• Preface
• Chapter One - Welcome
• Chapter Two - Agere in a Nutshell
• Chapter Three - Tolerance Is Rule Number One!
• Chapter Four - The Seven Rules
• Chapter Five - The Pandect
• Chapter Six - A Simple Magical System
• Chapter Seven - Meditations
• Author's Note

If you're looking for a religion that reads like a Craftsman manual and contains the passion of a bowl of Cheerios (without sugar or fruit), you will most likely not find what you want in this book. Heck, what is suggested here isn't even a religion. It's more like a method. So, if you're feeling pretty unfettered and are looking for some spiritual fun, stick around. You might like Agere.

"AGERE" is a Lating infinitive verb meaning to act or to do. It implies vital existence, and so has been adopted as a name for this path.

But don't go looking up Agere in your local phone book or guide to alternative religious organizations. You won't find it. Agere exists entirely as an unstructured option available to anyone.

Agere does not push any definition of deity. The point is to make the most out of the here and the now, and not waste precious energy worrying about any kind of hereafter. If you need to grovel before a divine figure, chances are you won't like the philosophy presented in this book.

So why write a tract? Well, it's the closest thing around to reaching a global community. It's convenient. But most importantly, Agere is not about joining--it's about being an individual. This is most effectively accomplished with a published nucleus. I throw out some ideas for your consideration. Now it's up to you to figure out what to do with them.

Of course, Agere does stand for a few unwavering things. Freedom of religion and fostering religious tolerance is one important matter. Agere stands behind the right of every individual to pursue his or her spiritual path without interference or harassment. We respect everyone's right to religious freedom, and we expect to be respected in return.

The basic idea of Agere can be found in its alternative life as Church of Perpetual Change. Everything is changing all the time. Nothing truly remains the same. As such, this Church is a church without walls and without limits. There are some ideas and some suggestions which are aimed at helping improve your life, should you desire improvement. Essentially, what you do with Agere is your own call.

I welcome you to Agere.

Know that there exists a force, an impetus, a universality. For purposes of clarity in expression, let us call it the ylem. It is responsible for all and everything, and that you and everything and everyone around you are its manifestation and its essence. Know that you are loved and you will be guided and rewarded.

You need only have faith that you do indeed have a relationship and an existence in the ylem that is one-on-one. You need no mediator, for the ylem already knows everything about you and accepts and understands you unconditionally. The ylem is you.

Confide in, and seek the counsel of, the ylem. Work acknowledgment of its existence into your life, and you shall find inner joy.

It is most important to keep your conscience at peace in your relationship with the ylem. What needs to be and not be done to obtain and sustain this peace varies as much as each of us is unique. Know that the ylem acknowledges and respects your individuality in your mortal incarnation, and will help you to establish your own moral paradigm. The ylem will let you know when you have gone astray, and will gently guide you back to the path of peace.

In your society there will be many who will not accept this path. That is fine. Remain strong in your knowledge and faith, and allow no one to sway or frighten you. The ylem protects and loves those who attempt to know it. But never enter into debate for the sake of conversion or condemnation of the opposing opinions. You must respect the rights of others to follow their own paths.

This is rule number one on the Agere roster. Let's think on it some more.

In the United States, the right to practice religion according to individual beliefs is theoretically guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution. Much has been made of the bitter and sometimes violent opposition to alternative spiritual paths. Little of the internal strife is ever addressed.

Tolerance begins from within. To be tolerated, we must learn to be tolerant. As in any group, Agere cannot fall under generalizations. But it is particularly fruitless to make generalizations in this instance, based on Agere's very structure and organization--or lack thereof. This spiritual fellowship is composed of individuals, all autonomous. Granted, there are common threads that link us all together.

A mistake is the emphasis on the intolerance that exists outside the group, while in- group conflicts and discrepancies appear to be overlooked. It is foolish to present groups as an unfractured wholes, with everyone practicing in harmony with one another.

Before we can expect to be wholly accepted into our society, we must learn to accept each other, and each other's differences. We are not simply victims of everyone else's ignorance. It is up to us to fight that ignorance, where we can. But it cannot be fought with rage or vitriol. If we truly understand the meaning--that all things are one, that all paths to the divine are valid--we must open our arms, our hearts, and our minds. We must educate ourselves to understand other faiths, so that we may gain perception and attempt to understand.

1. All paths to the divine are valid to the people who walk them. Therefore, be forever mindful of others' rights to believe what is proper for them.
2. Recognize your duty to care for all of your brothers and sisters.
3. Discriminate against no one, not ever, and be tolerant to all.
4. Know that the universe is not bipolar. Your choices must be made from options far more complex than good and bad. Choose well.
5. Shun pride, ego, conceit, haughtiness, arrogance and immodesty. Do not criticize to soothe your own heart. Always qualify what you say and do.
6. Do not act with the intent to do harm.
7. Free yourself from want, from money and material needs. Never give these things precedence in your life.

Most systems of spirituality refer back to some kind of authoritative work or writing. For Agere, that work is called The Pandect. Here, the essentials of working within Agere and applying its principles are summarized and recorded for the benefit of the curious.

The Pandect is in four parts: the Disclaimer, the Affirmation, the Schema, and Guidelines.

May all your paths bring you great joy and your life great depth.

Disclaimer

1. We cannot be named. We are no brand of alternative spirituality. We are what we are.
2. We are in no way associated with any religious/spiritual/etc. movement, aside from a common interest in the workings of nature and in religious freedoms.
3. We co-exist with all paths, and exist contrary to none.
4. We seek no converts.
5. We do not propose that this way is right for everyone. If it is right for you, the way is open for you.
6. We are admittedly full of it. We talk about individualism and not joining, yet here we are writing in the first-person plural. Well, okay, talking with your friends and getting ideas together is very different from following a flock. Affiliates of Agere don't get together to "practice" or "discuss the path". We're just like- minded folk who get together to play street hockey, see movies, etc.
7. You don't need to call us hypocrites. We're already doing that for you.

The Affirmation

1. I am that which I am and no other.
2. I recognize my responsibilities to my planet and all of the life and non-life upon its surface.
3. No longer shall I tread in the shadows of doubt and fear and oppression, for I know my right to be what I am, and my love and my spirit fill me up and spill over so that I can keep myself a secret no longer.
4. I believe I am solid in my relationship with the universe, and I shall let this energy propel me into service and charity for my entire community.
5. I will seek to correct misunderstandings with peace and tolerance.
6. As I will seek to teach, so will I seek to learn, that I may better understand.
7. I will bear in mind:
   --I will depend on my intuition.
   --I will be fiercely independent.
   --I will never be a joiner, because my spirit is far too fiercely independent.
   --I don't care if you call me Satanist or Girl Scout or Big Tree Eater. It doesn't matter. Titles and labels mean nothing.
   --I understand that the universe is not bipolar and cannot be divided into black and white, good and bad.
   --I will celebrate when and where I want to.
   

And that is the Affirmation.

Schema

We are all, every day, surrounded by a universe of mystery.

Naturally, there are some small mysteries that we manage to solve, some subjective truths that we uncover. We create a smaller world for ourselves, full of things we think we understand, and try to block out what we cannot understand. Most of us wake up in the morning, though living by day and sleeping by night might not accommodate our inner selves. As it is difficult to conceive of the world's bounty as possible breakfast options, we reach for the socially approved "breakfast foods". We work for money so that we may buy the things we need to exist, only occasionally wondering why money exists in the first place.

Forcing order out of chaos, however, can only succeed so long and so far before it inevitably fails. As we live, we also know we will eventually die. This inevitability compels us to seek some explanation of what happens after death; hypotheses on the unknown. Our homes get flooded, our towns rocked by earthquakes, our islands pummeled by hurricanes, and we cannot help but acknowledge a power truly beyond our reckoning. We look at the earth and each other, and wonder just how we all got here in the first place, what we're doing here, and how much longer will it all last.

All religions are essentially means of "understanding" the great unknown. As it is an unknown, we can never be certain of one religion's validity over another. In a way, we are all reaching out to that which is beyond us, in a way that suits us. Agere is no different from other paths in this respect. It is a path by which practitioners attempt to determine their place in the universe.

And so it comes down to this:

There was the one, there is the one, there shall always be the one. Yet the one falls into many forms and divisions.

Know that in the beginning, there was one being, and the one being was everything in the universe. And now, though we think there are many beings in the universe, all of us and everything unique, but still, we are all part of the one.

As humans, it is difficult for us to fully comprehend the one universality. It is, in fact, beyond human comprehension until that time the human spirit is freed from the physical body.

Acknowledge this, and do not claim to be able to conceive the inconceivable. Know that it exists in every one of us, and rejoice and celebrate in knowing of our oneness with it. There is but one universal force, one ylem. Its existence is known, and felt, and revered, and loved. It is called by many names and believed to exist in many forms, and is sometimes objectified or categorized. But it is all one.

Guidelines

It is virtually impossible to lay down any kind of guidelines for a path which divides into as many paths as there are individuals. Ultimately, the best path has but one follower.

You must first know yourself. None can define this, nor can anyone tell you how this must be done.

You must know within yourself.

Also part with the notion that you will be celebrating your path with lots of other like- minded folk. We are individuals. To be among us, you must simply walk among us. Don't join or cleave.

We believe in perspective as everything. There is no ultimate truth, and no concrete good and bad. You must choose wisely.

Magic is instinctive. It must come from within you. You must be able to sense what needs be done at any time, and how to do it. No book ever written can unleash the power of instinct.

Your will has the power to destroy you. Dedicate yourself to the training of your will.

Let all your doing be for the doing's sake. Seeking reward only reaps disappointment.

Revival is useless. Know the past, but live in the present.

Seek to attune yourself with the rhythms of nature, and with the life force of the universe which is everything and us all.

Seek to live in harmony with the natural world and with your fellow beings. Believe that the best followed path is that of the least resistance.

The universal life force can be though of as the divinity. Though it is those entities that we, as human beings, do not perceive to be alive, still it is the lifeforce. There is nothing that is not this life force.

There is but one being in the universe.

Power lies within you, and does not come from symbols or tools. You may need such external cues to evoke that power within yourself. Thus is the journey from outer confidence to inner confidence to be undertaken.

Use what external cues you like, so long as you keep in mind that you do not need them.

Acknowledge the interaction between what appears to us to be this universe and other planes, for all does not exist in a linear fashion.

The universe is constantly changing.

Acts of evocation effect change.

Here ends The Pandect.

Agere promotes the practice of magic as mentioned in The Pandect. However, the type of magic used is not of the high ceremonial nature, nor is it tool-oriented play acting. This magical system is no ornate set of rules and fancy practices.

Magic is the art of affecting change through concentration. It is necessarily a spiritual act which requires evocation, or the tapping of an inner divinity.

Consider the following paradigm:

That is, for these purposes consider prayer to be the reaching out to a power beyond the self to affect change. In magic, one turns within to contact that power.

There is no secret to the practice of magic. You must simply feel strongly enough about what changes you want to affect or make (from becoming more alluring to your choice of gender to simply giving thanks for an incredible bit of luck) than when you evoke, when you touch the ylem within you, the power of your passion will work for you.

And now, more on evocation.

Evocation is the central concept of this magic. In all reality, there's not much point to magic without it. It is both an easy and difficult concept to get.

For starters, please imagine:

A rain drop falling into a puddle

A stick of wood being consumed by a fire

Several candles melting together into a pool of wax

In each of these instances, an individual object becomes part of a greater whole. Now imagine a film of each of these events. You run the film backwards, so that the individual object emerges from the whole.

This is the basic concept of evocation. You are attempting to reunite your divine self --that part of you beyond the physical self-- with the greater divine being all around you.

As opposed to invocation, which is an appeal to a higher power, evocation summons the divine self from within to join with the greater universal being. Yes, you are divine all of the time. You do not become divine for a few minutes, and then have it disappear until your next evocation. However, we are not always aware of this inherent connection to the extent that evocation can bring us. This awareness-- the euphoria of actualizing our universality, if even for a few moments- -is what evocation is all about.

Evocation is both simple and difficult at the same time. If you are in the proper mindset and you have achieved comfort with the notion, you can perform evocation at any time. All you need is to feel yourself fall away. However, it cannot be done while the mind is laden with mental baggage. If you are preoccupied with being John Smith or Jane Doe, your evocation will not be as successful as if you are able to let go of the shell.

You may require some physical cue to help you in your evocation. Candles, incense, flowers, tea, a favorite tree, a spot by a running stream--your cue can be anything which triggers evocation within you. There are no right or wrong cues.

The final aspect of spiritual practice in Agere is meditation. The following are brief phrases and sayings to assist you in your meditation. Some of these are teachings of the Buddha, others are the works of Buddhist monks; and still others are original.

To use these. simply choose one to your liking. Focus on it. Concentrate. As you repeat the words in your mind, develop an image, feel a sensation that you associate. Let your mind become the meditation.

There is no right or wrong way to use these. I cannot tell you what they are supposed to mean.

Discover for yourself.