Dunmari Religious Practice
This page describes the religious practices of the Dunmari people, focusing on the worship, temples, rites, and rituals associated with the Dunmari Pantheon.
Worship
Dunmari worship practice is focused on two main distinct but equally important sets of rituals and traditions, one communal and one individual/familial, with a third strand of ritual practice associated with mystery cults.
The Dunmari see themselves as in communion with the Five Siblings, who are part of the Dunmari community. Temple practice, public festivals, and monuments represent the outward facing, communal aspects of worship, celebrating and giving thanks for their community with the gods. Personal prayer and family practice, on the other hand, is focused on individual needs, giving thanks, asking forgiveness, offering prayers for guidance and aid, and how individual relationships with one or more gods are celebrated. Finally, mystery cults explore the esoteric, secret side of the gods. Some focus on understanding the will of the gods, the hidden divine knowledge of the higher purpose of the Dunmari people. Others focus on achieving greater communion with the gods, through esoteric practices that can only be taught by direct instruction from master to initiate.
A Dunmari Praise song:
Personal Prayer
Although temples and communal religious rites play an important role in Dunmari society, most worship does not occur at them. Daily prayers, contemplation, and thanksgiving, as well as many personal and family rites, occur instead in personal or individual shrines.
Although these are called shrines, physically they are portable icons and statuary of the gods. Most people have one of each of the Five gods, although some will have multiple versions, and occasionally individual travelers will just carry one. Mostly these are small icons, often statutes, that are easily portable and can be carried anywhere and set up easily to form a sacred space.
Daily prayers, family rituals, and even acknowledgement of festivals among travelers who cannot return to a village or temple happen before these icons. They are sometimes seen as part of the family, and some have been passed down for many generations, although occasionally they will be cremated with the deceased as a way to ensure the spirits of the dead reach the halls of the gods.
Temples in Dunmari Religion
The focus of worship practices that take place at temples is the community. Ceremonies about joining and leaving the community – coming of age rites and funerals in particular – take place at temples, as do communal acts of thanksgiving and prayer.
Because most Dunmari have traditionally not lived in villages, being instead dispersed across the landscape and only coming together occasionally, temples also are often some of the most significant permanent structures in the Dunmari landscape. Because of this, they are the focus of the community, and because of the intertwined nature of the state and the religion, temples also serve as the backbone of state administration.
Temples and Monuments
Temples are often some of the most significant permanent structures across the Dunmari landscape, and the temple communities that grow up around them have traditionally been the focus of state administration. Many of the traditional roles of government – taxation, taking a census, resolving disputes and administering the law – are organized around temples.
Architecturally, there are several different temple styles in Dunmar. The traditional style, which describes most temples in Dunmar, is a pentagonal building, with an entryway at one corner and altars to the five siblings on the five walls. Jeevali’s altar is usually placed opposite the entryway. More elaborate designs add wings to two or more of the other corners, and elaborate on the entryway, extending it into a nave of sorts. These additions often house administrative or state functions. Many temples are also part of complexes that included living quarters for the priests and administrative space for state purposes, such as meeting chambers, private council chambers, and storerooms.
All these designs, though, reserve the central space, surrounded by the gods, for the community, with the idea that the Dunmari are surrounded and protected by their gods. This is the space used for community rituals, but also for public trials and pronouncements of judgement, and other public functions of the state. The most common organization has pews facing Jeevali, but this is not the only arrangement, and some elaborate temples even have moveable pews.
Shrines to individual gods, although rare, do also exist. Typically, these are not freestanding buildings or places of worship, but rather parts of other buildings. Most commonly, shrines to Aagir are often present in fortresses and other military buildings, but libraries or other places of learning may have shrines to Laka, hospitals shrines to Jeevali, and so on. Unlike temples, these usually don’t have altars and are not typically set up as areas of public worship. Instead, they have statuary, larger and more permanent versions of the icons that people carry as their personal tokens of the gods, and are generally semi-private spaces for personal prayer and reflection.
Shrines to individual gods, as part of cult complexes and monasteries, are also a significant component of mystery cults. These buildings are invariably dedicated solely to the god of the mystery cult, although they often contain shrines or icons to the other gods as well, and are always part of a larger complex of buildings that serve the cult.
The third style of religious architecture common in Dunmari culture are monuments. These vary in style and purpose, but are united by a few features. Most importantly, these structures usually give thanks for a specific thing: the life of a great person, an important victory, or another notable event. These typically are not specifically miracles, but reflect important moments in Dunmari life, and the monument serves to thank the gods for their role in achieving success.
The most common monuments are associated with the ruling Samraats, as elaborate monuments are often used as a way of signaling the power and favor of the Samraat and thus the people. Sometimes the Samraat is buried in their monument, and they become royal tombs; this is particularly the case for the Aatmaji dynasty, whose royal tombs outside Kharsan are notable, other times they are more like shrines, and often they are pure monuments with no secondary purpose or function. But these are not the only kind of monuments, and others have grown up around various significant events in the past.
The Priesthood
The priesthood of the Five Divines is, in many ways, inseparable from the Dunmari state. The Samraat, as the acknowledged representative of the gods on Taelgar, is formally the head of the priesthood. Officially, the Samraat controls all priestly appointments, and has the power to both assign priests to temples and dismiss priests from their posts. They are in principle supposed to use this power in accordance with divine guidance, and judiciously. Historically, these judgements, especially for important temples, were usually made in conjunction with an informal council of priests of notable temples. And in practice, the current priest of a temple tends to choose a successor, and only rarely is that choice rejected, at least for most of the small community temples scattered across the land.
More recently, this tradition has changed somewhat, especially in the west, as the civil bureaucracy has grown larger, and the Samraat court has sought more direct control. Now, the head priests of major temples are often asked to retire when a new Samraat comes to rule. A growing class of emeritus priests now exist in the west, who lack a traditional role in Dunmari society. In the east, many now do not even present the choice of a new priest to the Samraat court for official approval, instead turning to the local leaders to ratify the choice.
Like much of Dunmari society, there is no real hierarchy below the Samraat. Again, in principle, all priests are equal in the eyes of the gods, although of course those who run historically important temples or temples in large cities have a lot more political power than those in small, out of the way places. But there is no formal system of hierarchy in between the Samraat and the local priest.
Small temples are often run by just the priest, usually with one or more acolytes, and almost always with at least a few lay assistants, who are generally involved in the administrative side of the temple. Larger temples, especially those in big cities, are still run by a head priest, but may have associate priests to assist, and a much larger body of acolytes and lay assistants.
Entry into the priesthood is universally through training and study with an existing priest, and it is typically assumed that a priest will be divine-touched, usually meaning they have access to some form of divine magic, although sometimes this could mean they are particularly skilled at reading the signs of divine will. Most priests have a personal connection with a specific god, but theologically this is not supposed to influence their role in leading the community in communion with the entire Divine Family.
Reflecting the sense that priests are in some sense one of the divine family, they are referred to as Brother or Sister.
The only formal, religious role of priests is to preside over festivals and public rites. In practice, most are also community leaders and civil administrators as well as religious figures.
Rites and Rituals
Rites and rituals in Dunmari culture are separated into communal rites, which take place at temple, and private rites, which take place before the family shrine.
The most important communal rite is the coming of age ceremony, which is a major marker of adulthood and reflects the choice of the original Dunmari to leave Hkar and seek their destiny. This ceremony is usually celebrated about once a year at each temple, with all those who reach the age of adulthood in the past year participating in a communal ceremony.
Birth and marriage, in contrast, are seen as private rites. Naming and marriage ceremonies require no witnesses beyond the gods, and are usually celebrated as family affairs with just the family icons to give witness of the gods.
Funerals
Funerals have some aspects of both private and communal rites. The private goodbye, the farewell to the body, is a family ceremony that involves the cremation of the dead, happens soon after death and is a private rite; in part this is practice, due to the difficulty of being able to return to a temple immediately. But the real funeral, the farewell to the soul, takes place later, at a temple, and is usually a communal affair, where many souls are welcomed into the halls of the gods at once.
In the Dunmari tradition, the first rite of death, the farewell to the body, must take place as soon after death as is practical. This rite is the private goodbye, the time of mourning and sorrow to say farewell to the dead as they embark on their journey to the Afterlife. Bodies are burned in funeral pyres, often with small tokens to help them on their journey, especially things that remind the soul of the good they did in life, or remind them of the gods. Sometimes the small icons of the Dunmari gods that most Dunmari carry are burned as well. If a person had a particular vice that might keep their spirit from leaving for the Land of the Dead, this may also be burned, usually placed at the bodies’ feet, to remove the temptation to stay. Usually the ashes from cremation are scattered before 10 days have passed, but sometimes they are kept and interred in temple crypts during the second rite.
The second rite of death happens later, often much later, as part of a communal ceremony. There is no strict time limit, but it must happen at least 10 days after death, and usually happens within a year of death. This is a ritual carried out in a temple, where candles are lit for each soul being celebrated, and the colors of the flames are interpreted as indicating the final disposition of the soul. This communal funeral is usually followed by a celebratory feast honoring the dead. As part of the ceremony, small mementos of each dead soul are often created as a way for those close to the dead person to keep the memory of their soul near.