Palthachism
Palthachism (from Antissan palsa, 'road, path', via Old Messenian palthaches) was a spectrum of religious practices in southern Messenia during the period from approximately 1600 BCE to the middle fifth century BCE. While practices broadly connected to Palthachism have descended to the modern day in the form of minor regional sects and folk practices, the religion’s primary significance in modern culture is as the precursor to Siriash, the dominant religion of southern Messenia, northern Lestria, and Petty-Lestria.
Features
Creation myth
Palthachists held that the creation of the universe was the unconscious act of a single being; this entity was known as the Hantezzi, from the Antissan term for “first” (usually translated into Ellish as “precursor” or “forerunner”). The precise nature of the Hantezzi is not clearly defined, being variously described as encompassing all that existed at that point or, perhaps more consistently, standing outside the present physical universe. The ineffable explosion created by the physical discorporation of the Hantezzi both created the universe (a hypothesis of which the recent "big bang" theory is a secular reflection) and split the Hantezzi into a multiplicity of fragments or facets. These fragments, on recovering their sentience, became the initial rulers of the universe, the Sebanants.
The Sebanants created a race of servitors, the Asmedons. However, the Asmedons grew dissatisfied with their role as mere servants, and began to aspire to rulership themselves; learning the arts of creation from their masters, they created a servant race of their own, known as the Tessanes (probably from tepsanutar, “abased, dishonoured”). The Sebanants, outraged at this act of insubordination from their creations, fought a long war against the Asmedons, the Arayan (Antissan araian, “revolt”). Emerging as victors, they banished the Asmedons to a nether realm.
Learning somewhat from their past errors, the Sebanants created a second servant race, deliberately making them weaker and less intelligent so as to lessen the likelihood of a second revolt. This second race developed into modern humanity. Apparently satisfied with their handiwork, the Sebanants retired into their own realm and left the mortal world in the hands of their new creations. The Asmedons, still consumed by jealousy and hatred at the success of the Sebanants, remain a presence on the fringes of the human world; they and their Tessane servants continually harass humanity in a bid to turn the human species away from the favour of the Sebanants.
Asmedons and Sebanants
Besides their mythological opposition, the Sebanants and Asmedons represented two distinct and opposing forms of religious life, and perhaps existence in general. Odannach historian and theologian Saraid Ó Ciaragáin, applying her paradigm of dualistic religio-political spheres in antiquity, famously identified the Sebanants with gravitas, and the Asmedons with celeritas. The Sebanants represent in their persons what may be described as universal constants – life, death, justice, order and chaos, and so on. Their representatives were held to be incomprehensibly immortal, and the rituals, depictions, and myths associated with them were solemn, even described as stoic and inert. Myths associated with Sebanants, and the dictations of their devotees, described morality and other rationally intelligible parts of life. Popularly practiced Palthachism held that obeisance to the Sebanants, who controlled (or, more properly, personified) these overarching abstracts, would result in a joyous union with existence and reincarnation on favourable terms. But likewise, the impression was that of a distant if not aloof group of beings, represented and signified but seldom ever contacted with; hierophanies of Sebanants in mortal life were exceedingly rare in the Antissan canon.
Asmedons, by contrast, were philosophically held to represent more transient matters in the affairs of the world – love, hatred, luck, violence and the like, or even a generic, abstract sense of flux. From this derived an association with speed, and a sense of mystique: the Asmedonic qualities are commonly described as intuitive, visceral, or 'felt'. Entrapment by these more fleeting aspects of the world, it was believed, would ultimately lead to degradation in life and unfavourable reincarnation. The general population, and publicly practiced religion, feared the Asmedons as demons and outright malevolent beings, although considerable evidence suggests that esoteric and initiated practices, tracing origins to earlier virile forms of animism, attempted a more nuanced way of dealing with and mitigating the Asmedons. A practice known as parkuyatar (literally 'purification') involved close regulation of individual lives against Asmedon influence, and frequent intervention in the form of rituals to cleanse such encroachments. The Asmedons were thus viewed as considerably more immanent (if not a part of humanity itself to constantly inspire fear and caution, as suggested by the role of parkuyatar in Antissan and broader southern Messenian life) and an aspect of life to be encountered on a regular basis.
Palthachism: one faith or several?
Even within the context of an overall pantheon of deities, there was still room for marked differences of interpretation. The overlap between Palthachism and Thúrun in far western Messenia saw the latter faith take on some coloration from Palthachism, including the partial merging of Thúrun divines with their counterparts from the newcomer religion; however, Thúrun still ascribed primacy to its deities of land and sea. Although they became assimilated to their Palthachist analogues, Tehnu and Dalasi, they retained their dominant position in Thúrun beliefs, while Nepis and Fenya, the gods of the sun and moon and supreme among the Sebanants in mainstream Palthachism, were still held as the “benevolent grandparents” of Thúrun practice.
Over time, the purview of the Sebanants expanded to cover spheres of human experience which were just as transitory as those traditionally ascribed to the Asmedons, with the latter becoming conflated with the Tessanes and assuming a more obviously demonic aspect, and the concepts they represented becoming increasingly generic. This was often connected to political developments; to take a particular example, Tehnu’s position as god of the earth became expanded to cover a status as patron deity of soldiers, which took place in the context of the growth, centralisation, and expansion of a warlike Dammurite state, alongside the development of an elevated priestly caste as part of the state, which sought to expand its power and services at the expense of localised parkuyatar practices.
History
Palthachism originated in the early 16th century BCE in the western regions of the Antissan sphere as a development of the variants of Proto-Messenian mythology in the region, marked by elaboration of ideas of theogony, emergence of rituals in relation to these myths, and the placing of earlier practices analogous to parkuyatar in the context of this system. These came alongside the rise of the distinctive priesthood that attended to temples, as well as the rise of written religious literature. The Antissan cultural and political center in Dammuri served as the focus to these developments, where the priesthood emerged to provide new forms of religious legitimacy but also constraints for increasingly powerful rulers.
The broadly inclusive practices of the Dammurites’ beliefs caused relatively little friction as Palthachism took hold in the region and began to spread outward, various rituals, practices, and motifs identified with Palthachism soon being found across south-western Messenia. However, there was a serious decline in the Antissan heartland under the Larhine Empire, in which the imperial cult surrounding Larhinus sought to destroy rival and preceding religious practices chiefly represented by Palthachism, though it survived and remained at the forefront of political and religious life, always competing against imperial exclusivism and making moralist interventions against corrupt rulers. Concurrently a good deal of exchange occurred with other cultures and pantheons such as the Sabamanians to the north, whose Senuminism intermingled with Palthachism in some areas.
The later Larhine empire fell into wide-ranging chaos following the volcanic eruption on the Median island of Skilsey in 855 BCE, and the inundations of coastal regions which followed it. Caught in this upheaval, Palthachism as practiced and as a part of life entered a new period of crisis, the priesthood often fragmenting into rivalrous sects appealing to increasingly heterodox doctrines, while pillars of ritual and life became reformed, reinvented, subverted, or disrupted in numerous ways. The general tendency of developments, perhaps correlated with the uptick in violence around the region, was the dramatic favouring of Asmedon celeritas as a lived vitality, that through its own actualisation could bring worshippers to a gratifying otherworldliness. Cults and parkuyatar now openly appealed on positive terms to Asmedons, and the figure of Nevaras became a particular object of interest, giving rise to what can be described proto-Siriash. The 'discovery' of the Book of Transcendence by Menrot in 601 BCE inspired a major revision of mythology and theology across the region, directly identifying Asmedons with the human self, and openly casting Sebanants in a villainous light.
In the ensuing historical period known as the Sundering, the established Palthachist pantheon, clergy, and culture were tremendously overthrown by, as traditionally maintained, the awakening and outrage of the beholders of the Menrotian revelation, but also political struggle between the priesthood and various other interests that had emerged as its enemies. This precipitous decline was probably capped off by the decision of Hattanas, emperor of the Neokos Empire, to follow the wishes of his recently-deceased father Westaras and proclaim Siriash to be the established faith of the empire in the Edict of Styra, promulgated in 521 BCE. Only a few centuries into Neokoi rule, the original classical and priestly Palthachism had become diminished to obscure cults to Sebanant figures in backwaters, and were steadily rooted out; hints of the more elaborate subtext of Palthachist life lived on in use of the term itself, where palthaches became used in works of early Sirian theology to designate a range of criticised behaviour, ranging from unconcerned asceticism to hypocritical moralising to pretentious dogmatism.