Argan
The argan is the religious and social entity through which the activity of the Cairan communion is managed; it is a self-sustaining organisation of individual communities centred on temples, which stand as the basic unit of collective congregation. Argans are managed by a clerical hierarchy, and vary widely in size and doctrines. While the theoretical ideal sees a single argan which ministers to the entire communion, Cairony has become steadily more fragmented at least since the fall of the Ecclesiarchy at the end of the Third Sabāmani Empire, a state of affairs which has effectively become institutionalised since the schism between the Orthodox and Reform interpretations of Cairony in the 18th century. At the present time argans can be either national or, by opposition, non-national or dissident.
Sanctuaries, which are operated by the Orders, form a second parallel organisation independent from the normal clerical hierarchy; they are not considered to be part of any argan, although there are, of necessity, close ties between the sanctuarial structure and the argan of the territory within which it operates.
Structure
Traditional Argans are large organisations that follow a strict hierarchic management structure largely inherited from the pre-Secote Ecclesiarchy. Typically, an argan is divided into familiae (literally "families" in Old Sabamic), groupings of individual communal temples, which are then grouped into triburions (from tribuariorum, genitive plural form of tribuārius, "of the tribe").
The Cairan communion, from the smallest rural communities to the largest urban centres, gathers in temples where rituals and celebrations are conducted. Each temple has a staff of at least two clergywomen, known generically as "sisters" or "priestesses", who perform the daily liturgical duties (as the auditrix and restoratrix). Larger temples, notably those located in cities or which are the seat of familiae or triburions, have more staff, including several pairs of officiants (the leader of the familiae is officially the chief clergywoman for that temple, but she delegates her day-to-day duties to a lower-ranked priestess), and support staff.
Clergywomen presiding over familiae are called matrons, while triburions are administrated by archmatrons. The whole argan is headed by a Holy Mother (Sancta Mater), who is elected by the sorority, an assembly of its most senior clergywomen (matrons or archmatrons); she remains in position either until death or retirement. The arganic sorority is a very important collegiate organ that debates and passes decisions pertaining to the clergy's organisation, doctrine, and Cairan law. This structure replicates in a way the typical structure of the Savamese noble respublic.
National argans are often integrated into the regulatory functions of their state, performing a varying list of duties for the state's administration. These often include justice and education, but those duties are very disparate throughout the Cairan world. In Savam, a process of secularisation has somewhat removed the Argan of Savam from many of its regulatory duties (losing exclusive control of the judiciary and education for example, while remaining involved), while in Odann, the Argan remains all-powerful within the state's apparatus to the extent of providing an arm of the country’s government.