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Kaharnism is a traditional Charnean religion associated with Tamashek speaking peoples of the Zahra desert and today practiced by many groups across Charnea and Scipia. Core aspects of Kaharnism as an organized religion were established through the amalgamation of the traditional beliefs of Tamashek speaking nomads and the faiths of many ethnic groups residing in southern and eastern Charnea as the former came into contact with the latter through migration and conquest in the 10th and 11th centuries. Modern Kaharnism arose through syncretism of this medieval Kaharnism with White Path beliefs introduced through osmosis from Mutulese interests in Scipia, followed by the appearance of mendicant proselytising entities such as the semi-legendary Desert Oracle. It is not known when these processes of syncretism and partial conversion of Kaharnists to Sakbe beliefs began as the earliest surviving record of these activities are an early account of the Desert Oracle's activities dating to the mid 16th century, indicating that Sakbe must have been present or known in Charnea for some time prior. However, it is widely accepted that the heavily syncretic Sakbe-infused beliefs recognizable in modern Kaharnism had been well established around the mid to late 18th and early 19th centuries in many regions, and became widely although not universally practiced after the reunification of the Charnean Confederation in 1816. Kaharnism and similar Amazigh belief structures are also known to be syncretic with the Azdarin faith, various Christian denominations, and Judaism.
Kaharnic practice focuses on the correct treatment and veneration of an extraordinarily broad pantheon of deities, known by many local terms including kel essuf and rada among others which typically translate as gods, spirits or geniuses. Many deities in Kaharnism are the souls or iman of important ancestors which live on past death and are able to influence the physical world. However, it is believed that the iman of living people are also able to leave their bodies during dreams and interact with the divine plane or spirit world in some way. Animals are also believed to have immortal souls similar to humans, which may be influenced by ancestral souls or the souls of dreaming humans. Kaharnism is an animist belief structure and also ascribes a sort of soul or divine entity to inanimate objects and phenomena, such as mountains, rivers and storms. Some gods worshipped in modern Kaharnist practices may also be divinities borrowed from other religions which are practiced in parallel with Kaharnist beliefs by many diverse groups of Scipians. In other cases, foreign gods may simply be interpreted as other names or manifestations of Kaharnist spirits or deities. The Kaharnist pantheon is not universal, and may feature a different cast of deities which vary from tribe to tribe.
Many variations and syncretic sects of Kaharnism exist across Charnea and Scipia, practicing at times markedly distinct and differing liturgical orthodoxy and rites. The central constant which unifies Kaharnist practice and distinguishes it from other forms of Scipian traditional shamanism and ancestor worship is the deified figure of Mother Kaharna, a legendary queen of the ancient Amazigh peoples who was posthumously deified as a powerful ancestor spirit and later a higher order goddess as Kaharnism continued to develop. Kaharna, often referred to as Mother of us all, is worshipped as a powerful ancestor spirit and matron god presiding over the pantheon of other spirits in all variations of the faith. Kaharna is not always seen as the most powerful divinity, but is typified as the champion of the cause of humankind, the most widely concerned with the conditions of human life and the fate of nations. Although the historical Kaharna was distinctly an Amazigh foundational figure, her deified image is today treated as a universal ancestor to non-Amazigh nations and, theoretically, all of humanity. In syncretic practice of White Path, particularly in Charnea, Kaharna is syncretized with the god Chaak. In Azadrin practice, Kaharnists pray to Gedayo as Kaharna, even though the Azdarin deity is a supreme monotheistic god while Kaharna is not the creator nor the supreme being of her own pantheon.
Beliefs
Kaharnism espouses the belief in a supreme being which created the universe, leading to the religion being mistakenly identified as monotheistic historically. The creator being is identified as the sun, alternatively as a dual entity encompassing both the sun and moon, Sham-Mawu meaning sun-moon. In the latter interpretation, the creator Sham and the demiurge Mawu are distinct facets of the same overarching supreme entity, conceptually similar to the tripartite nature of God in the Christian concept of the trinity. For Kaharnists, Sham-Mawu is a distant and transcendent god who is uninterested in human affairs and therefore is not prayed to or directly venerated, as humans cannot contact it directly. Sham-Mawu can sometimes be personified as either a male or female entity, sometimes even as both male and female, but is more commonly portrayed as a non-human, intangible entity represented by the solar disk. Sham-Mawu is differentiated from non-transcendent lower deities which are both animistic spirits of the land, natural elements and conceptual embodiments as well as the empowered spirits of both living and ancestral dead souls. The heavenly divine realm of Sham-Mawu and the earthly divine realm of the divine spirits are often contrasted through mitigated duality. Duality is central to the Kaharnist concept of transcendent divinity, as the supreme being incorporates both "light" under Sham and "dark" under Mawu. The concept of complimentary opposites, or a natural balance of opposites which define each other, is considered the root of divine creation. Most Kaharnists believe that the mortal world decayed into its present mundane state from its original status which was more closely intertwined with the magical and divine spirit world, and that these examples of duality manifested in the earthly world are lingering signs of Sham-Mawu's original creation, within which the spark of the divine can be found.
The other gods, sprits or geniuses, are the polytheistic deities of Kaharnism. Depending on the sect or syncretic beliefs of practitioners, the gods will alternatively be referred to as K'uh, temanaa or as saints, "mysteries" or "invisible ones". Spirits interact with humans through positive influence by offering help, protection, or guidance as well as through voluntary possession and negative influence such as causing disease or inflicting tamazai, a form of negative possession akin to depression. Kaharnists generally believe in spirit possession, which is usually practiced through dancing rituals where the possessed is usually a priest or ceremonial officiant dressed in a costume specific to the deity being invoked. Through these séances, clerical figures claim to speak directly for the gods as anything they say or do while under the possession ritual is believed to be the literal word of the divine spirit being invoked. Negative forms of possession also exist, and powerful emotional states like profound grief are usually attributed to such instances of unwelcome possession, which Kaharnist spiritual healers are trained to remedy using special rites and paraphernalia.
Generally, the gods of the Kaharnist faith exist in a gradient from major deities comparable to the gods of foreign pantheons and of monotheistic religions, to the specific ancestor spirits, animal spirits and spirits of a particular stream, rock or tree. Gods which are widely worshipped by all of Kaharnism or by large local divisions are referred to as greater gods or major gods to distinguish them from the gods which represent only minor aspects of the world, such as local animals or a specific family ancestor only venerated by a small group of descendants. Complicating this, lesser gods may become greater gods if they are worshipped at three or more separate houses of worship in which they hold a central position, according to the most common Kaharnist practice. Scholars of the faith believe that Kaharna herself, the central deity and foremost of the greater gods in Kaharnism, originated as a minor ancestor deity after the death of the real Queen Kaharna and remained relatively obscure until she attained legendary status several generations after her death and burial, eventually becoming the patron ancestor of the Tamashek people, and later of all majority Kaharnist ethnicities. Similarly, divinities which were once greater gods have in the past lessened in popularity and faded into the status of minor gods or even an extinct deity no longer observed. Often, the role in the wider pantheon these deities occupied would later be filled by an alternate version of the god, which shares many of the same features but is of a different origin or mythical character.