While worship takes a great many forms across the known world, the practice of maintaining a personal shrine is quite common. The shape of the shrine varies, but the most integral part is the use and placement of the Icons.
If one is sufficiently well-versed in local culture, viewing the personal shrine of an individual can tell you a great deal about them, psychologically speaking. To place the
Lady of Amber Strings facing and paired with the
Lord of Obsidian Keeps is praying for romantic love and stability in life. To replace the Lord of Obsidian Keeps with the
Moonlit Rake in this pairing comunicates a desire for a more...carnal type of relation.
Of course, other wishes can be communicated in this fashion, past and above the more base emotions. There are Icons of protection, of harvest, and of craftsmanship. Ones that speak to love, and vengeance, and other more abstract emotions and ideas. If there is something that Humans can conceptualize, someone has placed it upon their shrine.
This includes negative thoughts and concepts, though they are likely placed there in an attempt to ward off what they represent through offerings, in the inverse of what one would place more positiely connotated Icons for.
On the topic of offerings they, like the Icons themselves and their meaning, are somewhat open to personal interpretation. Many take it as a sign to sacrifice something, most often a personal possession or something that had been earned through effort. It is not uncommon for the center of a shrine to have a bowl set within where a flame could be lit, and the offerings burned. Others think the sacrifice is to be a more personal affair, involving Aether crystals which are then condensed by the paritioner. The Aether within the crystal, when taken in during prayer, is said carry the blessing of the related Icons.
There are, of course, other options for all these facets of worship, but to list them all would have both writer and reader sitting till the end of days.
The form that priests take within a society that takes no standardized form of worship and clergy, they can vary a great deal in appearance and operation. Even if the term of 'priest' can be uniformly applied is up for debate.
The
Congregation of the Silver Garden, who speak the good word about the
Gardner of Silver Thorns, are known for their silver gloves which they wear as their symbol of ordainment.
On the other hand, the 'priests' of the
Moonlit Rake really have no central authority of worship, nor holy vestements of any kind, nor do they really have an official recognition. They're pretty much all just individuals who chose to espouse the ideology that the Moonlit Rake represents.
Comments