alternatehistory.com

Meir was born to a Jewish family in the town of Nazareth around 40 BCE under the Egyptian rule of the Levant. Egyptian emigrants and Persian merchants along with their gods were an established part of Meir’s world while growing up. As he matured, he learned his father’s trade of carpentry and it seemed he would lead an ordinary life. But in his early 20s, he became close friends with Jahan, a Persian man and devout follower of Zoroastrianism, and the two would often discuss the intricacies of their respective beliefs along with their mutual interest in the Egyptian gods. And during his spare time, he would meditate on these differences.

When he reached 30, he began to preach of a new faith. Two gods were responsible for creating the world, one male and the other female. Together they created everything and through them, everything was sustained. They each had their own domains which they had created and presided over. However they both influenced the other’s domains, much as the moon influences the ocean. The Father was strongly associated with water, stars, and lightning while the Mother was connected with the earth, fire, and the moon. Everything in creation belonged in either the Father or the Mother’s domains, except for the following: humans, knowledge, love, fertility, justice, and life and death. These things belonged to the Two Gods in equal measure. The world was also inhabited by angels and lesser earthly spirits. Each spirit had a purpose in this world but humans were unique in this regard. They had been created by the Gods simply out of a desire to create beings to fully experience the world the Gods had made. Unique to creation, humans were half divine and half earthly creatures, forever torn between these two conflicting natures. When people died, they would have to eventually choose between their two natures: become fully earthly and cease to exist or become fully divine and live forever in Paradise with the Two Gods. Leading people away from Paradise was an adversarial spirit who was once divine but now infernal who was destined to be destroyed by the Father and the Mother in the end times.

Furthermore, belief in them was solely imperative for access to the afterlife, the abode of the two gods and to avoid being swept from existence. He began to travel around the province, preaching his faith and gaining a sizable following. Eventually, he traveled to Egypt after he learned of a conspiracy on his life by the local authorities and in 6 BCE, settled in Avaris with a few of his followers along his closest friend and foremost disciple Jahan. This religion was particularly popular with the common folk and women with its promise of immortality and a female goddess the equal of her male counterpart, with no “weighing of the heart” trial to undergo. Meir later died of a fever in 8 CE, where he asked to see Jahan on his deathbed. There he thanked Jahan for his friendship and constant support and passed on the leadership of the religion to him, blessing him with “May the Father and the Mother guide your path, and do not look so sad, we will see each other again.” And while many hybrid religions faded with their founder, by luck or by providence, this one spread within the Delta and down the Nile in the years following his death. Some of Meir’s acolytes were literate in Late Demotic and Coptic and so were able to transcribe sections of what he wrote down and said, as well as their own thoughts on Meir’s teachings in a book that eventually became known as The Tome. In the few years after Meir’s death, The Two God Path or Meirism, as it came to be called, was regarded by Egyptian nobles as merely another peasant cult, albeit one more popular and organized than others.

Followers of the Two God Path came from all walks of life which proved crucial to spreading their religion. Merchants who followed the Path established temples in Meroe and Aksum and the priests that maintained them started to win a few converts. And in time the Two Gods came to the western sands and savannas of Africa.