Because everything leads back to Amnar

Lhasa (inspiration for Amnari Temples)

I’ve spent the last few months investigating deeper forms of spirituality. Improving meditation practice, discovering new Buddhist teachers. Last night, I started thinking about how all of this self-work applies to Amnar.

Since I spend a lot of time with different spiritual groups, most people ask if Amnar has some kind of a god or a religion. Although I know something of Amnar’s spiritual practices, I’ve spent most of my time concentrating on the lives of the Ta Dasi and Servants, so the priests and priestesses of Amnar, the Zurasim and Sifradan, have been left to their own devices.

Nothing I do is separate from Amnar, so it was inevitable that spending time considering Buddhist practices, I would end up imagining the Amnari spiritual world.

Amnar has no god and to answer one querent from a few years ago, no, it hasn’t encountered Jesus. Neither does it have a pantheon of gods and goddesses. Amnar’s spirituality is very diverse, partly because its population is made up of a variety of different genetic and social tribes.

There is a puzzling mix of faith in elochinai, spirits who are not unlike faeries and are associated with different aspects of nature, meditative practice and dance, and a deep worship or “appreciation” of the Empress herself, Isha. Isha’s personal retinue and her representatives are the Ai Ta’Sifradan. There are, however, a variety of priests and priestesses (Zurasim and Sifradan), who act as guides to the general populace, providers of wisdom and insight.

I spent last night hunting around for good music to think about the mountainous regions like Nas Trinitar, which I suppose is not unlike Tibet. When I first wrote books based in the area, I hadn’t been into China yet, and certainly hadn’t had the opportunity to visit Tibet or Nepal.

Research for Amnar is usually experiential in nature. While I do a lot of reading, and a lot of invisible work with music just letting my imagination run riot, I do prefer to actually visit the many places all over the world that look like Amnar looks. And that could be pretty much anywhere. Nothing inspires me as much as travelling, but there’s always the option of doing things like going on retreats here, studying our own religions and spiritual paths before I let go and find out what happens in Amnar itself.