Fonδaiš Wīštā̊: Difference between revisions

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'''Pontōis Wītōs''' encompasses the collection of beliefs, rituals, and mythologies that originated in the [[Northern States|Northian]] culture in the forms of both public religion and cults.   
'''Fonδaiš Wīštā̊''' encompasses the collection of beliefs, rituals, and mythologies that originated in the [[Northern States|Northian]] culture in the forms of both public religion and cults.  The "classical" form of Fonδaiš Wīštā̊ spirituality that is most prominently discussed, and considered culturally canonical in the 19th and early 20th centuries, is that inferred from the Epic tradition and Late Canon tradition, a considerable body of poetry and prose dating from the middle of the 7th century BCE through 2nd century CE. 
 
Ponθōiš Wiḥštō is the source of a revivalist religion in recent decades in DNS often called the Fonδaiš Wohū, or "path of goodness".


==Name==
==Name==
The name Pontōis Wītōs is dissolved from the phrase ''pontōihwītōs'', from the ''Epic of Samana'' or ''Samanēsongos'' verse 1120 (GNr. 449), where a correct attitude towards sacred things is demanded by a disgruntled, downtrodden traveller speaking to a priest who obviously does not take his position seriously.  The traveller, whose home was destroyed by floods, seeks to enter the service of a variety of merchants, herdsmen, and craftsmen, but nowhere is his service enduring.  Having learned that the priest would rather catch a fever than hold the annual festival, the traveller seeks to blame the ill of inconstancy or transience in his life on the priest's dereliction of duty: ''for as I travel from land to land / and land and land turn me away / thou swayest from god to god / denying every his proper due''.
The name Pəntaiš Wīštā̊ is dissolved from the ''Epic of Samana'' verse 1120 (GNr. 449), where a correct attitude towards sacred things is demanded by a disgruntled, downtrodden traveller speaking to a priest who obviously does not take his position seriously.  The traveller, whose home was destroyed by floods, seeks to enter the service of a variety of merchants, herdsmen, and craftsmen, but nowhere is his service enduring.  Having learned that the priest would rather catch a fever than hold the annual festival, the traveller seeks to blame the ill of inconstancy or transience in his life on the priest's dereliction of duty: ''for as I travel from land to land / and land and land turn me away / thou swayest from god to god / denying every his proper due''.
 
The word ''pəntā̊'' is the plural of ''pəntā̊'' "path, way", and ''wištō'' is an adjective meaning "seen, known".  Emologically speaking, Fonδaiš Wīštā̊ is ultimately from Proto-Erani-Eracuran (PEE) *póntoh₁es and *wéydtos; however, because the name is a poetic term of no obvious antiquity, appearing in a younger part of the Epics, it is not generally thought this combination of words had any spiritual significance at the level of PEE culture.
 
==Canon==
The religious canon of the Northians was not centrally codified like that of [[Valstígr]] but rather was preserved through Epic poetry and a small quantity of other materials.  When Fonδaiš Wīštā̊ was practiced, the religious texts are assumed to have been part of an oral tradition until priesthoods lost their independence in the 15th century.  Though strict memorization by rote could preserve texts accurately, a large body of religious literature is assumed to have been lost to forgetfulness and changes in ritual practice that necessitated the literature in the first place.
 
Interest in Northian culture and religion intensifying in the 18th century, a number of scholars worked successively to extract the "primitive material" from preserved editions of the Epics, whose content had been known to be heterogeneous for centuries.  Their work was first published in 1740 under the title ''The Gales of the Primitive Northians'', after the repetitive, declamatory poetry most characterized by arcane language and found embedded, in stark contrast, with the fluid and florid verse of the Epics.  It was thought that such crude, unpolished verse could only accompany a loud, shouting voice, hence the term "Gale".  Other types of verses have been discerned from the Epic corpus, which consisted of over a half-million verses, spread through 103 known works, composed between 600 and 200 BCE.
 
Modern scholarship divides the Galic corpus into the six following categories both chronologically and thematically:
*Galic hymns
**Period I (to 1500 BCE)
**Period II (to 1300 BCE)
**Period III (to 1200 BCE)
*Pseudo-Gales (between 1500 and 800 BCE)
**Sacerdos corpus
**Lay corpus
**Mundane corpus
*Galic sacerdotal verses (between 1200 and 800 BCE)
*Didaskalic material (between 800 and 650 BCE)
*Transitional prose (between 700 and 650 BCE)
 
===Galic hymns===
The Galic hymns are some of the oldest poetry not only of Nordic-Northian culture but also in all Erani-Eracuran languages.  They characteristically addresses deities directly (in the second person, using terms like "thou" or "you") and make use of highly repetitve phrases.  The Galic metre is uniform, consisting of 13 syllables divided by one caesura.  The meter is sensitive to syllable weight, requring a number of specific feet about the caesura, which alternates in two locations (e.g. 5/8 then 8/5).  Rhyme may or may not be observed in one of several patterns.  This striking uniformity in form has led scholars to believe that the Galic hymns were composed by a single school of poets, composed within a short time frame, or heavily redacted on several occsaions.
 
There are a total of 197 hymns that are considered Galic, identified by their language, metre, and genre.  The exact dating of the Galic hymns "is probably never to be known for sure", as while the language and form of the hymns are quite consistent, historical contexts are subjec to dispute.  For example, G77 reads "this vessel I fashion in thy lunar light for thy lunar light", seemingly referring to cold forging of copper, common in the MBA but obsolete in the LBA.  Upon this line scholars like Tholi (1887) dated the verse to 2000 BCE, but his contemporary Carlson says the vessel is pottery and not chronologically relevant.  Currently, it is held that Period I (pre-gross recension) hymns are likely to have been written at the very end of the MBA (i.e. 2100 BCE – 1600 BCE), shortly before the "gross recension" around 1500 BCE. 
 
Fragments of "old material", which may significantly predate the recension, are discernible according to some authorities by their odd phrasing, metre, or non-rhyme when the context is rhyming.  This non-rhyme, no longer held to be primitive laxity or poetic license, may have been intentional to call attention to these phrases.  Old material is thought not to have been composed by the Galic priests but incorporated by them into the Galic hymns, often with striking repetitiveness across multiple hymns when other phrases are less frequently repeated.  Typical old material include the epithets of the Sun, such as ''βiβižuuoštī lōxštai aiiai'' "she who is abiding always in her illumination", and routines of the Sun, ''diuuōi fóṇδoā yaδīḥ'' "[she] who wends the paths in heaven", "of swift wheels and strong axles", etc.  Almost all of the "old material" thus identified are oriented towards the Sun, but solar orientation alone is not proof of old material as the Galic sect continued to venerate the Sun for many centuries.
 
The recensions of the Galic hymns has become broadly accepted after the 1930s, though currently scholars are divided about the number of recensions of the Gales.  They divide the corpus into, at minimum, early and late groups, on both form and thematic criteria.  The early group is assigned an MBA date of composition and a location in [[Acrea]], while the late group may have been composed elsewhere and by definition postdate the gross recension.  Thus, the early group shows signs of added phrases, terms, and possibly concepts that are proper to the late group.  Gherm adds a "middle recension" around 1300 BCE but does not identify any hymns that were composed at that point.  Whether these recensions reflect changes in the priesthood's location, organization, or ideology is debated.
 
Given the likelihood that the Galic hymns were composed by a relatively closed group of priests who abided by a common metre and shared a language, it has been asked how Galic hymns might represent the broader Nordic-Northian religion and culture.  Some authorities believe that the Galic hymns were composed by a divergent religious sect who subscribed to the (otherwise unknown in Nordic tradition) notion that the gods shared a "common spirit" (in Rasmussen's terminology) or "divine object" (in Petersen's) amongst themselves, namely the maintenance of the natural environment, and the beliefs of the Galic priests would thus indicate or connote a "henolatrous" doctrine, being worshipful of one aspect that all the deified personalities share above other aspects of those personalities.
 
===Pseudo-Galic hymns===
The Pseudo-galic hymns were named this way because the scholars who pioneered the specialized study of Galic verse believed they were later imitations of the Galic hymns after the latter had become part of a sacred religious canon.  This view is no longer upheld by modern scholars, but the relative chronology between the Galic and Pseudo-galic group is still considered correct.  While some Pseudo-galic hymns show a comparable degree of archaicism to the Galic ones, Crammer has demonstrated by 1950 that Pseudo-galic hymns do not contain the variety of archaic formations that the Galic hymns do and instead shows signs of an evolved language that borrowed phrases from the Galic hymns. 
 
How much the Pseudo-Galic material postdates the Gales themselves is considered difficult to assess because the Pseudo-Gales do not address topics similar to the Gales, which would otherwise provide a good example of how the language would have been used in similar contexts.  Crammer asserts that an interval of 300 to 500 years would not seem "beyond the realm of possibility", thus placing the Pseudo-Gales around 1200 to 1000 BCE; again, the Pseudo-Gales are closely aligned with Galic metre.
 
===Sacerdotal verse===
The sacredotal verses are a comparatively little-studied group of poetry that, most saliently, are found with the Gales but shift the perspective to the priest, who is never directly mentioned in the Gales.  These include phrases like "we lift up this gift" and "we exchange kisses before your presence".  They are often descriptions of what the priests are doing while conducting rituals.  There are several hypotheses regarding the origins of the sacerdotal verses, a common one being that these were originally reminder notes to priests that were later canonized and understood as part of the liturgy. 
 
Liturgical scholars tend to pay the most attention to the sacerdotal verses as they reveal the physical liturgy that would have underlaid the need for the Gales.  Curiously, not all things described in the sacerdotal verses are "physically performable", such as SP1022 "as your beneficiaries, we exchange our bloods for your bloods and do dissipate it over the entire earth", and are clearly meant to be understood spiritually.  But if these are not tips for the priests, even in the sense of a representative ritual, it has been asked whether these are phrases to be uttered but are not part of a set hymn, and, if so, what their provenances are.  There is probably an explanatory character in the sacerdotal verses that are comments on the rituals more than mere instructions of them, and the need for comments may reflect an increasing importance in the theology behind rituals over the rituals themselves.
 
===Didaskalic prose===
The didaskalic prose, which number 60 chapters and over 100,000 words, are the largest body of pre-Epic material in the Northian language, far out-sizing the Galic, Pseudo-Galic, and Sacerdotal corpora put together.  Most of this material is not metrical or rhyming and instead take the form of questions and answers by one of the Didaskaloi or "teachers".  Some questions and their answers are given by named individuals, whose lifetimes could thus be computed, but a large portion of them are anonymous, given only as "the teacher responded".
 
The language of the didaskalic prose is in a very flowery form of the Galic language, using many and lengthy participle phrases and expressions that, by comparison with other received texts, are hardly imaginable as ''verbatim'' quotations of a person's spontaneous speech.  Nevertheless, this editorial activity is thought to have been very close in time or contemporary to the Didaskaloi, as the text does not otherwise betray signs of later composition.
 
Most modern scholars concur the didaskalic prose is not a reflection of spontaneous speech of any person in the 8th and early 7th centuries BCE.  This is shown, by 650, by the more familiar epics, whose characters speak with diction and grammar far easier to understand.  The didaskalic prose frequently goes to extreme lengths to select arcane words and unusual compounds, as shown by the proliferation of the genitive and locative infinitive, instrumental subjects in indirect discourse, optatives with initial accent, as well as to retrofit non-productive and unetymological morphologies to words, such as the s-stems in -āḫ or the i-stem in -ai to neuter nouns. 
 
The editor or editors evidently introduced these forms without much regard for internal consistency, with the result that the didaskalic prose yields over 4,000 ''hapax legomena''.  Perhaps ironically, these words have been considered an impediment recovering the text's nuanced meaning, as a ''hapax legomenon'' may merely be an ornamented version of an understood word or instead be a genuinely different term.  The ornamentation connects the Didaskaloi to the Gales, which would have been about 1,000 years old to Northians and increasingly difficult to understand intuitively.  It is a reflection of the great liturgical import of the Gales which the editors seek to impute to the words of the Didaskaloi.
 
==Theology==
The theology of Fonδaiš Wīštā̊ has been the subject of rigorous debate in both ancient and modern times.  Modern scholarship has described Fonδaiš Wīštā̊ as having elements of polytheism, ditheism, monotheism, and even atheism.
 
===Didaskalic orthodoxy===
Much about the nature of gods has been inspired by the teachings of the Didaskaloi.  While they did not speak much about the nature of the gods, some statements are at the foundation of Fonδaiš Wīštā̊ theology and are rarely controverted. 
{{quote|... I state [the gods] exist no more than good or evil.  No man may put good or evil into his hand, indeed not more than he might see, hear, or touch a god.  The illumination above our heads and the mud under our feet, they are not.
 
We understand [the gods] exist because we see their images and the movement in them.
 
Go as you will, but nowhere in the world will you find the gods.  The gods you can never find in any corner of any world, though you may seek them every waking hour.}}
 
Araotā attributes this following story, which may be apocryphal, that contemplates what god should and should not be to the Didaskaloi but does not record which one:
{{quote|You fall into a well and, being unable to ascend out of it and hearing no answer to your shouts, pray that a god should come to your assistance.  At length, you son comes to the well, sees you, asks you to step into the bucket, and winches you out of the well with the pulley.  What do you do?  You prostrate yourself to worship your son as your god.  For why should you not worship your son as your god: has he not done the same thing you wanted some god to do?  Your son is, by your own will and thought, the same as your god.  But I consider you to owe not your worship to your son as your god, though you might have so done, but still your gratitude to your son as your son.}}
 
Theologians often seek to understand the godhead by comparison and contrast with humanity.  The faith sees human beings as consisting of two parts, the personal and impersonal part.  All things which make individuals unique are personal and private, in that they and their experiences cannot be shared between individuals perfectly.  One person can never see exactly the same as another person, and if a person describes what is seen, the description is subject to the interpretation of the listener, based on their assumption and experience.  Yet there are also things that are considered universal amongst humans, such as the ability to think, to speak, and to imagine rationally, etc.  At these levels, humans do not exist as distinct individuals but as a unity, in the sense that if one person knows or feels it, then all people do and at the same time.
 
By extension, the things which make individuals unique are associated with the material world.  One cannot see without eyes or hear without ears; these faculties must have physical existence in order to function.  The entire human body is unique and personal; no part of a body could (according to the knowledge of the ancients) be shared between individuals.  The material world is therefore defined as all things which we observe through our faculties.  On the other hand, things like rationality and emotion are thought to reside within the material human body but exist independently of it; by extension, these are universal qualities of humanity that are immaterial.
 
In ancient times, the bitterest schism amongst priests and intellectuals seems to be over whether the gods contained personal aspects.  A personal god is considered alike to a human person in that they possess faculties, which may or may not be of the same kind as of humans, that inform a rational mind similar to a human mind; over time, the god accumulates knowledge based on these faculties.  Furthermore, a personal god is distinct from another personal god, on account of their differing experiences arising from their respective faculties.  An impersonal god does not have faculties and is not altered by external information but still possesses a rational mind; any new information the god acquires is purely through deduction based on their innate knowledge. 
 
A deeply intertwined question is whether the rational mind of humans is the same as the rational mind of gods.  The majority position throughout antiquity accepted that a god's mind is, discounting any experiences they had, exactly the same as a human mind.  This is because a god would not be able to understand humans if they had a radically different sort of mind, and by all authorities it is agreed that gods are able to understand humans.  Etiaro (d. 344) puts the question as follows: at the point of an infant's birth, having yet no external stimulus with which to develop its individuality, is its mind the same as the gods at their origin (whether they were born in the sense of humans or not)?  Some theologians assert that humanity partake in the godhead as much as the gods partake in humanity, if some part of their qualities are shared.
 
It seems rarely disputed that there is nothing physically observable that can be considered the proper body of a god; their proper bodies could only exist within the rational mind (which exists independently of the physical world according to Northian theology).  But if concepts like poverty can only exist in their proper forms within the rational mind, even though they pertain to matters very much within the faculties of observation, it has also been proposed that the gods are of the same nature as concepts like poverty and injustice, i.e. as abstract entities or qualities.  Thus, Hizito (d. 440) says that
{{quote|If I show you a coin and say to you, 'that is all I have', you will surely understand the condition of poverty.  But the coin is a substance, and poverty is a quality.  Were I to give the coin to you, you would not receive poverty, but, lo, you would be wealthier by a coin.  Thus poverty is a thing to be understood, not to be acquired.  There are no gods to be touched, seen, or heard, to be sacrificed to, or to take refuge in.  But there are gods to be understood.  Yet the rustics rarely understand the gods and deliver their moneys and goods to such (so-called) priests and media—they sacrifice nothing to the gods, but to their own stupidity."}}
 
===Monotheist positions===
Hizrociiā (d. 483) reportedly did a thought experiment about the quality of god in front of foreigners.  He poured out two cups of water and asked them how many ''wodiriš'' "waters" there were, and they were confused by the ungrammatical word "waters".  When one answered there were two, he poured one cup into another; when another said there was one, he poured some water out from the full cup into the empty one and dropped some salt into the first.
{{quote|Many men, wiser than I am, have pondered the question how many gods there are in the world.  I cannot improve on their dogmata but to repeat them.  Our words often deceive us—in matters of number more than anything.  Things around us have number when they are not easily substituted, according to each our faculties, for one another.  It is bad to say there are two waters just because they are in two cups, for by those means we count cups and not the water within.  But it is true that when water is in two cups, two persons may drink of it and describe two unique things according to their faculties, and one is not made true or false by the other.  Thus while god can be considered, like water, only one thing, experiences of god are separate and admit of numbers.}}
 
===Atheist positions===
While most who opined on matters of religion appear to be from a priestly background during the Epic age, under Acrean domination there was no longer any formal qualification required before a person could opine or teach about religion, permitting schools of thought to proliferate on matters of faith.  The simultaneous and peaceful co-existence and practice of other religions, such as the Nordic religion, occasioned an externalized, objective mannerism of religious commentary that would be more familiar to modern scholars, in contrast to the elaboration of religious understanding within a dogmatic framework, more akin to theology.  For example, Axštaoxrā (c. 420s – 480s) publicly questioned whether the Northian gods existed at all, if his contemporaries were satisfied that they could not exist in the material world and nothing there could be a tangible representation of them.  He says,
{{quote|But if gods are like poverty, as Hizito says, and if one could imagine a world where there is no money and therefore no poverty, one therefore could envision a world where the gods do not exist?  And if poverty must be reflected in some way in materials in order to exist, and admitting that poverty could be removed by the redistribution of wealth, could also the gods be removed by some re-arrangement of the material world?}}
 
While Axštaoxrā's assertions generated shockwaves and even a conviction for blasphemy, resulting in his debarrment from Cleiden, other scholars were to follow in his footsteps.  His contemporary Morito claimed that the gods could be reduced by deduction into more fundamental concepts like knowledge and ignorance, good and evil, etc., and therefore the gods do not really exist.  Morito's friend, Furohimura, contradicted him in a 502 treatise claiming that the gods are primary to the rational mind and therefore cannot be "put out of existence by the mere re-definition or re-understanding of matters".  Morito and Furohimura's disputes has been taken up by later theologians along these lines or traversing them, resulting in what has been called Constructive Atheism, which flourished in the 7th century, i.e. the gods are composite and theoretical entities that can be reduced to more basic entities.
 
Furohimura, espousing the opposite position, rejected Axštaoxrā saying that, even if poverty could be eradicated from the world, assuming the removal of all arrangement of materials that may lead to the condition of poverty (such as the utter abolition of possession), it still exists within the human mind and can be, at once, generated once there is an unequal distribution of wealth.  And if poverty is an unitary abstraction, regardless of in how many instances it exists or the degree of its seriousness, then the question of whether something currently represents it materially is not relevant.  Thus, in the sense of the Gales where the gods not merely are associated with but ''are'' the infinite regeneration of the world and natural life that emanates from them, as long as life is a possibility (as it now is), then the gods of the Gales also must exist.
 
Fonδaiš Wīštā̊ has been called the "only religion in the world where atheism is an acceptable theological doctrine".
 
==Worldview==
===Metaphysics===
The prevailing belief during the Epic period of itinerant tribes was that the cyclical regeneration of nature, such as the annual growths of plants and animals etc. were the results of a supernatural desire to sustain human life through cyclical behaviour: "as satisfaction becomes want, so is nourishment then brought forth".  This was identified with abstract, regular phenomena such as the precession of seasons, the phases of the Moon, as well as the (apparent) rotation of heavenly bodies around Earth, with the result that the regeneration of nature was viewed as the action of natural gods that demonstrate (related or unrelated) cyclical behaviour.  This theology may have existed since Galic times, but it is less aparent from the Galic texts.
 
Some time before the Epic age, and perhaps originating with the Galic sect itself, a spirituality around the relationship of human life and materials emerged.  Humans, as both physical and spiritual beings, were affected by seven requirements that were both physical and spiritual.  If these requirements were in order, they manifested as satisfaction; in disorder, as want.  These attributes were further identified with certain materials.  These, given the correct treatment, had implicit magical powers that could rectify both physical and spiritual wants.  They could be summarized as follows:
{| class="wikitable"
!colspan="2"| Want !!rowspan="2"| Satisfaction !!rowspan="2"|  Element !!colspan="2"| Remedial substance
|-
!style="width:7em" | Physical !!style="width:7em" | Spiritual !!style="width:7em" | Base !!style="width:7em" | Essence
|-
| Thirst || Exhaustion ||style="width:7em" | Refreshment ||style="width:7em" | Air || Wind || Chimes
|-
| Hunger || Suggestibility || Fullness || Earth || Stone || Metal
|-
| Illness || Feebleness || Health || Plant || Berries || Juice
|-
| Injury || Violence || Invulnerability || Animal || Milk || Butter
|-
| Weakness || Deceit || Truth || Moon || Water || ''Eradmə̄''
|-
| Confusion || Wickedness || Righteousness || Sun || Fire || ''Aθrai̯šte''
|-
| Mortality || Sadness || Immortality || Human || Speech || Hymn
|}
 
Much religious practice was centred on the transformation of the base remedial substances into their essences.  It was not the physical form of the essence that was supposed to rectify the spiritual want, but rather its transformed spiritual nature, with its hidden potency brought out by means of invocations and rituals.  Thus while butter is the essence or, in Northian, "blood" of milk, it is only butter prepared according to such ritualistic manners that satisfies the spiritual want of violence; other forms of butter can only act as a remedy to the physical want of injury.
 
===Afterlife===
The Galic hymns contain few clues about what occurs to a person after physical death.  G.Nr. 31 states that a person's ''animą̄n'' "breath, life" would "return to eternity at its end".  This ''animą̄n'' is yet a stubborn problem in Northian studies as nowhere else in the Galic verses is it mentioned again. 
 
In the Didaskalic material, the ''animą̄n'' is still not clarified except restated to return to the "age of ages" (''moiiərə miyõm'').  The matter is complicated, apparently, by the continued disagreement between where the material part of humanity ended and where the immaterial began.  It is clear that the Didaskaloi agreed that the flesh rots away and even the bones rot away, while the abstract state of being human could be regarded as everlasting.  But it is never quite clear if a person's individuality, that is the experiences made possible by the material body, survives death, or if only the abstract state of being human, which includes the ability of rational thought but not empirical experience, survives physical death. 
 
Sanders argues the Didaskaloi tended towards the belief that a person's experiences does not survive physical death.  Building on the precept of identitism, which states that the immaterial, everlasting part of the human being, is the godhead itself, he says that a person loses their individuality at death and is re-absorbed into the undifferentiated godhead.  Pudar, building on the tradition of specifism, says that human experiences, insofar as they are consonant with truth, that constitutes a person's identity, are retained after the physical body perishes.  Thus, at death, "illusions and lies, built up like the material world, dissipate away, while the truth triumphs and is proven everlasting, independent, and certainly in no need for materials to exist".
 
The Epic stories seem to express a great emotional or ethical ambivalence about life after death, coupled with an admonition that such is not to be relied upon: humans are to tend to their affairs while living, as nothing could be done in ''xairāḫ'' (cognate to Nordic ''Hel'', both < *koilos).  It is however possible for various divinities to raise a body from the dead and make it do their bidding, though such bodies are regarded as merely that, automata with no independent sense or will.  If these bodies possessed human faculties, they would be extensions of the animating god.  This was usually reserved for the wicked, whose immorality attracts malevolent gods to use them for evil ends.
 
In the late Epic period and into the Late Canon era, an afterlife begins to develop along with the theology of otherworlds.  There is never a consistent number of otherworlds in the Epics, most of which do not enumerate them but only describe the ones relevant to the story.
 
During the Late Canon era, the theology developed to be compatible with the afterlives as asserted in other religions.  Under this view, a form of {{wp|post-mortem judgment}} is imposed not by some external deity but by the deceased over themselves.  This states that, no matter what deity decides to do with them in the afterlife, the ''ego'' will always judge itself, and if found wanting, a person's own spirit torments itself, and no god could change this behaviour.  Karita says, "O foolish men, why think you may placate gods before you can placate yourselves?  Is it not true, to feel happiness, you must have sense, and whatever your god does for you, your sense will not permit you to feel happy if you torment it?"
 
===Sexuality===
Not much is known about sexuality in Galic times, other than the portrayal that the Goddess of Dawn is the product of a "copulation" between the Sun and Moon, who are female and male respectively in mythology.  In this sense, copulation is portrayed with positive overtones as a fulfilment of natural cycles that regenerate.  The word for "copulate" is in G.Nr. 141 seen as ''yabaētātāHi'', which is dual in number and of the middle voice, signifying that both partners, Sun and Moon, are in the same grammatical position and the action's result concerns the agents.  Terce points out, "Neither Sun nor Moon is being portrayed as a passive partner; copulation is something both are actively doing for themselves.  It is a shared activity, not something that one does to another."
 
The same verb root that gives ''yabaētātāHi'' also formed a transitive verb meaning "to conjugate" or "to bring together", which does not always have sexual meaning. "To conjugate" requires two accusative objects, which are the two things conjugated or brought together by the doer, plus the locative infinitive of purpose or genitive infinitive of cause. This is the verb for the act of uniting two tribes through marriage or the process of joining grammatical stem and ending.  In G.Nr. 41, a builder conjugates the superstructure of a house to a foundation, built by a different craftsperson.  In the Epics, the God of Air conjugates animals, which means to breed a pairing of male and female of the same species.  But the sexual meaning of the transitive verb "to conjugate" is not used of humans, i.e. it is not attested in the Epics to "breed humans".
 
===Gender===
Very little gendered material is found in the Galic corpus, and as a result most literature regarding gender in pre-imperial Northian society is centred on the Epic period (7th – 3rd c. BCE).
 
The Northian conceptualization of gender is "both oppositional and parallel".  In some instances, men and women are presented as exclusive, contrasting categories from each other, such as MPS 2230 ''as men till and herd, but women forage and hunt; hath not this been the way of our two mothers [i.e. parents].'' and DNN 176 ''for the Goddess took possession thereof, and thereby was pleased'' (i.e. the God would not have been pleased if he had taken possession, on account of his gender).  On the other hand, men and women are also associated categories with much similarity between them, and thus speaks Kumo in MPS 1624 ''this doth please me though it be for a woman: for thereunto what is a man if not woman''.
 
===Ethnicity and race===
In medieval and early modern scholarship, Fonδaiš Wīštā̊ was described as an innovative religion to reject ethnicity and gender as relevant and doctrinal part of spirituality.  Scholars of the 15th century cited the Didaskaloi to assert that the worldview of Fonδaiš Wīštā̊ was available to "each and every human being", further asserting that the Didaskaloi themselves were of different nationalities (though they all spoke Northian).  These ideas were absorbed by the Northian Order of Priests when it formed in 1487, which stated that "not even every god on this side of the sea or beyond put together can invalidate the dogmata [of Fonδaiš Wīštā̊]". As a "profession of the wise", the Priesthood explicitly rejected national or ethnic connotations of the religion that were even inherited as part of it, "for wisdom is freely given to any mind that takes it."
 
The modern priesthood still teaches as doctrine that all humans are an indivisible unity on the level of their humanity; that is, the one and same set of characteristics marks all of them as human, as distinct from gods, animals, or inanimate things.  These capabilities include the ability to communicate (whether with words or not), to feel emotion, and to think rationally, and they are the only things which are required to become a holder of the Fonδaiš Wīštā̊ faith.  Attempts to introduce elements of ethnicity or nationality have been multiple times rejected as heresies and excised from the priesthood, on the grounds that the faith is communicated through theories, whose medium is immaterial, rather than ancestry, whose medium is material.  However, individual practitioners of Fonδaiš Wīštā̊ may hold these views privately without censure.
 
More modern scholars have provided a sketch of the ancient realities of Fonδaiš Wīštā̊, which elucidates many of its practices as exponents of Northian culture and society, without which those practices might create dramatically different emotional or pragmatic resonances with practitioners.  Specifically, the society in which Fonδaiš Wīštā̊ first became a liturgical religion was nomadic and practiced only opportunistic agriculture.  Changes in the historical context may have prompted the Didaskaloi's theology to become much more prominent in later developments in the faith, emphasizing the philosophical and representative elements of rituals over the material and substantial.  The altered orientation is "obvious" according to Carter, as "not even was the word 'wisdom' mentioned once in the Galic corpus". In view of these limitations, many scholars still hold that (at least the philosophical aspect of) Fonδaiš Wīštā̊'s religious universalism was "striking and innovative in a profoundly ethnic time and place".
 
===Eschatology===
During the Epic age, the idea emerged that the physical world would one day be destroyed, only to be remade later.  According to Sivias, writing around 300 CE, "the elders" say that the greed of humans would one day overwhelm the providence of the elements, and the very earth and sky will wither away after exhausting their physical forms.  The following will happen at midday on the last day of the world: the sky will crack and fall in pieces, and the earth will disintegrate to dust; the Sun will collide with the Moon and annihilate each other; the waters will run dry, and the seed of fire will be extinguished.  All the living humans will die as a result of the destruction of the physical world.  All things once on earth will fall into the primordial, bottomless abyss.  The evil gods would at once experience ecstacy that natural order is destroyed and grief that, now that the world itself is destroyed, no more can there be the joy of destruction. 
 
Though this dramatic failure of the material world, the philosophical superiority of good over evil is thoroughly demonstrated: acts of evil (that is, destruction and death) are only possible after and in light of acts of good (that is, creation and life), while good stands independently in the absence of evil.  The ephemerality and weakness of evil is laid bare.  Note that, as the battle for the material world was decidedly lost, the battle for the spiritual world was resoundingly and resultatively won.  By the death of all life, the truth has ironically triumphed over falsehood of death.
 
The fate of the world then depends on the human spirits' ability to recall the truth and restart the work of creation.  While all other species of sacraments necessary for the ceremonies that supported life are now lost, the supreme species of sacrament, that is words of prayer, remains at the disposal of the disembodied spirits. As the situation is desperate and the evil gods shown to be useless and inferior in the state universal destruction, some human spirits would abandon misconceptions and bring the Godhead into physical existence again through their collective minds.  As long as the Godhead is not totally forgotten, the Sun and Moon will rise again, the Sky and Earth will re-emerge, and the flowing waters and burning fire will re-appear. 
 
Once the world has re-appeared, the spirits who have remembered truth would be the first to be resurrected and enter new bodies to inhabit the remade world, which is now a paradise because, having witnessed the holy truth, no human would stray again from it.  Those that have not remembered would initially writhe in such tormenting shame and disgrace that they feel physical pain about their former lives.  After this, they regret and blame themselves for becoming deceived.  However, when they have come to terms with the idea that the work of creation provides for everyone, even those that have worked against them, they too will become resurrected and join the new world.  When {{wp|universal resurrection}} is achieved, the evil gods will have been forgotten, even as causes for shame, and the world enters a perfect state, where all humans are at peace.
 
==Themes==
===Galic divinity===
In Galic times, it appears that the divine creation and regeneration, viewed as the same process, was venerated by the composers of Galic hymns, which were oriented towards praise of the powers of creation/regeneration.  This prominence of the unanthropomorphic regenerative power is not found within the Epic texts, where the maintenance of the Divine Order is a concern in social dimensions much more than in religious ones.  It is the core belief of the Galic composers that the regular transition of day and night, the seasonal appearance of wild animals and plants, as well as a correct relationship between humans constituted the Divine Order, and it is its maintenance that makes human society and life itself possible.  The original emphasis of a religious understanding of natural order seems to be transferred to societal order slightly before or during the Epic period.
 
Since solar and lunar eclipses, supernovae, and comets represented interruptions of the perceived order of the heavenly bodies, they were considered monitions from nature that bode ill for the seasonal order that underpinned a primitive society that still relied on hunting, foraging, and animal husbandry.  Meteors were considered a great menace, as it penetrated the dome of the sky, creating great horrors that the heavenly bodies were failing and falling down to the earth.  The Gales seem to suggest that religious activities of considerable scale occurred at these times to restore the natural order, attended by large gatherings of "many races", poining to a system of beliefs shared between kinship and geographic groups.
 
The concept of ''āhuš'' "Creator" is still poorly defined.  This word can also be glossed, especially in the plural, as "Lordship".  This is possibly a reference to the idea that it is the regular and unfailing work of these natural deities that sustains human life and is thus the "creator" of the abstract sense of "life", as opposed to individual persons' lives. ''ampšuš'' (when feminine) also identified a human ancestor, especially a distant one regarded as the apex progenitrix.  ''Āṇhaōš'' when applied to the gods is generally associated with their extraordinary actions, particularly corrective ones when the natural order has been disturbed in some way.
 
===Didaskalism===
Didaskalism focuses on the teachings of the three sages of the Didaskalism Age, which is usually dated to about 900 to 650 BCE based on the sages' postulated lifetimes.  This coincides with the end of the Galic Age and to historians primarily represents a period of religious transformation, the creation of prose literature, and heralding of the Epic Age.
 
The first sage, known as Hsārišimāṇhō of the Añipurarians, lived and worked around 900 BCE.  Tradition holds that, in his youth, he was a tribal priest of the Añipurarians (hence the name) and became disillusioned with the general religious practices amongst Northian tribes, whose gatherings were usually accompanied by lavish rituals.  Though organized to honour the elements for their providence, an act of rectitude, Hsārišimāṇhō observed that the collection of brass and foods for sacraments became burdensome and embarrassing to the poor.  It is held that he saw that "the poor were accused of injustice on account of their poverty, and the wealthy honoured as righteous by means of their wealth."
 
Hsārišimāṇhō was told to mind his rituals and not mind with how the sacramental elements were collected, as long as they were ritualistically pure.  More senior priests chastised him that the correct rituals and words made the elements pure and fit to be the material representation of the hypostases of the gods.  Hsārišimāṇhō left his tribe and meditated for 40 years, before returning as an old man and with a radical message: there was no barrier between the ritualistic and material worlds.  If something was procured in a polluting way from the material world, no ritual could could purge it of the taint of iniquity, saying "nothing taken, even from an enemy, can be the pure Bronze that holds the pure Cream". 
 
In Northian tradition, Hsārišimāṇhō became enlightened at the age of 72 and taught his beliefs for another 72 years, before dying at the age of 144.  Aside from this implausible longevity, it has been questioned whether Hsārišimāṇhō is a true, historical figure, on the grounds that his tribe, Añipurarians, is not thought to have formed until about 200 years after his traditional lifetime.  Nevertheless, his pupil (at least in spirit) Munāhθīi̯å of Ai̯kšahei̯š is usually accepted as a historical figure who lived around 800 BCE.
 
While Hsārišimāṇhō was primarily concerned with the construction of ritualistic purity and rectitude in quotidian and social life, and how rectitude in one realm strengthens or diminishes that in the other, Munāhθīi̯å expanded on the earlier philosophy by envisioning the entire world as one divided into right and wrong.  He said in G.Nr. 7735, "Does not everything—forage, herd, till, and craft—that one does sustain life? Is not everything that sustains life a thing that is right, in the same way we say the Hypostasis of Cream and Hypostasis of Berries are things that are right?"
 
However, the third and final sage Mae̯mutasrå of Biθrō, who lived just before the Epic Age, around 700 BCE, was regarded as the wisest teacher amongst the Northians.  In the schema of the gradual propagation of sacred knowledge of life from the spiritual world to the mundane, Mae̯mutasrå represents the final stage where it is revealed that not only every action has spiritual significance, but every person has an innate conscience that can comprehend that significance and act according to it.  "Whoever is human needs no teacher to know right; each person that has eyes and ears and also a mind knows right." Despite this appeal to innate morality, Mae̯mutasrå also preaches that what is right does not always have the most gratifying results, but as long as one listens to one's mind, "one will not stray from what is right."
 
===''wohūḥ'' and ''dušṯ''===
''wohūḥ'' is the plural of ''wohū'', meaning "good things" or "goodness".  It is the elaboration of the Divine Order in the Epic period.  It features prominently, through not immutably, in texts of all eras that describe the belief system of Fonδaiš Wīštā̊, whether through the lens of literary mythology or direct religious devotion.  ''wohūḥ'' is understood as the underlying essence of everything that permits life and brings joy, and it is often a yardstick or objective of an individual's behaviour.  Sanctioned behaviour, intention, etc. is in accordance with ''wohūḥ''.  In a slightly later time, ''wohūḥ'' acquires a more spiritual meaning of "holiness" in a way not quite associated with divinities; that is, ''wohūḥ'' permits a person to transcend their material existence and somehow access or embody the supernatural.
 
It is to be observed that ''wohūḥ'' is the assumed objective of both mankind and divinity, but neither kind (divinities are often regarded as a separate race of beings with humanoid shape and emotions) is born perfectly in a state of ''wohūḥ''.  In this sense, divinities are not inherently more possessed of ''wohūḥ'' than humans, and their great power can often lead them farther astray from ''wohūḥ'' than humans.  ''wohūḥ'' is not a currency of goodness that can be accumulated against evil or ''dušṯ'': no amount of previous ''wohūḥ'' will prevent or nullify a great ''dušṯ''.  ''wohūḥ'' signifies an attachment or state of mind to what is right, which can be easily cultivated but will be challenged at all times.  Due to the imperfect state of both humanity and divinity, in the current time both will possess ''wohūḥ'' and its opposite ''dušṯ''; a being tending towards ''wohūḥ'' will more often choose to abide by the former but may still act upon ''dušṯ'' from time to time.
 
The concept of ''wohūḥ'' is distinct from piety to the gods, which may or may not be ''wohūḥ'' depending on the circumstances.  For example, in TR 49, a person praying and offering generous sacrifices to the God of Rain that he turn his breath to Martu and cure the drought is considered ''wohūḥ'', but in SV 7, a sacrifice offered to obtain a blessing sought for an unjust cause, that is the seduction of someone's daughter, is considered ''dušṯ''. 
 
''Dušṯ'' on the other hand means "evil".  Compared to the nebulous meaning of ''wohūḥ'', ''dušṯ'' is concretely associated with actions that, in addition to being not-''wohūḥ'', nullify or corrupt the results of ''wohūḥ''.  The state of not-''wohūḥ'' is not equal to ''dušṯ'' and has a special term, ''āṇuuohuuī''.
 
===Mortality and immortality===
The topic of mortality is not often addressed in the epic corpus, and "scenes portraying the dead as alive" are virtually unknown.  In very early epics as well as the Gales themselves, it seems that no afterlife is envisioned, and that death is as inescapable and as unalterable.  Death was referred to as the "fate of all humankind" (G.Nr. 6113); those who are dead have "gone to the fate of our race".  Conversely, the gods are those who are not fated to die, though this is not to say they had no fate.
 
Despite this frankly uncheerful view of death, early Northians believed that if their name continues to be remembered, they remain alive in some sense.  While the body is fated to die, fame can be undying, and the Epics are replete with characters who are trying to achieve "reputational immortality" by a variety of deeds.  This would give a mortal the chance to approximate a god, since gods do not die and continue to built upon their fame.  Individuals of noble origin are particularly attached to their own reputations, not only within their communities but also foreign ones; as such, they are given to adventure and astonishing generosity.  Even those of modest means may bequeath objects of considerable value for their own memories in the community, like communal buildings and wares.
 
Epic poets praised the ''wosū'' of certain individuals as the key by which they have become reputationally immortal.  While many acts that the nobility have done may be interpreted as ''wosū'', it is seldom but indeed seen that acts directly contradict ''wosū'' could also contribute to a person's reputation.  Nevertheless, the poets fulfill their moralistic duty by explaining that while all acts may contribute to reputation, only ''wosū'' is certain to.
 
Though the maintenance of a legendary reputation was the objective of many characters in Northian epic, it does not seem to encourage life-endangering recklessness in most situations.  This is because fame is accumulated through a person's actions during their natural life, and singular acts that lead to reputational immortality are rare.  In the poetic tradition, the preference for a long life of continuous good acts, punctuated by a few remarkable ones, may be attributed to the ease of dramatic development in such a life story as material for epic poetry.  Moreover, youths are instructed by poets that ''wosū'' generally leads to longevity, and a longer life creates more opportunity for ''wosū'', creating a virtuous cycle of a kind.
 
===Relationship with gods===
In the Epic tradition, a common theme encountered by many characters is the worship of novel gods by foreign or domestic communities.  For example, in the magical epic of Namena, the main character leaves his home town on a trading expedition of several years, only to find that his village had converted to the worship of a new god he did not know before.  He then has to reconcile his doubts about the powers of the new god with the apparent devotion the others in his village, whom he tries not to offend after a long absence.
 
A mortal person in the Epics always owes a degree of distant respect to any being defined as a god ''dēwō'' (lit. "shining one") by virtue of that definition; if it is flaunted, the mortal is seen as justifiably punished when retribution befalls them.  A god always possesses supernatural powers and immortality as a natural characteristic of their species, in as much as sentience is expected from a human being and as aggression is expected from bears and wolves.  A god is not intrinsically worthy of worship or sacrifice to, but it seems the Epic poets felt their powers were very real and a mortal of any intelligence must be aware of his subordinate place before a god.  Failure to show humility, according to the poets, justifies a god's retribution.
 
Yet devotion to the gods operates in parallel, it appears from the Epics, with that to the moralistic principles of good societal order and private rectitude, and Epic characters are frequently trapped between these two demands especially when a god threatens a hero to accomplish a wicked deed that the hero finds difficult to entertain.  In this way, the rectitude of a human being contrasts with the perverseness of a god, a situation (admittedly) dangerous to the mortal but that ranks as high praise in the rhetorical resources of Epic poets.
 
In terms of how the historic spiritual system may have worked during the Epic age, it seems there were a multitude of cults, some with multiple centres, across the area settled by the Northian-speaking peoples and those not settled by but still known to them.  There was no such thing as a "false god" in the vocabulary of the Epics, the presence of a religious community around the god being ample proof that they existed.  A god worshipped in foreign lands was felt to be as real as one worshipped by Northians.  This belief is likely to have been true of the historical Northians too: the existence and validity of foreign gods were rarely challenged, though their intentions often were.  Conflicts between cults were common, though more often of the kind pertaining to economic rights, rather than religious differences.
 
A person can enter into several relationships with a god reflected in the Epics and in Acrean descriptions of Northians.  First, by entering into the consecrated ground of a god's physical abode, a person owes the respect expected of a guest to a host; this includes abiding by the cult's rules and showing reverence to the cult statue by an accustomed method.  Desecrating actions and blasphemous words were to be especially avoided.  Harmless actions and words elsewhere may be considered desecrating within the precincts of the cult statue.  A person could also enter into a religious community surrounding the god, whereby additional requirements were imposed in return for perceived blessings from the god and varoius benefits provided by the community.
 
===''arō''===
''arō'' (gen. ''arahō''), < *h₂er-os, means "order".  Within the context of Fonδaiš Wīštā̊, it is often used in a moralistic sense, as to societal ethics.  Its adjectives are ''artō'', meaning "orderly, truthful, right", and ''anartō'', which covers the inverse concepts of "disorderly, perverted, wrong".  Comparative is ''ariiā̊''; superlative, ''arištō'' = Syaran ἄριστος.
 
The Epic poets often viewed the world as one in which everything person and thing had proper places and behaviours.  To an extent, a person's proper behaviour was decided by class, gender, and family; it was, however, also tied to aspirations, religious devotion, ability, and even happenstance.  In the 19th century, the Epic tradition was interpreted as an exposition that the world was a machine, and its constituents were its "gears" working in predetermined ways; this interpretation is no longer common.
 
There was a strong desire by the Epic poets to find an underlying theory that explains issues like gender and class, and most often the example of the gods was cited as sources or antecedents to the behaviour of humans.  In this way, behaviours contrary to what the poets thought to be natural were often identified as sources of problems, which was not necessarily subject to their moral censure, particularly in dramatic usage.  It should be noted that the phenomena that the poets rationalized were realities to the poets and their listeners, while the poets were offering listeners their theories.  The realities of the Epic age will thus, necessarily, be some distance away from the explanations that the poets give in the Epics.
 
===Truth===
According to the vision of the Didaskaloi, the purpose of existence is to comprehend "Truth" both intellectually and actually.  Truth is that which is eternal and independent; it is uncreated, exists naturally, cannot be destroyed, and does not depend on goodwill, concessions, or other accidents to exist.  By aligning oneself to Truth, one also becomes eternal and independent.  According to this view, death merely distinguishes Truth from Falsehood, which falls away at the end of life.
 
According to some authorities, there is a shift in the notion of life as one that needs constant nourishment to one that is justified through Truth.  In so changing, the notion of life loses some of its biological characteristics.  There is disagreement whether Truth may be communicated via words or must be internally-grasped.
 
===Creed of the Galic Prologue===
According to most traditions, the following creed is recited three times by both the priesthood and laity before the commencement of the Galic hymns.
{{quote|''bāhā aāṯ hanaŋhõ āgməntā haōždūmβo
''taīš taōβiiā āṯ haōšta hiϑaiiā priaiiaē
 
Ye that step upon the path of honours worship
 
the divinities with praises and worship associates with love.}}
 
The line occurs as a Sacerdotal verse and is very densely composed.
 
In a co-incidence with the Shalumite language, the two verbs "worship" work as both indicatives and imperatives.  Spoken by priests, the other priests are addressed; their functions are confirmed; by the laity, the whole priesthood is addressed, and the words become a command.  Moreover, the two instances of the word "worship" are translated with the same word in Shalumite but are different in Northian.  The worship of the gods is in the middle voice, while the worship of the "associates" is in the active. 
 
While both middle and active verbs could be (and are here) transitive (i.e. affecting a direct object), the active verb emphasizes the effects of the action as it concerns the direct object, while the middle often redirects the emphasis on the agent.  Thus, by a purely grammatical conjecture, the worship of the gods may express an action that primarily concerns the priesthood and not as much the gods, while the worship of the associates concerns the associates and not as much the priesthood. 


The word ''pontōis'' is the plural of ''pontōs'' "path, way", and ''wītōs'' is an adjective meaning "seen, known".  Emologically speaking, Pontōis Wītōs is ultimately from Proto-Erani-Eracuran (PEE) *póntoh₁s and *wéydtos; however, because the name is a poetic term of no obvious antiquity, appearing in a younger part of the Epics, it is not generally thought this combination of words had any spiritual significance at the level of PEE culture.
A literary symmetry is both made (by using the same verb root) and broken (by using contrasting voices) at the same time, and then also spoken from two separate perspectives.  Such intricacy is characteristic of the Late Galic poetic tradition of dense compositions, compared to the freer, more direct forms common in Early Galic.
 
===Warfare===
During the Epic period, a traditional of martial art existed through the dual skills of charioteership and archery.  Though once considered associated with masculine virtue, this perspective has come under challenge in the 20th century.  Scholars like Rammi and Nanten stress that the peace-time institutions of warfare, such as chariot races and archery competitions, were principally associated with wealth and not gender.  Their 1952 argument rests on the observation that there is no ''general'' imperative or ethic that male members of society be affiliated with charioteership and archery, but instead wealthy women were seen practicing archery and (in one instance) driving her own chariot.  Indeed, Galic gods were often envisioned as drivers of chariots.
 
The literature purports a "strong connection between skills of warfare and wealth, because the time need to develop these skills as well as their implements, namely a team of horses and a chariot, were unavailable to individuals of more modest means." Branner emphasizes that the ability to control a team of yoked horses and to shoot from a moving platform "probably took years of daily training to master".  Still, the poor had roles in warfare—they served as footmen, wagon-pullers, slingers, trumpeters, craftsmen, etc.—but that their roles in battle were literarily cast as subordinate to the one dominated by the wealthy, that of charging in the well-oiled chariot.  Both men and women had stations on the field of battle, and the literature suggests that all members of society were expected to support their champion.
 
The connection of warfare to wealth is complex in the Northian epics.  On the one hand, spoils of war were liable to pollute, and, obtained by violence, were unfit for sacramental usage in the eyes of priests.  On the other hand, the distribution of spoils to the temporality of the community was considered fair in consequence of battles.  Those who took more than their fair share were criticized.  The wealthy were censured if they failed to provide for the defence of members of their communities.  Upon this point, Grelnik asserted that the spoils of war (particularly the weapons) were granted to chieftains as a "community fund", to be used for communal purposes; Hasser states that ''all'' of the wealth of the wealthy were ethically disposable by the community in emergency, not only those derived from warfare.
 
The situation in Galic society is more murky, as the transduced liturgical material reveals "almost nothing" about warfare, other than that it existed.  The metaphor of the Moon as a shield, likening both its illumination and circular shape to defensive function, suggests that hand-held shields existed and were used as defensive implements, which "hardly surprises" according to Kemmer.
 
The archaeological record of Epic-era Northian burials reveal that daggers were a common possession amongst the more privileged individuals, probably used both as an ornament and as a means of self-defence.  These daggers were short, their blades no longer than 12 cm, and most seem to have experienced only gentle use.  An alternative interpretation, forwarded by Kemmer, is that they were table knives used for eating.  Most of the battle weapon, such as longer swords, shields, lances, etc. were discovered in large hoards, suggesting that these were communal deposits in preparation for communal usage.  There was little standardization of weapons, and only a few bear identifiable markings.


==Deities==
==Deities==
===Wītṓ===
====ϑezā====
From PEE *weh₂t-mṓ, "excitement, madness".  Also ''Wītōnāta'', ''Wītōpiter'' "Father Wītṓ".  Genitive ''Wītnṓ'', ''Wītnṓpatras''.  This deity is cognate to the [[Asuryan]] god Odin.  Wītō is an extremely prominent god in the system of beliefs summarized under the name Pontois Witos, because he is believed to be the divine conduit who transports offerings of goods and songs to the other divinities and who dispenses their blessings and curses.   
ϑezā ({{smallcaps|'''gen.sg'''}} ''xmō'', = Av. ''zā̊'', Sy. ''χθών'' etc.), is the goddess of the Earth.  She is often described with the epithet ''barəsuwī'' "the broad one", from ''barətuš''.
 
====Zyō====
Zyō ({{smallcaps|'''gen'''}} ''tuwō'', = Syaran ''Ζεύς, Δι(ϝ)ός'' etc.) is the deified sky or its anthropomorphic, male god.  He is often qualified as ''ufšištō'' "highest", as ''ufšištos-dyō'' "Heaven Most High".  Thus, Zyō was both a god and a location where other entities may inhabit.  The epithet ''ptō'' "father" is also applied to him, as ''Zyō-ptō''.  This epithet is seen in other Erani-Eracuran languages.  But, curiously, ''ufšištō'' is never used in conjunction with ''pitō'', perhaps suggesting a distinction between his two shapes as animistic and anthropomorphic god.
 
Zyō was worshipped by a particular sect that existed during the Epic age, considering him as the progenitor of all living beings.  ''ufšištos-dyō'' was later utilized as a convenient translation for the world of Asgard in Nordic faith, as it is usually described as above the human world.  This usage could be regarded as an attempt to euhemerize the Nordic religion according to the worldview of Fonδaiš Wīštā̊, as the Ǽsir of Asgard were also rendered as ''pwəntā ufšištōyo-tuwō'' "the powers of heaven most high".
 
====Mā====
Mā (phonologically dysyllabic /mā·ā̊/, {{smallcaps|gen}} ''māhō'' /ma·ahōḫ/) is the male lunar deity of the Northian pantheon in the Galic period and has aspects of the Celtic deity Lugh in later times.
 
====Hāuuərə====
Hāuuərə (phonologically /hāw·r̥̄/, {{smallcaps|gen}} ''hūvəṇġ'') is the female solar deity of the Northian pantheon in the Galic period.  Together with her twin brother Mā, they are often called ''daēuuōi'' "Two Shining Ones" or elliptically ''Hāuuarō'' "Two Suns".
 
====Āfš====
Āfš ({{smallcaps|gen}} ''apōḫ'') is the female god of the holy waters.
 
====Āṇhniš====
Āṇhniš ({{smallcaps|gen}} ''āṇhnaiš'') is the god of fire, purity, and protection.  Āŋhniš is also the god of oaths and contracts, evidenced in the Galic phrase ''Āṇhnṓi póčiiōi'' "by the lord Āṇhniš" at the end of oaths.
 
====Wośmā====
{{main|Wōdmã}}
Early in the Epic period, the name Wośmā is absent, and his function was vested instead in ''θitātā'', ā-stem derivative of ''θitās'', a ''plurale tantum'' glossed as "immanence, manifestation, incarnation".  It is thought that the concept of ''θitās'' presupposes the doctrine of {{wp|transcendence (religion)|Transcendentalism}}, which asserts the gods do not have inherently-limited material forms.  The physical sky, earth, and the heavenly bodies are, according to this doctrine, material or materialized projections of divine powers.  Accordingly, a positive medium or quality is necessary to express or convey divine power in materials, and that medium is inferred as ''θitātā''.  Thus, ''θitātā'' is also translated as ''numina'' in reference to its theological function.  Notably, the expected singular *θitātõm never appears.
 
In the ''Epic of Temilan'', date to the 300s BCE, the phrase ''užmā θitātā'' "the manifestation of numina" is first used. ''ušməṇġ'', genitive of ''Wośmā'', appears to be from PEE *woh₂t-mn̥, "excitement, trance".  However, some scholars assert (contrary to the surface form) that ''ušməṇġ'' is not a genitive but a locative, in which case ''ušməṇġ'' is the (inanimate) place where ''θitātā'' is found or vested; this subtlety changes the theological property of ''ušməṇġ'' from an entity to a location or purpose.  At any rate, if the etymology is true, as it appears to be, the name itself is cognate to the Nordic god Odin's name.  However, scholars differ extensively if the figure of Wośmā is actually related the figure of Odin worshipped in various sects of Nordic faith like [[Valstígr]] and [[Vallyar]].
 
The figure of Wośmā was elaborated during the Migration period (200 BCE – 100 CE), because he absorbs ''θitātā'' (which rarely was spoken of after the Migration Period) and becomes an anthropomorphized figure that transports offerings and songs to the other divinities as well as dispenses their blessings and curses.  Wośmā by the start of the Common Era obtains the body of a beautiful young man and is depicted as standing or sitting upon the altars and is figuratively kissed by supplicating priests; however, less anthropomorphic imagery of Wośmā co-existed, and at certain parts of the liturgy various sacerdotal implements were called Wośmā's heart, head, arms, legs, mouth, and eyes.
 
Some authorities on Northian religion have since the 1930s postulated that the figure of Wośmā was actually a development of the Celtic deity Lugh and cited the physical similarities between that deity and the mythological appearance of Wośmā.  The theory's supporters assert that, prior to Celtic contact, Wośmā was not conceived of as a person, far from having a physical appearance, and was only a by-name or manifestation for ''θitātā'', which is an abstract property of the material that contects them to the spiritual.  Critics of the Celtic origin theory assert that Wośmā's comparison to Lugh is motivated only by similarities in physical appearance and not by those in mythological or theological content.
 
Still others, following Lateran's work in 1975, state that Wośmā has several depictions enshrined in doctrine and mythology as separate personae.  Lateran's work focused on dissecting the chronological strata of the Northian liturgy and proposed that the impersonal Wośmā is primarily found in the older strata, while the personal Wośmā is found in psalms and hymns of a younger date.  Lateran's theory is held in doubt by those who either believe his chronologization of the liturgy to be untenable, or that a personal image of Wośmā is recoverable in the early strata where it is supposedly absent.  Defenders of the Lateran theory provide that there concepts of one stratum can often influence analogous ones in other strata, and any personal reference to Wośmā in earlier material can be explained away this way.
 
Scholars have also pointed out that some cults dedicated to Wośmā mysticism as opposed to the better-known but also more doctrinal form of religion may have also left some impressions on the mythological understanding of Wośmā.  Such cults are sometimes identified with professional groups like poets and physicians, whose powers are depicted in Epic and later literature as attributed by their holders to their patron god Wośmā.  Additionally, it is held that after Wośmā was anthropomorphized, he acquired independent cults which worshipped him on terms that were rather different from the better-known Epic religion.  Some aspects of these Wośmā-cults, claiming a special relationship with Wośmā, may have been incorporated into mainstream religious cults during the Imperial period.
 
====Aiδar====
From PEE *h₂eydʰ-r̥, "burning". Aiδar was the god of light, the child of the Sun and Moon.  On this basis, he is called ''rəōṯaŋhõm nepōt'' "child of lights".  He is associated with the concept of ''ϑitātā'' "immanence".  His epithets include ''iδuminōḫ'' "incandescent" and ''ϑaēuuōḫ'' "shining".
 
Aiδar is not a very prominent figure in the received liturgy of the Late Canon period, whence most modern rites are thought to have been developed.  Nevertheless, he does appear in several places near the end, prior to the final rite of thanksgiving-praise, especially in the thrice-chanted phrase, ''Aiδar nū ūzδi āṇhmōi parai, éštū fərətōṯ xruminõm wəkār, antirōṯ minušminõm, θritōṯ gignōminõm'' "Aiδar, now be amongst us; firstly be our words heard, secondly understood, thirdly fulfilled".
 
===Concepts===
====Immortality====
 
====Wholeness====
 
====Truth====
 
====Satisfaction====
 
==Rites==
The rites of Fonδaiš Wīštā̊ were diverse, as different religious sects during the Epic age found different liturgies appropriate for their devotion.  Nevertheless, modern scholars have reconstructed a fairly solid and broadly-accepted set of core beliefs and rituals that seemed to be reflected in most religious ceremonies during the Epic age.  Many of these beliefs show great antiquity as echoes of Galic-age ceremonies, but so too were there new ceremonies rapidly adopted across multiple religious communities at the same time.
 
While there was no organized priesthood as such in Galic times, these had arisen with the appearance of religious centres, at the very latest by 650 BCE.  Priesthoods in the Fonδaiš Wīštā̊ sense both practiced religious ceremonies according to the requirements of their devotions and offer religious services to the laity.  Where religious services were called upon by a lay person, the lay person became the patron of the service and had a special place in the spiritual sense within most religious proceedings.  This could be done for a certain contribution in money, goods, or some kind of labour that priests could not perform for technical or religious reasons, but for some ceremonies the patron did not need to make any contribution.
 
Most Fonδaiš Wīštā̊ services were organized as a series of ''wahš'' (pl. ''wokiš'') "utterances", which were consecrated words spoken with or without liturgical action on spiritual objects; each utterance represented some specific spiritual action.  Spiritual objects were held to represent objects, concepts, or powers in the invisible worlds, while their visible forms were only a shadow of their spiritual significance.  Utterances could be directed to affect the officiating priest, assistant priests, attendant priests, patrons, laymen, or deities.  In the Epic era, it was held that these utterances had magical power and were the means by which spiritual actions were accomplished; the visible actions done on spiritual objects were merely the "echo" of the spiritual action accomplished in the spiritual world by the magical words.
 
The general purpose of services is to affirm, priase, and thank one or more divinity for a beneficient action, which could be as quotidian as having the good fortune of recovering a lost object or as momentous as the successful defence of a settlement.  These three actions were defined as "worship".  The Moon and Sun were most commonly attributed as the source of goodness, or the two together, followed by Heaven and Earth, apart or together.  Other than the pricinipal divinity, other deities may also be worshipped as functionaries in the service, such as being a messenger, purifier, or sanctifier; in earlier times, Fire and Water were often appealed to sanctify and purify ritualistic utensils, and closer to the period of the Late Canon, Odin (in his Northian interpretation as Wodmə̄n) also served the function of a messenger god.
 
Many Fonδaiš Wīštā̊ rituals are of great length, some consisting of more than 600 ''wokiš'' and continue from dawn to dusk.  Much of this length is due to the need to transform mundane elements so that their spiritual forms may manifest and thereby become carriers of spiritual power, as well as to present them to various deities.  And it is more often than not the case multiple elements need to be combined, which each require separate preparation, purification, transformation, consecration.  These elements are then charged with each other, re-purified, re-transformed, and re-consecrated. Each step may require the intercession of multiple spiritual forces or the participation of multiple parties to the service.  More ''wokiš'' were then said over these processes, either of explanatory nature, or to give thanks to the spiritual force effecting the action.
 
===Late Canon Service===
It was during the Late Canon period that the earliest records were purposely written to describe religious actions.  According to some authorities, ''Aṇhiθrohā'', dating to 70 CE and the earliest religious manual of Northian tradition, was written in a time when Nordic religion started to exert pressure on the "known ways" of the Northians.  By implication the author of the manual believed that Nordic gods were being called upon to perform various functions in rituals in "unknown", i.e. novel, ways, and the treatise was written to qualify what the author believed was acceptable and reasonable in these tendencies.  The author did not wholesale condemn the involvement of Nordic gods or deny their powers but sought to clarify and rationalize them and reject only what he thought was unreasonable.
 
''Aṇhiθrohā'' went to great lengths to describe the entire philosophy and activity of Northian services.  The pre-service was mostly about the proper roles of priests, patrons, laymen, etc. and their states of mind.  After the pre-service, the main service was in six parts: preparation, purification, transmutation, consecration, benediction, and thanksgiving.  These components proceeded in order of increasing holiness, with the final thanksgiving, centred on the 72 Galic hymns, being described as "holy amongst the very holy" (''ištarō ištrištō'').  After it, the post-service included more hymns to thank all divinities invoked, at their departure.
 
Ritualistically speaking, the various elements meticuously purified, consecrated, and presented by human work as offerings to the gods are exactly those substances that are praised as life-giving and considered gifts of divine origin.  Scholars see in this practice an element of {{wp|imitatio dei}}, as these elements are normally credited as the gift of gods are, temporarily and ritualistically, appropriated as the gift of humans to gods during the segments of consecration and benediction; yet when they are consumed by the officiating and assisting priests, the elements revert to the identity of the work and gift of gods.  It is thought that by replicating and visualizing the divine process of creating the nourishing elements, supplicants affirm or demonstrate their belief in the truth of the divine origin of the elements and their nourishing value.  The deeper meaning of these rituals remain actively debated by academics today.
 
===''Great Psalter''===
The ''Great Psalter'', published by royal edict in 1517, is a derivative of an earlier ''University Psalter'' written at Cleiden in the late 1300s.  The ''Great Psalter'' consolidated the great variety of ceremonies contained in the ''University Psalter'' but most importantly introduced the liturgical calendar, which ordained compulsory, regular services throughout the year and other services automatically celebrated for specific occasions.  Prior to the ''Great Psalter'', most priests only held services at the request of community adherents. 
 
The '''Plenary Service''' was to be held by the chief priest of each Northian town upon each full moon in honour of Mā, the moon-god, and the fifth day following, in honour of Hāuuarō, the sun-goddess.  These two days were declared holidays throughout the land.  While there were alternating lunar and solar orientations for the two services, most of their content were actually the same, and within a few decades any differences seem to have disappeared.  This binary opposition between the moon-god and sun-goddess appears to have been inspired by the Siluan veneration of two principal goddesses of, incidentally, lunar and solar connotation.  The ''Great Psalter'' was exact as to the words and actions required from the officiating priest: when the priest should stand, kneel, bow, or raise his hands were all explicitly given.
 
The Plenary Service is named thus on account of a full recitation of the 113 Gales, hymns composed before 1200 BCE, that have survived to the 16th century.  While the language of the Gales is an archaic form of Northian, which is still spoken, it made no sense to anyone but scholars of ancient literature, owing to its sheer age.  The Gales were chanted by the priest as an unbroken chain of syllables, without regard for verse structure.  As the priest enunciated the Gales, the laity initially stood in solemn silence but later took to humming a melody judged appropriate for the occasion.
 
Perhaps the most renowned element of the ''Great Psalter'' service is the instruction to the congregation, immediately prior to the manifestation of the ''numina'':{{quote|And as we [two] priests shall consecrate the elements to make them divine, and they be fit, blessed, sacrificial elements; so shall ye consecrate each other and yourselves bless to make your persons holy, that ye be fit hosts to the powers of heaven and earth.  The providence of creation the powers omit not once, and the blessing of peace to each other shall ye this hour not deny.}}
Upon hearing this instruction, the congregation usually turn to face and kiss each other on the forehead then turn and bow to the altar.  Family members cannot fulfill this requirement by kissing each other, especially parents by kissing their children.  At different places there were additional rules, such as men should kiss other men, and women other women, or that kisses should be exchanged between social peers, etc.  The denial of a kiss to another who has kissed oneself is perceived as a grave social and spiritual affront, unless there is a medical reason why a kiss should not be given in return; in its stead, a bow is given.
 
==Mythology==
{{main|Northian mythology}}
 
==Revivals==
===Fonδaiš Wohuiš===
{{main|Penϑō-uuouš}}
Fonδaiš Wohuiš is a reformist faith asserted to recentre the Northian religion on the beliefs and practices of the Epic era, prior to the popularization of the Nordic gods under the [[Acrean Empire]].
 
The religion reform movement has deep roots in various sects of the Northian religious community, which had uneven receptiveness to the Nordic gods.  For the most part, there was no consensus in civic and religious bodies whether their worship was beneficial or consonant with the Northian religion.  In most communities during the Imperial era there was a harmonious intermixture of rituals and beliefs of Northian and Nordic origins, but some theologians held more skeptical or dismissive views about the Nordic gods.  During the Viking settlement of the 8th through 12th centuries, Northian beliefs seem to have lost liturgical and theological prominence, and by the 14th century even cultural strongholds like Cleiden saw steep declines in participation in Northian rites. 
 
Far from a "Viking cultural invasion" as decried by Romantic authors, who connected the spread of Nordic religion to the bane of Viking raids and the advent of Vikingr settlers, the mainstream now identifies the secuarlization of Northian government in the 800s and onwards as the main reason behind the disappearance of large-scale native religious communities and activities.  The Epic religion actually continued to be adapted and adopted in Vikingr settler communities, where the Galic rituals found new life as the ''aptrblót'', literally "after-sacrifice".  Galic priests were often hired by the settlers to provide a highly mystical and exotic philosophy to enrich their religious experiences.  The need to train priests from a Nordic background was indispensible for the creation of many exegetical works on Galic materials, which have greatly influenced modern Galology.
 
Interest in the Northian religion experienced a revival in literate circles from about 1300, but it was approached mostly as part of an interest in history.  Through the accounts of travelling scholars, information and examples were gathered from practitioners of Northian rites and compared to the Epic corpus; the developments of objects, rituals, and words were traced and analyzed.  The result of this study, centred in the University of Cleiden (est. 1321), was a compendious series of books capturing even minute details of ritual instruments, vessels on the one hand, and the precise words and gestures the priests used on the other. 
 
While Medieval scholars spent much time and effort studying the visible materials and procedures of Northian religion, it was not until the 1400s until its theology became a topic of study amongst scholars.  The proliferation of {{wp|Humanism}} in Northian universities inspired much debate about the proper relationship between the human, natural, and supernatural.  Building on the highly systematic, medieval study of Northian religion, many Humanist writers found value in a seemingly rational relationship between the human and divine proffered by the Northian religion in medieval portrayal.  Northian polymaths asserted that the veneration of gods' cyclical, predictable behaviour showed that early civilizations made rational and ethical choices in their religions, whereas the appeal for their intercession in "disputations of purely human origin" (such as warfare) is considered superstitious and aberrant.
 
These understandings seem to have segued into the following centuries when Northian identity developed around cities, universities, and marketplaces.  In 1520, the Northian king suddenly proclaimed that there should be a purgation of the religious practices in the kingdom, "to restore honour and glory to the gods on whose work all humanity cherish and rely" and "forbid the worship of those gods whose work is misery, hatred, and strife and who are altogether too indecorously indulged in vice."  His successor declared that "the gods by whose works my people live, their crops grow, and their crafts prosper, I honour and establish in my house.  The gods that work hatred and violence amongst the cities, those that bless wrath and jealousy, those that are honoured by way of bloodshed, I dishonour and turn away from my house." These proclamations were re-issued in 1531, 1545, 1546, 1577, and 1590.
 
It should be noted that the king's proclamation may have gone unheard in many quarters.  Even during the most fervent period of Northian revival of 1550 – 1650, the Northian army active in 1602 – 5 offered animal sacrifices to Odin and Thor in large quantities before almost every battle: the king "enjoyed the company of the forces that have heeded his call in their ''blót'' and ate of the sacrifice" and "gave gold chains to the ''goði'' that officiated the army's ceremonies".  Printed pamphlets attacked the Nordic gods as "promoters of manslaughter, robbery, force,<ref>''u̯īš'', generally speaking an unjustified use of force that is considered a crime in city limits and religious spaces.</ref> lechery, drunkenness, gluttony, laziness, anger, slander, malicious duels, and all imaginable kinds of vice and immorality," all the while praising the virtues of "faithfulness, righteousness, generosity, love, wisdom, etc." exemplified by the Sun, Moon, Sky, and Earth.
 
In the 1600s, the reformed Northian faith grew at a rapid rate amongst intellectuals, and its knowledge if not worship became firmly associated with the wealthy, the educated, and the major cities, where ceremonies were carried out with public or private patronage.  But it was only in 1660 did the Congress of the States made it mandatory for all incorporated cities to impose fines on families failing to attend monthly ceremonies held by the local Fonδaiš priesthood.  For this occasion, the ''Book of Holy Hymns'' and ''Book of Sacerdotal Rites'' were published and sanctioned as the bases for Fonδaiš services.  The priesthood believed in didascalism, that is priestly actions physically exemplified the gods and supernaturally instilled divine virtues in adherents. Exactitude in gestures made and words spoken was thus indispensible.
 
This heavy focus on priestly action was not only at odds with the Nordic-influenced religious practices common in the Northern States but possibly with historic Northian religion as well.  A reluctant attendant complained that these services, for the laity, consisted of "watching in silence", while the priests performed all forms of worship.  Priests did not interact with the laity during the service, as the laity was considered profane.  For the same reason, lay persons were also not permitted to perform any of the ritualistic actions, or to engage in physical worship.  This changed in 1703, when the laity was instructed to bow their heads or kneel at certain parts of the liturgy.
 
===Northian national anthem===
{{main|National Anthem of the Northern States}}
 
==Culture==
===Sacerdotal training===
From at least the time of Praetorianius, the Northian priesthood recognized three ranks of priests who were authorized to perform varying amounts of ceremonies and actions within them based on their rank.
*Training-Priest
*Under-Priest
*Plenary-Priest
 
To graduate from the rank of Under-Priest to a Plenary-Priest, the test known as the 120 Trials must be passed. To do so, the Under-Priest stands in the middle of the altar, where a re-enactment of a sacrifice is carried out with non-consecrated vessels. The Under-Priest is blindfolded, and whenever the officiating priest starts to mouth the psalter rather than chant it, the Under-Priest must chant, without hesitation, until the officiant starts to vocalize again. In total, the full psalter, lasting three hours at a good pace, will have about 120 places where the chanting drops off, hence the name of the trial.  This means the full psalter, which has over 35,000 words, needs to be reproduced purely from memory, as visual aid is not permitted.
 
If the Under-Priest passes this trial, the set of non-consecrated vessels (containing 2 mortars, 3 pestles, 6 cups, 10 cup rests, 8 dishes, 3 chargers, 3 mounts, 5 ladles, 2 pairs of tongs, and 1 basin) will be given to them as their vessels to use in their future practice. These vessels must now be consecrated in a process than may last a few weeks.
 


In the context of cults dedicated to one or more gods, Wītṓ is almost invariably one of the gods venerated at a separate shrine, especially as the belief that the gods resided not on Earth, but in different realms, developed.  Invocations to Wītṓ opened many festivals, asking him to honour and awe the assembled community with his divine wonders.  Wītṓ is said to possess and entrance the bodies of oracles, so that their spirit may travel to the realm of the gods and there have intercourse with them.  Mirroring Wītṓ's observance in ceremonies, he is universally invoked as the first deity to whom a song is dedicated, and as such he is called ''Wītṓpradēwō'' "Wītṓ First-of-the-Gods".
===Priestly nudity and vestments===
It was argued in the book ''Primitive Galic Religion'' (1951) that Galic priests conducted ceremonies "mostly, if not always" in the nude.  This nudity was supposed to represent both purity and primordial anonymity, and by the removal of the priest's individuality, they could represent the humanity in all persons.  Later, when nudity became unacceptable, priests took to wearing a hooded robe with no markings, with the hood pulled over the head while performing some liturgical actions.  Under the principle of {{wp|imitatio dei}}, this anonymity permits the "identity between the godhead and humanity".  Because the hood (with no eye holes) obscured sight, a great deal of experience and memory was required in the priest.  This view is not accepted by all authorities.


Due to the observation of Wītṓ as a god of communication, birds judged capable of intelligence and recognition of a certain home were sacred to Wītṓ, including the {{wp|raven}}, {{wp|crow}}, and {{wp|owl}}.  In places sanctified to Wītṓ, his presence was judged by the number of such avians nesting within it.
In contemporary practice, the prelacy of Cleiden, known for its progressivism, has permitted priests to eschew garments while performing rites, while fully reserving this choice to the priest and asserting that the congregation should not force the priest to make such a choice, especially for "perverse ends".


===θyā́===
==Notes==
From PEE *dyeū́s, "god".  Genitive ''dewós''.  The PEE proto-form would give *zēo by regular sound change, so ''θyā́'' must have arisen from a compound word ending in a vowel, triggering the shift from *d > θ, and in an unaccented final position, causing final *ō > ā.  Cammen, however, says that θyā́ must originate from *dyoū́s and reflects a different ablaut grade than *dyeū́s.  Then, somehow, the compound word lost its first component, leaving the second and placing an accent on its sole syllable.  At any rate, the root of this word is related to the Asuryan and Æþurian god Týr.
<references />


==See also==
==See also==

Latest revision as of 03:48, 2 March 2024

Fonδaiš Wīštā̊ encompasses the collection of beliefs, rituals, and mythologies that originated in the Northian culture in the forms of both public religion and cults. The "classical" form of Fonδaiš Wīštā̊ spirituality that is most prominently discussed, and considered culturally canonical in the 19th and early 20th centuries, is that inferred from the Epic tradition and Late Canon tradition, a considerable body of poetry and prose dating from the middle of the 7th century BCE through 2nd century CE.

Ponθōiš Wiḥštō is the source of a revivalist religion in recent decades in DNS often called the Fonδaiš Wohū, or "path of goodness".

Name

The name Pəntaiš Wīštā̊ is dissolved from the Epic of Samana verse 1120 (GNr. 449), where a correct attitude towards sacred things is demanded by a disgruntled, downtrodden traveller speaking to a priest who obviously does not take his position seriously. The traveller, whose home was destroyed by floods, seeks to enter the service of a variety of merchants, herdsmen, and craftsmen, but nowhere is his service enduring. Having learned that the priest would rather catch a fever than hold the annual festival, the traveller seeks to blame the ill of inconstancy or transience in his life on the priest's dereliction of duty: for as I travel from land to land / and land and land turn me away / thou swayest from god to god / denying every his proper due.

The word pəntā̊ is the plural of pəntā̊ "path, way", and wištō is an adjective meaning "seen, known". Emologically speaking, Fonδaiš Wīštā̊ is ultimately from Proto-Erani-Eracuran (PEE) *póntoh₁es and *wéydtos; however, because the name is a poetic term of no obvious antiquity, appearing in a younger part of the Epics, it is not generally thought this combination of words had any spiritual significance at the level of PEE culture.

Canon

The religious canon of the Northians was not centrally codified like that of Valstígr but rather was preserved through Epic poetry and a small quantity of other materials. When Fonδaiš Wīštā̊ was practiced, the religious texts are assumed to have been part of an oral tradition until priesthoods lost their independence in the 15th century. Though strict memorization by rote could preserve texts accurately, a large body of religious literature is assumed to have been lost to forgetfulness and changes in ritual practice that necessitated the literature in the first place.

Interest in Northian culture and religion intensifying in the 18th century, a number of scholars worked successively to extract the "primitive material" from preserved editions of the Epics, whose content had been known to be heterogeneous for centuries. Their work was first published in 1740 under the title The Gales of the Primitive Northians, after the repetitive, declamatory poetry most characterized by arcane language and found embedded, in stark contrast, with the fluid and florid verse of the Epics. It was thought that such crude, unpolished verse could only accompany a loud, shouting voice, hence the term "Gale". Other types of verses have been discerned from the Epic corpus, which consisted of over a half-million verses, spread through 103 known works, composed between 600 and 200 BCE.

Modern scholarship divides the Galic corpus into the six following categories both chronologically and thematically:

  • Galic hymns
    • Period I (to 1500 BCE)
    • Period II (to 1300 BCE)
    • Period III (to 1200 BCE)
  • Pseudo-Gales (between 1500 and 800 BCE)
    • Sacerdos corpus
    • Lay corpus
    • Mundane corpus
  • Galic sacerdotal verses (between 1200 and 800 BCE)
  • Didaskalic material (between 800 and 650 BCE)
  • Transitional prose (between 700 and 650 BCE)

Galic hymns

The Galic hymns are some of the oldest poetry not only of Nordic-Northian culture but also in all Erani-Eracuran languages. They characteristically addresses deities directly (in the second person, using terms like "thou" or "you") and make use of highly repetitve phrases. The Galic metre is uniform, consisting of 13 syllables divided by one caesura. The meter is sensitive to syllable weight, requring a number of specific feet about the caesura, which alternates in two locations (e.g. 5/8 then 8/5). Rhyme may or may not be observed in one of several patterns. This striking uniformity in form has led scholars to believe that the Galic hymns were composed by a single school of poets, composed within a short time frame, or heavily redacted on several occsaions.

There are a total of 197 hymns that are considered Galic, identified by their language, metre, and genre. The exact dating of the Galic hymns "is probably never to be known for sure", as while the language and form of the hymns are quite consistent, historical contexts are subjec to dispute. For example, G77 reads "this vessel I fashion in thy lunar light for thy lunar light", seemingly referring to cold forging of copper, common in the MBA but obsolete in the LBA. Upon this line scholars like Tholi (1887) dated the verse to 2000 BCE, but his contemporary Carlson says the vessel is pottery and not chronologically relevant. Currently, it is held that Period I (pre-gross recension) hymns are likely to have been written at the very end of the MBA (i.e. 2100 BCE – 1600 BCE), shortly before the "gross recension" around 1500 BCE.

Fragments of "old material", which may significantly predate the recension, are discernible according to some authorities by their odd phrasing, metre, or non-rhyme when the context is rhyming. This non-rhyme, no longer held to be primitive laxity or poetic license, may have been intentional to call attention to these phrases. Old material is thought not to have been composed by the Galic priests but incorporated by them into the Galic hymns, often with striking repetitiveness across multiple hymns when other phrases are less frequently repeated. Typical old material include the epithets of the Sun, such as βiβižuuoštī lōxštai aiiai "she who is abiding always in her illumination", and routines of the Sun, diuuōi fóṇδoā yaδīḥ "[she] who wends the paths in heaven", "of swift wheels and strong axles", etc. Almost all of the "old material" thus identified are oriented towards the Sun, but solar orientation alone is not proof of old material as the Galic sect continued to venerate the Sun for many centuries.

The recensions of the Galic hymns has become broadly accepted after the 1930s, though currently scholars are divided about the number of recensions of the Gales. They divide the corpus into, at minimum, early and late groups, on both form and thematic criteria. The early group is assigned an MBA date of composition and a location in Acrea, while the late group may have been composed elsewhere and by definition postdate the gross recension. Thus, the early group shows signs of added phrases, terms, and possibly concepts that are proper to the late group. Gherm adds a "middle recension" around 1300 BCE but does not identify any hymns that were composed at that point. Whether these recensions reflect changes in the priesthood's location, organization, or ideology is debated.

Given the likelihood that the Galic hymns were composed by a relatively closed group of priests who abided by a common metre and shared a language, it has been asked how Galic hymns might represent the broader Nordic-Northian religion and culture. Some authorities believe that the Galic hymns were composed by a divergent religious sect who subscribed to the (otherwise unknown in Nordic tradition) notion that the gods shared a "common spirit" (in Rasmussen's terminology) or "divine object" (in Petersen's) amongst themselves, namely the maintenance of the natural environment, and the beliefs of the Galic priests would thus indicate or connote a "henolatrous" doctrine, being worshipful of one aspect that all the deified personalities share above other aspects of those personalities.

Pseudo-Galic hymns

The Pseudo-galic hymns were named this way because the scholars who pioneered the specialized study of Galic verse believed they were later imitations of the Galic hymns after the latter had become part of a sacred religious canon. This view is no longer upheld by modern scholars, but the relative chronology between the Galic and Pseudo-galic group is still considered correct. While some Pseudo-galic hymns show a comparable degree of archaicism to the Galic ones, Crammer has demonstrated by 1950 that Pseudo-galic hymns do not contain the variety of archaic formations that the Galic hymns do and instead shows signs of an evolved language that borrowed phrases from the Galic hymns.

How much the Pseudo-Galic material postdates the Gales themselves is considered difficult to assess because the Pseudo-Gales do not address topics similar to the Gales, which would otherwise provide a good example of how the language would have been used in similar contexts. Crammer asserts that an interval of 300 to 500 years would not seem "beyond the realm of possibility", thus placing the Pseudo-Gales around 1200 to 1000 BCE; again, the Pseudo-Gales are closely aligned with Galic metre.

Sacerdotal verse

The sacredotal verses are a comparatively little-studied group of poetry that, most saliently, are found with the Gales but shift the perspective to the priest, who is never directly mentioned in the Gales. These include phrases like "we lift up this gift" and "we exchange kisses before your presence". They are often descriptions of what the priests are doing while conducting rituals. There are several hypotheses regarding the origins of the sacerdotal verses, a common one being that these were originally reminder notes to priests that were later canonized and understood as part of the liturgy.

Liturgical scholars tend to pay the most attention to the sacerdotal verses as they reveal the physical liturgy that would have underlaid the need for the Gales. Curiously, not all things described in the sacerdotal verses are "physically performable", such as SP1022 "as your beneficiaries, we exchange our bloods for your bloods and do dissipate it over the entire earth", and are clearly meant to be understood spiritually. But if these are not tips for the priests, even in the sense of a representative ritual, it has been asked whether these are phrases to be uttered but are not part of a set hymn, and, if so, what their provenances are. There is probably an explanatory character in the sacerdotal verses that are comments on the rituals more than mere instructions of them, and the need for comments may reflect an increasing importance in the theology behind rituals over the rituals themselves.

Didaskalic prose

The didaskalic prose, which number 60 chapters and over 100,000 words, are the largest body of pre-Epic material in the Northian language, far out-sizing the Galic, Pseudo-Galic, and Sacerdotal corpora put together. Most of this material is not metrical or rhyming and instead take the form of questions and answers by one of the Didaskaloi or "teachers". Some questions and their answers are given by named individuals, whose lifetimes could thus be computed, but a large portion of them are anonymous, given only as "the teacher responded".

The language of the didaskalic prose is in a very flowery form of the Galic language, using many and lengthy participle phrases and expressions that, by comparison with other received texts, are hardly imaginable as verbatim quotations of a person's spontaneous speech. Nevertheless, this editorial activity is thought to have been very close in time or contemporary to the Didaskaloi, as the text does not otherwise betray signs of later composition.

Most modern scholars concur the didaskalic prose is not a reflection of spontaneous speech of any person in the 8th and early 7th centuries BCE. This is shown, by 650, by the more familiar epics, whose characters speak with diction and grammar far easier to understand. The didaskalic prose frequently goes to extreme lengths to select arcane words and unusual compounds, as shown by the proliferation of the genitive and locative infinitive, instrumental subjects in indirect discourse, optatives with initial accent, as well as to retrofit non-productive and unetymological morphologies to words, such as the s-stems in -āḫ or the i-stem in -ai to neuter nouns.

The editor or editors evidently introduced these forms without much regard for internal consistency, with the result that the didaskalic prose yields over 4,000 hapax legomena. Perhaps ironically, these words have been considered an impediment recovering the text's nuanced meaning, as a hapax legomenon may merely be an ornamented version of an understood word or instead be a genuinely different term. The ornamentation connects the Didaskaloi to the Gales, which would have been about 1,000 years old to Northians and increasingly difficult to understand intuitively. It is a reflection of the great liturgical import of the Gales which the editors seek to impute to the words of the Didaskaloi.

Theology

The theology of Fonδaiš Wīštā̊ has been the subject of rigorous debate in both ancient and modern times. Modern scholarship has described Fonδaiš Wīštā̊ as having elements of polytheism, ditheism, monotheism, and even atheism.

Didaskalic orthodoxy

Much about the nature of gods has been inspired by the teachings of the Didaskaloi. While they did not speak much about the nature of the gods, some statements are at the foundation of Fonδaiš Wīštā̊ theology and are rarely controverted.

... I state [the gods] exist no more than good or evil. No man may put good or evil into his hand, indeed not more than he might see, hear, or touch a god. The illumination above our heads and the mud under our feet, they are not.

We understand [the gods] exist because we see their images and the movement in them.

Go as you will, but nowhere in the world will you find the gods. The gods you can never find in any corner of any world, though you may seek them every waking hour.

Araotā attributes this following story, which may be apocryphal, that contemplates what god should and should not be to the Didaskaloi but does not record which one:

You fall into a well and, being unable to ascend out of it and hearing no answer to your shouts, pray that a god should come to your assistance. At length, you son comes to the well, sees you, asks you to step into the bucket, and winches you out of the well with the pulley. What do you do? You prostrate yourself to worship your son as your god. For why should you not worship your son as your god: has he not done the same thing you wanted some god to do? Your son is, by your own will and thought, the same as your god. But I consider you to owe not your worship to your son as your god, though you might have so done, but still your gratitude to your son as your son.

Theologians often seek to understand the godhead by comparison and contrast with humanity. The faith sees human beings as consisting of two parts, the personal and impersonal part. All things which make individuals unique are personal and private, in that they and their experiences cannot be shared between individuals perfectly. One person can never see exactly the same as another person, and if a person describes what is seen, the description is subject to the interpretation of the listener, based on their assumption and experience. Yet there are also things that are considered universal amongst humans, such as the ability to think, to speak, and to imagine rationally, etc. At these levels, humans do not exist as distinct individuals but as a unity, in the sense that if one person knows or feels it, then all people do and at the same time.

By extension, the things which make individuals unique are associated with the material world. One cannot see without eyes or hear without ears; these faculties must have physical existence in order to function. The entire human body is unique and personal; no part of a body could (according to the knowledge of the ancients) be shared between individuals. The material world is therefore defined as all things which we observe through our faculties. On the other hand, things like rationality and emotion are thought to reside within the material human body but exist independently of it; by extension, these are universal qualities of humanity that are immaterial.

In ancient times, the bitterest schism amongst priests and intellectuals seems to be over whether the gods contained personal aspects. A personal god is considered alike to a human person in that they possess faculties, which may or may not be of the same kind as of humans, that inform a rational mind similar to a human mind; over time, the god accumulates knowledge based on these faculties. Furthermore, a personal god is distinct from another personal god, on account of their differing experiences arising from their respective faculties. An impersonal god does not have faculties and is not altered by external information but still possesses a rational mind; any new information the god acquires is purely through deduction based on their innate knowledge.

A deeply intertwined question is whether the rational mind of humans is the same as the rational mind of gods. The majority position throughout antiquity accepted that a god's mind is, discounting any experiences they had, exactly the same as a human mind. This is because a god would not be able to understand humans if they had a radically different sort of mind, and by all authorities it is agreed that gods are able to understand humans. Etiaro (d. 344) puts the question as follows: at the point of an infant's birth, having yet no external stimulus with which to develop its individuality, is its mind the same as the gods at their origin (whether they were born in the sense of humans or not)? Some theologians assert that humanity partake in the godhead as much as the gods partake in humanity, if some part of their qualities are shared.

It seems rarely disputed that there is nothing physically observable that can be considered the proper body of a god; their proper bodies could only exist within the rational mind (which exists independently of the physical world according to Northian theology). But if concepts like poverty can only exist in their proper forms within the rational mind, even though they pertain to matters very much within the faculties of observation, it has also been proposed that the gods are of the same nature as concepts like poverty and injustice, i.e. as abstract entities or qualities. Thus, Hizito (d. 440) says that

If I show you a coin and say to you, 'that is all I have', you will surely understand the condition of poverty. But the coin is a substance, and poverty is a quality. Were I to give the coin to you, you would not receive poverty, but, lo, you would be wealthier by a coin. Thus poverty is a thing to be understood, not to be acquired. There are no gods to be touched, seen, or heard, to be sacrificed to, or to take refuge in. But there are gods to be understood. Yet the rustics rarely understand the gods and deliver their moneys and goods to such (so-called) priests and media—they sacrifice nothing to the gods, but to their own stupidity."

Monotheist positions

Hizrociiā (d. 483) reportedly did a thought experiment about the quality of god in front of foreigners. He poured out two cups of water and asked them how many wodiriš "waters" there were, and they were confused by the ungrammatical word "waters". When one answered there were two, he poured one cup into another; when another said there was one, he poured some water out from the full cup into the empty one and dropped some salt into the first.

Many men, wiser than I am, have pondered the question how many gods there are in the world. I cannot improve on their dogmata but to repeat them. Our words often deceive us—in matters of number more than anything. Things around us have number when they are not easily substituted, according to each our faculties, for one another. It is bad to say there are two waters just because they are in two cups, for by those means we count cups and not the water within. But it is true that when water is in two cups, two persons may drink of it and describe two unique things according to their faculties, and one is not made true or false by the other. Thus while god can be considered, like water, only one thing, experiences of god are separate and admit of numbers.

Atheist positions

While most who opined on matters of religion appear to be from a priestly background during the Epic age, under Acrean domination there was no longer any formal qualification required before a person could opine or teach about religion, permitting schools of thought to proliferate on matters of faith. The simultaneous and peaceful co-existence and practice of other religions, such as the Nordic religion, occasioned an externalized, objective mannerism of religious commentary that would be more familiar to modern scholars, in contrast to the elaboration of religious understanding within a dogmatic framework, more akin to theology. For example, Axštaoxrā (c. 420s – 480s) publicly questioned whether the Northian gods existed at all, if his contemporaries were satisfied that they could not exist in the material world and nothing there could be a tangible representation of them. He says,

But if gods are like poverty, as Hizito says, and if one could imagine a world where there is no money and therefore no poverty, one therefore could envision a world where the gods do not exist? And if poverty must be reflected in some way in materials in order to exist, and admitting that poverty could be removed by the redistribution of wealth, could also the gods be removed by some re-arrangement of the material world?

While Axštaoxrā's assertions generated shockwaves and even a conviction for blasphemy, resulting in his debarrment from Cleiden, other scholars were to follow in his footsteps. His contemporary Morito claimed that the gods could be reduced by deduction into more fundamental concepts like knowledge and ignorance, good and evil, etc., and therefore the gods do not really exist. Morito's friend, Furohimura, contradicted him in a 502 treatise claiming that the gods are primary to the rational mind and therefore cannot be "put out of existence by the mere re-definition or re-understanding of matters". Morito and Furohimura's disputes has been taken up by later theologians along these lines or traversing them, resulting in what has been called Constructive Atheism, which flourished in the 7th century, i.e. the gods are composite and theoretical entities that can be reduced to more basic entities.

Furohimura, espousing the opposite position, rejected Axštaoxrā saying that, even if poverty could be eradicated from the world, assuming the removal of all arrangement of materials that may lead to the condition of poverty (such as the utter abolition of possession), it still exists within the human mind and can be, at once, generated once there is an unequal distribution of wealth. And if poverty is an unitary abstraction, regardless of in how many instances it exists or the degree of its seriousness, then the question of whether something currently represents it materially is not relevant. Thus, in the sense of the Gales where the gods not merely are associated with but are the infinite regeneration of the world and natural life that emanates from them, as long as life is a possibility (as it now is), then the gods of the Gales also must exist.

Fonδaiš Wīštā̊ has been called the "only religion in the world where atheism is an acceptable theological doctrine".

Worldview

Metaphysics

The prevailing belief during the Epic period of itinerant tribes was that the cyclical regeneration of nature, such as the annual growths of plants and animals etc. were the results of a supernatural desire to sustain human life through cyclical behaviour: "as satisfaction becomes want, so is nourishment then brought forth". This was identified with abstract, regular phenomena such as the precession of seasons, the phases of the Moon, as well as the (apparent) rotation of heavenly bodies around Earth, with the result that the regeneration of nature was viewed as the action of natural gods that demonstrate (related or unrelated) cyclical behaviour. This theology may have existed since Galic times, but it is less aparent from the Galic texts.

Some time before the Epic age, and perhaps originating with the Galic sect itself, a spirituality around the relationship of human life and materials emerged. Humans, as both physical and spiritual beings, were affected by seven requirements that were both physical and spiritual. If these requirements were in order, they manifested as satisfaction; in disorder, as want. These attributes were further identified with certain materials. These, given the correct treatment, had implicit magical powers that could rectify both physical and spiritual wants. They could be summarized as follows:

Want Satisfaction Element Remedial substance
Physical Spiritual Base Essence
Thirst Exhaustion Refreshment Air Wind Chimes
Hunger Suggestibility Fullness Earth Stone Metal
Illness Feebleness Health Plant Berries Juice
Injury Violence Invulnerability Animal Milk Butter
Weakness Deceit Truth Moon Water Eradmə̄
Confusion Wickedness Righteousness Sun Fire Aθrai̯šte
Mortality Sadness Immortality Human Speech Hymn

Much religious practice was centred on the transformation of the base remedial substances into their essences. It was not the physical form of the essence that was supposed to rectify the spiritual want, but rather its transformed spiritual nature, with its hidden potency brought out by means of invocations and rituals. Thus while butter is the essence or, in Northian, "blood" of milk, it is only butter prepared according to such ritualistic manners that satisfies the spiritual want of violence; other forms of butter can only act as a remedy to the physical want of injury.

Afterlife

The Galic hymns contain few clues about what occurs to a person after physical death. G.Nr. 31 states that a person's animą̄n "breath, life" would "return to eternity at its end". This animą̄n is yet a stubborn problem in Northian studies as nowhere else in the Galic verses is it mentioned again.

In the Didaskalic material, the animą̄n is still not clarified except restated to return to the "age of ages" (moiiərə miyõm). The matter is complicated, apparently, by the continued disagreement between where the material part of humanity ended and where the immaterial began. It is clear that the Didaskaloi agreed that the flesh rots away and even the bones rot away, while the abstract state of being human could be regarded as everlasting. But it is never quite clear if a person's individuality, that is the experiences made possible by the material body, survives death, or if only the abstract state of being human, which includes the ability of rational thought but not empirical experience, survives physical death.

Sanders argues the Didaskaloi tended towards the belief that a person's experiences does not survive physical death. Building on the precept of identitism, which states that the immaterial, everlasting part of the human being, is the godhead itself, he says that a person loses their individuality at death and is re-absorbed into the undifferentiated godhead. Pudar, building on the tradition of specifism, says that human experiences, insofar as they are consonant with truth, that constitutes a person's identity, are retained after the physical body perishes. Thus, at death, "illusions and lies, built up like the material world, dissipate away, while the truth triumphs and is proven everlasting, independent, and certainly in no need for materials to exist".

The Epic stories seem to express a great emotional or ethical ambivalence about life after death, coupled with an admonition that such is not to be relied upon: humans are to tend to their affairs while living, as nothing could be done in xairāḫ (cognate to Nordic Hel, both < *koilos). It is however possible for various divinities to raise a body from the dead and make it do their bidding, though such bodies are regarded as merely that, automata with no independent sense or will. If these bodies possessed human faculties, they would be extensions of the animating god. This was usually reserved for the wicked, whose immorality attracts malevolent gods to use them for evil ends.

In the late Epic period and into the Late Canon era, an afterlife begins to develop along with the theology of otherworlds. There is never a consistent number of otherworlds in the Epics, most of which do not enumerate them but only describe the ones relevant to the story.

During the Late Canon era, the theology developed to be compatible with the afterlives as asserted in other religions. Under this view, a form of post-mortem judgment is imposed not by some external deity but by the deceased over themselves. This states that, no matter what deity decides to do with them in the afterlife, the ego will always judge itself, and if found wanting, a person's own spirit torments itself, and no god could change this behaviour. Karita says, "O foolish men, why think you may placate gods before you can placate yourselves? Is it not true, to feel happiness, you must have sense, and whatever your god does for you, your sense will not permit you to feel happy if you torment it?"

Sexuality

Not much is known about sexuality in Galic times, other than the portrayal that the Goddess of Dawn is the product of a "copulation" between the Sun and Moon, who are female and male respectively in mythology. In this sense, copulation is portrayed with positive overtones as a fulfilment of natural cycles that regenerate. The word for "copulate" is in G.Nr. 141 seen as yabaētātāHi, which is dual in number and of the middle voice, signifying that both partners, Sun and Moon, are in the same grammatical position and the action's result concerns the agents. Terce points out, "Neither Sun nor Moon is being portrayed as a passive partner; copulation is something both are actively doing for themselves. It is a shared activity, not something that one does to another."

The same verb root that gives yabaētātāHi also formed a transitive verb meaning "to conjugate" or "to bring together", which does not always have sexual meaning. "To conjugate" requires two accusative objects, which are the two things conjugated or brought together by the doer, plus the locative infinitive of purpose or genitive infinitive of cause. This is the verb for the act of uniting two tribes through marriage or the process of joining grammatical stem and ending. In G.Nr. 41, a builder conjugates the superstructure of a house to a foundation, built by a different craftsperson. In the Epics, the God of Air conjugates animals, which means to breed a pairing of male and female of the same species. But the sexual meaning of the transitive verb "to conjugate" is not used of humans, i.e. it is not attested in the Epics to "breed humans".

Gender

Very little gendered material is found in the Galic corpus, and as a result most literature regarding gender in pre-imperial Northian society is centred on the Epic period (7th – 3rd c. BCE).

The Northian conceptualization of gender is "both oppositional and parallel". In some instances, men and women are presented as exclusive, contrasting categories from each other, such as MPS 2230 as men till and herd, but women forage and hunt; hath not this been the way of our two mothers [i.e. parents]. and DNN 176 for the Goddess took possession thereof, and thereby was pleased (i.e. the God would not have been pleased if he had taken possession, on account of his gender). On the other hand, men and women are also associated categories with much similarity between them, and thus speaks Kumo in MPS 1624 this doth please me though it be for a woman: for thereunto what is a man if not woman.

Ethnicity and race

In medieval and early modern scholarship, Fonδaiš Wīštā̊ was described as an innovative religion to reject ethnicity and gender as relevant and doctrinal part of spirituality. Scholars of the 15th century cited the Didaskaloi to assert that the worldview of Fonδaiš Wīštā̊ was available to "each and every human being", further asserting that the Didaskaloi themselves were of different nationalities (though they all spoke Northian). These ideas were absorbed by the Northian Order of Priests when it formed in 1487, which stated that "not even every god on this side of the sea or beyond put together can invalidate the dogmata [of Fonδaiš Wīštā̊]". As a "profession of the wise", the Priesthood explicitly rejected national or ethnic connotations of the religion that were even inherited as part of it, "for wisdom is freely given to any mind that takes it."

The modern priesthood still teaches as doctrine that all humans are an indivisible unity on the level of their humanity; that is, the one and same set of characteristics marks all of them as human, as distinct from gods, animals, or inanimate things. These capabilities include the ability to communicate (whether with words or not), to feel emotion, and to think rationally, and they are the only things which are required to become a holder of the Fonδaiš Wīštā̊ faith. Attempts to introduce elements of ethnicity or nationality have been multiple times rejected as heresies and excised from the priesthood, on the grounds that the faith is communicated through theories, whose medium is immaterial, rather than ancestry, whose medium is material. However, individual practitioners of Fonδaiš Wīštā̊ may hold these views privately without censure.

More modern scholars have provided a sketch of the ancient realities of Fonδaiš Wīštā̊, which elucidates many of its practices as exponents of Northian culture and society, without which those practices might create dramatically different emotional or pragmatic resonances with practitioners. Specifically, the society in which Fonδaiš Wīštā̊ first became a liturgical religion was nomadic and practiced only opportunistic agriculture. Changes in the historical context may have prompted the Didaskaloi's theology to become much more prominent in later developments in the faith, emphasizing the philosophical and representative elements of rituals over the material and substantial. The altered orientation is "obvious" according to Carter, as "not even was the word 'wisdom' mentioned once in the Galic corpus". In view of these limitations, many scholars still hold that (at least the philosophical aspect of) Fonδaiš Wīštā̊'s religious universalism was "striking and innovative in a profoundly ethnic time and place".

Eschatology

During the Epic age, the idea emerged that the physical world would one day be destroyed, only to be remade later. According to Sivias, writing around 300 CE, "the elders" say that the greed of humans would one day overwhelm the providence of the elements, and the very earth and sky will wither away after exhausting their physical forms. The following will happen at midday on the last day of the world: the sky will crack and fall in pieces, and the earth will disintegrate to dust; the Sun will collide with the Moon and annihilate each other; the waters will run dry, and the seed of fire will be extinguished. All the living humans will die as a result of the destruction of the physical world. All things once on earth will fall into the primordial, bottomless abyss. The evil gods would at once experience ecstacy that natural order is destroyed and grief that, now that the world itself is destroyed, no more can there be the joy of destruction.

Though this dramatic failure of the material world, the philosophical superiority of good over evil is thoroughly demonstrated: acts of evil (that is, destruction and death) are only possible after and in light of acts of good (that is, creation and life), while good stands independently in the absence of evil. The ephemerality and weakness of evil is laid bare. Note that, as the battle for the material world was decidedly lost, the battle for the spiritual world was resoundingly and resultatively won. By the death of all life, the truth has ironically triumphed over falsehood of death.

The fate of the world then depends on the human spirits' ability to recall the truth and restart the work of creation. While all other species of sacraments necessary for the ceremonies that supported life are now lost, the supreme species of sacrament, that is words of prayer, remains at the disposal of the disembodied spirits. As the situation is desperate and the evil gods shown to be useless and inferior in the state universal destruction, some human spirits would abandon misconceptions and bring the Godhead into physical existence again through their collective minds. As long as the Godhead is not totally forgotten, the Sun and Moon will rise again, the Sky and Earth will re-emerge, and the flowing waters and burning fire will re-appear.

Once the world has re-appeared, the spirits who have remembered truth would be the first to be resurrected and enter new bodies to inhabit the remade world, which is now a paradise because, having witnessed the holy truth, no human would stray again from it. Those that have not remembered would initially writhe in such tormenting shame and disgrace that they feel physical pain about their former lives. After this, they regret and blame themselves for becoming deceived. However, when they have come to terms with the idea that the work of creation provides for everyone, even those that have worked against them, they too will become resurrected and join the new world. When universal resurrection is achieved, the evil gods will have been forgotten, even as causes for shame, and the world enters a perfect state, where all humans are at peace.

Themes

Galic divinity

In Galic times, it appears that the divine creation and regeneration, viewed as the same process, was venerated by the composers of Galic hymns, which were oriented towards praise of the powers of creation/regeneration. This prominence of the unanthropomorphic regenerative power is not found within the Epic texts, where the maintenance of the Divine Order is a concern in social dimensions much more than in religious ones. It is the core belief of the Galic composers that the regular transition of day and night, the seasonal appearance of wild animals and plants, as well as a correct relationship between humans constituted the Divine Order, and it is its maintenance that makes human society and life itself possible. The original emphasis of a religious understanding of natural order seems to be transferred to societal order slightly before or during the Epic period.

Since solar and lunar eclipses, supernovae, and comets represented interruptions of the perceived order of the heavenly bodies, they were considered monitions from nature that bode ill for the seasonal order that underpinned a primitive society that still relied on hunting, foraging, and animal husbandry. Meteors were considered a great menace, as it penetrated the dome of the sky, creating great horrors that the heavenly bodies were failing and falling down to the earth. The Gales seem to suggest that religious activities of considerable scale occurred at these times to restore the natural order, attended by large gatherings of "many races", poining to a system of beliefs shared between kinship and geographic groups.

The concept of āhuš "Creator" is still poorly defined. This word can also be glossed, especially in the plural, as "Lordship". This is possibly a reference to the idea that it is the regular and unfailing work of these natural deities that sustains human life and is thus the "creator" of the abstract sense of "life", as opposed to individual persons' lives. ampšuš (when feminine) also identified a human ancestor, especially a distant one regarded as the apex progenitrix. Āṇhaōš when applied to the gods is generally associated with their extraordinary actions, particularly corrective ones when the natural order has been disturbed in some way.

Didaskalism

Didaskalism focuses on the teachings of the three sages of the Didaskalism Age, which is usually dated to about 900 to 650 BCE based on the sages' postulated lifetimes. This coincides with the end of the Galic Age and to historians primarily represents a period of religious transformation, the creation of prose literature, and heralding of the Epic Age.

The first sage, known as Hsārišimāṇhō of the Añipurarians, lived and worked around 900 BCE. Tradition holds that, in his youth, he was a tribal priest of the Añipurarians (hence the name) and became disillusioned with the general religious practices amongst Northian tribes, whose gatherings were usually accompanied by lavish rituals. Though organized to honour the elements for their providence, an act of rectitude, Hsārišimāṇhō observed that the collection of brass and foods for sacraments became burdensome and embarrassing to the poor. It is held that he saw that "the poor were accused of injustice on account of their poverty, and the wealthy honoured as righteous by means of their wealth."

Hsārišimāṇhō was told to mind his rituals and not mind with how the sacramental elements were collected, as long as they were ritualistically pure. More senior priests chastised him that the correct rituals and words made the elements pure and fit to be the material representation of the hypostases of the gods. Hsārišimāṇhō left his tribe and meditated for 40 years, before returning as an old man and with a radical message: there was no barrier between the ritualistic and material worlds. If something was procured in a polluting way from the material world, no ritual could could purge it of the taint of iniquity, saying "nothing taken, even from an enemy, can be the pure Bronze that holds the pure Cream".

In Northian tradition, Hsārišimāṇhō became enlightened at the age of 72 and taught his beliefs for another 72 years, before dying at the age of 144. Aside from this implausible longevity, it has been questioned whether Hsārišimāṇhō is a true, historical figure, on the grounds that his tribe, Añipurarians, is not thought to have formed until about 200 years after his traditional lifetime. Nevertheless, his pupil (at least in spirit) Munāhθīi̯å of Ai̯kšahei̯š is usually accepted as a historical figure who lived around 800 BCE.

While Hsārišimāṇhō was primarily concerned with the construction of ritualistic purity and rectitude in quotidian and social life, and how rectitude in one realm strengthens or diminishes that in the other, Munāhθīi̯å expanded on the earlier philosophy by envisioning the entire world as one divided into right and wrong. He said in G.Nr. 7735, "Does not everything—forage, herd, till, and craft—that one does sustain life? Is not everything that sustains life a thing that is right, in the same way we say the Hypostasis of Cream and Hypostasis of Berries are things that are right?"

However, the third and final sage Mae̯mutasrå of Biθrō, who lived just before the Epic Age, around 700 BCE, was regarded as the wisest teacher amongst the Northians. In the schema of the gradual propagation of sacred knowledge of life from the spiritual world to the mundane, Mae̯mutasrå represents the final stage where it is revealed that not only every action has spiritual significance, but every person has an innate conscience that can comprehend that significance and act according to it. "Whoever is human needs no teacher to know right; each person that has eyes and ears and also a mind knows right." Despite this appeal to innate morality, Mae̯mutasrå also preaches that what is right does not always have the most gratifying results, but as long as one listens to one's mind, "one will not stray from what is right."

wohūḥ and dušṯ

wohūḥ is the plural of wohū, meaning "good things" or "goodness". It is the elaboration of the Divine Order in the Epic period. It features prominently, through not immutably, in texts of all eras that describe the belief system of Fonδaiš Wīštā̊, whether through the lens of literary mythology or direct religious devotion. wohūḥ is understood as the underlying essence of everything that permits life and brings joy, and it is often a yardstick or objective of an individual's behaviour. Sanctioned behaviour, intention, etc. is in accordance with wohūḥ. In a slightly later time, wohūḥ acquires a more spiritual meaning of "holiness" in a way not quite associated with divinities; that is, wohūḥ permits a person to transcend their material existence and somehow access or embody the supernatural.

It is to be observed that wohūḥ is the assumed objective of both mankind and divinity, but neither kind (divinities are often regarded as a separate race of beings with humanoid shape and emotions) is born perfectly in a state of wohūḥ. In this sense, divinities are not inherently more possessed of wohūḥ than humans, and their great power can often lead them farther astray from wohūḥ than humans. wohūḥ is not a currency of goodness that can be accumulated against evil or dušṯ: no amount of previous wohūḥ will prevent or nullify a great dušṯ. wohūḥ signifies an attachment or state of mind to what is right, which can be easily cultivated but will be challenged at all times. Due to the imperfect state of both humanity and divinity, in the current time both will possess wohūḥ and its opposite dušṯ; a being tending towards wohūḥ will more often choose to abide by the former but may still act upon dušṯ from time to time.

The concept of wohūḥ is distinct from piety to the gods, which may or may not be wohūḥ depending on the circumstances. For example, in TR 49, a person praying and offering generous sacrifices to the God of Rain that he turn his breath to Martu and cure the drought is considered wohūḥ, but in SV 7, a sacrifice offered to obtain a blessing sought for an unjust cause, that is the seduction of someone's daughter, is considered dušṯ.

Dušṯ on the other hand means "evil". Compared to the nebulous meaning of wohūḥ, dušṯ is concretely associated with actions that, in addition to being not-wohūḥ, nullify or corrupt the results of wohūḥ. The state of not-wohūḥ is not equal to dušṯ and has a special term, āṇuuohuuī.

Mortality and immortality

The topic of mortality is not often addressed in the epic corpus, and "scenes portraying the dead as alive" are virtually unknown. In very early epics as well as the Gales themselves, it seems that no afterlife is envisioned, and that death is as inescapable and as unalterable. Death was referred to as the "fate of all humankind" (G.Nr. 6113); those who are dead have "gone to the fate of our race". Conversely, the gods are those who are not fated to die, though this is not to say they had no fate.

Despite this frankly uncheerful view of death, early Northians believed that if their name continues to be remembered, they remain alive in some sense. While the body is fated to die, fame can be undying, and the Epics are replete with characters who are trying to achieve "reputational immortality" by a variety of deeds. This would give a mortal the chance to approximate a god, since gods do not die and continue to built upon their fame. Individuals of noble origin are particularly attached to their own reputations, not only within their communities but also foreign ones; as such, they are given to adventure and astonishing generosity. Even those of modest means may bequeath objects of considerable value for their own memories in the community, like communal buildings and wares.

Epic poets praised the wosū of certain individuals as the key by which they have become reputationally immortal. While many acts that the nobility have done may be interpreted as wosū, it is seldom but indeed seen that acts directly contradict wosū could also contribute to a person's reputation. Nevertheless, the poets fulfill their moralistic duty by explaining that while all acts may contribute to reputation, only wosū is certain to.

Though the maintenance of a legendary reputation was the objective of many characters in Northian epic, it does not seem to encourage life-endangering recklessness in most situations. This is because fame is accumulated through a person's actions during their natural life, and singular acts that lead to reputational immortality are rare. In the poetic tradition, the preference for a long life of continuous good acts, punctuated by a few remarkable ones, may be attributed to the ease of dramatic development in such a life story as material for epic poetry. Moreover, youths are instructed by poets that wosū generally leads to longevity, and a longer life creates more opportunity for wosū, creating a virtuous cycle of a kind.

Relationship with gods

In the Epic tradition, a common theme encountered by many characters is the worship of novel gods by foreign or domestic communities. For example, in the magical epic of Namena, the main character leaves his home town on a trading expedition of several years, only to find that his village had converted to the worship of a new god he did not know before. He then has to reconcile his doubts about the powers of the new god with the apparent devotion the others in his village, whom he tries not to offend after a long absence.

A mortal person in the Epics always owes a degree of distant respect to any being defined as a god dēwō (lit. "shining one") by virtue of that definition; if it is flaunted, the mortal is seen as justifiably punished when retribution befalls them. A god always possesses supernatural powers and immortality as a natural characteristic of their species, in as much as sentience is expected from a human being and as aggression is expected from bears and wolves. A god is not intrinsically worthy of worship or sacrifice to, but it seems the Epic poets felt their powers were very real and a mortal of any intelligence must be aware of his subordinate place before a god. Failure to show humility, according to the poets, justifies a god's retribution.

Yet devotion to the gods operates in parallel, it appears from the Epics, with that to the moralistic principles of good societal order and private rectitude, and Epic characters are frequently trapped between these two demands especially when a god threatens a hero to accomplish a wicked deed that the hero finds difficult to entertain. In this way, the rectitude of a human being contrasts with the perverseness of a god, a situation (admittedly) dangerous to the mortal but that ranks as high praise in the rhetorical resources of Epic poets.

In terms of how the historic spiritual system may have worked during the Epic age, it seems there were a multitude of cults, some with multiple centres, across the area settled by the Northian-speaking peoples and those not settled by but still known to them. There was no such thing as a "false god" in the vocabulary of the Epics, the presence of a religious community around the god being ample proof that they existed. A god worshipped in foreign lands was felt to be as real as one worshipped by Northians. This belief is likely to have been true of the historical Northians too: the existence and validity of foreign gods were rarely challenged, though their intentions often were. Conflicts between cults were common, though more often of the kind pertaining to economic rights, rather than religious differences.

A person can enter into several relationships with a god reflected in the Epics and in Acrean descriptions of Northians. First, by entering into the consecrated ground of a god's physical abode, a person owes the respect expected of a guest to a host; this includes abiding by the cult's rules and showing reverence to the cult statue by an accustomed method. Desecrating actions and blasphemous words were to be especially avoided. Harmless actions and words elsewhere may be considered desecrating within the precincts of the cult statue. A person could also enter into a religious community surrounding the god, whereby additional requirements were imposed in return for perceived blessings from the god and varoius benefits provided by the community.

arō

arō (gen. arahō), < *h₂er-os, means "order". Within the context of Fonδaiš Wīštā̊, it is often used in a moralistic sense, as to societal ethics. Its adjectives are artō, meaning "orderly, truthful, right", and anartō, which covers the inverse concepts of "disorderly, perverted, wrong". Comparative is ariiā̊; superlative, arištō = Syaran ἄριστος.

The Epic poets often viewed the world as one in which everything person and thing had proper places and behaviours. To an extent, a person's proper behaviour was decided by class, gender, and family; it was, however, also tied to aspirations, religious devotion, ability, and even happenstance. In the 19th century, the Epic tradition was interpreted as an exposition that the world was a machine, and its constituents were its "gears" working in predetermined ways; this interpretation is no longer common.

There was a strong desire by the Epic poets to find an underlying theory that explains issues like gender and class, and most often the example of the gods was cited as sources or antecedents to the behaviour of humans. In this way, behaviours contrary to what the poets thought to be natural were often identified as sources of problems, which was not necessarily subject to their moral censure, particularly in dramatic usage. It should be noted that the phenomena that the poets rationalized were realities to the poets and their listeners, while the poets were offering listeners their theories. The realities of the Epic age will thus, necessarily, be some distance away from the explanations that the poets give in the Epics.

Truth

According to the vision of the Didaskaloi, the purpose of existence is to comprehend "Truth" both intellectually and actually. Truth is that which is eternal and independent; it is uncreated, exists naturally, cannot be destroyed, and does not depend on goodwill, concessions, or other accidents to exist. By aligning oneself to Truth, one also becomes eternal and independent. According to this view, death merely distinguishes Truth from Falsehood, which falls away at the end of life.

According to some authorities, there is a shift in the notion of life as one that needs constant nourishment to one that is justified through Truth. In so changing, the notion of life loses some of its biological characteristics. There is disagreement whether Truth may be communicated via words or must be internally-grasped.

Creed of the Galic Prologue

According to most traditions, the following creed is recited three times by both the priesthood and laity before the commencement of the Galic hymns.

bāhā aāṯ hanaŋhõ āgməntā haōždūmβo

taīš taōβiiā āṯ haōšta hiϑaiiā priaiiaē

Ye that step upon the path of honours worship

the divinities with praises and worship associates with love.

The line occurs as a Sacerdotal verse and is very densely composed.

In a co-incidence with the Shalumite language, the two verbs "worship" work as both indicatives and imperatives. Spoken by priests, the other priests are addressed; their functions are confirmed; by the laity, the whole priesthood is addressed, and the words become a command. Moreover, the two instances of the word "worship" are translated with the same word in Shalumite but are different in Northian. The worship of the gods is in the middle voice, while the worship of the "associates" is in the active.

While both middle and active verbs could be (and are here) transitive (i.e. affecting a direct object), the active verb emphasizes the effects of the action as it concerns the direct object, while the middle often redirects the emphasis on the agent. Thus, by a purely grammatical conjecture, the worship of the gods may express an action that primarily concerns the priesthood and not as much the gods, while the worship of the associates concerns the associates and not as much the priesthood.

A literary symmetry is both made (by using the same verb root) and broken (by using contrasting voices) at the same time, and then also spoken from two separate perspectives. Such intricacy is characteristic of the Late Galic poetic tradition of dense compositions, compared to the freer, more direct forms common in Early Galic.

Warfare

During the Epic period, a traditional of martial art existed through the dual skills of charioteership and archery. Though once considered associated with masculine virtue, this perspective has come under challenge in the 20th century. Scholars like Rammi and Nanten stress that the peace-time institutions of warfare, such as chariot races and archery competitions, were principally associated with wealth and not gender. Their 1952 argument rests on the observation that there is no general imperative or ethic that male members of society be affiliated with charioteership and archery, but instead wealthy women were seen practicing archery and (in one instance) driving her own chariot. Indeed, Galic gods were often envisioned as drivers of chariots.

The literature purports a "strong connection between skills of warfare and wealth, because the time need to develop these skills as well as their implements, namely a team of horses and a chariot, were unavailable to individuals of more modest means." Branner emphasizes that the ability to control a team of yoked horses and to shoot from a moving platform "probably took years of daily training to master". Still, the poor had roles in warfare—they served as footmen, wagon-pullers, slingers, trumpeters, craftsmen, etc.—but that their roles in battle were literarily cast as subordinate to the one dominated by the wealthy, that of charging in the well-oiled chariot. Both men and women had stations on the field of battle, and the literature suggests that all members of society were expected to support their champion.

The connection of warfare to wealth is complex in the Northian epics. On the one hand, spoils of war were liable to pollute, and, obtained by violence, were unfit for sacramental usage in the eyes of priests. On the other hand, the distribution of spoils to the temporality of the community was considered fair in consequence of battles. Those who took more than their fair share were criticized. The wealthy were censured if they failed to provide for the defence of members of their communities. Upon this point, Grelnik asserted that the spoils of war (particularly the weapons) were granted to chieftains as a "community fund", to be used for communal purposes; Hasser states that all of the wealth of the wealthy were ethically disposable by the community in emergency, not only those derived from warfare.

The situation in Galic society is more murky, as the transduced liturgical material reveals "almost nothing" about warfare, other than that it existed. The metaphor of the Moon as a shield, likening both its illumination and circular shape to defensive function, suggests that hand-held shields existed and were used as defensive implements, which "hardly surprises" according to Kemmer.

The archaeological record of Epic-era Northian burials reveal that daggers were a common possession amongst the more privileged individuals, probably used both as an ornament and as a means of self-defence. These daggers were short, their blades no longer than 12 cm, and most seem to have experienced only gentle use. An alternative interpretation, forwarded by Kemmer, is that they were table knives used for eating. Most of the battle weapon, such as longer swords, shields, lances, etc. were discovered in large hoards, suggesting that these were communal deposits in preparation for communal usage. There was little standardization of weapons, and only a few bear identifiable markings.

Deities

ϑezā

ϑezā (gen.sg xmō, = Av. zā̊, Sy. χθών etc.), is the goddess of the Earth. She is often described with the epithet barəsuwī "the broad one", from barətuš.

Zyō

Zyō (gen tuwō, = Syaran Ζεύς, Δι(ϝ)ός etc.) is the deified sky or its anthropomorphic, male god. He is often qualified as ufšištō "highest", as ufšištos-dyō "Heaven Most High". Thus, Zyō was both a god and a location where other entities may inhabit. The epithet ptō "father" is also applied to him, as Zyō-ptō. This epithet is seen in other Erani-Eracuran languages. But, curiously, ufšištō is never used in conjunction with pitō, perhaps suggesting a distinction between his two shapes as animistic and anthropomorphic god.

Zyō was worshipped by a particular sect that existed during the Epic age, considering him as the progenitor of all living beings. ufšištos-dyō was later utilized as a convenient translation for the world of Asgard in Nordic faith, as it is usually described as above the human world. This usage could be regarded as an attempt to euhemerize the Nordic religion according to the worldview of Fonδaiš Wīštā̊, as the Ǽsir of Asgard were also rendered as pwəntā ufšištōyo-tuwō "the powers of heaven most high".

Mā

Mā (phonologically dysyllabic /mā·ā̊/, gen māhō /ma·ahōḫ/) is the male lunar deity of the Northian pantheon in the Galic period and has aspects of the Celtic deity Lugh in later times.

Hāuuərə

Hāuuərə (phonologically /hāw·r̥̄/, gen hūvəṇġ) is the female solar deity of the Northian pantheon in the Galic period. Together with her twin brother Mā, they are often called daēuuōi "Two Shining Ones" or elliptically Hāuuarō "Two Suns".

Āfš

Āfš (gen apōḫ) is the female god of the holy waters.

Āṇhniš

Āṇhniš (gen āṇhnaiš) is the god of fire, purity, and protection. Āŋhniš is also the god of oaths and contracts, evidenced in the Galic phrase Āṇhnṓi póčiiōi "by the lord Āṇhniš" at the end of oaths.

Wośmā

Main article: Wōdmã

Early in the Epic period, the name Wośmā is absent, and his function was vested instead in θitātā, ā-stem derivative of θitās, a plurale tantum glossed as "immanence, manifestation, incarnation". It is thought that the concept of θitās presupposes the doctrine of Transcendentalism, which asserts the gods do not have inherently-limited material forms. The physical sky, earth, and the heavenly bodies are, according to this doctrine, material or materialized projections of divine powers. Accordingly, a positive medium or quality is necessary to express or convey divine power in materials, and that medium is inferred as θitātā. Thus, θitātā is also translated as numina in reference to its theological function. Notably, the expected singular *θitātõm never appears.

In the Epic of Temilan, date to the 300s BCE, the phrase užmā θitātā "the manifestation of numina" is first used. ušməṇġ, genitive of Wośmā, appears to be from PEE *woh₂t-mn̥, "excitement, trance". However, some scholars assert (contrary to the surface form) that ušməṇġ is not a genitive but a locative, in which case ušməṇġ is the (inanimate) place where θitātā is found or vested; this subtlety changes the theological property of ušməṇġ from an entity to a location or purpose. At any rate, if the etymology is true, as it appears to be, the name itself is cognate to the Nordic god Odin's name. However, scholars differ extensively if the figure of Wośmā is actually related the figure of Odin worshipped in various sects of Nordic faith like Valstígr and Vallyar.

The figure of Wośmā was elaborated during the Migration period (200 BCE – 100 CE), because he absorbs θitātā (which rarely was spoken of after the Migration Period) and becomes an anthropomorphized figure that transports offerings and songs to the other divinities as well as dispenses their blessings and curses. Wośmā by the start of the Common Era obtains the body of a beautiful young man and is depicted as standing or sitting upon the altars and is figuratively kissed by supplicating priests; however, less anthropomorphic imagery of Wośmā co-existed, and at certain parts of the liturgy various sacerdotal implements were called Wośmā's heart, head, arms, legs, mouth, and eyes.

Some authorities on Northian religion have since the 1930s postulated that the figure of Wośmā was actually a development of the Celtic deity Lugh and cited the physical similarities between that deity and the mythological appearance of Wośmā. The theory's supporters assert that, prior to Celtic contact, Wośmā was not conceived of as a person, far from having a physical appearance, and was only a by-name or manifestation for θitātā, which is an abstract property of the material that contects them to the spiritual. Critics of the Celtic origin theory assert that Wośmā's comparison to Lugh is motivated only by similarities in physical appearance and not by those in mythological or theological content.

Still others, following Lateran's work in 1975, state that Wośmā has several depictions enshrined in doctrine and mythology as separate personae. Lateran's work focused on dissecting the chronological strata of the Northian liturgy and proposed that the impersonal Wośmā is primarily found in the older strata, while the personal Wośmā is found in psalms and hymns of a younger date. Lateran's theory is held in doubt by those who either believe his chronologization of the liturgy to be untenable, or that a personal image of Wośmā is recoverable in the early strata where it is supposedly absent. Defenders of the Lateran theory provide that there concepts of one stratum can often influence analogous ones in other strata, and any personal reference to Wośmā in earlier material can be explained away this way.

Scholars have also pointed out that some cults dedicated to Wośmā mysticism as opposed to the better-known but also more doctrinal form of religion may have also left some impressions on the mythological understanding of Wośmā. Such cults are sometimes identified with professional groups like poets and physicians, whose powers are depicted in Epic and later literature as attributed by their holders to their patron god Wośmā. Additionally, it is held that after Wośmā was anthropomorphized, he acquired independent cults which worshipped him on terms that were rather different from the better-known Epic religion. Some aspects of these Wośmā-cults, claiming a special relationship with Wośmā, may have been incorporated into mainstream religious cults during the Imperial period.

Aiδar

From PEE *h₂eydʰ-r̥, "burning". Aiδar was the god of light, the child of the Sun and Moon. On this basis, he is called rəōṯaŋhõm nepōt "child of lights". He is associated with the concept of ϑitātā "immanence". His epithets include iδuminōḫ "incandescent" and ϑaēuuōḫ "shining".

Aiδar is not a very prominent figure in the received liturgy of the Late Canon period, whence most modern rites are thought to have been developed. Nevertheless, he does appear in several places near the end, prior to the final rite of thanksgiving-praise, especially in the thrice-chanted phrase, Aiδar nū ūzδi āṇhmōi parai, éštū fərətōṯ xruminõm wəkār, antirōṯ minušminõm, θritōṯ gignōminõm "Aiδar, now be amongst us; firstly be our words heard, secondly understood, thirdly fulfilled".

Concepts

Immortality

Wholeness

Truth

Satisfaction

Rites

The rites of Fonδaiš Wīštā̊ were diverse, as different religious sects during the Epic age found different liturgies appropriate for their devotion. Nevertheless, modern scholars have reconstructed a fairly solid and broadly-accepted set of core beliefs and rituals that seemed to be reflected in most religious ceremonies during the Epic age. Many of these beliefs show great antiquity as echoes of Galic-age ceremonies, but so too were there new ceremonies rapidly adopted across multiple religious communities at the same time.

While there was no organized priesthood as such in Galic times, these had arisen with the appearance of religious centres, at the very latest by 650 BCE. Priesthoods in the Fonδaiš Wīštā̊ sense both practiced religious ceremonies according to the requirements of their devotions and offer religious services to the laity. Where religious services were called upon by a lay person, the lay person became the patron of the service and had a special place in the spiritual sense within most religious proceedings. This could be done for a certain contribution in money, goods, or some kind of labour that priests could not perform for technical or religious reasons, but for some ceremonies the patron did not need to make any contribution.

Most Fonδaiš Wīštā̊ services were organized as a series of wahš (pl. wokiš) "utterances", which were consecrated words spoken with or without liturgical action on spiritual objects; each utterance represented some specific spiritual action. Spiritual objects were held to represent objects, concepts, or powers in the invisible worlds, while their visible forms were only a shadow of their spiritual significance. Utterances could be directed to affect the officiating priest, assistant priests, attendant priests, patrons, laymen, or deities. In the Epic era, it was held that these utterances had magical power and were the means by which spiritual actions were accomplished; the visible actions done on spiritual objects were merely the "echo" of the spiritual action accomplished in the spiritual world by the magical words.

The general purpose of services is to affirm, priase, and thank one or more divinity for a beneficient action, which could be as quotidian as having the good fortune of recovering a lost object or as momentous as the successful defence of a settlement. These three actions were defined as "worship". The Moon and Sun were most commonly attributed as the source of goodness, or the two together, followed by Heaven and Earth, apart or together. Other than the pricinipal divinity, other deities may also be worshipped as functionaries in the service, such as being a messenger, purifier, or sanctifier; in earlier times, Fire and Water were often appealed to sanctify and purify ritualistic utensils, and closer to the period of the Late Canon, Odin (in his Northian interpretation as Wodmə̄n) also served the function of a messenger god.

Many Fonδaiš Wīštā̊ rituals are of great length, some consisting of more than 600 wokiš and continue from dawn to dusk. Much of this length is due to the need to transform mundane elements so that their spiritual forms may manifest and thereby become carriers of spiritual power, as well as to present them to various deities. And it is more often than not the case multiple elements need to be combined, which each require separate preparation, purification, transformation, consecration. These elements are then charged with each other, re-purified, re-transformed, and re-consecrated. Each step may require the intercession of multiple spiritual forces or the participation of multiple parties to the service. More wokiš were then said over these processes, either of explanatory nature, or to give thanks to the spiritual force effecting the action.

Late Canon Service

It was during the Late Canon period that the earliest records were purposely written to describe religious actions. According to some authorities, Aṇhiθrohā, dating to 70 CE and the earliest religious manual of Northian tradition, was written in a time when Nordic religion started to exert pressure on the "known ways" of the Northians. By implication the author of the manual believed that Nordic gods were being called upon to perform various functions in rituals in "unknown", i.e. novel, ways, and the treatise was written to qualify what the author believed was acceptable and reasonable in these tendencies. The author did not wholesale condemn the involvement of Nordic gods or deny their powers but sought to clarify and rationalize them and reject only what he thought was unreasonable.

Aṇhiθrohā went to great lengths to describe the entire philosophy and activity of Northian services. The pre-service was mostly about the proper roles of priests, patrons, laymen, etc. and their states of mind. After the pre-service, the main service was in six parts: preparation, purification, transmutation, consecration, benediction, and thanksgiving. These components proceeded in order of increasing holiness, with the final thanksgiving, centred on the 72 Galic hymns, being described as "holy amongst the very holy" (ištarō ištrištō). After it, the post-service included more hymns to thank all divinities invoked, at their departure.

Ritualistically speaking, the various elements meticuously purified, consecrated, and presented by human work as offerings to the gods are exactly those substances that are praised as life-giving and considered gifts of divine origin. Scholars see in this practice an element of imitatio dei, as these elements are normally credited as the gift of gods are, temporarily and ritualistically, appropriated as the gift of humans to gods during the segments of consecration and benediction; yet when they are consumed by the officiating and assisting priests, the elements revert to the identity of the work and gift of gods. It is thought that by replicating and visualizing the divine process of creating the nourishing elements, supplicants affirm or demonstrate their belief in the truth of the divine origin of the elements and their nourishing value. The deeper meaning of these rituals remain actively debated by academics today.

Great Psalter

The Great Psalter, published by royal edict in 1517, is a derivative of an earlier University Psalter written at Cleiden in the late 1300s. The Great Psalter consolidated the great variety of ceremonies contained in the University Psalter but most importantly introduced the liturgical calendar, which ordained compulsory, regular services throughout the year and other services automatically celebrated for specific occasions. Prior to the Great Psalter, most priests only held services at the request of community adherents.

The Plenary Service was to be held by the chief priest of each Northian town upon each full moon in honour of Mā, the moon-god, and the fifth day following, in honour of Hāuuarō, the sun-goddess. These two days were declared holidays throughout the land. While there were alternating lunar and solar orientations for the two services, most of their content were actually the same, and within a few decades any differences seem to have disappeared. This binary opposition between the moon-god and sun-goddess appears to have been inspired by the Siluan veneration of two principal goddesses of, incidentally, lunar and solar connotation. The Great Psalter was exact as to the words and actions required from the officiating priest: when the priest should stand, kneel, bow, or raise his hands were all explicitly given.

The Plenary Service is named thus on account of a full recitation of the 113 Gales, hymns composed before 1200 BCE, that have survived to the 16th century. While the language of the Gales is an archaic form of Northian, which is still spoken, it made no sense to anyone but scholars of ancient literature, owing to its sheer age. The Gales were chanted by the priest as an unbroken chain of syllables, without regard for verse structure. As the priest enunciated the Gales, the laity initially stood in solemn silence but later took to humming a melody judged appropriate for the occasion.

Perhaps the most renowned element of the Great Psalter service is the instruction to the congregation, immediately prior to the manifestation of the numina:

And as we [two] priests shall consecrate the elements to make them divine, and they be fit, blessed, sacrificial elements; so shall ye consecrate each other and yourselves bless to make your persons holy, that ye be fit hosts to the powers of heaven and earth. The providence of creation the powers omit not once, and the blessing of peace to each other shall ye this hour not deny.

Upon hearing this instruction, the congregation usually turn to face and kiss each other on the forehead then turn and bow to the altar. Family members cannot fulfill this requirement by kissing each other, especially parents by kissing their children. At different places there were additional rules, such as men should kiss other men, and women other women, or that kisses should be exchanged between social peers, etc. The denial of a kiss to another who has kissed oneself is perceived as a grave social and spiritual affront, unless there is a medical reason why a kiss should not be given in return; in its stead, a bow is given.

Mythology

Main article: Northian mythology

Revivals

Fonδaiš Wohuiš

Main article: Penϑō-uuouš

Fonδaiš Wohuiš is a reformist faith asserted to recentre the Northian religion on the beliefs and practices of the Epic era, prior to the popularization of the Nordic gods under the Acrean Empire.

The religion reform movement has deep roots in various sects of the Northian religious community, which had uneven receptiveness to the Nordic gods. For the most part, there was no consensus in civic and religious bodies whether their worship was beneficial or consonant with the Northian religion. In most communities during the Imperial era there was a harmonious intermixture of rituals and beliefs of Northian and Nordic origins, but some theologians held more skeptical or dismissive views about the Nordic gods. During the Viking settlement of the 8th through 12th centuries, Northian beliefs seem to have lost liturgical and theological prominence, and by the 14th century even cultural strongholds like Cleiden saw steep declines in participation in Northian rites.

Far from a "Viking cultural invasion" as decried by Romantic authors, who connected the spread of Nordic religion to the bane of Viking raids and the advent of Vikingr settlers, the mainstream now identifies the secuarlization of Northian government in the 800s and onwards as the main reason behind the disappearance of large-scale native religious communities and activities. The Epic religion actually continued to be adapted and adopted in Vikingr settler communities, where the Galic rituals found new life as the aptrblót, literally "after-sacrifice". Galic priests were often hired by the settlers to provide a highly mystical and exotic philosophy to enrich their religious experiences. The need to train priests from a Nordic background was indispensible for the creation of many exegetical works on Galic materials, which have greatly influenced modern Galology.

Interest in the Northian religion experienced a revival in literate circles from about 1300, but it was approached mostly as part of an interest in history. Through the accounts of travelling scholars, information and examples were gathered from practitioners of Northian rites and compared to the Epic corpus; the developments of objects, rituals, and words were traced and analyzed. The result of this study, centred in the University of Cleiden (est. 1321), was a compendious series of books capturing even minute details of ritual instruments, vessels on the one hand, and the precise words and gestures the priests used on the other.

While Medieval scholars spent much time and effort studying the visible materials and procedures of Northian religion, it was not until the 1400s until its theology became a topic of study amongst scholars. The proliferation of Humanism in Northian universities inspired much debate about the proper relationship between the human, natural, and supernatural. Building on the highly systematic, medieval study of Northian religion, many Humanist writers found value in a seemingly rational relationship between the human and divine proffered by the Northian religion in medieval portrayal. Northian polymaths asserted that the veneration of gods' cyclical, predictable behaviour showed that early civilizations made rational and ethical choices in their religions, whereas the appeal for their intercession in "disputations of purely human origin" (such as warfare) is considered superstitious and aberrant.

These understandings seem to have segued into the following centuries when Northian identity developed around cities, universities, and marketplaces. In 1520, the Northian king suddenly proclaimed that there should be a purgation of the religious practices in the kingdom, "to restore honour and glory to the gods on whose work all humanity cherish and rely" and "forbid the worship of those gods whose work is misery, hatred, and strife and who are altogether too indecorously indulged in vice." His successor declared that "the gods by whose works my people live, their crops grow, and their crafts prosper, I honour and establish in my house. The gods that work hatred and violence amongst the cities, those that bless wrath and jealousy, those that are honoured by way of bloodshed, I dishonour and turn away from my house." These proclamations were re-issued in 1531, 1545, 1546, 1577, and 1590.

It should be noted that the king's proclamation may have gone unheard in many quarters. Even during the most fervent period of Northian revival of 1550 – 1650, the Northian army active in 1602 – 5 offered animal sacrifices to Odin and Thor in large quantities before almost every battle: the king "enjoyed the company of the forces that have heeded his call in their blót and ate of the sacrifice" and "gave gold chains to the goði that officiated the army's ceremonies". Printed pamphlets attacked the Nordic gods as "promoters of manslaughter, robbery, force,[1] lechery, drunkenness, gluttony, laziness, anger, slander, malicious duels, and all imaginable kinds of vice and immorality," all the while praising the virtues of "faithfulness, righteousness, generosity, love, wisdom, etc." exemplified by the Sun, Moon, Sky, and Earth.

In the 1600s, the reformed Northian faith grew at a rapid rate amongst intellectuals, and its knowledge if not worship became firmly associated with the wealthy, the educated, and the major cities, where ceremonies were carried out with public or private patronage. But it was only in 1660 did the Congress of the States made it mandatory for all incorporated cities to impose fines on families failing to attend monthly ceremonies held by the local Fonδaiš priesthood. For this occasion, the Book of Holy Hymns and Book of Sacerdotal Rites were published and sanctioned as the bases for Fonδaiš services. The priesthood believed in didascalism, that is priestly actions physically exemplified the gods and supernaturally instilled divine virtues in adherents. Exactitude in gestures made and words spoken was thus indispensible.

This heavy focus on priestly action was not only at odds with the Nordic-influenced religious practices common in the Northern States but possibly with historic Northian religion as well. A reluctant attendant complained that these services, for the laity, consisted of "watching in silence", while the priests performed all forms of worship. Priests did not interact with the laity during the service, as the laity was considered profane. For the same reason, lay persons were also not permitted to perform any of the ritualistic actions, or to engage in physical worship. This changed in 1703, when the laity was instructed to bow their heads or kneel at certain parts of the liturgy.

Northian national anthem

Main article: National Anthem of the Northern States

Culture

Sacerdotal training

From at least the time of Praetorianius, the Northian priesthood recognized three ranks of priests who were authorized to perform varying amounts of ceremonies and actions within them based on their rank.

  • Training-Priest
  • Under-Priest
  • Plenary-Priest

To graduate from the rank of Under-Priest to a Plenary-Priest, the test known as the 120 Trials must be passed. To do so, the Under-Priest stands in the middle of the altar, where a re-enactment of a sacrifice is carried out with non-consecrated vessels. The Under-Priest is blindfolded, and whenever the officiating priest starts to mouth the psalter rather than chant it, the Under-Priest must chant, without hesitation, until the officiant starts to vocalize again. In total, the full psalter, lasting three hours at a good pace, will have about 120 places where the chanting drops off, hence the name of the trial. This means the full psalter, which has over 35,000 words, needs to be reproduced purely from memory, as visual aid is not permitted.

If the Under-Priest passes this trial, the set of non-consecrated vessels (containing 2 mortars, 3 pestles, 6 cups, 10 cup rests, 8 dishes, 3 chargers, 3 mounts, 5 ladles, 2 pairs of tongs, and 1 basin) will be given to them as their vessels to use in their future practice. These vessels must now be consecrated in a process than may last a few weeks.


Priestly nudity and vestments

It was argued in the book Primitive Galic Religion (1951) that Galic priests conducted ceremonies "mostly, if not always" in the nude. This nudity was supposed to represent both purity and primordial anonymity, and by the removal of the priest's individuality, they could represent the humanity in all persons. Later, when nudity became unacceptable, priests took to wearing a hooded robe with no markings, with the hood pulled over the head while performing some liturgical actions. Under the principle of imitatio dei, this anonymity permits the "identity between the godhead and humanity". Because the hood (with no eye holes) obscured sight, a great deal of experience and memory was required in the priest. This view is not accepted by all authorities.

In contemporary practice, the prelacy of Cleiden, known for its progressivism, has permitted priests to eschew garments while performing rites, while fully reserving this choice to the priest and asserting that the congregation should not force the priest to make such a choice, especially for "perverse ends".

Notes

  1. ↑ u̯īš, generally speaking an unjustified use of force that is considered a crime in city limits and religious spaces.

See also

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