazy, and the stock was going bad, but perhaps this was the way things had to be; after all, even a water-strider could fall if a rock was thrown beside it. She concentrated on the sand-pattern in front of her. The different shapes and colors swirled in her mind's eye, helping her find her center, and for a while it was enough.

Red against white. Blue against blue. Her mind eddied, tranquil, but never still, absorbing the pattern, becoming the pattern. Yellow birds in an endless ocean, petals over water, murmuring across waves, fallen from on high to become one with the ocean. How like ships in the current, caught by the breeze. She traced the geometry with her mind's eye, forever hoping for the tug of Speria's influence; to be visited by the Muse of Mathematics would be a lone good omen in a times when nearly everything was turning bad.

Smoke eddied about her, stinging her eyes. Yes, this was correct, Zafira murmured from her center. Wind snatches the petals from the flower. Wind fetches the ships against the rocks, the ocean wears down even the stone. Shouts from outside, pain in her eyes. Blinking, she lost her center and the blue waters of her mind's eye. Exhaling, she drew her fingers through the sands, scattering the pattern with the grains.

Perhaps, she thought, all things must wear like threads in a garment and be torn asunder. For a moment, her eyes caught the gleam of sand, briefly tracing down the curve of a wave in the arc of blue over grey. Oceans. Stones. But am I the ocean or the rock?

Overview

The Sevenfold Method is a belief system native to Moorva focused on personal and worldly change. Its dogma states that mortal flesh is foam at the lip of the sea of divinity, churned up by its waves and cast upon an unclean shore. Transmutation perfects the self, casting away impurities; at the end of the process, the remains of the self dissolve into the nothingness from whence it came. Only self-improvement can lead to this epiphany. Alchemy is sacred to this faith, as it symbolizes the seven states of enlightenment and the change which one's self must undergo to achieve perfection.

Those who manage to achieve divine nature while still in the womb leave their physical selves behind in the form of lithopedia.

The Sevenfold Method also states that genius is a transient property which only visits a host for a finite period of time; one can be a vessel more than once, and those who are more intelligent are naturally better at it, but creativity is not something one can rely upon. It views the arts and sciences as roughly anthropomorphic concepts, each exemplified by a specific Muse. The Muses are more symbolic than specific figures to be worshiped. The Sevenfold Method encourages the belief that each sentient being has their own personal muse, as well, which is the fickle bringer of intuition and higher knowledge.

Followers of the Sevenfold Method regularly meditate to focus on their chakras, strive to improve themselves in some manner (whether physically, mentally, spiritually, artistically, or economically), work to interpret the mysteries of alchemy, knot and unknot cords in various patterns, and prepare their food through elaborate methods. There is no particular requirement for nor tenet against worldly goods in the Sevenfold Method; it counts both ascetics and merchant princes among its followers.

Most practitioners of the Sevenfold Method are dhajas.

Religions

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