This religion was born as Mani's dream of universalism and communion, an attempt to mix all the religions that were popular in Asia during his lifetime. It was effectively a concoction of Zoroastrianism, Buddhism and a long series of Christian and Jewish sectarian doctrines, among them the Gnostic schools of Bardaisan and Marcion, all rooted in a highly complex original mythology which almost reads like a High Fantasy epic saga. As a consequence, Manichaeism was very adaptable and syncretic, integrating names and concepts from all the beliefs it had contact with, which allowed it to survive in various forms and places until the 14th century. Ironically, however, this trait would also end up accelerating its disappearance as well, as it turned Manichaeism into a sort of universal heresy against everybody and made it simultaneously easy to be absorbed into the very religions it aped. This was the final cause of its extinction, ganged up on from all corners by the Christians, Muslims and Chinese rulers.
The Manichaean system of belief is strongly dualistic: according to its doctrine, our plane was created in a war between the enlightened World of Light and the demonic World of Darkness, during which seeds of light were devoured by demons whose bodies would end up being utilized to create the world, its lifeforms, and ultimately ourselves. As luminous beings trapped in gross matter, our bitter fate is to reincarnate over and over in this Crapsack World after death, unless we follow the strict ethical, vegetarian and antinatalist laws fortunately brought to us by prophets of light, among which there were Zoroaster, Buddha, Jesus and Mani himself.
The Manichaean 'verse is roughly divided in three chapters or "creations".
- First Creation: The World of Light and the World of Dark lived in their portions of cosmos, the first high into existence and the latter deep into chaos and concupiscence, until the Dark discovered one day the existence of the Light and resolved to capture their world. In order to stop them, the Father of Life summoned an incarnation of his soul, the First Man, who faced the dark forces along with his five sons, good counterparts to the Prince of Darkness and his own five sons. The invasion was repelled, but the five sons of light were forced to perform a Heroic Sacrifice and ended up devoured by their opponents as a poison of light, while the First Man was left knocked out in darkness.
- Second Creation: The Father of Light ordered the First Man and his offspring to be rescued, so he deployed the Living Spirit, an ingenious entity also endowed with five sons, and the Mother of Life, the First Man's mother of sorts. Together, the Living Spirit and the Mother of Life assaulted the Dark and cleaned house, freeing the First Man (with the help of a deity of calling who awakened him) and smashing demons in plenty. However, as they were unable to recover the light from the demons' bodies, the two heroes used the battle corpses to create the world and threw inside the remaining alive demons, expecting to use the world as a cosmic machine where the light could be extracted. In the process, they were successful in seducing the demons to extract some light, which they used to create the sun, the moon and the stars.
- Third Creation: In order to set the machine in motion, the Father of Light called forth the Third Messenger (the first two were the First Man and the Living Spirit) and the Zodiacal Virgins of Life, who seduced further the demons into releasing more light in the form of semen and abortions. This process also accidentally created animals, plants and monsters when some darkness got ejected as well, but the hosts of the Light disposed of the worst of it. However, the demons acted then in order to keep the rest of light inside of themselves, and, through two incarnations of lust named Saklas and Nebroel, they created Adam and Eve with matter and light in the form of the Third Messenger, hoping that, by reproducing and therefore dividing their life in endless bodies, the light would be impossible to recover. The World of Light countered this by sending Jesus, who gave Adam conscience or gnosis about how to abandon matter and return to the world his true soul belongs. With the help of Jesus, Zoroaster, Buddha and a series of angels and entities, they will be able to defeat the demons' obstruction and achieve the redemption of the light that is inside of mankind.
Manichaean cosmology integrated many myths, among them the well known Enochian story of the Nephilim, who in their version (called the Book of Giants) are the offpsring of liberated demons from the sky instead of fallen angels. It was also very flexible, as every character in the story featured above could receive the name that was necessary to perform Canon Welding with any local religion: to Zoroastrians, the Father of Light and the Prince of Darkness would be Zurvan and Ahriman, while to Buddhists, the call god that awakened the First Man was the bodshisattva Guanyin, and so on.
Today, the faith is remembered and used as a synonym for the word "dualism": one who breaks everything down into good or evil, black and white. This is a legacy of Augustine of Hippo, who was a former member of the Manichean faith and wrote multiple works against it, especially attacking its dualistic nature.
