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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
Cosmology
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.
In the Kaharnist creation myth Sham-Mawu does not in fact create the entire universe, which is believed to be infinite and has no beginning and no end. Instead, Sham-Mawu or the transcendent divinity he or she represents enters the universe or comes into being within it and creates the mortal world within the primordial world, which is believed to be an infinite body of dark, salty water. This is often interpreted as Sham-Mawu merely changing the primordial universe, which had existed for eternity prior, to imbue it with their divine radiance and transform it into the recognizable material world with land and living things. Modern interpretations may instead suggest that this myth refers to the formation of the planet within the primordial void of space by the interference of supreme solar energies. At some point following the creation of the world as it is by the supreme deity, this original divinity partially abandoned the world and returned to the heavens, leaving behind a vast number of tiny fragments of the greater divine being, which would become the spirits of nature, the earth and the souls of all humans and animals. Other fragments of the solar-lunar transcendent being would attempt to follow their forbearer into the heavens, creating the stars and the visible planets of the sky.
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. Broadly speaking, Kaharnists believe in reincarnation as the souls of recent or old ancestral dead may return to mortality and be reborn into flesh once again. Spirits which were once human may be reincarnated as animals and vice versa, hence the reverent religious treatment of animals as equal beings to humans in Kaharnist practice. Unlike many beliefs based around reincarnation, Kaharnists believe that the soul does not necessarily reincarnate immediately after death, and will most often linger as an untethered non-corporeal entity for long periods of time between mortal incarnations. Very powerful spirits, such as the goddess Kaharna, are believed to be of such divine strength and size that they are not capable of inhabiting a mortal body any longer, and so are not believed to reincarnate and may only briefly and temporarily inhabit a mortal body through possession.
Although the term "god" is often used freely in reference to the divinities of Kaharnism, scholars of the faith distinguish between gods and spirits as the divinities observed may range from major gods comparable to those of other polytheistic pantheons to very minor entities representing a specific dead ancestor, a specific river or tree, or the spirit of an animal killed in the hunt. According to the common tradition, a god is any deity that holds a central position in ten or more separate shrines. Kaharnist scholars believe that Kaharna herself was once considered a common ancestor spirit after her death, albeit an important royal ancestor, and was only elevated to the status of a very important central god many years after her death, when her reign and death became legendary to her descendants and her spirit became more widely revered as a result. Kaharna is not the only example of an ancestor spirit surpassing the threshold to become a greater divinity, but she is by far the most important ancestor spirit turned god in the Kaharnist faith, as she went from a minor ancestor spirit to the central deity of the entire pantheon. In a similar vein, gods which are widely worshipped may at times wane in popularity and be downgraded to the classification of lowly spirit as a result, or even go extinct altogether as they are no longer worshipped. Modern scholars have proposed that the Kaharnist view is that divine entities are stronger or weaker depending or the number of people and shrines dedicated to their worship, although this is not entirely corroborated by the actual practice of Kaharnism and remains a largely unsubstantiated view on the subject of Kaharnist cosmology.
Deities
Kaharnists believe that the creator Sham-Mawu populated the world with small splinters of divinity upon finishing the construction of the earthly reality. These entities can traverse the barrier between the material world and a second, spiritual world, and have the power to influence the material world from the spiritual world and vice versa. A few of these spirits are able to attain or are otherwise endowed with a strong divine energy which empowers them to preside over the other spirits, causing the spiritual world to be divided into factions or "kingdoms", each of which is presided over by one god or a council of gods. These groups of divine entities are generally grouped into two general categories. The incarnating spirits are the souls of humans and other animals, as well as the gods which preside over them but do not incarnate themselves, which can generally be referred to as a soul or iman. Kaharnists believe that the souls of humans and of animals are fundamentally the same, but only belong to different spiritual kingdoms of different size and power, and that a soul that isn't currently incarnated in the mortal world can change between these affiliations for a variety of reasons. The second group of divine entities are the non-incarnating type, which never inhabit mortal bodies and instead influence the material world through natural phenomena, such as storms, fires, floods, diseases and even good or bad luck. They are sometimes somewhat misleadingly labeled "nature spirits", because they influence the workings of the natural world and may inhabit or direct the growth of plants, but are not incarnated in any animal lifeforms.
There are a wide variety of gods in the Kaharnist pantheon, as each division of the spirits must have at least one corresponding god which leads that band of spirits. The largest and most relevant group of spirits observed is that of the human souls, ruled by the goddess and chief ancestor Kaharna, however she is very far from the only deity observed by Kaharnist adherents as much as she may be the central figure of daily worship. Kaharnism is fundamentally an animist belief, within which almost everything which exists is associated with a spirit or god. Not all of these divine entities are worshipped, while many are observed only in small local shrines dedicated to the local spirits and gods. Only a few are widely recognized and are the subject of universal or near universal veneration by the adherents of Kaharnism.
Kaharna
Also known as the Great Mother, Kaharna is the central goddess of the Kaharnist religion and is one of the few to be universally recognized and worshipped in all local variations and syncretic sects that fall under the umbrella of Kaharnist worship. As a goddess, Kaharna is best defined as an earth mother and is worshipped as the universal ancestor figure of all of humanity, occasionally being depicted as the mother of all life in the world. Generally, Kaharna is observed as the divine matron of humanity and the principal deity presiding over human civilizations and the daily affairs of people around the world. In Kaharnist cosmology, Kaharna is not the supreme being and is merely the chief human ancestor deity, considered to be roughly equal in power to many other deities under the transcendent creator god Sham-Mawu. However, because of her integral position in the pantheon as it relates to human affairs and the daily process of worship and interaction with the divine, Kaharna is treated as the de facto chief deity of the Kaharnist pantheon and because of this lends the religion her name. Mother Kaharna is primarily a goddess of life and death within the pantheon of major deities. She is believed to preside over the souls of human beings and is deeply involved with the religious aspects of birth and death. Adherents believe that souls that are born into the human race are those which reside within Kaharna's domain in the spiritual world or divine plane, whereas animal souls exist within other spirit kingdoms. In the Kaharnist view of reincarnation, human dead which have done misdeeds, behaved poorly or even lived a poor and unfulfilling life, may be reincarnated as animals after their deaths. This is because souls which are unworthy of entering Kaharna's spirit kingdom in the beyond are cast out to the other kingdoms instead, causing them to join the souls of the animals. People having severe genetic disabilities, including physical deformities or mental disorders, are believed to be souls incompatible with the human body, which Kaharna will guide to another kingdom so that when they next reincarnate they will inhabit a body better suited to them and live a happier, more fulfilling mortal life.
Kaharna's position as the matron of humanity, queen of the human afterlife and judge over the souls of the dead puts her at the center of all rituals and beliefs involving communion with an adherents ancestors, a central part of Kaharnist worship. Notable or powerful ancestor spirits are sometimes contacted directly through prayer, however the most common practice especially for more mundane dead spirits is to contact them by praying first to Kaharna to act as a divine intermediary and relay the adherent's messages to the soul they are trying to reach and vice versa. Notably, Kaharna's position as the judge of mortal souls and queen of the human afterlife not only likens her to the many gods of death in other polytheistic pantheons, but also draws many parallels to the deities of monotheistic religions, such as the Christian or Jewish God and Gedayo in Azdarin belief. This has facilitated the syncretic worship of Kaharna by Christians, Jews and Azdarin adherents of Kaharnist affiliation, which worship Kaharna as a personification of their supreme god in a monotheistic view, and observe the many other deities of traditional Kaharnism as saints or angels under Kaharna.
Tanet
Known as the Great White Serpent (Tamashek: Maqqor Aschschel Imlal, ⵎⴰⵈⵈⵧⵔ ⴰⵙⵞⵛⴻⵍ ⵉⵎⵍⴰⵍ) or the initialism "Mai" (ⵎⴰⵉ), Tanet is the goddess of the important Obul river which bisects Charnea. She is the bringer of the rains, mother of the annual floods and the chief deity of agriculture and farming. In Kaharnist mythology, the lingering primordial waters which made up the void into which Sham-Mawu brought his radiant creation were later tamed by Kaharna and the other spirit gods of life to no longer be salty, and to follow and serve the rhythms of life across the world. This tamed form of the primordial chaos serpent of the great ocean became Tanet, a corruption of the ancient Scipian goddess Tiamat, related to Leviathan of Christian mythology and other primordial serpent myths found across the world. It is believed that the riverine form of Tanet constantly regenerates the goddesses original saltiness, which she sheds at the behest of the other gods and allows to flow downriver and into the ocean, filling the sea with all of Tanet's discarded salt which is considered a manifestation of primordial chaos of a mythical era predating the coming of the divine to the material world. Tanet's primary role within the pantheon is as the goddess of renewal and new life, as the seasonal cycles she represents nourish the riverside fields year after year. The late spring showers which may at rare occasions fall on the northern deserts of Charenea are called "Tanet's blessing" because of this association, and are considered to be spiritually significant occurrences. It is common practice in Kaharnist communities to time pregnancies so that the birth coincides with the coming of the rainy season, as this time frame during the Tanet's renewal of life is believed to allow a dead iman soul to reincarnate into the baby and live life once more. Tanet is more broadly associated with pregnancy and birth, and it is believed that the Fiom river, also known as the Black Serpent (Tamashek: Aschschel Tezzefe, ⴰⵙⵞⵛⴻⵍ ⵜⴻⵣⵣⴻⴼⴻ), is the unborn child of Tanet which has miscarried and remained attached to her body, the Obul river into which the Fiom flows. Tanet mourns this loss and takes pity on mothers undergoing complications because of this, often interfering on their behalf. The goddess is occasionally tempremental and is believed to be behind thunderstorms, cyclones, and destructive flooding which may occur when she lashes out. Drought is the result of humankind causing Tanet disgust or otherwise offending or attacking her by polluting or mistreating the river, which can only be undone by pleasing Tanet and undoing the offending act, or by pleading with Kaharna to bring back Tanet's rains as the "twin mother" goddesses are believed to have a special relationship among the gods, Kaharna being one of the deities which are said to have tamed the primordial waters to create Tanet from them.
Erekere
Erekere (or Erakaris) is the principle deity amoung wide range of war gods which exist in the Kaharnist pantheon, both those currently worshipped and those which were once well known and have since fallen out of popularity. Generally, he is seen as the primary patron spirit of warriors and hunters and the master of the divine realm of armed combat and weapon related arts, which are considered distinctly masculine in Charnean culture. The ancestor spirits of the famous Charnean warlords Agnan of the Tree and his successor Ihemod the Inheritor are believed to have been mortal incarnations of the warrior deity Erekere before his spirit became too engorged with divinity that he became unable to manifest again within a mortal body. There are many variants of this myth which differ in their details, primarily in the discussion of whether or not the Erekere spirit began with Agnan before reincarnating into Ihemod, or if Erekere had been born before Agnan and the Charnean founder was only one of several incarnations the spirit had lived as. Most versions agree that the spirit was not reborn at any time in the centuries between Agnan's death and Ihemod's birth, and has not been reborn since Ihemod's death. Because Erekere is a human soul, he belongs to Kaharna's spiritual kingdom and is considered beneath her in status despite the both of them being gods of the pantheon. Because of his prominence and popularity, the myriad of other hunter and warrior gods and goddesses are for the most part considered to be subordinates or associates of Erekere, with the notable exception of the ant god Anelugu, which is seen as a god of natural conflict and war and exemplifies the Kaharnist understand of war as being non-exclusive to humans based on observations of Matabele ants and their complex raiding behaviors interpreted as a form of non-human organized warfare.
Kowaye
This goddess is unique among the pantheon of major Kaharnist deities in that she is believed to have very frequently reincarnated through the course of recorded history. It is said that Kowaye is among the gods with the weakest divine energy, allowing her to momentarily become small enough to "fit" in a human body and be reborn, only to grow to the status of a god after passing from their mortal body. This is because Kowaye is the goddess of love, sex, and marriage and is believed to have originated as a human prostitute in ancient times. Kowaye is believed to be so protected of those sharing in her lifestyle and profession that she very frequently expends divine energy to grant protection, good fortune, dispell evil, and incarnate herself into a human body so that she may once again partake in carnal pleasures unattainable to the incorporeal spirits and gods. Like Erekere, Kowaye's status as a human soul places her distinctly within the kingdom of Kaharna in the spiritual plane of existence and subordinate to the Great Mother as a result. Worship of Kowaye often takes the form of sacred prostitution, which is the only legal form of prostitution in Charnea, but is also present at wedding and courting rituals of the Kaharnist faith.
Ire
This is one of the gods of Kaharnism which is not venerated or worshipped, but is recognized as a divinity generally at odds with the human kingdom of Kaharna. Ire, or Katir (ⴾⴰⵜⵉⵕ) is the god of decay and disease, which manifests as molds, fungus and detritophagous invertebrates such as maggots or worms. Many of the living kingdoms of animal and human souls oppose Ire because by his nature, he destroys their bodies and food sources, harming them and carrying out ill deeds on them. He is associated with what is considered metaphorical rot as well. The general entropy of organized structures and the development of negative behaviors or doing of evil deeds is believed to be a manifestation of Ire's ongoing war against the other kingdoms of the divine plane. His primary enemies are Kaharna, as well as the kingdoms of the jackal, the vulture and other scavenging animals which eat dead bodies and thus remove Ire's rotting influence from the world, protecting humanity and other life. Many interpretations label Ire as a demon, archdemon and even syncretize him with Satan or other head evil entities within their respective pantheons, as Ire or his minions often play an antagonistic role in some Kaharnist myths. However, the more mainstream strands of Kaharnism oppose this view, suggesting instead that the spirits and deities of the faith cause and therefore mirror the natural phenomena of the world, some of which may actively harm humanity which is only one part of the world, but all of which are equally divine as creations of Sham-Mawu and manifestations of the spirits left behind in their passing,
Practices
Worship
The worship of the gods and spirits of the Kaharnist faith is generally conducted in a communal, family based fashion. Each family or clan group is expected to keep a shrine honoring the spirits of their ancestral dead, as well as the animals with which they commonly interact especially those which are hunted or killed as part of their lifestyle. Such household shrines are practically ubiquitous in Kaharnist communities, especially in Charnea, and are most common in dispersed, highly rural or nomadic populations within which major dedicated temples are not practical. However, the major Kaharnist deities often have temple complexes dedicated to them, or are otherwise venerated on established hallowed ground dedicated for that purpose. There is a distinction between Kaharnist houses of worship, called Tegzim or Tagazam ta kel essuf (lit: "home of the spirits"), and broader hallowed grounds which do not necessarily have any built temples or structures on them. Sacred sites like the Sacred Tree of Awakar or other sacred groves are used for outdoor worship in groups, while "wild" spaces considered sacrosanct such as the Erg Awakar are not actively used for worship and feature only in religious processes involving the individual. Some gods or groups of sprits are worshiped primarily in temples, while others are observed primarily in sacred spaces or shrines outside of dedicated temples. Funerary fields, which are considered hallowed grounds, and Kaharnist necropoli, which are considered temple complexes, are both dedicated to the goddess Kaharna, who also figures centrally in most temples of the faith, making her the main deity appearing in both types of worship site.
Funerary Rites
The majority of Kaharnist funerary practices center around excarnation, based on the practice of the Tamashek nomads to leave their dead for the elements and desert scavengers to break down and return to the weave of the world. In the ancient past, the Amazigh groups, some of which would later distinguish into the Tamashek, practiced burials and built large tomb complexes to house the bodies of the dead, as is believed to be the case with Kaharna herself. The only remaining echo of this tradition is the practice of keeping relics of a dead person or animals skeletal structure, usually a finger removed before the destruction of the body and preserved as a talisman through which the person's soul may be contacted or may likewise reach out from beyond death and interfere with the living world. In general, however, Kaharnists believe that disposing of the body by reducing and destroying it in a way that is considered clean and pure is proper treatment of the dead. The principal methods of disposal for cadavers is either sky burial or cremation, although they are not interchangeable and are usually each applied to specific circumstances. It is noted that because Kaharnism holds that animals posses an iman or soul just as humans do, the same principles of human funerary rites are applied to the disposal and treatment of dead animals as well. All Kaharnist mortuary practices are rooted in the belief that putrefaction and decay are profoundly evil, and any body that is in the process of decay will taint and make unclean everything around it.
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Human cadavers are most often submitted to sky burial in Kaharnist communities, which consequently consider scavenging birds and especially the Sacred Vulture, occasionally referred to as a "Kaharnic Angel", to be holy in nature and sacrosanct as integral spirits of death and the passage of a soul from inhabiting a living body to existing freely as an ancestral god. Vultures and other scavenging birds were known to eat the cadavers of small animals in Charnean farming and herding villages, which would otherwise decompose and contaminate the surrounding areas, contributing to the positive portrayal of these birds as beings which help and preside over humanity in the Charnean and wider Kaharnist tradition. The oldest sky burial traditions involve simply offering the whole cadaver to the vultures, hawks and crows at a mortuary field, which is usually marked with multiple stelae consecrating the ground and invoking the spirits and the gods. Often, a stele will be erected at these funeral fields to record the names of important or honored dead which have been excarnated at the site. More complex forms of the same practice are employed near major population centers, where a Kaharnist necropolis may be erected, consisting or one or more Towers of the Dead, which replace the open stelae littered funeral fields of more rural settings with much more compact, space efficient means of sky burial. In these towers, bodies are arranged in concentric rings, usually with the bodies of men placed on the outside ring, women in the middle ring, and the bodies of children and animals in the inner ring. Once the bodies have been stripped of flesh and bleached by exposure to the elements, they are placed in an ossuary pit at the center and set to disintegrate with the assistance of lime before being washed away by rainwater which is then filtered in specially built wells adjacent to the towers. In modern day Towers of the Dead, mirrors are used to accelerate the elimination of flesh and decay from the bodies in a process termed "solar purification". Additionally, due to some decline in the population of vultures and other scavenging birds, breeding programs are implemented by some Kaharnist organizations to help maintain the populations of these birds, especially of the Sacred Vulture, which remain the most effective way to remove and dispose of the flesh from the cadavers assembled in the towers.
The second and less common means of corpse disposal is cremation, which traditionally is carried out in an open air pyre but in the modern day is most often conducted within a furnace in a crematorium. In many ancient societies in Charnea, the dead were ceremonially burned and cast into nearby rivers as ash, which was done regardless of social status. However, in mainstream Kaharnist practice, only the bodies of those considered unworthy or impure, such as criminals or people considered to have done great evil, are burned. Some scholars suggest that this is due to the belief that evil is a metaphorical putrefaction that affects the soul rather than the body, and that the purifying quality of the fire will help to eliminate the rot from an evil person's soul so that their existence after death may not be affected by their misdeeds. Alternatively, the bodies of evil persons or unimportant or verminous animals are burned simply because they are considered unworthy of being fed to the vultures, which are venerated and respected animals. In extreme cases, the houses or belongings of such persons, especially anything that might have been used in the commission of their evils, such as a murder weapon, are burned with them and destroyed as thoroughly as possible. Because of this belief, being taken to a Tower of the Dead or a mortuary field for sky burial is considered a form of posthumous forgiveness of any accumulated sins a person may have committed, as being fed upon by vultures and "returned to the Mother" (Kaharna) is considered a redemptive act. In the modern day, cremation may be used as the default means of funerary treatment due to the constraints of large population centers which may render the preferred Kaharnist treatment impractical, in which case the context of moral judgement and purification is considered inapplicable.
Rites of Passage
Festivals
Rain Festival
Also known as the River Festival, the Rain Festival is celebrated at the start of the rainy season, which varies from March to late April and May from northern to central Charnea. It is sometimes considered a nominally secular holiday based on elation in recieving the first rain of the season. However, many of its traditional practices are deeply rooted in Kaharnist faith and animism as the gods and spirits are individually thanked through many public and private rituals for bringing water to the crops, through rain and by flooding the Obul river to aid irrigation. These rituals vary depending on the conditions, and have been described as being exceptionally morbid during years of drought, which may feature animal sacrifice, Kaharnist blood magic and general beseechment of the gods to aid the struggling populace with rain, begging forgiveness for past transgressions and seeking Kaharna's mercy. This contrasts heavily with the usually colorful, festive and upbeat character of the Rain Festival on a normal year. It is associated with the river god known as the Great White Serpent due to the rain flooding the banks every year, bringing sediment rich water to the fields. The Great White Serpent, and the Rain Festival itself, represent the renewal of life and rebirth after death, as the fields are brought back to life every year by the rains. This is even more emphasized in the north of Charnea, where the festival is not annual and is held at any time of the year after a significant rain comes to the desert regions. The striking transformation of the desert after even a brief shower as dormant seeds quickly germinate and flowers bloom in the short period of lasting hydration is considered to be a major aspect of Charnean philosophy and Kaharnist theology in particular, symbolizing rebirth and renewal which even death cannot keep at bay.
Agnanid Pilgrimage
This festival, held on the days following the first full moon in the month of April, is a annual pilgrimage beginning at the site of the Sacred Tree of Awakar, near the Erg Awakar, and ending at the Pyramid of Agnan, which is located roughly 1000 kilometers away. The object of the pilgrimage is to carry a dinner spoon full of consecrated sand from the Erg Awakar from the starting point to the pyramid, where the sand must be brought up a series of temporary ramps erected on the sides of the Great Pyramid, up its three tiers to a platform at the top, where the sands are then cast into the wind. The journey was historically done on foot or riding an animal but today is usually undertaken by motor vehicle, and now takes the form of a motorized caravan or parade through the designated route, complete with highly decorated vehicles akin to a parade float. In the present day, the pilgrimage is a national holiday in Charnea and is used as a vehicle to perpetuate political discussion about the nations issues and recent accomplishments. Many stops along the route hold special ceremonies and events for the passing pilgrims, often seeing entire marketplaces rise just in time for the pilgrimage to pass, only to dissolve again afterwards and only reconvene ahead of the date of the pilgrimage the following year. The religious significance of the voyage is the symbolism of Agnan of the Tree's life and death, as it is said he was born under the Sacred Tree of Awakar, and is known to have died in battle at the site of what is now Agnannet, where the Pyramid of Agnan stands today. At each stage of the pilgrimage, the participants tell traditional histories and tales of Agnan's life and the many changes he underwent in his life, punctuated by his death and passage into the spiritual beyond. In this religious context, Agnan personifies radical change which may shake the fate of nations or simply intrude on the lives of the common people now and again, a constant and morally neutral change represented by the sand carried by the pilgrims, reflected the native Charnean phrase "the sands always shift" referring to the constant nature of change.