u/levemeodemo

https://preview.redd.it/l4ohssp1tshh1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=b1867dafb3f2bcce89fbe61ec4e7784ca49b1775

I don't know if you remember me, I'm the guy who gets obsessed with endless projects about the lore of World of Darkness. Like the chart showing the connection between all the supernatural beings (a new interactive version will be my next project) or the topic we're discussing today: a comprehensive chronology that acts as a genealogy for all the groups in Mage.

The interactive chart (thanks to some JAVA and Python courses I am taking as a teacher...) is progressing well and looks way better than my original idea of a single image. Each group is justified with bibliography, it's interactive and you can see how it evolved over time. However, I've run into a conundrum when I've compiled all the data I've gathered about the Choir from my previous research.

As non American, the Celestial Choir has always struck me as a sublimation of the psychosis and religious traumas typical of the United States (I'll write an essay about it someday), and although the Victorian Age setting is nominally imperial England, the Choir's representation of colonialist regression translates modern American narratives. There is an alternating cycle of "an open and eclectic group welcoming all who believe in the ONE" (The Choir of the Crusade and Ascension) and "the fundamentalist Choir obsessed with a single version of the Truth" (Dark Ages, Victorian Age, and in my opinion, the one depicted in M20's Lore of the Traditions)

These abrupt shifts in the narrative identity of the Celestial Choir necessitate depicting at least two abrupt departures of groups, only to see them return in the next phase. While the purges carried out by the Messianic Voices are clearly documented, beginning in the late Roman Empire and ending with Bishop Valoran's declaration, the division and purge caused by the rise of the Septarian faction is poorly defined ("between the Protestant Reformation and the 19th century") if we cross-reference the Revised Book of Tradition with the Victorian Age. However, there is no indication anywhere of when the status quo in Mage: The Ascension (where the Septarians are no longer so predominant, the Monists are an integral part of the Choir, and non-Christian groups are also present) emerged.

Let's not even talk about defining what happened with groups as significant to the Victorian Age as "Palabra Fugaz de la Doncella" (the terrible job of translating that name into Spanish from a contextual-religious perspective would warrant another entire post)... my question is, after rereading EVERYTHING that has been published... do we have any kind of authorial note, community consensus, reference that I might have missed... about when this post-Victorian reintegration of the Choir took place?