Lore: Ways of the Sanjari

Greetings everyone!

Today I thought I’d give another sneak peek into The Awakened world, specifically regarding some of the religions in the series.

I was about three quarters finished writing When Blood Awakens, when it dawned on me that this “world” could be anything I wanted it to be! The people in my story, the future, they could be so drastically different from us, and considering the recent events in the story’s timeline, I believe they would be. Although I wanted them to remain similar in many respects, one way in particular that I believed they would adapt was via religion.

In The Awakened series, every nation in the entire world has undergone the Awakening. Select individuals everywhere, of all walks of life, have developed distinct powers and abilities, without explanation. In addition to this, about twenty years before the Awakening, scientists discovered a new planet inside our own solar system. If something like that wouldn’t cause entire civilizations to question and reconstruct their faiths, I don’t know what would.

During my writing process, I created three new dominant religions. These religions were meant to be a way for readers to experience the story through the lens of the people in the books. They were created for purely creative and entertaining reasons and are not meant to be a bashing of any religions in existence today.

So, without further ado, please enjoy this tale from one of the primary religions in The Awakened series: the Sanjari:

You want to learn the ways of the Sanjari, you say? The answers you seek are already within you. It’s as simple as looking to your most pleasant dreams or your most fearsome nightmares, for the Sanjari are dreamers.

It is said that when one dies, they are to be judged by the God of Paníhava, the name of whom no living person knows.

Those fortunate to gain his approval are granted reincarnation and are removed of all memories of their past life, barring sense of self. They live and die in new life after new life, facing the God every time before passing on to the next.

Those deemed unworthy are less fortunate indeed. The God with no name traps their souls in the After, an abyss of horrendous suffering, for eternity. It is there that they shall live in darkness and torment, until the end of times, or until the demise of the God of Paníhava.

Proof of this, the Sanjari believe, is in our dreams, the ones that plague us, the ones we awake from feeling rotten from the inside out. It is in our most twisted nightmares that these poor slaves dwell. So, when we dream of a loved one who’s perished, it is because they are at the barrier between life and death, searching for escape from the After and all the anguish they have endured. It won’t be long though before the God finds his lost pet again, and returns them to their cage of nightmares, awaiting the next Sanjari to open the gateway.

So, may dreams illuminate your path so that the After may never feed on your lost soul.