Nexus (Cairony)

In Cairony, a nexus (plural nexi) is a point at which the state of the world’s cairon – the ineffable substance which underlines the physical world – is of a particularly elevated condition, and thus more representative of the pristine state of the world immediately following its creation by Aedif, the "Supreme Architect" of Cairan cosmology. Nexi can be of different importance and strength, ranging from small ones associated with many cemeteries throughout the Cairan world, to large ones such as the entire Holy City.

A nexus is thus seen, in part, as a template by which to judge the progress of the work of Restoration by which Cairans seek to bring the world back to this state of primordial perfection. At more extreme levels, it is believed that the unique conditions present within a nexus can allow the onlooker to sense the presence of Aedif in the vicinity and, on vanishingly rare occasions, speak directly with It.

Origins

The concept of the nexus predates Cairony itself and has its origins in Senuminism, the system of belief common in northern Messenia from which Cairony emerged. Several extant Senuminist texts refer to particular locations as “vertices” or “intersections” at which lines of geomantic force were believed to converge, a status which made them particularly propitious places from which to conduct the most essential services of the faith.

As a direct result, many such places became centres of population as the faithful gathered in close proximity to these oases; this prompted the building of religious structures, including temples and sanctuaries, and around them secular buildings which, in many cases, have formed the core of sizeable towns and cities. Many of the largest cities in the Sabamic world, including such giants as Quesailles and Etherley, the capitals of Savam and Elland respectively, as well as Etamps-La-Sainte, this historic focal point of the faith, have their foundations in such developments. Indeed, the significance of Etamps in this context was such that some late pre-Common Era texts refer to it as fons mundi, the “source of the world”.

The concept was carried over almost unchanged into Early Cairony as it was distilled from Senuminist doctrines by the Six Holy Sisters in the late ninth century BCE, and this was set down in the early semitas of the revised faith.

Modern understanding

Contemporary Cairony has retained nexi but the understanding of those, and their relative importance within the faith, has shifted dramatically. The emergence of the doctrine of equivalence did not made nexi obsolete but considerably reduced their importance as part of orthopraxy, with priestly rituals conducted at sanctuaries built on nexi becoming secondary to society-wide cairon channeling rituals undertaken by the clergy and lay people alike.

In the present day, overt focus on rituals at nexi is widely dismissed as closer to the more esoteric practices of Cairan magic, although such rituals persist in the most ancient orders such as the Sacred Flame Order and the Fertility Order. Nexi are also believed to provide a conductive setting to controlling and straightening one's inner cairon, meaning that visits to nexi remains a common occurrence in the faithful's life.

Scientism debate

It must be observed that the status of many historic nexi is such that, within the context of Cairan Scientism, their veracity cannot be experimentally confirmed even by the pseudoscience of their period. Permaterialists have come forward with a number of explanations around the nature of nexi and their effect, as well as refined those explanations as natural sciences have progressed, while paramaterialists have rejected that nexi exist at all, pointing to more recent studies that have been unable to demonstrate any conclusive effect on human behaviour at those locations.

Although it was claimed that particularly sensitive clerics could identify on a psychic and spiritual level the presence of a nexus – a particularly well-attested example is Honorine de Géa, the so-called “géomaîtresse” of the early twelfth century and a leading cairon engineer of the period – it was hardly unknown for local landowners to lean on friendly clerics to have a particular location identified as a nexus, and then reap the spin-off benefits as news of this newly-elevated status spread around the country. The possibility for fraud has existed throughout much of the history of the faith, and it has been capable of influence even as late as 1942, in which year the Nexus of Tibiscum fraud was exposed in Emilia.

Related used of the term

The term nexus is also applied, to some degree by extension, to the vertices of the Fundamental Triangle which forms one of the centrepieces of Cairan practice; these are the Nexus of the Soul (the group of virtues which serve to define Cairan moral standards), the Nexus of the Body (a group of precepts and goals by which adherence to those virtues may be monitored) and the Nexus of the Cairon (the group of practices by which those goals may be achieved). The three nexi are each divided into six elements; the eighteen components thus formed by this process constitute the Eighteen Virtues, which term has featured heavily in Cairan liturgy for centuries.