Megelanese traditional witchcraft
Megelanese traditional witchcraft is an ethnic religion closely tied to the various Megelanese peoples; it is followed by 69.3% of the population of the Community of Megelan, and by a significant percentage of Megelanese abroad. It consists set of local worship traditions devoted to a deity or spirit known as Lady of the East - also known as Lady of the Game - and to a host of lesser deities or spirits. It has been described as an animist faith, due to its belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence, and a shamanist faith, due to its belief that one can interact with the spirit world through altered states of consciousness.
Historically, it has been influenced by several other faiths in Tyran - the influence of Cacerta's religion being extensive enough that the Megelanese faith was long regarded as a heterodox variant of the Sofian faith. Indeed, in Megelan, the two faiths are functionally inseparable, as most of the country's population takes part in the activities of both religions. The influence of Gylias-based faiths on Megelanese traditional witchcraft is a relatively recent (dating back to the Liberation War in Gylias and the Megelanese Civil War) but noteworthy development.
Origins
The first known ancient inhabitants of the thick forests and swamps of prehistoric Megelan belonged to an Indo-European people, whose pantheon was headed by a daylight-sky god and his consort, the earth mother. Eventually, the city of Alba - founded in around 600 BCE, by the king of a confederation of six tribes hailing from beyond Megelan's western mountain ranges - quickly established itself as the political and spiritual center of ancient Megelan. Alba's patron deity, a previously minor solar goddess, became the head of the local pantheon; her importance grew to such an extent that, soon, the people of Megelan began to worship her as a single, overarching goddess.
This confederation was however partitioned between its neighbours around the time of Cacerta's Padova Period; the influence of the archipelago to the east of Megelan was by far the strongest. Under the influence of the Sofian faith, Alba's patron deity was quickly likened to the founder of Cacerta's religion, and she began to be referred to as Lady of the East, while becoming a major spirit, rather than a goddess - as the Sofian creed was an atheist one.
From Vallyar, Megelanese traditional witchcraft adopted the belief in familiar spirits not unlike the Fylgjur, taking the form of an animal; belief in familiar spirits associated with the ancestors, the household, and with places and plants soon followed. From Vallyar, the Megelanese faith also adopted the motif of the Wild Hunt, that eventually evolved into the Game of the Good Society - the reason why the Lady of the East is also referred to as Lady of the Game.
From Greek and Roman religion, Megelanese traditional witchcraft adopted the cults of Diana, Hecate and Hera, who were likened to the Lady of the East in the same way Sofia had been, and the use of ointments and oils for magical and ritual purposes. Through trade, elements of Magyar and Slavic paganism made it to Megelan as well; legends about Perun and Veles and their clashes and disputes increased the importance of dreaming and dreams in Megelanese traditional witchcraft.
Moreover, the figure of the Táltos, the shaman of Magyar paganism, served as a model for the kind of person most suited to navigate the oneiric world, entering a state of trance to heal wounds and sickness or learn hidden truths. Most of the details and elements of ritual and worship surrounding the Lady of the East or Lady of the Game were not however touched by these developments, even as the mythology and the theology surrounding Megelan's patron deity changed considerably.
Megelanese traditional witchcraft has no single founder, but the Megelanese faith acquired the form it has in the present as late as the 1390s, when a small part of the oral literature that characterizes it was first put to paper, by a couple of housewives from Alba. The Megelanese have no religious texts they regard as revealed scriptures of sacred origin; folk epics, folk narratives, folk drama and folk songs however make up a kind of canon that is regarded as having authority and perhaps being inspired.
Long characterized and considered as an animist and shamanist variant of the Sofian faith, Megelanese traditional witchcraft began to be taken seriously as a religious tradition worthy of study in the 1960s, during the period of recovery that followed the Megelanese Civil War.
History
Despite the role of the city of Alba in the development of Megelanese traditional witchcraft, local and regional forms of the cult influenced Alba's own take on the faith, leading to the birth of a kind of koiné version of Megelanese traditional witchcraft. Megelanese traditional witchcraft soon diversified into a number of diverse lineages, sects and denominations, referred to as traditions, each with its own organisational structure and level of centralisation.
Adherents of Megelanese traditional witchcraft have traditionally been opposed to proselytizing, and even consider it a crime for which the culprit may face expulsion; therefore, the faith can be considered an ethnic religion closely tied to the various Megelanese peoples. Even though Megelanese traditional witchcraft has influenced and was influenced by several other faiths in Tyran, especially those of the Common Sphere, the creed's ethnic character has historically prevented the expansion of Megelanese religion by force of arms.
Today, Megelanese traditional witchcraft is the Community's largest religion, the second being Sofianism; however, most of the country's population takes part in the activities of both religions, especially festivals, to such an extent that the faiths are functionally inseparable.
Beliefs
The most important sacred narrative of the faith is an elaborate and fantastical tale of occult religious rituals practised at the houses of wealthy individuals in Alba, where a woman known as the Lady of the East performed magical acts such as the resurrection of slaughtered animals. Regarded as a goddess by her followers, and described as omnipotent and omniscient, she appears and intervenes in the physical world, assisted by a host of familiar spirits, only when called upon.
According to Megelanese traditional witchcraft, the human world and the world beyond it are connected; human beings can interact with the spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance, and spirits can interact with the physical world as well. To interact and provide advice and guidance to her followers, the Lady of the East employs a host of familiar spirits of varied nature, that can be familiar to her followers in a carnal sense as well.
The power of these familiar and major spirits is however confined to Megelan, as other places are believed to have their own tutelary deities and spirits; because of this, the faithful are to act as guardians and protectors of the land and its aforementioned deities and spirits.
This has often led Megelanese mercenary companies to seek employment on behalf of countries and peoples that were seen by them as being in danger of losing their own connection to the spirit world, through cultural genocide and environmental collapse.
Queries about human nature and the purpose of existence do occur in the Megelanese faith, but believers are encouraged to find out the answers to them for themselves, with the help of the major spirit and those familiar spirits that help the faithful to communicate with her. In Megelanese traditional witchcraft, it is believed that the Lady of the East rewards her followers when they're helpful and hospitable towards other people, as well as clean and tidy on a more domestic and personal level.
Likewise, it is believed that egoism, inhospitality, laziness and selfishness are actively punished by the same major spirit, in some way or another; therefore, evil and suffering are seen as the end result of the kind of human behaviour that's damaging to society as a whole.
This practical and utilitarian outlook on the nature of good and evil has had consequences even on the way Megelanese audiences relate to pop culture, local and foreign alike; for instance, Gylian works about anti-heroic figures have proven quite popular in the Community.
While the exact nature of the afterlife is not openly stated in any work considered canonical to the Megelanese faith, the existence of spirits of the ancestors - that is openly stated in those same literary sources - gives more than a few hints about the probable nature of it. Namely, the soul survives the death of the body, and joins the great number of those familiar spirits that interact with the faithful on behalf of the Lady of the East; the influence of the Sofian faith, on the other hand, provided the Megelanese one with its view on salvation.
That is, the status of familiar spirit is only a temporary one, and is just one of many steps towards the individual's journey towards enlightenment, a journey that is not seen as exclusive to human beings, but including every living being.
Rituals and worship
Many religious festivities are traditionally celebrated on Thursday, while other festivities can be held on other days, for example those that align with the equinoxes and the solstices, as well as with the midpoints between them. The most important festivities in Megelanese traditional witchcraft are the four seasonal Ember days, Midsummer (June 24th), the Night of the Dead (between the 1st and the 2nd of November) and the Twelve Nights (from the 25th of December to the 6th of January).
Monthly full moon celebrations are also recognized, as well as other festivities linked to those religions that influenced the Megelanese faith the most, for example Sofianism and Vallyar, but also Concordianism and other relatively minor (in Megelan) religions. Domestic worship typically takes place in the home and is carried out by either an individual or family group; public worship takes place only during the most important religious festivities, in temples whose concentric shape derives from that of the Gallo-Roman fanum.
The main rite in the Megelanese faith, the Game of the Good Society, consists in a reenactment of the ceremony the Lady of the East was said to lead; one of the people taking part in it, the one taking on the role of said spirit, has to be in a state of trance. The ceremony normally consists of a divination session, followed by a discussion concerning subjects pertinent to the religion, a banquet in honour of the spirit, and a dance in honour of the same; it can take place anywhere, but it usually takes place in private spaces.
Sacred orgies and sexual rituals, an echo of ancient Gallo-Roman and Hellenic mystery cults, can also be performed, but they are not a mandatory or even universally recognized part of the faith; their popularity, however, has been increasing through Gylian influence.
Lucid dreaming is of paramount importance in Megelanese traditional witchcraft, as well as a wide array of practices meant to induce a state of trance in the practitioner, since it is believed they are means with which humans can communicate with the spirit world. Moreover, most homes in Megelan have an altar devoted to the major spirit, the Lady of the East, and the familiar spirits, especially those of the ancestors; offering food and drink to either is a widespread practice.
Symbols specific to the Megelanese faith are relatively rare, and many of them can trace their roots to the Gallo-Roman polytheism that gave birth to it, and to the Sofian faith that influenced it; that said, Megelanese traditional witchcraft is not an iconoclastic faith. In fact, lunar and solar iconography is widespread, to such an extent that it appears on Megelan's flag, and visual depictions of magical, religious and sexual rituals are commonplace as well.
The statue of a halberd-wielding Lady of the East that appears in Alba's main fanum is, while relatively unorthodox (the halberd owes more to the old cults of Belisama and Minerva than to today's faith or Sofian influence), a popular symbol both in Megelan and abroad.
Ethics and community
Religious congregations in Megelan are strictly local in character and, just like the Community's secular guilds, they maintain funds in order to support infirm or elderly members, as well as widows, orphans and funeral benefits. These congregations are often small, and usually consist of a few members bound together by oaths of loyalty, with strict screening procedures regulating the admittance of new members, that may undergo a probationary period before they are fully accepted and welcomed.
They are largely independent and autonomous, although they typically network with other congregations, especially due to financial concerns related to their aforementioned duties and the need to maintain temples and places of worship. The temples they center on host festivals and holiday events, whether religious or secular, and not necessarily tied to the Megelanese faith - indeed, it is not uncommon for temples in Megelan to double as places of Sofian worship.
Each denomination or tradition of Megelanese traditional witchcraft is headed by an individual that acts as the formal leader of one or more of the aforementioned networks of local religious congregations. Similarly to the more esoteric Sofian denominations, the Megelanese faith puts a heavy emphasis on how the transmission of certain teachings can only occur in the context of an initiation ceremony, especially from each leader to each individual. Over time, these practices of likely Sofian origin took up characteristics typical of similar rituals that used to be widespread among the Community's secular guilds, with the same process happening in reverse as well.
Since a similar process gave birth to Freemasonry elsewhere in Tyran, there has been some mutual influence between elements of both the Megelanese faith and Freemasonry, most infamously among some individuals linked to the Neoliberal conspiracy.
The aforementioned practical and utilitarian outlook on the nature of good and evil typical of the Megelanese faith has shaped the principles of moral thought and action of the same; nothing is good or evil by itself, but only in relation to the influence it has on wider society. As there are not many specific exhortations and prohibitions of conduct in those literary works that pertain to the Megelanese faith, what exactly does and does not do harm is therefore open to personal and societal interpretation.
That said, if an individual goes against the most widely accepted set of values of their own subset of society, they might be shamed and ostracized for it, even though another subset of society might view their behaviour as acceptable or even ideal.
The aim of Megelanese traditional witchcraft is to allow for the development of a society in which humans, nature, and heaven coexist in peace and harmony, with the familiar and major spirits aiding and guiding the individual towards this goal. Because of this aversion for internal conflict, that was only intensified by the Megelanese Civil War, Megelanese society is, at the same time, among the most radically democratic countries in Tyran, but also one governed by a relatively narrow cultural consensus.
In old Megelan, differences between the genders owed more to practical and pragmatic issues concerning the division of labour in the extended family than to spiritual or religious matters; indeed, the Megelanese faith's literary and oral canon is largely silent on the subject. Even as certain peculiarities of the traditional household have gained a kind of authority through the passing of time, Sofian influence has enshrined the concept of equality between the genders in Megelan, in the absence of a take on the matter by local sources.
Indeed, quite a few traditions of Megelanese traditional witchcraft have as their goal human liberation from any restraint and from entrenched power, and the creation of a new egalitarian society based on mutual aid and respect, holding property in common and respecting gender equality: a legacy of those religious sects that, in the Middle Ages, advocated the fall of the feudal system and the return of the faithful to their alleged original ideals of humility and poverty.
