Me being a victim of sexual assault, I do feel uncomfortable with rape/dubious consent in the media.
While writing such brutal content and scenes, I wanted Raphael to come to terms with his despicable actions while being a self-loather. In Christianity and in many religions, homosexuality of any kind is a sin against God, but also a crime against nature, according to the Wiccan faith. In her own unconventional way, she was deprogramming him and making him come to terms with himself, while having him reexplore his masculinity.
But do I condone her actions? No, I don't.
Just like I don’t condone anyone’s heinous actions.
But in the same time, it’s only a fictional story.
This was a hard one to write in general since it deals with kidnapping, broken homes, and sex trafficking. While writing this series, I made it a rule that if I would write any action with strong sexual content and/or heinous crimes, it has to be with met results and consequences that affect the story and not just a throwaway scene with fan service.
However, there are times when most crimes can go unpunished. Sadly, that is the world we live in, and I should not bother writing an idealistic world where such karma doesn't or does exist. Even though I believe in my lord and Savoir, I will not shy away from such topics.
I started reading more about other religions and spiritual practices before mapping out my world. Many people would argue that Wicca is older than Christianity. However, most scholars of Religious Studies classify Wicca as a new religious movement and, more specifically, as a form of modern Paganism.
Wicca has been cited as the largest, best known, most influential, and most academically studied form of modern Paganism. Within the movement, it has been identified as sitting on the eclectic end of the eclectic to reconstructionist spectrum.
Several academics have also categorized Wicca as a form of nature religion, a term that is also embraced by many of its practitioners, and as a mystery religion. However, given that Wicca also incorporates the practice of magic, several scholars have referred to it as a "magico-religion."
Wicca is also a form of Western esotericism and, more specifically, a part of the esoteric current known as occultism. Academics like Wouter Hanegraaff and Tanya Luhrmann have categorized Wicca as part of the New Age, although other academics, and many Wiccans themselves, dispute this categorization.
Although academics recognize Wicca as a religion, some evangelical Christians have attempted to deny it legal recognition as such. At the same time, some Wiccan practitioners themselves eschew the term "religion"—associating the latter purely with organized religion—instead favoring "spirituality" or "way of life."
Which is when many draw the line in Christianity as a whole. Most of the supposed pagan or heretic movement. The Spanish Inquisition and the Holy Templar crusades did their part of spiritual cleansing the world of now many dead religions. How can one religion bastardize another without scrutiny, you may ask yourself?
Although Wicca as a religion is distinct from other forms of contemporary Paganism, there has been much "cross-fertilization" between these different Pagan faiths; accordingly, Wicca has both influenced and been influenced by other Pagan religions, thus making clear-cut distinctions between them more difficult for religious studies scholars to make. The terms wizard and warlock are generally discouraged in the community. In Wicca, denominations are referred to as traditions, while non-Wiccans are often termed cowans.
Allow me to expand on The Wiccan community in the Project Eleven Series.
I had my own spin on it, splitting the community into two genders (Magus and Malefica) and five groups (Obscura, Rubeus, Coeruleus, Albus, White, and Herbesco) who closely live and work together.
The obvious is that the Magus are male wiccans and the Malefica are female wiccans. They believe in sexual positivity and celebrate man being masculine and women being feminine as it brings balance and progression.
Then they are the five groups:
- Obscura (Black) – this community leans towards brutality and death more any coven. The raw unhinged nature coincides of what they accomplish.
- Rubeus (Red) – this community leans towards physicality. Aggressive but not as brutal and bloodthirsty as the Obscura. This coven believe in a sense of valor.
- Coeruleus (Blue) – this community leans towards intelligence and wisdom. Expect anyone from this coven to have an IQ no less than 200. They don’t make the best fighters, but they are genius when comes to engineering weapons and inventing spells.
- Albus (White) – this community are go-to healers. Any ailment that you can think of, they are able to cure it. Indeed, this is the least populated coven more sad and obvious reasons.
- Herbesco (Green) – The first and oldest of the coven. Without the Herbesco, there would be the four others that splintered from it. In its roots, both figurately and literally, are in tune with nature and the four elements.
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They believe in strength in numbers and open communication who always take care of their wayward. That is why Father Raphael was spared, because Alphonse Peregrine was the real victim, saving his life.
In God's Reminder, I took the time to introduce our protagonists. Their motives are clear, but I wanted to do something unconventional and focus on their personalities first. I feel if I wanted to do a deconstruction, I should focus more on who they are instead of what they are. They are the "heroes" of the story because of one or two things: they were chosen by divine power, or it's their job, and they so happen to be on the "right side of the law."
On the other side, I did something that was unconventional as well. Much like the protagonists, the antagonists are dealing with the same issues. They are perceived as evil because the narrative says they are evil. In this universe, they were born this way, like the fallen angels mating with mortals, creating what we know are "Nephilim" in our religious world.
But in this universe, I take it a step further with mythical creatures and have them live among humans out in the open. Such urban legends like witches, vampires, are black shucks are real. But just like most humans, not all of them are violent and live their lives positively day by day.
I am using the same characters for some of you who have read the Cross Roads series, but they have been tweaked and rebuilt. I felt the main characters (the Crucis Sentinels and the Aethereal Queen) needed the most overhauling.
It didn’t fit well with their character origins, which was the sole reason for the hard reboot. It was that, and the previous timeline was a mess and needed to be cleaned up. Eventually, I will revisit the conceptual story arc that has already been made and redo that part of the story.
When it comes to naming things, I am terrible at them. I guess I try too hard to make it look and sound cool that I eventually cave in and so for something basic and rememberable like Project Eleven. Many people think that it is called “Project Eleven,” which is more than an unnamed project.
But it is not.
Like I wrote down before about religious groups, I wanted to stylize the group around a military order, a Christian religious society of knights. The original military orders were the Knights Templar, the Knights Hospitaller, the Order of Saint James, the Order of Calatrava, and the Teutonic Knights.
They arose in the Middle Ages in association with the Crusades, both in the Holy Land, the Baltics, and the Iberian peninsula; their members were dedicated to the protection of pilgrims and Christians, as well as the defense of the Crusader states. They are the predecessors of chivalric orders.
Most members of military orders were laymen who took religious vows, such as of poverty, chastity, and obedience, according to monastic ideals. The orders owned houses called commanderies all across Europe and had a hierarchical structure of leadership with the grand master at the top.
The Knights Templar, one of two military orders that are inspired by the Third Revelation, the largest and most influential of the military orders, was suppressed in the early fourteenth century; only a handful of orders were established and recognized afterward.
However, some persisted longer in their original functions, such as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and the Order of Saint John, the respective Catholic and Protestant successors of the Knights Hospitaller. Those military orders that survive today have evolved into purely honorific or ceremonial orders or else into charitable foundations.
The original features of the military orders were the combination of religious and military ways of life. Some of them, like the Knights Hospitaller, the Knights of Saint Thomas, and the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus, also had charitable purposes and cared for the sick and poor.
However, they were not purely male institutions, as nuns could attach themselves to the orders' convents. One significant feature of the military orders was that clerical brothers could be subordinate to non-ordained brethren.
In 1818, orientalist Joseph von Hammer compared the Catholic military orders, in particular the Knights Templar, to certain Islamic models, such as the Muslim sect of Assassins. In 1820, José Antonio Conde suggested they were modeled on the ribat.
This fortified religious institution brought together a religious or hospital way of life by fighting the enemies of Islam. However popular such views may have become, others have criticized this view, suggesting there were no such ribats around Outremer until after the military orders had been founded.
The military orders' role and function extended beyond their military exploits in the Holy Land, Prussia, and the Baltics. In fact, they had extensive holdings and staff throughout Western Europe. The majority were laymen. They provided a conduit for cultural and technical innovation, such as the introduction of fulling into England by the Knights Hospitaller and the banking facilities of the Knights Templar.
The second Order inspired by the Third Revelation was the Order of the Holy Ghost. The Order of the Holy Ghost (also known as Hospitallers of the Holy Spirit) is a Roman Catholic religious order.
It was founded in 1180 in Montpellier by Gui of Montpellier, the son of William VII of Montpellier, for the care of the sick by groups of lay people. Pope Innocent III recognized the Order on 23 April 1198. It was originally based in Montpellier and Rome. A small female remnant survives in Poland.
For centuries, the Order was responsible for running hospitals—known as Hospitals of the Holy Ghost—throughout Europe. At its prime, they numbered many hundreds. The wealth of its endowments made it a repeated target for the unscrupulous.
The lay Knights of the Holy Ghost formed an analogy to military orders, but without military function, repeatedly attempted to divert the group's assets to their use.
Several popes made efforts to protect the Order as a purely religious body, but Pope Pius V, in 1619, re-created the Knights and again diverted the Order's assets into their hands. In 1692 Louis XIV redirected the property in the possession of the Knights for the benefit of his Order of Our Lady of Carmel, in effect a pension fund for his retired soldiers.
The remaining religious members of the Order were successful in obtaining a mandate in 1700, which again confirmed the purely religious nature of the Order and regaining the use of the funds for religious and charitable purposes.
These now focused on a single institution, the original and by this time large Arcispedale di Santo Spirito in Sassia, the buildings of which dated from the time of Pope Sixtus IV (1471–84), which at its height was capable of accommodating over 1,000 patients, with additional spaces for contagious and for dangerously insane cases, employing more than 100 medical staff with an international remit.
Over time, it became a municipal hospital for the inhabitants of Rome, and later, the original building became a museum and conference center. The Order in Rome gradually merged into the medical profession, though offshoots of the Order survived into the 20th century in France.
The Order was abolished in 1783.
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