The Cathars

"Ask for no promises, and I'll tell you no lies."

Origins

The Cathars were a heretical Christian sect who believed that the physical world was created by the Devil. Like some other Gnostic faiths, they believed that spiritual purity and the shunning of physical pleasures would enable them to return to a purely spiritual state.

Then they got killed off by more mainstream Christians, and that was pretty much the end of them. Until sometime in the eighties....

Today

Today's "Cathars" believe they're the heirs to mystical truths from the medieval world. According to them, the universe of matter and energy was created by the Demiurge, an abstract force of evil which really hates everybody and wants our lives to suck. It did this by trapping our souls (created by the a being called the Word) inside contraptions of flesh and heat.

If there is a connection between the modern Cathars and their medieval counterparts, it's distant at best. Among other things, they seem to have merged or transmuted the Cathar practice of asceticism with the artistic ideals of aetheticism. As such, their rituals focus not only on stripping away or mutilating physical ties, but also on the creation of refined spectacles intended to create spiritual white noise.

Company researchers speculate that the modern Cathars were influenced by information from within the Company. These researchers suspect that Cathar beliefs formed out of Company information filtered through the Fringe, or even from a rogue employee.

The Perfects

Cathar priests are called Perfects. They have devoted their lives to physical, spiritual, and fashionable purity. What's more, by destroying physical prisons (people's bodies, basically), they can call upon beings they call the Brethren or the Pure- spirits never trapped in bodies to begin with. These spirits enable them to experience ecstatic visions and do nasty things to people they don't like.