Aidegani

Aidegani is the native and ethnic religion of Onchera. As a polytheistic and naturalistic religion, Aidegani expresses belief and worship in physical and immanent deities within this realm and others. Aidegani does not regard souls to exist, and reincarnation, where it is believed in at all, is understood as a form of physical transfer. Central authority in Aidegani exists solely in the institution of the Elekoneta, and by extension the State of Onchera; however, this authority is not exercised, and there is no professional clergy. There is much diversity of belief and practice evident among practitioners across the 3,213 islands of the archipelago.

Aidegani's pantheon is broadly militarised, with the high-ranking gods commonly held to constitute the command structure of a permanent heavenly army at war with monsters originating from a fourth direction in space variously termed the weirdways or <placeholder>. The blood of these monsters reaches the world as Ouken blood algae, the basis of the Oncheran wine industry. Most adherents drink blood algae wine daily and at all major rites.

The religion is traditionally traced to Aide the Sun, the first Elekoneta, who unified the kingdoms of Onchera in 1821 and is held to have instituted the state cult of her own veneration as the goddess Mize. Scholars generally treat Aidegani as the codified form of older Batea and pre-Batea Iratssa religious traditions, with the figure of Aide serving as the central reorganising principle. The religion has no scripture in the strict sense, but a large literature of ritual handbooks, mytho-historical compilations, and regional collections is in circulation. Approximately 20% of the Oncheran population identifies as having no religion, though most retain Aidegani family and seasonal practices; smaller minorities follow Tan (5.9%) and other faiths (~2%).

Etymology

<placeholder>. The name Aidegani is generally understood to derive from Aide (the name of the founder-goddess) and the Oncheran suffix -gani, meaning roughly <placeholder: "way of," "house of," or "people of">. The term came into general use in the <placeholder> century EC, displacing earlier endonyms such as <placeholder> and <placeholder>. In older Tambuli sources the religion is sometimes referred to as <placeholder>.

Classification

Aidegani is classified by scholars as a polytheistic, naturalistic, and physicalist ethnic religion. It is polytheistic in that it recognises a large and open pantheon, with new gods admissible by collective recognition; naturalistic in that its deities are not transcendent but immanent in features of the physical world; and physicalist in that it denies the existence of incorporeal souls or spirits, holding that beings (including gods and the dead) are always materially constituted, though in matter that may be inaccessible to the living. These commitments make Aidegani structurally distinct from many other regional religions, particularly the Tan faith, whose <placeholder> commitments differ from Aidegani's, and the soul-based traditions of <placeholder>.

Comparative scholarship has noted similarities with <placeholder real-world religion in setting>, particularly in its ethnic and territorial character, its lay structure, and its veneration of nature and ancestors. Important differences include Aidegani's rejection of any soul-concept, its acceptance of new deifications through collective acclamation (notably the cult of the revolver-introducing foreign smith, elevated within the past <placeholder> centuries), and the central role of the heavenly war in its cosmology.

Cosmology

Aidegani cosmology divides existence into three primary realms — the world, Heaven, and the Undergarden — connected along a vertical axis, together with a fourth direction termed the weirdways, which is understood to extend sideways into space that the living cannot comprehend.

The world

The world is the realm of the living and of immanent deities. Gods are held to be physically present in their domains: the Ssokamaru in storms, Mize in the sun, the Wet Admiral in the Ouken Ocean, and so on. The 3,213 islands of Onchera are themselves understood to host innumerable lesser place-gods, particularly along coasts, in caves, on mountains, and at the coastal fortifications of the Wet Admiral, of which the West Onchera Reef is the most prominent.

Heaven

Heaven (<placeholder Oncheran term>) is held to lie upward from the world, and possibly also in directions the living cannot comprehend. It is a physical place in which the reconstituted dead reside, alongside the gods and deified heroes. Most adherents describe Heaven in terms recalling the <placeholder>: a populous, agriculturally productive realm with halls, fields, workshops, and standing armies, in which the dead continue something close to their former occupations. Warrior dead are commonly held to fight in ongoing skirmishes against the monsters of the weirdways. Heaven is ruled by the Ssokamaru as king of the gods, and is administered by a heavenly bureaucracy whose precise composition is the subject of regional and sectarian variation.

The Undergarden

The Undergarden (<placeholder Oncheran term>) lies downward from the world, and possibly also sideways. It is the realm of reconstitution: the dead, as their bodies decompose, are believed to arrive there piece by piece, where they are reassembled by a class of beings traditionally described as mushroom-like rakshasa, the gardeners. The Undergarden is ruled by the Underking, who oversees the gardeners' work. Reconstitution is held to take some time — traditionally <placeholder duration>, though estimates vary — after which the reconstituted being ascends to Heaven.

Because the gardeners' work is essential to a properly formed arrival in Heaven, cremation is generally discouraged in Aidegani. Cremation is held to constitute a direct conduit to Heaven, bypassing the Undergarden; the resulting arrivals are described in popular tradition as "incomplete" or "bureaucratically troublesome," and cremation is therefore reserved for <placeholder: certain categories of dead, e.g., heretics, plague-dead, criminals, war-dead beyond recovery>. Standard funerary practice is earth burial. Wealthy families historically interred their dead in dedicated burial caves, a practice that overlaps with the cave-feast tradition of Aide's cult (see §Practice).

The weirdways

The weirdways (<placeholder Oncheran term>) are a fourth direction in space, neither up nor down nor along any axis of ordinary experience. Aidegani theologians do not generally claim to understand the weirdways in detail; the doctrine is regarded as a frank statement of cosmographic limit. Monsters are held to originate from the weirdways, and the Ouken Algae Flood (2259) is traditionally attributed to a dying monster using the weirdways to transport the blood of its fallen comrades into the Ouken Ocean — an act unanticipated by the heavenly forces, who had been engaged in a successful battle elsewhere.

The heavenly war

A central and continuous element of Aidegani cosmology is the heavenly war: the permanent armed conflict between the gods and dead of Heaven, organised as an army under the Ssokamaru, and the monsters of the weirdways. Individual battles have been won and lost, but the war as a whole is held to have no end. The monsters' blood, leaking from the heavenly battlefield into the Ouken Ocean, is the blood algae that the West Onchera Reef is held to filter. The militarisation of the Aidegani pantheon is generally explained by reference to this war.

Deities

Aidegani recognises a very large pantheon. Major gods number in the dozens; minor and local deities number in the thousands, with new deifications continuing into the modern period.

Deified heroes and ancestors

Aidegani admits new gods through collective recognition. Historical figures of sufficient distinction may, after their deaths, come to be venerated in Heaven first as honoured ancestors and, with time, as minor gods with domains of their own. The most-cited modern example is the foreign revolver-smith, whose revolvers reached Onchera in the <placeholder> century and who came to be venerated as a god of <placeholder: firearms / smithcraft / the introduction of useful foreign things>. Many Iratssa heroes were similarly incorporated into Aidegani during the Batea period, while their gods were generally identified with Aidegani equivalents through a process resembling Tambuli <placeholder>.

Aide's mother, an unnamed merchant of <placeholder> who delivered the goddess alone in a storehouse cellar three levels underground, is venerated in many regional traditions as a patroness of pregnant women, of merchants, and of those undertaking difficult work without help.

Practice

Priesthood

Aidegani has no professional clergy. Any Oncheran of any age, sex, or station may perform rites, and ritual leadership is determined by social position rather than ordination. In a household, the head of household typically presides; in a military or governmental setting, the senior commander or magistrate; at state rites, the Elekoneta or her representative. Some lay practitioners develop substantial expertise and serve as informal ritual specialists in their communities, but they hold no institutional office.

The absence of a clergy is generally cited as the principal reason for both the high regional diversity of Aidegani and the unusually high (~20%) proportion of culturally Aidegani but non-practising Oncherans, who face no institutional pressure to remain observant.

Cave-feasts and the cult of Aide

The central rite of the cult of Aide the Sun is the cave-feast, traditionally held in a natural or excavated cave by candlelight or torchlight. The cave-feast is held to commemorate Aide's birth in the cellar of Tsserapiburam and historically functioned simultaneously as a religious rite and as a political-military council. Participants share food and blood algae wine, and discuss strategy, governance, and the affairs of state. Because adequately cool, dry, and large caves are an aristocratic resource, the cult of Aide has historically been associated with the Oncheran political and military elite, while broader popular devotion has gathered around Afasso and the Ssokamaru. The Elekoneta is the senior celebrant of the cave-feast at state level.

Scholars have noted that the structure of the cave-feast — a private elite gathering at which no binding oaths are sworn — is consistent with the Aidegani tendency to neglect Obellu and with the broader Oncheran political tradition of gekokujō.

Open-sky devotion and the cult of Afasso

In contrast to the enclosed and elite character of Aide's cult, the worship of Afasso is open-sky, individual or small-group, and broadly accessible. The characteristic posture is kneeling in direct sunlight, face raised toward the sun, often in fields or on hillsides. Afasso has historically been the patron of line soldiers and junior officers, particularly during spring campaign seasons; he is also widely venerated by youth, athletes, and the unmarried. His cult is the most explicitly populist of the major Aidegani cults, and it has no formal organisation, though lay brotherhoods and dawn-watch societies have arisen at various periods.

Funerary practice

Standard Aidegani funerary practice is earth burial, oriented to facilitate the work of the gardeners of the Undergarden. Decomposition is regarded as sacred labour, in which the body is becoming its reconstituted form rather than ending. Specific local practices vary: in <placeholder>, the body is wrapped in <placeholder>; in <placeholder>, the body is exposed to <placeholder> before burial; and so on.

Cave burial is an aristocratic practice, in which a family interred its dead in a dedicated cave or cave-chamber sufficient to permit decomposition without disturbing the cave's other uses. Burial caves are frequently the same caves used for cave-feasts of the family's living members, an arrangement that some commentators have read as a deliberate juxtaposition of the Aidegani cycle of death and reconstitution.

Blood algae wine

Oncheran blood algae wine is the standard drink at all major Aidegani rites and a fixture of daily Oncheran life. Theologically it is held to be the blood of the monsters of the weirdways, leaked into the Ouken Ocean from the heavenly battlefield and harvested through the West Onchera Reef. It is also widely used as a household antiseptic and stain (the latter often inadvertently). Its consumption is uncontroversial: drinking the blood of the cosmic enemy is regarded as ordinary, even desirable, rather than transgressive.

Household and ancestral rites

Most Oncheran households maintain a small altar or altars for the veneration of family ancestors in Heaven, and for the placation or invocation of local place-gods. The form and frequency of these rites vary by region, class, and family; the Wordbook entries on <placeholder> and <placeholder> provide further detail.

Festivals

The Aidegani festival calendar is organised around the four equinoxes and solstices, one for each of the Four Seasonal Generals, supplemented by a number of additional festivals of varying scope.

History

Pre-Batea Iratssa religion

The religious traditions of the pre-Batea Iratssa inhabitants of the Oncheran archipelago are imperfectly known, but are generally reconstructed as <placeholder: animistic, place-focused, with prominent ancestor and hunt traditions>. A number of Iratssa heroes were incorporated into the later Aidegani pantheon as deified ancestors; their gods were generally identified with Aidegani equivalents (see §Deities).

Batea period and proto-Aidegani

With the arrival of the Batea people from approximately 1st century EC, Mira-derived religious traditions entered the archipelago and progressively merged with the Iratssa substrate. By the late first millennium EC, the resulting tradition — proto-Aidegani — was recognisably continuous with later Aidegani in its pantheon, its physicalist metaphysics, and its lay structure. Tambuli sources of the Gamadi dynasty period note Oncheran religious practices in some detail, including the industrial production of blood algae wine.

Unification and the state cult (1821 onward)

The unification of the Oncheran kingdoms under Aide the Sun in 1821 established the institutional centre of Aidegani in the Elekonetadom and gave the cult of Aide its enduring state character. Aide is traditionally held to have instituted her own worship as a deliberate political act, and to have formalised the cave-feast as the central rite of state religion.

The Algae Flood and the feudal era

The Ouken Algae Flood (2259) — attributed in Aidegani tradition to the dying weirdways-curse of a defeated monster — coincided with the beginning of Onchera's long feudal era. Religious interpretations of the flood varied; the most influential held that the disaster was an unanticipated consequence of a heavenly victory rather than a punishment, and that no party in the world had been at fault. The fragmentation of Oncheran political authority during the command period was accompanied by a corresponding fragmentation of Aidegani practice into regional variants, with Obellu particularly neglected in this period.

Modern era

The reunification of Onchera under Izaro the Jawless in the early 31st century, and the subsequent industrialisation and imperial expansion of the Ariaku period, were accompanied by a renewed state promotion of the cult of Aide. Aide-shrines were established across the territories of the former Hadashule dynasty. The cult of Afasso, already popular in the lower ranks, expanded with the size of the Fifth Sunly Army, but was not generally promoted abroad.

The modern period has also seen the development of <placeholder>, the partial secularisation of the Oncheran population (~20% non-practising), and a recent revival of interest in Obellu associated with the establishment of constitutional and parliamentary institutions.

Demographics

Aidegani is the religion of approximately 72.1% of the population of Onchera, or roughly 72 million people. A further 20% identifies as non-religious, the majority of whom retain Aidegani family and seasonal practices. Smaller minorities follow Tan (5.9%) and other faiths (~2%). Diaspora communities in <placeholder> and <placeholder> maintain Aidegani practice in modified form.

See also

• Onchera
• Elekoneta
• Aide the Sun
• Ouken blood algae
• Tan
• Iratssa
• Batea people

Notes

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References

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