There were temples of Yat-Zar on every time-line of the Proto-Aryan
Sector, for the worship of Yat-Zar was ancient among the Hulgun people
of that area of paratime, but there were only a few which had such
installations as this, and all of them were owned and operated by
Transtemporal Mining, which had the fissionable ores franchise for
this sector. During the ten elapsed centuries since Transtemporal had
begun operations on this sector, the process had become standardized.
A few First Level paratimers would transpose to a selected time-line
and abduct an upper-priest of Yat-Zar, preferably the high priest of
the temple at Yoldav or Zurb. He would be drugged and transposed to
the First Level, where he would receive hypnotic indoctrination and,
while unconscious, have an operation performed on his ears which would
enable him to hear sounds well above the normal audible range. He
would be able to hear the shrill sonar-cries of bats, for instance,
and, more important, he would be able to hear voices when the speaker
used a First Level audio-frequency step-up phone. He would also
receive a memory-obliteration from the moment of his abduction, and a
set of pseudo-memories of a visit to the Heaven of Yat-Zar, on the
other side of the sky. Then he would be returned to his own time-line
and left on a mountain top far from his temple, where an unknown
peasant, leading a donkey, would always find him, return him to the
temple, and then vanish inexplicably.
Then the priest would begin hearing voices, usually while serving at
the altar. They would warn of future events, which would always come
to pass exactly as foretold. Or they might bring tidings of things
happening at a distance, the news of which would not arrive by normal
means for days or even weeks. Before long, the holy man who had been
carried alive to the Heaven of Yat-Zar would acquire a most awesome
reputation as a prophet, and would speedily rise to the very top of
the priestly hierarchy.
Then he would receive two commandments from Yat-Zar. The first would
ordain that all lower priests must travel about from temple to temple,
never staying longer than a year at any one place. This would insure a
steady influx of newcomers personally unknown to the local
upper-priests, and many of them would be First Level paratimers. Then,
there would be a second commandment: A house must be built for
Yat-Zar, against the rear wall of each temple. Its dimensions were
minutely stipulated; its walls were to be of stone, without windows,
and there was to be a single door, opening into the Holy of Holies,
and before the walls were finished, the door was to be barred from
within. A triple veil of brocaded fabric was to be hung in front of
this door. Sometimes such innovations met with opposition from the
more conservative members of the hierarchy: when they did, the
principal objector would be seized with a sudden and violent illness;
he would recover if and when he withdrew his objections.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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