Aue is a relatively young religion, but it is still important to record the history of its development, lest this becomes lost to digital decay and fading memory.
Prehistory—myself
I am the founder of Aue, born 1997. I was raised passively in Anglicanism, but took the conscious decision to leave the faith at the age of 14. From then on I would, after a brief internet search, consider myself a “pragmatic agnostic”.
Since age twelve I’ve had a distinct interest in computing and programming, and have always had an interest in science. However, reading only became an interest in my 20s, and I’m still sorely lacking in it.
Through my teenage years I had hobbies including programming, but also conlanging and micronationalism. Conlanging is the hobby of creating languages (in this case, human speakable); and micronationalism is the hobby of creating a nation, albiet small with lofty ideals. I’m still mildly interested in conlanging—I feel the interest will return in force some day—but my interest in micronationalism barely touches upon curosity of other people’s micronational ambitions now.
In my early twenties I began developing new programming languages. However, the languages I have created so far only perform best in quite niche use-cases, though I would like some day to create something universally helpful.
During university, I (rather independently of campus life) began to take an interest in politics and Marxism—though again, I seldom picked up a book about the subjects, and never finished even one. To this day I still appreciate the insights, while also wary of, though not dismissive, of the framing of the world as a class struggle.
In 2019 I was exposed to The Satanic Temple, a legally recognised religious organisation in the United States of America. I admired their seven tenents, though had no care for the aesthetic, and was displeased to find many of its adherents were not vegan despite their tenent ”One should strive to act with compassion and empathy towards all creatures in accordance with reason.” Their reasoning evidently differed from mine. Nevertheless, I associated myself with them for about one year, until thoughts of Aue came to mind.
At some point, I had a Muslim friend, and took to reading, and reading about, the Qur’an. I did not read whole pages beyond the third Surah, though I was exposed to many crucial verses, and many Western cultural myths of Islam were dispelled for me. Tafsirs, I did read, but I wanted to avoid too much exposure to Hadiths until later in my learning. However, likely to the dismay of my friend, the experience made me positively athiest instead of apathetically agnostic.
Foundation
Aue was founded in September 2020. It started from a list I already privately maintained of my advocacies in life, including everything from technology I admired to public transport and organ donation. From this I distilled a few hundred words split into a doctrine followed by personal opinions which were meant to be directly linked to the religion.
The name “Aue” came about after thinking “vowels are easy to speak, and rather universal, so what if it were just vowels?” and speaking a group of vowels—Aue was the first and last.
The symbol came from inspiration of the old verses f and h, quoted below. While the symbol is not technically canonical, it has accompanied the text in all forms of media.
I spoke with a couple of my friends about my ideas on Aue, though it was more about how they viewed such a religion and how to grow it rather than for help or insight. A penchant I have had concerning writing, for a long time, is making text shorter, which applied over time to Aue shortened it from a few hundred words to less than one hundred. Furthermore, the doctrine (now “Aue”) was split from my personal opinions citing verses of the doctrine.
Early development
Quoted here is the earliest version of Aue that was introduced on the internet.
a. Here, use intelligence & serious attitude;
b. have faith in Aue & your ability to understand.
c. This is knowledge, to be shared, preserved, inspiring joy.
d. It is shared to you, rejoice!
e. Record & preach the joy.
f. The universe is over 13.7 billion years old.
g. Only now our nature & bodily constitution is formed & the future is too short to reform it.
h. We & the universe will scatter in death.
i. We are sentient – thinking so existing – able to suffer & enjoy, developed through primitive evolution.
j. We share the universe with life which evolved alongside our ancestors.
k. Time, volatile, should be precious & used well.
l. Know of suffering, & seek out joy with joy & praise.
m. Seek out all sentient beings & remember them always.
n. Trust, & aid trust, & rely on the society of sentience & nature – it can bring joy.
o. Avoid harm to it, & bolster goodness.
p. Embrace empathy, love others & yourself, encouraging reciprocation & emulation.
q. Some beings seek suffering;
r. protect yourself & joy, & seek to reduce belligerence.
s. Some beings unknowingly limit joy, so demonstrate Aue.
t. Keep critical faith in science & knowledge.
u. Wield it for joy, understand it to avoid suffering, contribute to it.
The website
Originally, the website was a static Github page with Aue verses, a small introduction, and my personal opinions citing Aue. Since very early on the website has had the ability to allow visitors to click each verse to highlight opinions citing it, and vice versa.
As the verse descriptions were authored, the website was extended to accomodate this, and support listing materials; support multiple authors; support articles; and by the end of 2023 provision of a read-only view of posts from the Discord forum.
It uses a bespoke, custom made Content Management System (CMS), which composes together HTML fragments and JSON data. The goal has always been high accessibility by keeping the website light, compliant, and with little JavaScript. The domain name aue-religion.org was first registered in April 2023.
The Discord server
November 17th, 2020, the first Discord server for Aue was created. On the 19th, the fourth person to join the server had their own new religion, and suggested that it be made into a server for all small religions. It was renamed to “Micro Religions” with the channel #aue. Once this channel was created, each day I wrote a new verse description in it, eventually published to the website.
On the 18th of July, 2021, a bespoke Aue Discord server was created again. By this time there had been one adherent aside from myself, for two months. In early January 2022 Sonia Kaplan joined and became the third ever adherent, eventually submitting her own verse interpretation, though by September 2023 called herself “a distant adherent”. In late January 2022 there was a fourth ever adherent, for a fortnight. In late February there was a fifth ever adherent, who went on to develop their own religious belief instead, and was no longer an Aue adherent by 2023. In September 2023 a new adherent joined, who also developed their own religion drawing inspiration from Aue, but still being a full Aue adherent.
The Discord server has been used to host Aue Hour:
A weekly event to chat about anything, favouring topics relevant to Aue, life, philosophy, and religion as a whole.
This weekly call has had many good conversations, of which it has always been unfortunate to not capture transcriptions nor audio recordings. Early attempts were made, but even with incredible compression an open-source solution to file hosting would be difficult to accomplish in the long-term until more adherents are present. A productive format has been to focus on one verse each week. These calls range from no attendees other than myself to half a dozen.
Physical presence
As of the end of 2023, Aue has not yet had any physical presence that I’m aware of, beyond a personal print-out I have of the verses.