An oneiros, who achieved apotheosis by the inner tranquility which follows the extinction of desire.
The original Vesper lives in an inaccessible garden in Elysion, studying and teaching the martial arts and mystic disciplines. She is an ascetic and a faultless, if unimpassioned, virtuoso of the harp and zither.
Vesper does not take a major part in any legends, though much is told of her garden. Instead, she figures in the legends of several of her students, who have left her garden, fallen from her ideals by allowing themselves personal involvement, failed in what they set out to do, and then died, gone back to her garden, or tried to go back and not been able to find the way. These legends are not very Vesperian, but then Vesperian behaviour doesn’t make for good stories.
In art and iconography Vesper is depicted as a beautiful lithe leshy woman, nude or in a white khiton, either practising her forms, playing a harp or zither, or seated in an attitude of meditation. Her symbols are a white lotus, a white-breasted sea-eagle, and the star (moon) Indarian (depicted with eight rays).
Vesper is not so much an object of worship, although some ascetics do pray to her. She is, however, the ideal of an austere philosophical religion: monasticism, which has many adherents and monasteries in Gehennum in the Classical Period and more in the Decadent Period.
Vesper’s avatars include members of the monastic religions, stoics, and all sorts of people who pursue excellence in the mystic disciples, the martial arts, art, and music for its own sake.
Vesper’s major realms are prowess at arms, self-discipline, and the mystic disciplines. Her minor realms are stringed instruments, wisdom, and gardening.
Copyright © 1991 by Brett Evill. All rights reserved.
