The Local Universe Sons of God

35:5.1Af­ter the cre­ation of the per­sonal aids and the first group of the ver­sa­tile Mel­chiz­e­deks, the Cre­ator Son and the lo­cal uni­verse Cre­ative Spirit planned for, and brought into ex­is­tence, the sec­ond great and di­verse or­der of uni­verse son­ship, the Voron­dadeks. They are more gen­er­ally known as Con­stel­la­tion Fa­thers be­cause a Son of this or­der is uni­formly found at the head of each con­stel­la­tion gov­ern­ment in ev­ery lo­cal uni­verse.

35:5.2The num­ber of Voron­dadeks varies in each lo­cal uni­verse, just one mil­lion be­ing the re­corded num­ber in Neb­a­don. These Sons, like their co-or­di­nates, the Mel­chiz­e­deks, pos­sess no power of re­pro­duc­tion. There ex­ists no known method whereby they can in­crease their num­bers.

35:5.3In many re­spects these Sons are a self-gov­ern­ing body; as in­di­vid­u­als and as groups, even as a whole, they are largely self-de­ter­mi­na­tive, much as are the Mel­chiz­e­deks, but Voron­dadeks do not func­tion through such a wide range of ac­tiv­i­ties. They do not equal their Mel­chiz­e­dek breth­ren in bril­liant ver­sa­til­ity, but they are even more re­li­able and ef­fi­cient as rulers and farsee­ing ad­min­is­tra­tors. Nei­ther are they quite the ad­min­is­tra­tive peers of their sub­or­di­nates, the La­non­an­dek Sys­tem Sov­er­eigns, but they ex­cel all or­ders of uni­verse son­ship in sta­bil­ity of pur­pose and in di­vin­ity of judg­ment.

35:5.4Al­though the de­ci­sions and rul­ings of this or­der of Sons are al­ways in ac­cor­dance with the spirit of di­vine son­ship and in har­mony with the poli­cies of the Cre­ator Son, they have been cited for er­ror to the Cre­ator Son, and in de­tails of tech­nique their de­ci­sions have some­times been re­versed on ap­peal to the su­pe­rior tri­bu­nals of the uni­verse. But these Sons rarely fall into er­ror, and they have never gone into re­bel­lion; never in all the his­tory of Neb­a­don has a Vo­ron­da­dek been found in con­tempt of the uni­verse gov­ern­ment.

35:5.5The ser­vice of the Voron­dadeks in the lo­cal uni­verses is ex­ten­sive and var­ied. They serve as am­bas­sadors to other uni­verses and as con­suls rep­re­sent­ing con­stel­la­tions within their na­tive uni­verse. Of all or­ders of lo­cal uni­verse son­ship they are the most of­ten in­trusted with the full del­e­ga­tion of sov­er­eign pow­ers to be ex­er­cised in crit­i­cal uni­verse sit­u­a­tions.

35:5.6On those worlds seg­re­gated in spir­i­tual dark­ness, those spheres which have, through re­bel­lion and de­fault, suf­fered plan­e­tary iso­la­tion, an ob­server Vo­ron­da­dek is usu­ally pres­ent pend­ing the restora­tion of nor­mal sta­tus. In cer­tain emer­gen­cies this Most High ob­server could ex­er­cise ab­so­lute and ar­bi­trary au­thor­ity over ev­ery ce­les­tial be­ing as­signed to that planet. It is of rec­ord on Sal­ving­ton that the Voron­dadeks have some­times ex­er­cised such au­thor­ity as Most High re­gents of such plan­ets. And this has also been true even of in­hab­ited worlds that were un­touched by re­bel­lion.

35:5.7Of­ten a corps of twelve or more Vo­ron­da­dek Sons sits en banc as a high court of re­view and ap­peal con­cern­ing spe­cial cases in­volv­ing the sta­tus of a planet or a sys­tem. But their work more largely per­tains to the leg­isla­tive func­tions in­dige­nous to the con­stel­la­tion gov­ern­ments. As a re­sult of all these ser­vices, the Vo­ron­da­dek Sons have be­come the his­to­ri­ans of the lo­cal uni­verses; they are per­son­ally fa­mil­iar with all the po­lit­i­cal strug­gles and the so­cial up­heavals of the in­hab­ited worlds.