A Very Brief Lecture on Modern Spirituality in Equestria
Fear is only in the mind, so many creatures say. There’s a religion for each word, nay, each letter in every alphabet in the world. Minotaurs, gryphons, even ponies have some even if they don’t know it. I, for one, as an earth pony, am here to explain that it’s not important, but it still shapes the way we see the world and how other see it.
I can lift my hoof from the floor and hold it to the sky, then, because of the schooling and advanced education I’ve taken, I know that ponies once did this motion to pray to clouds for rain, the sky for daylight or the moon to rise. There were even ponies that would scream at the same time to scare the night or day away.
Now, we don’t do that anymore… for the most part, I’m looking at you, buddy. Alright, back on track. Pegasi have a long history of being a warrior culture, there have been reports and dissertations written based solely on a single pegasus from their past. I’ve gotten about a quarter of the way through a document written at the time, or, a time in general, that was about, in excruciating detail the daily life of Commander Hurricane.
Do any ponies here, and I’m not just asking the pegasi, know what Commander Hurricane’s name was, her first name?
No. No. Close as a fly on the moon. Soft, her name was Soft Hurricane. Now you can tell your great grandfoals about that, but why not call her Commander Soft Hurricane? Because warriors aren’t soft, it’s taken so deeply into the heart of the pegasi that it’s a religion of sorts in it own right. A devotion to the belief that weakness can come from a name and lead to weak families or be the cause of a failed mission or event.
Unicorns have magic at their command, beck and call at a mere thought for some things like telekinesis or levitation, and we can all attest to being jealous at one time or another of not having to use our mouths or teeth while a unicorn can do a dozen things at the same time. But that’s just the thing, isn’t it. Unicorns are devoted to using magic to the point that a unicorn doing things like eating or grooming without magic is almost an insult to any unicorns that see it happen.
There are, of course, medical reasons that I won’t go into because it’s not my field of expertise, but there’s still the fact that in a way, unicorns are deified at some level. I’m not going to sound tribalist, I hope, but I know that I’ve watched many a unicorn and tried to cast a spell whenever the thought struck me. I still lie in bed at night and do some of the techniques I’ve read about for beginner magic users just to turn off a light or to pull another blanket over myself, and I don’t believe I’m the only one.
And that leaves my own kind, my tribe, as it were. The simplest, many have said in writings of the past, of the three tribes. We have been the joke of the other tribes, pegasi and unicorns in the past, for our lack of extraordinary abilities. We don’t fly, but we can surely fall with style, and we have strong legs and backs; perfect to haul carts from one city to the next and trade goods that pegasi can’t fly, unicorns can’t carry with their magical depth, or even alicorns, who are too busy managing the nobles and keeping the houses from vying for power.
To be honest, I wouldn’t mind seeing an alicorn pulling a wagon across the land, but what’s changed over the past three hundred years that makes the largest difference between the tribes of ponies?
We may not be able to master each other’s skills, but we can work together to get a better result. Now, what does all this have to do with religion in the earth pony tribe, you wonder? Well, earth ponies have always had a foundation with the earth; it’s how we grow food and fertilize lands so well. Not better than the pegasi, or more efficient than the unicorns, but it does lie in our history.
From the beginning of our spoken history, passed though stories, we’ve always been hearty. I stomp my forehoof everytime I say that, I think. Hearty. Hearty! It just empowers the word, the same way a pegasi flaps their wings or a unicorn will almost by instinct flip their mane and flourish their horn.
We stood under the weather and lived in caves while the others would sleep on clouds or build towns and cities. There was one problem, though.
Clouds would move with the wind. Cities, no matter how well thought out, weren’t built to be sturdy but to be extravagant. It’s not a fault, per se, but it was each holding arrogance in their hooves like so many slices of apple on a tray. “I have three slices.” “But I have peanut butter to dip.” “Well, I make the peanut butter, so there.”
Foals fighting over a ball until it pops from their combined attention.
We all came from that, we sit, stand, hover, swim… whatever the case may be, we stand together now… don’t we?
Pegasi control the weather thanks to technology, to put it most simply, made by combining unicorn magic and pegasi cloud skills.
We, those that aren’t blessed with access to the skies, are able to build cities that stand for centuries because earth pony engineering learned through tests conducted with pegasi weather control, unicorn combat magics, and a combined threat of Windigoes or any of a hundred predators that hunt us because, let’s face it, we taste great to carnivores.
I’ve tried getting a diamond dog to eat an alfalfa sandwich then watched her vomit for an hour. And it was the same when I tried meat, we bonded and built friendships that day, but we’re never going to indulge in the other’s cuisine.
Religion plays a part in everything I’ve said, even if you don’t notice it. Each tribe, at one time, held themselves as being higher than the others in some way. “I am pegasi, look upon me and praise me for rain.” “I am earth pony, land on my ground and trot in the soil so that you may share in the fruits of my labor.” “I am unicorn, I control space and time so respect me and shower me with affection.”
That led to wars, Windigoes, gryphon and minotaurs pressing our borders closer and closer to Canterlot and when that happened, every pony turned to, you guessed it, religion and spiritually. “The heavens will save us, I’ll ask the stars,” is how astrology came to be.
“I’ll mix earth, sky, and magic! I’ll call it alchemy and the land will save us.”
“I will work with my fellows and learn to control the aether, thus giving ponykind the powers needed to take back our land. We’ll call it…” and then new schools of magic were named, created, and abused… I’ll skip those details, but you know the standard stuff.
And above all of it, there stood Celestia; her mane ever waving in the wind of the aether. Her fur always groomed and her eyes so soft, yet her magic was the star itself! Luna was there, too, let’s not forget even though she was somehow left out of the books for about eight hundred years.
She was able to use the stars to send messages to the astrologists of other lands, our enemies to throw them off their game. What would a people that worship the stars say, when the stars began swirling over one another and changed each night?
We have our beliefs, they affect us and our way of life, and even our descendants, but we have to remember that we’re not better than anyone else and that above all else, we are better as ponies than as a tribe.
Thank you.
