I don’t know how this appeared on my screen

Inspired by this and everyone’s favorite writer and graphic designer

Vulcan counterculture and fandom store called Hot T’Pic

STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES (1966-1969) - 3.22 • "The Savage Curtain"

Humans are Vulcan catnip, I swear to Q.

Spock and Kirk: No need to explain. In any universe they are drawn together and Spock abandons any sense of rationality if his Captain is hurt or just looks at him sweetly.

Sarek and Amanda: Admitted he married Amanda for love, not logic. Then made Spock.

Solkar and Zefram: Ten seconds off the spaceship and Solkar decides to do the diplomatic thing and make out with this human.

Surak and Archer: Archer was given Surak's katra without his knowledge and when T'Pau attempted to extract him Surak clung to the mental doorframe because he was safer here and he liked it better here, despite the logic of being housed in a nice logical Vulcan mind instead.

Solok and Sisko: Solok abandoned all pretense of logic when he won a wrestling match with a young Sisko and became so obsessed with him that he taught an entire Vulcan Starfleet crew how to play baseball just so he could beat Sisko again.

T'Pol and Trip: T'Pol became so attached to the Enterprise crew that she gave up her military career with Vulcan to continue to serve as First Officer, and to keep close with her boyfriend.

Tuvok and Janeway: Tuvok is fiercely loyal to Janeway, to the point that he will go along with her illogical plans just because he has such great faith in her.

Soval and Forrest: Soval respected Forrest but when Forrest died saving Soval it uprooted what loyalty he had left to the Vulcan High Command (who he then realised was corrupt) and he went rogue trying to save Vulcan from itself. (Really watch for the nose flare when he talks to Archer next to Forrest's casket, that Vulcan is pissed.)

You know what I’m still mad abt?

They spend so much of TOS hyping up Surak. Idk why but i expected him to look cool and wizened. Like, big, neat, salt and pepper beard a la Marx and Greek Philosophers

Why was he just some twink

Surak

C'Thia, Surakian Philosophy, and Vulcan Polytheism

While most would consider Surak to merely be a philosopher and reformer, thereby removing any hint of religion from the discussion and forming instead an idea of both Surak and his philosophy as being, at best, atheistic or agnostic, and at worst, being anti-theistic, I have to strongly disagree with this assessment. Especially when it's used as proof to claim that modern, post-Awakening Vulcans are also at best atheistic or agnostic, and at worst anti-theistic. I believe this comes about due to a commonly held misconception that religion in and of itself is anathema to science, to progress, to intelligence, and therefore, to logic itself. This is, of course, a blatantly false binary and we are shown over and over again in canon that while Vulcans place a great importance on science, education, intellect, and logic, they are also a very spiritual people. Most of the important locations on Vulcan that we see in canon tend to be temples, sacred mountains, or holy ruins. Leaders tend to be high priestesses. Meditation is almost universal for Vulcans, and while it can be argued that it is very much a mental discipline as well, meditation was birthed, and continues to find its roots, in spirituality, and at its heart, is a spiritual discipline. Meditation, after all, was not invented by scientists, but by monks.

In the episode of the Animated Series, "Yesteryear", Spock tells Sarek that he is merely passing through ShiKahr on his way to the family shrine to "honor our gods". This one line proves to me that, at least for Spock, there is no incongruence between his modern Surakian belief and practice of C'thia (commonly this is translated as just "logic" but a more accurate Vulcan translation is "reality-truth") with that of traditional Vulcan polytheistic religious practice. One can assume that this is not, however, unique only to Spock, seeing as shrines require some semi-regular maintenance and he very rarely visits his father's homestead so it is unlikely that Spock alone is the one who maintains them. Sarek also is unsurprised by Spock's actions, which suggests a kind of normalcy to it. One does not get the impression that Spock is doing something rebellious by performing religious rites to Deities.

Likewise, in the Voyager episode, "Hunters", Tuvok receives a letter from his wife. In it, she tells him that she and their children have asked the priests at the Temple of Amonak to say prayers for Tuvok's safe return from the Delta Quadrant. Prayer requires something to which a person prays to and the assumption here is, again, the existence of Vulcan Deities as well as devotional practices targeted toward them existing even until the time of Voyager. While one of the purposes of prayer has to do with the person praying, as in, a benefit to prayer is that it gives the praying person something to do when they may not be able to do much else about a situation, and therefore T'Pel and her and Tuvok's children may be using it as a kind of meditative practice meant to give their grief and worry about Tuvok's safety somewhere to go that may then help them control it, I believe even this would still imply belief in the existence of Deities. One could meditate without the use of prayer involved but that was not the course of action that T'Pel took. She specifically made a trek to a sacred temple with the intention of saying prayers for Tuvok and told him about it, again, just as with Spock and Sarek, showing that there is something normalized about the action. Belief in the Gods and religious practice utilizing them is, therefore, not something performed only in the dark or in secret.

So, Vulcan polytheistic spiritual practice has continued past the Awakening and into the Vulcan Reformation. Is it the same as what it looked like to pre-Reform Vulcans? What's different? I wish we got more glimpses of Vulcan religion beyond mostly backdrop (while we are explicitly shown rituals and ritual locations in episodes like "Amok Time", "the Gambit" and many places in Enterprise, and in movies like "the Motion Picture" and "Search for Spock", very rarely do we see explanations for what the Vulcan lay people and priest(ess)es are doing and why) but that simply means that I instead get to make things up. Which is my favorite thing to do. So while the entirety of this post is built on a core of canon and information from Memory Alpha and Beta, as well as the Vulcan Language Database, most of what follows is my own musings and thoughts.

Firstly, in my research I've established that there seems to be two major pantheons within Vulcan spirituality, the Ka-ta-pak, or Inner Chorus, and the grouping I've named Ek-tam'a-ta, which is where I've placed every other named Deity not belonging to the Inner Chorus. The Inner Chorus, being made up of Deities that seem much more akin to emotional archetypes, become a much more thorny topic to consider when it comes to reconciling the worship, or, at the very least, acknowledgement of these Beings with the rigorous control of emotions that is to be expected within the Surakian cult of C'thia. As such, they are what I plan to focus on here.

The Inner Chorus is made up of the following Deities: Tel-Alep and Alep-Tel, Kir-Alep and Alep-Kir, Valdena and Dena-Vel, Kal-ap-Ton and Tyr-al-Tep, and Ket-Cheleb. Other than the last Deity, each is a part of a pairing where one represents the lighter, more acceptable form of a suite of emotions, whereas the other is the darker, shadow side. It's a concept similar to reading Tarot cards, where a card's reversal typically points to the darker reading of the themes the card communicates when right side up. For example, Valdena is famously the love Goddess and rules over emotions such as joy, beauty, fullness, pleasure, etc, whereas Dena-Vel, her shadow twin, rules over the darker side of love, namely concepts like possessiveness, covetousness, envy, domination, etc. What I would posit as probably one of the fairly radical reforms within Surakian thought, is the idea that C'thia is meant to subjugate and control both sides of what the Inner Chorus represents, not just the shadow side.

Isn't it illogical, however, to worship archetypal manifestations of emotions that one is trying to suppress? This was the big question that came out of my exploration of Vulcan Deities and led me to conclude that there is a difference between how Vulcans interact with Ek-tam'a-ta Deities vs the Ka-ta-pak, wherein the former is treated much more like how one stereotypically interacts with Gods, ie with reverence, worship, offerings, prayers, etc, as well as an understanding of the Deities being Beings outside of the mind in their own rights, while the latter is much more localized and symbolic. The Ka-ta-pak are not so much outward Beings, as they are emotional symbols and touchstones, metaphors to be focused on in meditation rather than as Gods to be worshipped.

Even the name, the Inner Chorus, suggests this kind of community of emotional beings, of aspects of the interior Vulcan mind, and furthermore, points to a need for a harmony amongst them. It is my thought that the Ka-ta-pak are less like sentient beings with personhood and more like the Platonic ideal of the emotion they represent. They are the emotion in its most perfected form and by experiencing this, experiencing the presence of this being, this outward-focused inner spirit, in the relative safety of meditation, the average Vulcan is able to meet that emotion and learn how it manifests within their own body and mind. In this meeting, they are able to name the emotion, learn it, experience it, and understand how to master it so that when they experience it outside of meditation, they need not be conquered by it and brought into chaos but instead are able to hold to order and logic in the face of it.

In the Enterprise episode, "Fusion", we are shown that Vulcans don't typically dream and that meditation has usurped the role that dreaming would usually take in the Vulcan psyche. It follows, therefore, that they process the emotional stimuli of the day through meditation and that symbolism, which is an important language for the sub-conscious and the language that dreams are written in, would probably play a role in that. Thus, the use of the Inner Chorus as a symbol of focus, as the emotional tangle that one seeks, through meditation, to sort out and bring order to, makes sense. I believe that this constitutes some of the work of t'san s'at, or the intellectual deconstruction of emotions that Surak preached. T'san s'at is the study of one's own emotions, and the effects these emotions have over one's actions. The peace and tranquility that lies at the end of t'san s'at is the goal of every Surakian Vulcan, and is a lifelong aspiration. It is through working with the Ka-ta-pak with this goal in mind that brings these ideas together.

Another idea I found interesting about the Ka-ta-pak is that the names of the Deities match the names of the other planets within the Vulcan solar system (according to the Memory Beta article that I believe is based on a Trek inspired ttrpg). A solar system, with its constant routine of stable orbits and cycles, would be an obvious metaphor for the idea of Order. The Inner Chorus strikes me, then, as the microcosm within the Vulcan mind/spirit as connected with the macrocosm of the living universe around them. It is the connection between the Vulcan mental and katric interior space and the exterior physical space. Just as the solar system is in constant harmony, subjugated to the laws of gravity, order, and simply the natural mechanisms of the living universe, one's own interior system should likewise be ordered. That it is called an inner chorus is very telling to me, since when choruses are working correctly, they are making music in harmony, just as the broader cosmos makes the music of the spheres, which is the sound of mathematics purified. It is the goal of every Surakian Vulcan to harmonize their inner chorus (part of which involves meditating on the form of the Inner Chorus) with the music of the macrocosm. In this, I believe the mind, or the reasoning capacity, represents a kind of conductor, who directs the inner chorus of emotions to properly allow for the production of music. The music produced by this harmony is C'thia, which is the same substance that keeps the planets in their orbits and the universe ticking onward.

This post is getting a bit long but there's one last thing I want to talk about and that would be Surak himself. As mentioned earlier, there is a common misconception I've seen that, again, makes Surak some kind of radical atheist philosopher who, in stomping out the violence and ignorance that marked the culture of his planet, must also have gotten rid of its religion, not just superstition or conservativism but religion more generally. Again, this comes more from the mistaken belief that spirituality and science are necessarily at odds. But what we see of Surak doesn't actually support this erroneous belief. Instead, one of the things that Surak is famous for is his pilgrimage. A pilgrimage is a religious journey undertaken for religious purposes. Surak set out to visit many religious orders and temples, before traipsing into the wilderness in places like Vulcan's Forge and Mount Seleya, to learn from and connect with the various priest(ess)es, as well as to connect in solitude with his own mind. C'thia is always shown as a revelation. Surak perceives it for the first time and discerns its meaning while on pilgrimage, while in meditation, while studying spiritual truths. He discovers it, not in a laboratory, but in deep contemplation on a mountain peak. Thus, Surak strikes me as much more akin to a Hindu yogi or an enlightened New Age seeker than he does a Richard Dawkins type. He doesn't dismiss the spiritual lessons he learns from visiting the other religious orders but instead incorporates them into his new cult. I think it's this incorporation of c'thia with traditional polytheism within Surak's own spirituality that allows for modern Vulcans to do the same.

In conclusion, anyone who claims that the post-Reform Vulcans shown in canon are atheists have not been paying attention to the actual canon, first of all, and secondly, are doing nothing more than showing their bias toward the science vs religion binary. I think the Vulcans are a little too smart to fall for this dichotomy, and they are certainly aware of the need for a philosophy to be an open one, if it's to be sustainable at all. I think having access to the neverending mystery of space, peopled as it is with many different kinds of beings, has allowed the Vulcans to be open-minded toward religion and the existence of Gods and other numinous beings. After all, they fully accept the existence of katra and thus, souls, spirits, and the idea of beings existing without bodies. It is not an illogical leap to suppose that since animating spirits (ie souls that are housed by and animate a body) exist, other kinds might also, including Deities. And since Vulcans possess a psionic system, capable of the extrasensory perceptions involved in their version(s) of telepathy, they may be able to perceive these spirits telepathically, even when psi-null folks may not be able to.

So, I don't think Vulcan polytheism is relegated to some point in the planet's distant past but instead continues, alive and well, into the post-Awakening world.

The intrusive thoughts won. I made a thing.

This is how I deal with my religious trauma.

Surak autistic confirmed

The Surak we see in The Savage Curtain is a manifestation of Spock's idea of Surak, so if the first thing he does is reprimand Spock for showing emotion that's because that is exactly what Spock would expect. That the greatest vulcan who ever lived, father of all we now hold true and his personal role model would be disappointed in him

I'm sorry I just cannot believe that 3x22 the savage curtain introduced the dilemma of spock having to choose between following the actual personification of vulcan history and philosophy, or kirk, and then resolved it so quickly that it was barely even a source of stress for either of them. the answer was kirk, btw. in case that wasn't obvious.

SURAK: I will not harm others, Captain.

SPOCK: His convictions are most profound in this matter, Captain.

KIRK: So are mine, Spock. If I believed that there was a peaceful way out of this --

SURAK: The risk will be mine alone. If I fail, you lose nothing. After all, I'm no warrior.

SPOCK: The captain knows that I have fought at his side before and will do so now, if need be. However, I too, am a Vulcan, bred to peace. Let him attempt it.

spock is saying, let him do as he sees fit. let him follow his own principles. and let me stay by your side. kirk tells him to gather weapons in case surak fails, and spock does. he is casting aside the philosophy he was raised with in favour of war, and he's doing it for kirk.

KIRK: Your Surak is a brave man.

SPOCK: Men of peace usually are, Captain. On Vulcan, he is revered as the father of our civilisation. The father image holds much meaning for us.

KIRK: You show emotion, Spock.

SPOCK: I deeply respect what he has accomplished.

KIRK: I hope he accomplishes something here, and soon.

kirk is complimenting surak, and I do think he genuinely means it, but the way he says it comes off like an apology. like he knows what spock just let go of for him, and he wants to make sure spock is okay.

spock says, men of peace, and he is not counting himself as one of them. I think that's what makes kirk look up like that. throughout the show, he does use violence, but outside extreme situations he does it sparingly and elegantly -- the nerve pinch, the simple side step of a punch -- and usually advocates for a more peaceful solution. now, he's admitting how he has changed. he values peace. but he can't call himself an instrument of it.

and now he's comparing surak to a father image. christian implications aside (and that is difficult with star trek sometimes), he is standing beside kirk in spite of surak's and his own vulcan father's teachings, too. he sharpens his spear and looks frustrated with himself. he shows emotion. and he doesn't deny it, either! he says sincerely that he respects surak's accomplishments, and kirk stares at him, because that's more emotion than he generally cares to show, especially after it's pointed out to him. (early in the episode, surak points out his emotion on seeing him, and spock begs forgiveness. he is no longer looking for that from surak. spock has made his choice.)

he's angry at himself. and as a peace offering, kirk says he hopes surak has managed to broker peace here and now. even though you can tell from his tone and the fact that he's still making his own weapon that he isn't optimistic.

(and all of this is putting aside the fact that surak is definitely a jesus figure and spock rejecting his philosophy and forgiveness for an imperfect man is another kind of huge character choice. this has to be pointed out.)

idk how they managed to air this in the 60s. but I'm very glad they did.

life on vulcan was so fucked up that some dude preaching "it is what it is" shifted the fundamental philosophy of them as a people

Spock is so Surak-coded. They're both involved in the Vulcan-Romulan split (Surak in causing it, and Spock in fixing it). They're both gay as hell. And they both die from radiation poisoning.

#237

"I want a prequel series or movie about Kahless and Lukara, or maybe a movie about Surak and the nuclear wars on Vulcan that followed."