This is an in-setting written work. It is written from a particular perspective and may or may not be factually accurate.
On the Endurance of Faith Without Gods
Collected from incomplete notes written around the year Y9910*Much has been written about the gods worshiped throughout the world, enough to fill the innumerable tomes that have occupied the attentions of countless scholars. Curiously less well-studied, at least in the universities and scholariums around the Chaska Sea which I have had the fortune of attending, have been the faiths without deities, largely overlooked by formal research. Even as worship of the pantheonic gods grows ever more influential, religions of spirits, ancestors, and other subjects of veneration endure.This work does not attempt to catalog these faiths. Such an effort would be foolish, for they take such a wide number of forms that vary endlessly. Instead, I seek to disprove the presumption of some influential theologians, who will not be named out of respect, that these beliefs are obsolete relics, remnants of past cultures that no longer hold relevance and will eventually fade away. This notion is the result of a blindness towards beliefs they consider crude and a disregard for religion that defies simple categorization.
In this work I will focus specifically on the faiths of the peoples residing in the lands around the Phiora and northern Chaska seas, as these have been my areas of study for the last several decades. Multiple excellent examples can be found there, as these regions have long-entrenched organized religions centering around the worship of gods. Elsewhere, non-deific faiths are much more widely worshiped, to the degree that gods hold little sway. I will not attempt to speak as to the complexities of faith in these lands.
Religions that omit gods cannot be easily supplanted by those that include them, as the ruling elites in Koritan have learned well. Even under the watchful eyes and forceful hands of the Malavischan inquisitors, pre-Koritanite animist and druidic practices remain strong. Centuries of repression have successfully driven traditional Razgoviri nature worship and soul-dreaming out of the cities and larger towns, but the people of the frontiers are not so easily led from their faiths. Distant from the major population centers, the dreamers and the mystics and the druids continue their ways.
But their worship is not unchanged. It is not an archaism that has forgotten to die. It has evolved, it has shifted, it has grown. The rites and worship have been adapted in response to the new potentates of Razgovir. The old faiths, as their followers choose to call them, have become more protective, almost insular in some manners, even as the beliefs at their hearts continue.
And this is the truth as to the endurance of these teachings. As others have noted, with no coupling to a church or priesthood adaptations can and are made by any that hold the faith. This is no revelation - many, even those that dismiss these beliefs, have written on this. But it is the first crack in the foundation for theologians that dismiss these religions as antiquated.
This is the first manner by which these faiths survive.
Now consider an example more complex. In Viridia, the church of Harinna holds great sway. While the goddess does not enjoy the status of a state religion, as Malavisch does in Koritan, the monarchy has for millennia tied itself to the Indomitable Sun. Reverence of the deity is deep-seated, even compared to her peers, and an inseparable part of the society of the Dominion. Yet how would her devotees, every-man and cleric alike, respond to the knowledge that aspects of her worship predate their church, their holy texts, their codifications, their very knowledge of the goddess?
All who worship Harinna know of the importance of ritual. Participation in the ceremonies of the church keeps chaos at bay, not only mere prayer but offerings and exhortations to the divine and her saints. These practices are dutifully kept, all in Harinna's name. But they are not Harinnan in nature, at least not originally.
Before the pantheonic gods gained roots in Thadria, hero-worship was the norm. Though this was not the same as the veneration of hero-gods in Hellea, it was not entirely unlike it either. Great figures - kings, chiefs, warriors, mages, any who achieved glory in life - were revered in death as well, given gifts for wealth in afterlife then entreated to return to the mortal world to continue their fight against the dangers faced by their people. There were spirits and celebrated ancestors to this faith, but no gods. When what we now call the Chaskan pantheon started to become known in Thadria, this faith did not die or disappear. It fused and melded instead. The heroes did not vanish. That they were now called saints and had a goddess above them mattered little to their followers.
Harinnan clergy will deny the source of their traditions, and yet it is true. Even many thousands of years later, these roots are still clear.
This is the second manner by which these faiths survive.
Let us examine a third case. The gnolls of the Urra Highlands in eastern Thadria adhere to a lunar religion. In their faith, dead souls reside on Abashmu, or alternatively collectively form the mass of the moon. When introduced to the gods of the Chaskan pantheon, they did not abandon their beliefs. Neither did they allow their existing practices to be subsumed into any new religion - rather, the reverse occurred. They learned of Shai and saw no contradiction between the then-foreign beliefs and those of their own. The Impassive Judge was welcomed with open arms into their veneration of the moon, becoming the Moonlight Guide who shepherds the souls of the deceased to the lunar object. Their existing faith continued, and continues, unabated. Syncretism moves in both directions.
This is the third manner by which these faiths survive.