Taharjin
The dragon goddess Taharjin is the most central figure in Berythian legend. Her worship hails from a time long past, aeons before any modern Orders of magic were founded.
We know of her today because her story was written down in the Ildhuat Soher, the first recorded history of magic, roughly 3000 years ago. The descriptions in this book are limited to her role in the emerging Berythian Tradition, which cherry-picked certain magically-aligned features of her mythos and discarded most of the religious trappings.
As her original devotees did, early Berythians viewed her as responsible for bringing life on earth, and magic, into being. This she did by breathing fire upon the planet’s northern pole, which the Tradition’s mages still today consider the ultimate source of magic and consequently, a holy site. As testament, it bears her name, “Taharjin’s Flame”; generalized, this is also the name the Tradition uses to describe the world entire.
Taharjin was also a tutelary deity, having educated the first human, named Ruha, in the Ways of Magic. He went on to found a kingdom of legend, Devokan, which Taharjin eventually destroyed due to corruption. Ruha, who survived, went on to instruct the Tradition’s great eponymous Founder, Beryth. While teaching lineages are formally traced back only as far as Beryth’s own disciples, known as the Twenty, to avoid the presumption of an ultimately Divine founder, she is poetically credited as the Promethean spark that set the history of apprenticeship into motion.
Berythians otherwise demoted Taharjin’s character from the focus of a living, breathing religion to purely symbolic use within arcane texts, wherein she is representative of the Fire element and employed as part of an encrypted magical language. The Sage, Beryth, never mentioned her by name in his Dialogues, but his references to “The Dragon” are taken to mean the same thing, and this term is used as a euphemism for a number of magical operations and processes. It is also the name for a common alchemical compound, used as a base for decoctions.
The early texts that mention Taharjin are collectively referred to as ‘The Legends’, suggesting their lack of certain truth, and, for several reasons, mainstream Berythians are quick to distance themselves from any allegation that they worship or view her as an actual god. Groups of extremists throughout history have done this, and though no organized religion has ever emerged as a result, reference to the ‘Brood of Taharjin’, especially in works of popular literature, has lent credence to the idea of some Taharjin-worshipping cabal lurking in the shadows. It is likely, given the term’s momentum, that at least a few fringe wizards out there could adopt the badge proudly.
Taharjin
Taharjin
Comments