>>3544 Interesting. How does this compare to other pony religions in the past?

>>3545 Well I'd like to think that the key difference is that the SP isn't trying to be it's own religious text. I'm striving to make sure that most everything written in the 'Prescriptive' section can be extrapolated from the show in some way, though I've had to invent some concepts in order to include things like an Equestrian afterlife. I'm making it as I was dissatisfied with the pony religion offerings available and I always thought that a pony religion should be very much based on the show as a complete religious experience instead of just picking out ponies and building a religion around them.

Are you editing the document right now? (I've never seen that before.) What is the origin of the title? I am also curious about this "pona" concept.

>>3549 I'm still writing and editing SP yes, I project to have it complete around the beginning of January. As for the name, I wanted to follow in the tradition of pony parody names by using the summa from Thomas Aquinas's "Summa Theologica" which was his greatest work. I found it fitting because both the Theologica and this document respect the primacy of it's central religious source (The bible for the Theologica and the show for the Pona). As for the concept of Pona, I have so far described it as the necessary spirit and hidden quality in FiM. It's the driving force that compels people to make such large amounts of content based around MLP, it's that extra something that makes the show as good as it is. Pona is basically the spirit of the show in it's original intent, but the two are not inseparable. All of Pona is demonstrated in FiM, but not all of FiM demonstrates Pona (Think the later seasons versus the earlier ones).

This appeared in my Amazon recommended list. I think they're onto me.

>>3544 I like the gist behind it; I'm the anon who mentioned Crowley in the other thread. The main thing I have to say is that while the 'scripture' is just the show, and Pona is an even more limited aspect of it, you must think of the ultimate lessons as universally applicable. This is the chief failing of other pony religions, that take so much inspiration from the most divisive aspects of christianity. They focus on what is good and shun what is bad - they are wholly dualistic even as they speak of universal harmony. Universality means there is love and wholeness no matter where or who you are, and isn't that the chief idea of Friendship is Magic? I'm just rambling but I hope to get a conversation started.

why would i worship ponies when i can worship He who made it all possible instead?

>>3563 So you'd prefer if Ponism's ultimate lessons were meant to be applied universally? A good amount of the ones I have in the works are explicitly concerned with friendship, but I suppose I could open it up by saying anyone is a potential friend, therefore making it a universal lesson.

>>3544 There are no Gods but the Royal Sisters! Any pony worship should be centered around them. So far your doc is but a load of heresy. Fucking infidels.

>>3575 Sister worship is wholly compatible with Ponism. You just can't tell yet since the planning doc is just an outline. In the full text their worship will be detailed under "Worship Modes".

>>3583 Sister worship isn't mere compatible. It's should be it's staple! >Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria, there were two regal sisters who ruled together and created harmony for all the land. >To do this, the younger used her unicorn powers to bring out the moon to begin the night; the eldest raised the sun at dawn. >Thus, the two sisters maintained balance for their kingdom and their subjects, all the different types of ponies. For fucks sake!

>>3591 >lost to a fucking cloud at this point we should worship derpy instead, she would've won

>>3592 Have a (you), fucking nigger. Cherish it, they aren't abundant around here.

>>3593 You should take a few lessons from Pinkie on how to take a joke.

>>3591 >It's should be it's staple! But it is a staple? In Ponism they are worshiped alongside the mane six. Maybe I didn't make that clear enough in the outline, but I've just gone and clarified that in the plan so others don't become similarly confused.

A bit off topic to the thread, but does anyone have a copy of that Celestianism "bible" from a while back? I don't believe it was really meant to be a religion by itself but rather a collection of stories in a bible-like fashion if I recall correctly.

>>3607 I have a copy I read over for in order to inform the Summa's production. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u9eYaN9pQqo8lddSTu_n-TCklHDf--r0/view?usp=sharing Let me know if it doesn't work

>>3609 >ask and you shall receive Awesome! Thanks Anon.

>>3605 Thanks for clarification.

>>3544 The show can't be boiled down to a religion or belief system or any set of universal rules to follow because friendship and harmony are shown, repeatedly, to be anti-dogmatic and anti-totalizing. With that being said at least your project is more original and appears to have more effort put into it than those guys who made Celestianism by just copypasting pony names onto Bible passages.

>>3634 >The show can't be boiled down to a religion or belief system or any set of universal rules to follow because friendship and harmony are shown, repeatedly, to be anti-dogmatic and anti-totalizing. Could you elaborate? Do you think that friendship and harmony could be encapsulated in more general guidelines as opposed to dogmatic rules?

>>3641 Any prescriptive rule is dogmatic, unfortunately. To truly communicate such a concept you need to either know the person well enough to predict how your lessons are going to come off, or you need to 'circum-ambulate' the topic, approaching it from many different angles, applying it to as many varied situations as possible, so as to triangulate a center point from so many tangents. This is necessary because people will always hear what they want to hear, and look for how your points (or the show's points) reinforce or oppose that. If they take an interest, whether positive or negative, in these points, you can lead them along through the maze of misinterpretation by showing them a thousand ways they answer questions that were previously left blank. If you can't, then well, you need to work on your own understanding too. For example, friendship and harmony is easy to tout as the 'light side', where everybody is working together to better themselves and the world, and people without it are the bad guys. But what about friendship and harmony among bandits, slavers, oil conglomerates? From the limited perspective of 'the good guys', the first instinct is to say "in these situations friendship and harmony are bad, because they create real personal danger to us", and relative to the conflict of good guys vs. bad guys, maybe that's correct. So friendship and harmony, to be useful at all, must be applied in a more specific, nuanced way, otherwise the principle *becomes* dogmatic, and fuel the us-vs-them mindset. It must be applied irrespective of boundaries and borderlines. Well, what if your compromise with the bandits and oil barons means that shit is still gonna suck? Bandits will still steal, oil barons will still pollute the world. Friendship means loving them and forgiving them as they do it - but how can we be friends with people who hurt us? Now you must find a deeper, more complex friendship and harmony; you must learn to love and forgive *yourself*, because yourself will always fight back against injustices. You are interrupting that bandit or that oil baron's entire life by enforcing justice; you must be able to feel their pain even as you inflict it, if you ever hope to understand them and reach harmony with them. On an even more abstract level, your actions must be in harmony with your soul. If you aren't friends with your deepest self, then the only relationship there can be is *conflict* with your deeper self. Conflict means inefficiency, it means both sides expending energy in a fight, that could otherwise be used to further a common goal. You cannot be an effective person if you have great levels of internal conflict. Furthermore, any contribution you make to an external harmony will be marred by your own internal dissonance, like a single instrument in an orchestra slightly out of tune. And so on. Harmony is virtuous, but there is no virtue so pure as to be uncorrupted by the bluntness of language.

>>3714 Dogma is dangerous when perpetuated without relation to the original consequences that created the dogma. When the source of the dogma and it's perpetuator is the immortal God-Princess who watches the country millenium after millennium, dogma will never deteriorate because she will always will always keep it in tune with reality and her authority will ensure the agreement on any change.

>>3544 Why would we ever need a religion? Isn't it enough that a person likes the snow and maybe tries to apply something he learned with it IRL, why is there a need to organize this pure passion into some sort of cult? (I'm not trying to offend you OP, but that's just how i see all attempts to create a non-ironic pony religion)

>>4460 Could just be >for fun

>>4460 To me, the very concept of religion seems particularly alien to pony.

>>4460 >Isn't it enough that a person likes the snow >>2295

>>4461 Well sure, i was talking about unironic stuff. If it's all just a joke i have no problems with it

>>4460 I don't view it as a a function of people's need for a pony religion so much as a want for it. Before I ever started this project I saw that there were a number of anons out there who held beliefs centered around ponies such as the idea of Equestria being their afterlife. Part of the Summa is an attempt to reconcile that into a cohesive religion that people can reasonable practice. I also wanted to try my hand at this when I was personally dissatisfied with Celestianism, which was an earlier attempt at a pony religion made by an /mlp/ group.

>>4562 Call me a schizo if you want. But it seems to me that every entity is drawn toward what best reflects its own truest nature. I can only reduce corruptive influences and hope that mine resembles what was depicted in the show. I'm not seeing what benefit imitating religion would add.

wtf is that?