Holy Terra

We are children of the Diaspora, seeds spreading the Pancreator's truths hither and yon across this bleak cosmos; and so it is fortunate that we may still gaze longingly, across the night skies of a thousand worlds, toward the stellar madonna that nursed our species to adulthood. She may still be seen, though she too has ebbed in the manner of her celestial sisters: yellow Sol, beacon blazing all the more gloriously in her faintness.

I can still remember the exercise that every seminary student had to undergo beneath the watchful eye and ready cane of the chartophylax. I remember myself as a lad, reciting those hoary names: Mercury, Venus, Urth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. And though I was born amid the fields of Ravenna, separated from my race's cradle by unfathomable gulfs, those simple names permeate me with simultaneous longing and serenity.

Or rather, I should amend, one name among them. The other eight planets are little known to me, save as words to be recited: orphan waifs of memory. Urth, though: third planet from the sun, that superficially undistinguished sphere on whose primordial seas, eons past, the Pancreator chose to smile...

Ye who peruse this humble work, ye are a scion of that third planet, no matter what star shines upon ye now; and so I challenge thee, can ye read of the mother-sphere without shedding a single nostalgic tear? Do the ancient names, Afric, Roma, Nova York, Pontus Pacifica, the Amazon, fail to tug your thoughts ever so faintly, across unimaginable gulfs of time and distance, toward that lone and flickering star?

Take heart: For though we have been weaned and grown and matured, and finally left the ancestral nest, as all children do when they have entered adulthood, do not imagine that we have abandoned Terra to the abyss. No, the Church has sanctified her as Holy Terra, and if Byzantium Secundus is the regal queen of secular power, then Holy Terra is the aged but honored matriarch overseeing the disposition of our souls.

There are, of course, those who interpret much too literally the Church's reverence for the natal soil. These "geomancers", byblows of an Eskatonic garbling of Book 23 of the Omega Gospels, would uphold the planet itself as some sort of sentient dominion, even going so far as to pay it worship and invoke its blessing in magical formulae. This is clearly false: Do not the Omega Gospels speak of the Pancreator's "single and supernal godhead" and warn against false idols?

Nonetheless, no planet, not Pyre or wondrous Pentateuch, does the Church hold in such reverence, and so Terra has been given over to Holy Church, the better that those who love her might preserve her beauty forever. And this task her curators have accomplished admirably: Terra has been transformed into the idyllic garden sphere of her youth. Her continents are lush with flowering shrubs and aromatic pines, her monuments have been restored and weathered against the elements, and no planet is as radiant with cathedrals praising the Pancreator's bounty.

This is not to infer has Terra been left entirely destitute, a revered but purposeless astronomical obelisk, in our quest for the heavens. On the contrary, over two billion faithful still walk close to the Pancreator's timeless blessing. Terra is a garden, yea, but a living garden, one complete with industrious and contented denizens happily going about their works, treading the very soil, sowing the very fields, plying the very streams that their ancestors trod, sowed and plied in the dim eras of time's beginning.

And so naturally, as with any garden, the Church must faithfully prune the grounds, encouraging the Pancreator's flowers to bloom while uprooting the weeds and poison toadstools, and in so doing suffer nothing to spread beyond its preordained bounds. Just as a dutiful son would never enter his mother's house with mud soiling his boots, so the Church must safeguard lest prodigal children bear to Terra some alien sin, some occult taint from the far reaches of outer space. Thus, the Church sternly but wisely forbids all Urthlings but the holiest from returning to Terra, save through the vicarious auspices of winecups and melancholy songs.

Certain agitators, ignorant of the Church's wisdom, decry this regulatory policy prohibiting homecoming. Their anger is understandable, but ultimately foolish and misdirected. They must realize that the Church's sapience on this matter exceeds their shortsighted needs. They must accept that humanity, as children of the Diaspora, needs must pay their penance in the void before returning triumphant to Terra, not as dutiful children, but as conquering spouses. Yea, only when all is cleansed, when the race is reunited under one banner, when the Symbiots and the Vau and the Ukar and the Krakens and all the other servants of the hells have been purged in celestial flame, only then may humanity return as one brotherly congregation and repopulate the seat of origin, and lift their voices to the immaculate heavens in exaltation of the Pancreator's work.

And so I adjure those who dissent: Turn thy tongues from ill speech, but go amid the heavens, and rest ye not until your humble star, your verdant planet of genesis is universally acknowledged as supreme in the Pancreator's esteem, until the Vau, the Ukar, the warlocks themselves come one and all to pay tribute amid the nurturing soil of Holy Terra.
