Cult of Ecstasy

Clap your hands and raise your voices to the universal beat! We know how to do it from the day we are born, but the illusion of life plugs our ears and drowns out or minds! Let loose, be free, and let truth and beauty spring forth!

— Elliot Silver, Torchbearer of Capitol Hill

Have you ever gotten too drunk at a club, and the whole night turned into a blur? Ever taken a bit too high of a dose on a bit too empty of a stomach, and felt the world shift around you? Ever heard the perfect chord in a song, or felt the perfect bodily sensation, and felt your spine shiver hard enough that it might've come right out? Those sensations are the paramount path of the Cult of Ecstasy, Mages whose focus on pleasure and emotional heights are their path to Ascension, a way of freeing ones self from the trappings of physical reality.

While the sect has a wider image of being drugged-out pacifists and sex-obsessed hippies, the inner workings of the sect and their Paradigm are much more comprehensive and varied, sometimes to violent extremes. Emotions can drive one to madness as well as to greatness, after all! In the Puget Sound region, most of the Ecstatics present are revolutionaries working for a better reality, for sleepers and Mages alike, but the militant and debaucherous among them are still plentiful.

History

As the Estatics are the masters of Time on the Council of Nine Mystic Traditions, their history can be a bit winding and self-involved, but we shall venture to lay out the important bits all the same. Remember, the Awakened as a whole span back millennia, so we're going to be lightly touching on most of the non-local history.

General Sect History

While many of the Awakened Sects had some proto-structure, or spun out of Sleeper faiths and organizations, the Cult of Ecstasy did not form for the grand majority of their existence. While they could reach out to each other along the universal pulse they attained, every culture and every faith had their own way of doing so. No matter where you look, you'll find deities, rituals, and practices that involve releasing spirit from flesh and the passions of life, from blood offerings to medicine science would now call hallucinogenic to the Greek Cult of Dionysus and Oracle of Delphi.

As these disprate strands wove throughout history in various ways, the formative structure of the Sect would begin to form in Shaktism, a Tantric branch of Buddhism that worships the feminine-energy Shakti and various Goddesses who encompass that energy. As this branch grew in influence and became a part of Hinduism, those who sought to be a part of the Spanda could do so once more and in greater numbers, especially when Tantrism spun out of the faith.

As time went on though, the proto-Ecstatics found their methods and people cut down by the Order of Reason, those who would become the Technocratic Union. Seeing the threat they would become, one of these early Ecstatics, the Seer known as Sh'zar, brought together the people that would become the Council of Nine Mystic Traditions and unified his sect under the Seers of Chronos. Fittingly, they took the Seat of Time. This was also the time he created the Code of Ananda, which laid down the ground rules for the Sect, emphasizing the importance of not harming others and fighting against those who would. In 1470, after The First Coven was betrayed by one of their own, Sh'zar vanished from reality, and many of the other key leaders of the Seers fell to mystery or to death.

Into the 1500's, the work of the Sect would continue, with the key Nine Sacred Passions being codified, but so too would the Order of Reason continue their war against magic. Since their power base was primarily in Europe, many Seers fled to India where their influence was still strong due to their origins, and renamed themselves the Sahajiyā, a compound for Sahaja meaning natural and a feminine suffix in Hindi. While this would keep the sect alive, their power wound wane as the Enlightenment era pressed onward, and the Victorian era for all its debauchery and hedonism carried a vice of puritanism alongside it. The forces of imperialism would also wipe out many of their people and allies in non-european nations, such as the various native people belonging to the Dreamspeakers.

After suffering too many losses, the Seers began to fight back, both in their power base of India and wherever their allies needed help. In the Americas fighting against settlers, in Europe spreading vice through hedonistic culture, and in India through militant action. By going so far flung in their anger and wrath, the sect changed their name from the Seers of Chronos to the Cult of Bacchus. This would lead to inner-sect concerns, debate, and division. This culminated in 1867 when a debate over 100 people strong raged out of control, and Sh'zar appeared once more, chastising the violent and unhinged of the sect. In an hours-long lesson, he renamed the sect once more to the Cult of Ecstasy, reminding them that their goal is to bring souls together through harmony and joy. The Code of Ananda was held in respect once more, and Sh'zar dissipated as quickly as he appeared.

As the world entered the 1900's, there were many peaks and valleys for the sect. The horror of World War 1 shook their foundations, but the reverie of the roaring 20's rose their methods higher, as did the desperation and escapism in the 30's. The second World War was a dark time for many Mages and other supernaturals, and despite the revolution and rise of counter culture in the 50's and 60's, the rise of conservatism and consumerism in the 70's and 80's squashed that down. As counter culture resurged in the 90's in various forms, as did globalism increase human connection and information, the turn of the century and its aftermath has caused the line to shake every single day. And that's not even counting the disasters for Mages such as the Avatar Storm.

In the current state of the world and the Traditions, the Ecstatics are carefully toeing the line. On one hand, there have been many freedoms granted to people, and decriminalization of various consensual sex acts and less dangerous drugs alongside increased interest in alternative faiths and collective consciousness. On the other hand, the reigns of conservatism and facism grow ever stronger around the world, and the question of Ananda vs Bacchus grows larger every day.

South Sound History

Due to their allies among the Dreamspeakers, the Seers of Chronos were welcome and aware of the Puget Sound area long before the settlers would land on the western coast. Despite this connection, and the occupation of the Americas as one of the many fights that turned them into the Cult of Bacchus, the Cult of Ecstasy didn't have much of a foothold in the area until the founding of Seattle just about a decade before Sh'zar's reappearance. Many Ecstatics came into the city via the brothels, with famed Lou Graham, the famed Queen of the Lava Beds, having a number in her employ. Some have bandied about the idea that the dame herself was an Ecstatic, but other's know she had...different proclivities in the night.

Nonetheless, the Ecastatic paradigm struggled against the racist nature of many in the area which would lead to the expulsion and death of Chinese laborers in both Seattle and Tacoma. At the same time, the city was always on the more liberal side of progress, such as being among the first to allow women's suffrage and is thought of to many as a queer haven in the Pacific Northwest. As the Gold Rush brought in more immigrants, and greater population led to greater community and uniting experiences such as art and music, the Ecstatics began to flourish once more, although the crackdown of vice such as Prohibition still hit them where it hurt. Seattle, unlike most of the world, didn't even have much of a boom in the 1920's, as it's greatest industries came from Word War 1, and the Great Depression wasn't far behind.

But, before the Depression came, the Sound was a place for Arts. Not only were theaters and galleries made abound in Seattle, but Tacoma too embraced art as it held the third-largest film studio in America at the time, and the highest not in Hollywood. Once the Depression hit, the few Ecstatics that had found their footing still in the Sound put their effort into community work, serving and helping the people they could, in the houses, the churches, and the Hoovervilles. When violence against the homeless in these shanty towns rose, they did what they could to ferry the people away, but they were not always successful.

Post World-War 2 is when the most Ecstatics would make their way into the area. Not only did they weave back in to support their allies previously kept in internment camps following the attack on Pearl Harbor, but also because the ripples of counter culture were beginning to form in conjunction with the Arts scene that had survived the war. The World Fair in 1962 was the biggest pull of Mages the world over, hosted by the recently absorbed Virtual Adepts. Despite the futuristic aesthetics of the event calling Technocrat sensibilities to mind, a bit of foreshadowing for the cities future state, the ideal of a unified people without borders and isolation spoke to the Traditions, and inspired many to set up roots.

At the same time, one noteworthy Ecstatic, Saki Shinoda, spoke of The Seven Hills Song, and how each needed a torch to be lit to stave off the darkness of Reason. Even to this day, the Traditions in Seattle are led by these Torchbearers, one for each tradition and each hill. Despite only naming Seven Hills of Seattle, much like those in Rome, the Society of Ether and Virtual Adepts are still counted and represented in their number as Forged Torches, bringing the Torchbearer's actual number as a Coven to nine.

From the mid-60's and onward, Counter Culture grew wild in Tacoma and Seattle alike, with many Mages, Ecstatics included, joining in and taking advantage of the questioning of culture values. Specifically, the rise of garage rock and grunge appealed to the Ecstatics, as well as the hippy movement and the rise of new age beliefs, which often appropriated and mutated the concepts of eastern faiths like those that developed the Cult to begin with. This isn't what many would call a good thing, and many modern Ecstatics have a lot of work to do to clean the consequences up, but for the sake of the sects population, it was a boon.

Ecstatics in the Tacoma of the 90's would have their work cut out for them, as city infrastructure was on a downswing, and gang violence fueled by drug trade ran rampant. As gang violence and police brutality in twain effected the most vulnerable communities, many Ecstatics joined with Choristers in order to help people, and their actions were just as involved in the restoration of downtown Tacoma from the aftermath. Events like the Game Over Massacre of Y2K, which sent a ripple of paradox through the Spanda, and the Song of Sorrow post 9/11 harmed their numbers in the sound, but many Ecstatics still remain, and more awaken each day to fill the gaps.

Seattle, however, had a much different set of struggles. After the World Fair, Seattle began to grow as a juggernaut of technology, science, and engineering, which drew all heads of the Technocracy, which spent all of the 80's until the turn of the century squashing out their enemies. With the aforementioned Game Over Massacre happening in conjoined space between Tacoma and Seattle, and the Avatar Storm not long after, the Ecstatics saw a potential. Saki Shinoda would come to the Tradition's aid once more, stepping down from her position as Torchbearer of Capitol Hill in order to do the radical: make a truce with the Technocracy.

While it led to years of fierce debate, shadow politics, and physical altercations, the impossible was achieved, and the truce was made. This led to many incidents, named and unnamed, where either side has attempted to goad the other into breaching the truce and invoking the punishments, leading the Ecstatics to become peace-keepers. Not all were interested in that life however, so new factions have popped up within them in this odd political navigation.