Religion in Aporue and the Orbis Furum is a very broad and detailed topic. Even this post will not cover everything, but I will try to cover the basics.
Like in any other world, religion and philosophy play an important role
in culture and customs of societies, both on a personal and public
level. There's an obvious myriad of various belief systems worldwide,
with each inhabited corner of the globe providing its own unique
examples.
As a continent, Aporue is mostly dominated by a few particular
monotheistic religions (subdivided into further groupings, such as
churches), and by philosophical currents reminescent of those seen in
various strands of European philosophy from roughly the 15th to the 18th
century. Numerically, humans of the "present day" mostly favour
monotheism, with more archaic beliefs or deistic/atheistic outlooks
being rarer or uncommon. People throghout Aporue are generally fairly
pious and religious. Individuals with deistic or agnostic or atheistic
views on faith are rather rare. Most humans and beastpeoples of Aporue
are members of one of the following three faiths (see below), with
Pilgrimism having by far the highest number of followers.
Some of the people of the Aporue continent also follow some traditional
religions or their remnant practices. Especially some of the
beastpeople, but also a fair few human cultures, and particularly in the
more sparsely settled and wilder parts of the continent. Most species
of beastpeoples also follow established monotheistic churches, but
compared to Aporue's human inhabitants, there's a slightly higher number
of them following traditional religions. Some of these traditional
religions are practiced by several species (including humans), but
several are wholly unique to one particular beastfolk species.
Philosophy in Aporue focuses both on religious and worldly topics. The
latter include things as varied as natural sciences, mathematics, art
and esthetics, statecraft and diplomacy, and so on.
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Treiskaídekanism, Pilgrimism, Faith of the Maker
Churches
- Olankalian churches (the Catholicism equivalent, name loosely derived from real world Greek óla-ankaliázei, i.e. "all-embracing")
- Alithidromic churches (the Orthodox Christianity equivalent, name loosely derived from real world Greek, alithís, i.e. "truthful", and drómos, i.e. "road", "way")
- Redeemer churches (the Protestantism equivalent; originally a disparaging term, eventually adopted by its followers as a badge of honour)
The Maker
The Thirteen Prophets
2. Ekkur – Prophetess of Compassion and Mercy. One of The Crux, teacher of Oxala and Sana.
3. Arkus – Prophet of Honest Labour and Diligence. One of The Crux, teacher of Mehan and Verden.
4. Gnos – Prophet of Wisdom and Learning. One of The Crux, teacher of Zoén and Ravé.
5. Oxala – Prophetess of True Love and Selflessness. One of The Adherents, a pupil of Ekkur.
6. Dolat – Prophet of Truth and Justice. One of The Adherents, a pupil of Confid.
7. Zoén – Prophet of Safeguarding Nature and Life. One of The Adherents, a pupil of Gnos.
8. Mehan – Prophet of Handicraft and Invention. One of The Adherents, a pupil of Arkus.
9. Ravé – Prophetess of Arts and Creativity. One of The Adherents, a pupil of Gnos.
10. Sana – Prophetess of Healing and Consolation. One of The Adherents, a pupil of Ekkur.
11. Verden – Prophet of Protection and Defence. One of The Adherents, a pupil of Arkus.
12. Nikenos – Prophet of Generosity and Charity. One of The Adherents, a pupil of Confid.
13. The Needy Stranger / The Pilgrim / The Maker’s Child – The ultimate prophet. The "Prophet for All Seasons".
St Arbogast, St Borek, St. Hervil, St Nobri, St Unis, St Varda
Some of the tenets and dogmas of Treiskadekanism
Not commandments, just some overall tenets and dogmas of the faith
(briefly paraphrased, in no particular order, with commentary):
- There is One God, he is the Creator and Maker, do not worship anyone
or anything else. The prophets, fathers and saints of the Faith are not
deities, and should only be worshipped as holy (but mortal) men and
women.
- Treat your fellow man with kindness, fairness and honesty, regardless
of age, gender and cultural/natural background. The Creator is ever
vigilant of how you treat others and how you think of them.
- Honest hard work, physical or mental, is part of worshipping the
Maker, not just religious rituals, prayer, etc. Idleness is a mortal
sin. (This was a major tenet in reaction to what the prophets saw as
unbridled hedonism.)
- Humans and beastfolk are equals, enslavement and slavery is a mortal
sin. (One of the reasons this religion proved so successful with
evangelising from early on.)
- Help the needy and the less fortunate, look after the poor, the orphaned, the old, sick and dying, etc., etc.
- Treat all of creation with respect, as it is the Maker's work, but do
not worship his work. Creation is a part of the Maker himself, including
everyone alive.
- Do not frown upon science and learned matters, because faith and knowledge must go hand in hand. (This,
along with the “be hard-working” teachings, is what eventually helps
kickstart a new scientific and industrial revolution many centuries
later. With the churches' support, no less.)
- Magic is not necessarily all evil, but magic is easily abusable and one should avoid sinning by relying
on even the simplest forms of magic. The Creator gave his children the
gift of free will, but warned them of temptations. One such temptation
was abuse of magic, which among other things led to the banishing of
God's children from Paradise, or to the fall of the Old Empire and other
“societies that started to fester in decadence”.
- According to the creation myth, the earliest peoples lived in a
paradise, but the Creator banished them after they were tempted to
reshape the world with magic, immitating God. That day, the spiritual
and earthly realms were split into two, with Paradise now reserved only
to those who would work hard to reach it. And by work hard, God was
being literal (according to the prophets): Ergo, work hard, pray hard,
avoid hedonism, gain reacceptance of your souls into Paradise. With the
catch that bodies cannot follow, for they have been tainted by
worldliness and hedonism when they defied God with that old sinning in
Paradise. Only souls can return. According to the Faith, those who try
to rebuild Paradise on earth, often only via physical pleasure and
abundance, are doomed to fail.
- Some churchly fathers and other philosophers have argued that any sort
of fun equals sinful hedonism. However, this is no one's official
doctrine or dogma, save for those few fringe radicals.
The History of Treiskaídekanism
The beginnings of the main Aporuean churches lie in Archontian times,
the times of the Old Empire. Distraught about what they perceived as
sloth, decadence and greed, a group of period philosophers – religious
ones as well as early scholars – claimed to have been divinely contacted
and influenced by The One, which they also named the Creator and the
Maker. While by far not the first monotheistic religion in the world,
the Faith of the Maker became the first major evangelically minded
monotheistic faith of the known world.
For a long time, despite the occassional infighting and dynastic
disputes, the empire's four corners reasonably flourished. The empire
dabbled a lot in scholarly pursuits and the study of magic, developed
primitive forms of advanced technology, built immense infrastructure
throughout parts of three different continents, but was eventually
brought down by changing geopolitics outside its borders and its own
pile-up of internal problems. While the Old Empire was a cosmopolitan,
varied, multicultural and multireligious place, it's variety not only
made it one of the most powerful polities in history, but also brought
about tensions and an inherent risk of instability.
In the waning centuries of the Old Empire, newer religious movements,
often based as much on philosophy and naturalist scholarship as on
rituals and transcendentalism, started to gain a lot of traction. Some
just offered new avenues of worship or answers to people in troubled
times, but there were also a few that focused on social criticism and
charity. Among these was also a group of religious prophets who adopted
the ideals of a particular monotheistic religion that had been
previously at home only in a single region of the Empire. These
prophets, male and female, came from varying social backgrounds, but
they all shared their growing belief in the Creator/Maker and the divine
inspiration he granted them. They were determined to disseminate the
divine teachings and thus help redeem what they saw as a society mired
in self-centeredness and hedonism.
Recognition of this faith came late in the empire's history, and even
then, only in some parts of the Empire. By this point, the Empire was
balkanising thoroughly and in general decline. Some parts of the Empire
adopted the new faith as their state religion. After the disappearance
of the Empire, many successor states eventually adopted the new
religion. However, with relatively few voices to give it unity, the
religion itself underwent some early disputes and schisms concerning
dogma, teachings and practices. This split culminated when one of the
additional leaders and missionaires from the Empire's southwest
proclaimed himself a final prophet, the final major successor to the
previous prophets. This split what was once a single religion into two
increasingly diverging ones. Over the many centuries, the older and the
newer branch further fractured into several new churches or schools of
thought, with the occassional heresy in-between.
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The Faith of the Lawgiver
The most ancient faith of the three large monotheistic religions in Aporue. The Irim (literally the "Watchers"), also known as the Nodaadim ("Wanderers"),
are equivalent to Jews and Judaism, and follow the monotheistic Faith
of the Maker, with the single god known as the Maker, Creator, Lawgiver.
The Irim also refer to themselves as the Faithful and Watchful of the
Maker. Philosophically, the faith gradually diversified internally into
several main philosophical branches or schools of thought, even though
virtually all of them share the same basics.
The numbers of the Irim/Nodaadim vary depending on the particular
country of Aporue, but they have their communities in virtually every
country, both in cities and in rural areas. Unlike real world Jews of a
similar historical era, they are much less socially ostracized and
segregated in society. This extends to them performing pretty much the
same array of crafts as people of other faiths, with the exception of
those that are not viewed favourably for religious and ritual reasons.
The diaspora of their ethnicity and their faith is similar to the real
world, albeit slightly less pronounced, because the reasons for their
ancestors leaving their old homeland were less far-reaching and less
tragic than in real world history.
There were very few temples of the faith in bygone antiquity, with the
oldest temple considered the main one, and all of them have long ceased
to exist. Therefore, in Aporue as well as elsewhere, the Irim don't
build temples. They build humbler "prayerhouses" instead, equivalents of
real world synagogues. The vast majority of spiritual officials in the
Irim's Faith of the Maker are functionally teachers and preachers,
equivalent to real world rabbis. Real priests are far rarer, and like
the real world kohan priest of Judaism, they need to be of a certain
family lineage (that includes priesthood ancestry), in very good health,
highly moral, and so on.
Somewhat confusingly, the followers of Pilgrimism also refer to
themselves as the Faithful and to their religion as the Faith of the
Maker. To avoid confusion, this led to the Irim, particularly those
living in the global diaspora, specifying their faith further as the
Faith of the Lawgiver (this term's usage is largelly unique to the
Irim). The Faith of the Maker as observed by the Irim - i.e. the Faith
of the Lawgiver - was the predecessor to later Treiskadekanism a.k.a.
Pilgrimism. Several of Pilgrimism's founders, including some of its
twelve prophets, were Irim or half-Irim by ethnic and religious heritage
(e.g. Confid, the first prophet, of mostly Elladic and Irim heritage).
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The Faith of God's Loyal
There is also an equivalent of Islam in some parts of Aporue, especially
those lands that are ruled by the now rather diminished empire of the
Sillamian Sevaranate (an equivalent of the Ottoman Empire). The faith
has several internal philosophical branches, of varying popularity in
particular geographic regions, and these are often at odds with each
other in terms of theological and philosophical details. The main
branches of the faith have further smaller schools of thought, with
differing viewpoints on a range of subjects. Some of them more radical,
some of them more moderate, and everything in between.
Depending on the particular branch or school of the faith, people of the
faith have differing viewpoints towards the artistic depictions of
living beings, either in fine art or even in machine and tool designs.
Some are more wary of this for philosophical reasons, others are more
open and lenient towards the practice.
The faith has equivalents to real world prayer rooms, mosques, and
imams. Like Pilgrimism, it also has something of a monastic tradition,
though less overt and focused more on the equivalents of
philosopher-hermits and wandering monks.
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Symbols of the three monotheistic faiths
All three religions include stars as their sacred symbols.
The Holy Star and other religious symbols of Pilgrimism
There are plenty of varying religious symbols in Pilgrimism, depicting
basic as well as more complex concepts. Much like in real world history,
a lot of the typical stylings for these symbols depend on the
particular church or movement that uses them. Among the more basic
symbols, there are different symbols for just the Maker, just the
Prophets, or for both.
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One of the most widespread, widely seen religious symbols of Aporue, is a
simple, regular four-pointed star. Since Pilgrimism is meant to be an
equivalent of real world Christianity, it uses this regular-shaped,
four-pointed star in lieu of a Christian cross. Called simply the "Holy
Star", it represents The Maker, and its four points represent The Crux,
i.e. the Maker's first four prophets. In most cases, this symbol is
further divided on the inside to create geometrical shapes that bring
the references up to the number twelve, or the number thirteen (i.e. to
more complete depictions of the roster of prophets).
Holy Star symbols are a common element of religious architecture and
religious items, constructed or drawn from materials as varied as wood,
metals, glass, ink, and much more. A recurring and iconic element of
Aporuean religious architecture are elevated parts of a place of worship
- usually in the form of a steeple or spire - that carries a larger
Holy Star symbol at its top.
The Shield of the Maker (The Maker's Shielding Star) and other religious symbols of the Faith of the Lawgiver
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The Irim have two main traditional religious symbols. One is an Irim
candelabra or candlestick, but unlike the examples from real world
Judaism, its seven arms radiate from the trunk in a tree-like manner,
rather than in a single horizontal row when looked from above. Another,
more recent symbol of the faith is a six-pointed star, with very similar
shapes and proportions to the real world Star of David,
a.k.a. the Shield of David (IIRC, first popularized among the Jewish
diaspora by the Prague Jewish community around the Renaissance era).
A common feature of the Irim six-pointed star is that there's a smaller,
inner, six-pointed star (of the exact same proportions) at the centre
of the larger, outer six-pointed star. A slightly less common variation
is a regular circle at the centre of the six-pointed star, in lieu of a
smaller star. This circle is meant to represent the buckle of a handheld
shield, making the star into a symbol of the Maker's protection of the
Irim, the Nodaadim. For this reason, the symbol is often called "The
Shield of the Maker" and "The Maker's Shielding Star". Just like the
points and elements of a Pilgrimist Holy Star are meant to represent the
prophets of that religion, the one central element of the Maker's
Shielding Star is meant to represent the oneness of God, while the six
points of the star are meant to represent the major virtues of a pious
life.
Divine symbolic connotations of certain numbers in the monotheistic religions' cultures
Among the more superstitious-inclined followers of the faith, those
preoccupied with the notion of "holy numbers" (that certain numbers have
a certain divine quality to them, an idea similar to certain real
medieval and early modern religious ideas), certain numbers are seen as
somewhat sacred. Some philosophers and followers of Pilgrimism and the
Faith of the Lawgiver both share a certain reverence towards the numbers
4 and 7, whereas the followers of Pilgrimism also consider the numbers
12 and 13 to be exceptional, and the Irim also consider the number 6 to
be potentially reflective of faith and divinity (albeit less so than 4
and 7).
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Holidays in the three monotheistic faiths
There's a large number of different holidays in all three religions, and
some holidays are unique to a particular branch or church or movement
within each of the three religions.
For some quick insights into winter time holidays celebrated in Melza, both religious and more secular, see this article.
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The monotheistic religions' attitudes to science and learning
One of the more secular-related traits is that my Christianity
equivalent offers a lot of church support not only to science in
general, but also technological innovation. Hence why they already have
industrial revolution era advances in an otherwise Renaissance/Barocque
world.
Worshipping God through good works extends not only to doing good deeds
and spreading the good news/teachings (i.e. evangelion), but also
labouring and crafting for the greater glory of God. Hence why Aporue
has a clockpunk/steampunk-ish "Techno-Christianity". If you thought real world late-medieval tech like this was impressive, you haven't seen anything yet.
The Islam and Judaism analogues are also science-friendly, even their
more conservative branches, and many scientists and scholars of the
Orbis Furum are members of these two faiths.
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Animistic, shamanistic and other traditional religions
Some of the people of the Aporue continent also follow some traditional
religions or their remnant practices. Especially some of the
beastpeople, but also a fair few human cultures. This occurs
particularly in the more sparsely settled and wilder parts of the
continent, such as the northern and northwestern regions of Aporue.
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Behind the scenes: The portrayal of various religions and faiths within Orbis Furum storytelling
When it comes to plausibility given the socio-cultural and technological
context of the overall setting, you can rest easy. One of my goals was
to avoid making the fictional religions too contrived. There's a
Christianity, Judaism and Islam equivalent, and some old folk religion
of both humans and beastpeoples. People in Aporue are overwhelmingly
followers of the three newer, more global faiths, though minor pagan
elements have survived in some seasonal rural folklore (much like in the
real world). I felt that having a very historically inspired world,
with a roughly 15th to 18th century feel, but then adding completely
bizarre religions, would have undermined the believability. So, the
religions are patterned on real world Abrahamic religions and other
religious faiths, but with some interesting twists.
As for whether I'm biased in favour of any of these fictional religions,
you can equally rest assured. Like in all my fiction, there are no
deities running around or blatantly manifesting themselves. Given the
figure of The Pilgrim, you might occassionally have a character
experience a moment when they meet a man or woman who seems friendly and
wise, but mysterious, and then they leave and are never seen again. And
some interesting moments of good luck, what you'd religiously call
"providence". But that's about it. God isn't going to suddenly appear in
my setting and say "Hey ! I'm here ! And I give this faith preferential
treatment.". No. In keeping with my setting's relative realism, I
prefer the "in mysterious ways" approach. There also aren't any evil
god-like monsters or evil wizards around, threatening to end the world.
The drama is almost entirely mundane, as it's a very "low fantasy"
setting.
Though it is a fantasy setting, with non-human races, some subtle magic,
early industrial gadgets, etc., I treat the religious aspects of the
setting as if I was writing them within a historical novel. Most of the
other aspects of the setting are of the same nature, closer to
historical fiction in tone. It is definitely "low fantasy", rather than
"high fantasy".
On a final note, none of the fictional religions are meant to parody or
ridicule their real world counterparts, or "correct" them, or anything
of the sort. I'm writing about them with as much respect as I'd show
real religious faiths while writing a historical novel.
The apostle-esque twelve founders of the biggest Aporuean faith have
some parallels to real world early Christian saints, somewhat less so to
the actual apostles of Jesus. As with everything, it's a religious
history comparable to Christianity, but not exactly 1:1. For example, Sana has parallels with the likes of Saint Lucy and Saint Anastasia of Sirmium (association with healing), Verden is comparable with Saint Martin of Tours and the more legendary Saint George of Lydda
(a bit of an archetype for a "warrior saint" and "tough former soldier
converted to meek believer"), while Nikenos (of Ryma) is an obvious
fictional counterpart to Saint Nicholas of Myra
(equally associated with genorosity, charity, helping the weak, young
and elderly). While Confid might seem to play a Peter-like role, he came
from humble origins, but a slightly more scholarly background, and was
(in real world terms) part-Jewish, part-Greek (or, in Aporuean parlance,
part-Irim, part-Elladic). He has as much in common with apostle Peter
as with some late classical ancient Greek philosophers. The word apostle
doesn't exist in the Orbis Furum world, given the different beginnings
of the religion, and it not having a direct counterpart to Jesus to
serve as a direct, personal teacher (the teachings being passed on from
God through revelation or unexpected lessons in humility taught by the
Pilgrim). The counterparts of Judaism and Islam also have their
respected or holy men (and even women), and respected religious scholars
and philosophers, who serve as similar loose parallels to examples from
the real history of Judaism and Islam.
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Behind the scenes: Inspiration for the Orbis Furum religions' quirks and details
The scientific, technological and industrial aspects are something of a homage to the Hammerites and Mechanists of Thief, one of the works that inspired the setting. The tabletop RPG 7th Sea also had its fantasy Catholics, fantasy Protestants, fantasy Orthodox Christians and fantasy Muslims.
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Copyright
(C) 2014, 2019 - 2024 P. Molnár
(C) 2014, 2019 - 2024 Knight-Errant Studios
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