Parkuyatar

Parkuyatar (Antissan, 'purification', cognate with parkus) was a religious practice found across southern Messenia particularly associated with the Antissan civilisation and its Palthachism in the 2nd to mid-1st millennia BCE. It involved deep contemplation, guided by liturgy and sometimes assisted by consuming entheogens (some of which now speculated to have had psychoactive properties), to the point of a self-induced trance, in which the practitioner would either be startled and terrified, or later, lash out violently in a state of frenzy. In this ritual, malevolent spirits and sentiments, later identified as Asmedons, were to be expelled or diminuted in a person's mind, as they were confronted in the contemplation or trance.

Parkuyatar was carried out at first with the services of a Palthachist priest, but later laymen who were simply knowledgeable in the religious systems behind it in particular could substitute that role; these developed into cults surrounding the practice. It also became much more communal, becoming collectively practiced by military units, secretive lodges, and then tightly knit social groups across western Messenian society after the collapse of Antissan civilisation after the Hilima Eruption. The terms on which the practitioner dealt with Asmedons steadily became more ambiguous even before societal collapse: informed by philosophy, such spirits and elements in life became seen as things to be leveraged and reasoned with in balance, rather than turned away from in fear. The post-Hilima environment saw the rise of beliefs that the Asmedons offered the powers necessary to weather life all along, and this gave rise to the belief system of Protosiriash.

Although documentation of it mainly appears alongside the codification of hierarchical Palthachism, contemporary records often hinted at it being much older, possibly being rooted in Proto-Messenian mythology, although there is also evidence to suggest influences from ancient West Messenians that would have also fed into Thúrun. Later as frenzy became more prominent over a state of solemn if stunning lucidity, writing speculated on influences from the berserker cultures that provided palsaries to the Larhine Empire. Whether they pivoted Antissan regard for Asmedons in the direction that would fatefully engender Siriash remains an open question. In any case, Protosirian parkuyatar survived well into the times of the Neokos Empire; elite engagement only began to abate with the imposition of more intellectual forms of the religion after the Convocation of Boeos, and the practice as passed down from Antissan times survived for much longer in folk practices, that in some areas linger to today. This narrow genealogy, however, easily eludes one to the derivation of nearly all Sirian rites (such as hierophany) or the entire system of meditation from parkuyatar practices.