Minbari - Religion

Religion

The Minbari are a very religious people. The Minbari religion does not have a central god figure, nor does it have a pantheon of gods, though on one confusing instance in an early episode Delenn did speak of "The gods." In Passing Through Gethsemane, it is revealed that the Minbari have a belief that the universe itself is sentient, and that the universe has the ability to break itself into many pieces and invests itself in every form of life. Consequently, every being is a projection of a part of the universal soul. They believe that the universe uses the perspective of individual sentient beings in a process of self-examination and a search for meaning (similar to the real-life belief of pantheism or pandeism), this could also be a reference to the quote "We are a way for the universe to know itself" from astronomer Carl Sagan.

Valen is a central figure in Minbari religion. However, Valen is not considered a deity. He was a "Minbari not born of Minbari". About AD 1260, a fortress suddenly appeared in Minbari space, on which resided Valen flanked by Vorlons, who then led the Minbari people against the Shadows. Valen was in fact a human—Jeffrey Sinclair—who had subjected himself to a process that made him into a human/Minbari hybrid. After the war, Valen helped restructure Minbari society, organizing the Grey Council to lead it. These nine individuals came from each of the three castes. This form of government remained stable for a thousand years until the next Shadow War. Valen knew the Shadows would return and wrote prophecies to warn the Minbari when the next war was starting. After these tasks were completed, Valen left Minbar; the remainder of his life and eventual fate is still a mystery, though it has since been kept a secret by the Grey Council that he did have a wife and children in self-imposed exile, most of whom returned to Minbari society in secret, had families of their own, and added human DNA to the Minbari gene pool. Minbari with human DNA are consequently called "children of Valen". Delenn will eventually learn she is herself a "child of Valen".

Minbari people believe in reincarnation. They feel that after an individual has died, the soul of the individual joins with all the other departed Minbari souls. The souls then all meld together becoming one. Then the souls are reborn into the next generation of Minbari. Thus Minbari do not welcome Soul Hunters—their gathering of souls interferes with the reincarnation process. This was the central reason behind the Minbari stopping their genocidal war with the humans, as they had found "that Minbari souls were reborn in human bodies" as well as the fact that the Minbari have some human DNA. Since the Minbari find the concept of killing fellow members of their species horrifically unacceptable, the sudden revelation that their young enemy had this unexpected link to themselves put them under the same consideration.