we have every confidence you will succeed with flying colors in your exam.Civil War Bugle wrote: ↑Sat Jul 19, 2025 7:20 pmI have been gradually developing the next post, on the state cults. I will be taking the bar exam at the end of the month, and I am unsure if I will be posting this new segment before or after the exam, but it is in the process of being developed, in any case.
Research on the religion of the islands of Lilliput and Blefuscu
Re: Research on the religion of the islands of Lilliput and Blefuscu
Re: Research on the religion of the islands of Lilliput and Blefuscu
Good luck!Civil War Bugle wrote: ↑Sat Jul 19, 2025 7:20 pm I will be taking the bar exam at the end of the month, and I am unsure if I will be posting this new segment before or after the exam, but it is in the process of being developed, in any case.
Re: Research on the religion of the islands of Lilliput and Blefuscu
Thirded!Raphael wrote: ↑Sun Jul 20, 2025 5:03 amGood luck!Civil War Bugle wrote: ↑Sat Jul 19, 2025 7:20 pm I will be taking the bar exam at the end of the month, and I am unsure if I will be posting this new segment before or after the exam, but it is in the process of being developed, in any case.
Yaaludinuya siima d'at yiseka wohadetafa gaare.
Ennadinut'a gaare d'ate eetatadi siiman.
T'awraa t'awraa t'awraa t'awraa t'awraa t'awraa t'awraa.
Ennadinut'a gaare d'ate eetatadi siiman.
T'awraa t'awraa t'awraa t'awraa t'awraa t'awraa t'awraa.
Re: Research on the religion of the islands of Lilliput and Blefuscu
Fourthed!Travis B. wrote: ↑Sun Jul 20, 2025 11:07 amThirded!Raphael wrote: ↑Sun Jul 20, 2025 5:03 amGood luck!Civil War Bugle wrote: ↑Sat Jul 19, 2025 7:20 pm I will be taking the bar exam at the end of the month, and I am unsure if I will be posting this new segment before or after the exam, but it is in the process of being developed, in any case.
(Edit: I couldn't resist the opportunity to write that, although the good luck is meant sincerely)
LZ – Lēri Ziwi
PS – Proto Sāzlakuic (ancestor of LZ)
PRk – Proto Rākēwuic
XI – Xú Iạlan
VN – verbal noun
SUP – supine
DIRECT – verbal directional
My language stuff
PS – Proto Sāzlakuic (ancestor of LZ)
PRk – Proto Rākēwuic
XI – Xú Iạlan
VN – verbal noun
SUP – supine
DIRECT – verbal directional
My language stuff
Re: Research on the religion of the islands of Lilliput and Blefuscu
Fifthed!
(I meant to be first, but it took me a while before I could reply).
Good luck and best wishes for your bar exam!
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Civil War Bugle
- Posts: 118
- Joined: Sat Jul 14, 2018 6:57 pm
Re: Research on the religion of the islands of Lilliput and Blefuscu
Thanks, all! I feel generally good about it, now that it is over, although it'll be a while before results are out so we shall see.
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Civil War Bugle
- Posts: 118
- Joined: Sat Jul 14, 2018 6:57 pm
Re: Research on the religion of the islands of Lilliput and Blefuscu
The State Cults
As has previously been mentioned, the priestly class is one of the few bodies of little people's religion who regularly engage in overt devotions to the gods. Temples to the gods, separate from altars which may exist in the monasteries or at roadside sites, exist only in the Mildendo, Blefuscu City (the capitals of Lilliput and Blefuscu) and in Siguino, the former capital of Lilliput, which coincidentally is near a major penguin migratory site. Temples must be ritually purified by a scattering of salt shortly after they are built, and may be polluted by various things, chiefly occurence of murder or sexual violence within the temple, bringing bodily emissions within about twenty feet of the altar, or allowing roosters in the interior of the temple. When not engaged in duties requiring a political presence, the priests generally live the ordinary life of a monk in whichever monastic institution the priest is affiliated with. It is possible to visit a monastery for an extended period, assuming there is no transition in monastic leadership, and fail to realize which members are priests and which are ordinary monks, as the priests will ordinarily undertake their sacrificial devotions to the gods privately. The exception is when a new abbot takes office, as a group of priests will oversee the ritual installation of the abbot, which entails an oracular reading of egg yolks at each of the points of the compass, followed by an anointing of the abbot's arms with the egg-whites. The ceremony is brief and generally unremarkable, as the candidate for abbot would not be permitted to reach this point if the priests had considered it inauspicious at any point prior to the ceremony; the primary grounds for considering a ceremony inauspicious are when a double yolk is found in an egg during the ordinary private ceremonies of the priest. (These ceremonies simply involve opening an egg and a specially corked bottle of grain liquor and placing the wet contents before an altar in the priest's rooms. The priests inspects them for oracular purposes and dedicates them to the god designated for the month. The details of the inspection are highly technical and are beyond the scope of this treatise.)
Priests generally also make themselves available to the general public to provide a divinatory consultation on the advisability of entering into marriages, the timing of marriages, and the timing of funerals.
At court
The most visible role of priests is in state-sponsored divination, sacrifices, and overseeing public rituals at court. There is a series of holidays and comparable public functions observed only at court, in the monarch's role as the connection between the ordinary and supernatural worlds. The most regular of these are the monthly blessing of the new moon, the birthday of the gods (who collectively are held to have been born on the 6th day after the spring solstice) and lunar eclipses, which are tracked in advance in order for preparations. Besides these predictable holidays, court rituals will occur at coronations, births within the royal and other significant families, and whenever some political development (war, selection of a new cabinet, enactment of major laws) or personal development in the life of the monarch makes it seem prudent to conduct divinatory consultations or blessings of various events. These latter events are all more or less individually choreographed, although the methods of divination are similar to methods of divination I describe in this post and elsewhere.
The festivals of the new moon proceed in a series, with rituals to two or three deities at each festival. The ceremonies begin with passage through a series of hoops towards the altar while chanting a hymn to the patron deity of the state: Flimresh in Lilliput (from whom the king purportedly descends) or Colmin in Blefuscu (to whom the king is considered to be symbolically married.) Two men stand on a tightrope above the altar while a child presents chicken or goose eggs to the priest in charge, who lays the eggs on their side on the altar before lightly tapping them open to reveal the yolk. The yolk is considered a blessing from the deity in question, and remains on the altar for the duration of the ceremony, after which it is placed in what is termed the "god's mouth" at the back of the altar, to feed the deity (and conveniently to remove the yolk from the premises - the mouth, actually a chute, leads to an underground area beneath the temple used for the ceremonial growth of mushrooms and fungi which are considered sacred within court. This is not widely discussed outside court ceremony, and the mushrooms tend to be used in ecstatic experiences among priests who belong to appropriate monasteries.) The god is thanked for his or her oversight over the state and for providing protection to the king's subjects. As the tightrope walkers lower themselves from the rope, particular recent examples in which the god is held to have engaged in acts of benevolence are mentioned. After this, a cup of milk also is placed on the altar. Then, the participants turn their attention to the god of the month, who will be one of the natural or domestic deities. The deities each in turn are associated with a given month, beginning with Clefrin, followed by a set of others in a 48 month pattern dictated by whether the color of the yolk was considered auspicious at the end of the immediately preceding portion of the ceremony. (The more yellow, the more likely a nature deity will hold a position earlier in the sequence, and the less yellow, the more likely that a domestic deity will hold an earlier position. Specks, whorls, and other variable characteristics of the may play a role at the judgment of the priest inspecting the yolk.)
In Clefrin's month, Clefrin is praised even more highly than Flimresh/Colmin, and the priest states his confidence that Clefrin will of the most immense assistance: he will return the moon to us from his coat pocket. The moon is symbolically considered both an egg yolk, referring to animal-based agriculture, and a seed packet for plant-based agriculture, and only by a royal flattery of Clefrin can the kingdom have a regular life cycle in the biosphere, so to speak. No ritualistic predictions are undertaken during the month of Clefrin - it is presumed that Clefrin will respond to the humble petitions of the king during this ceremony. During this stage of the ceremony, participants other than the chief priest will be leaping through a series of hoops, the number of hoops based on the prime number closest to the day of the month on which the ceremony is occurring. This is as acrobatic as any other comparable use of hoops described in this work or other treatises on this society.
When a god other than Clefrin is designated as the god of the month, the deity will be offered both an egg and a libation of some drink - natural deities are believed to prefer alcoholic drinks, while domestic ones will be given milk. Goat, cow, and sheep milk are associated with the spring, summer, and fall, respectively. During the winter, milk from any of these animals may be used without causing offense to the gods. The god is more directly badgered than Clefrin - in these ceremonies, Clefrin is essentially thought to have the active role in promoting agricultural processes, but the other gods may spur Clefrin to action. Therefore, the hymns, invocations, and so forth which are addressed to the gods other than Clefrin in this ceremony are more overtly transactional than the obsequious flattery given to Clefrin. Otherwise, the performance of the ceremony follows the general lines described above.
In the final portion of the ceremony, the priest engages in divination. No god is mentioned directly, but rather only a pious invocation of all the gods. The rituals are pointedly different than monastic rituals devoted to the gaseous deities but the implication is clear that the priests have the gaseous deities in mind. An offering is made of fish or frog eggs, and the participants sit and spend several minutes chanting in a manner intended to induce a trancelike state. After roughly a quarter of an hour, they may pause to ingest certain mushrooms or a drink containing secretions of the slickback frog, which will cause a very mildly hallucinogenic effect, and resume chanting for another 15 to 30 minutes or so. After completion of the chanting, the priest will approach the altar and place a duck or chicken egg among the fish or frog eggs, on its end. Which end is used varies by temple, and this was a point of controversy in past times - Lilliputian temples generally prefer to balance the egg on the small end and vice versa in Blefuscu, a point of argument around the time of the compilation of the Brundrecral. The egg is carefully balanced so it will stand on end for a period of time, and is allowed to fall naturally, and then broken by a soft blow from a silver hammer. The priest inspects the yolk carefully, and after observing whatever he can glean, mixes the fish/frog eggs with the egg yolk and detritus of the shell, and makes whatever further observations he can discern from the mixture. As above, interpretation is highly technical and beyond this work's scope. After the inspection is completed, the ceremony is finished, and the participants leave, with the priest recording his observations in the temple records for the edification of those court officials and temple workers who wish to inspect them. The divinations ordinarily touch on very general predictions and court officials are generally interested in learning of them, but will use other methods when seeking more specific divine advice.
The birthday of the gods does not involve divination, but rather a series of acrobatic and sacrificial activities in honor of the gods. The acrobatic ceremonies are specially choreographed anew each year and care is taken to make each year's ceremony distinct from the next in its use of acrobatics and the like. L. Gulliver famously described a portion of such a ceremony in which he participated, although he did not entirely realize the nature of the event - his description of displays of horsemanship on his handkerchief appears in Chapter III of his treatise and is described in temple records of the annual birthday ceremonies in Lilliput. The acrobatic displays are followed by a gift of the finest grain liqour available to the gods, placed on the altar of the chief temple.
Lunar eclipse ceremonies consist entirely of chanting and the consumption of herbs or mushrooms - the exact choice of item to consume depends on which monastery the priest in charge is associated with when not engaging in court ritual. It is an intriguing event to watch, but the eclipse is considered merely as an event to demonstrate the state's devotion to the gods via ecstatic chanting. Monasteries often will use the length of the eclipse and details concerning the shadow cast and the various colors of the moon during the eclipse for divinatory purposes (largely as outer constraints to assist in interpreting other divinations) but these are monastic rather than courtly affairs.
Coronations and important births are conducted in a state of semiprivacy, with the king, close family members, and important political and religious figures present in rooms closed off to the public. These are generally described as being too holy for details to be given to the public, but it is known that in coronations the king approaches a makeshift altar containing a ceremonial sword and cup, and announces to the gods either that his predecessor has left the throne vacant and that he, the new king, is assuming it. He takes a sip from the cup and passes it to those who are present, and places his hand on the blade of the sword, purposely cutting the thumb and index finger on his right hand. (This is believed to be the substance of the ceremony in both realms of the little people.) The purpose is not to seek the blessing of the gods but merely to inform them of significant political changes in the king's realm. At the birth of infants in politically significant families such as the royal family, the infant is brought to the private chambers and is wiped on the forehead by a priest with a cloth dampened in grain liquor, held in the same style of cup which is used at coronations. The priest then taps an egg on the infant's forehead lightly, allowing a slight breakage of the shell. The breakage must be small enough that the priest can then move the egg to a nearby makeshift altar to allow the contents of the egg to pour out for his inspection. He views the contents to divine the broad contours of the infant's future life, and prepares a divinatory report for the infant's family to possess for future consultation as needed.
As has previously been mentioned, the priestly class is one of the few bodies of little people's religion who regularly engage in overt devotions to the gods. Temples to the gods, separate from altars which may exist in the monasteries or at roadside sites, exist only in the Mildendo, Blefuscu City (the capitals of Lilliput and Blefuscu) and in Siguino, the former capital of Lilliput, which coincidentally is near a major penguin migratory site. Temples must be ritually purified by a scattering of salt shortly after they are built, and may be polluted by various things, chiefly occurence of murder or sexual violence within the temple, bringing bodily emissions within about twenty feet of the altar, or allowing roosters in the interior of the temple. When not engaged in duties requiring a political presence, the priests generally live the ordinary life of a monk in whichever monastic institution the priest is affiliated with. It is possible to visit a monastery for an extended period, assuming there is no transition in monastic leadership, and fail to realize which members are priests and which are ordinary monks, as the priests will ordinarily undertake their sacrificial devotions to the gods privately. The exception is when a new abbot takes office, as a group of priests will oversee the ritual installation of the abbot, which entails an oracular reading of egg yolks at each of the points of the compass, followed by an anointing of the abbot's arms with the egg-whites. The ceremony is brief and generally unremarkable, as the candidate for abbot would not be permitted to reach this point if the priests had considered it inauspicious at any point prior to the ceremony; the primary grounds for considering a ceremony inauspicious are when a double yolk is found in an egg during the ordinary private ceremonies of the priest. (These ceremonies simply involve opening an egg and a specially corked bottle of grain liquor and placing the wet contents before an altar in the priest's rooms. The priests inspects them for oracular purposes and dedicates them to the god designated for the month. The details of the inspection are highly technical and are beyond the scope of this treatise.)
Priests generally also make themselves available to the general public to provide a divinatory consultation on the advisability of entering into marriages, the timing of marriages, and the timing of funerals.
At court
The most visible role of priests is in state-sponsored divination, sacrifices, and overseeing public rituals at court. There is a series of holidays and comparable public functions observed only at court, in the monarch's role as the connection between the ordinary and supernatural worlds. The most regular of these are the monthly blessing of the new moon, the birthday of the gods (who collectively are held to have been born on the 6th day after the spring solstice) and lunar eclipses, which are tracked in advance in order for preparations. Besides these predictable holidays, court rituals will occur at coronations, births within the royal and other significant families, and whenever some political development (war, selection of a new cabinet, enactment of major laws) or personal development in the life of the monarch makes it seem prudent to conduct divinatory consultations or blessings of various events. These latter events are all more or less individually choreographed, although the methods of divination are similar to methods of divination I describe in this post and elsewhere.
The festivals of the new moon proceed in a series, with rituals to two or three deities at each festival. The ceremonies begin with passage through a series of hoops towards the altar while chanting a hymn to the patron deity of the state: Flimresh in Lilliput (from whom the king purportedly descends) or Colmin in Blefuscu (to whom the king is considered to be symbolically married.) Two men stand on a tightrope above the altar while a child presents chicken or goose eggs to the priest in charge, who lays the eggs on their side on the altar before lightly tapping them open to reveal the yolk. The yolk is considered a blessing from the deity in question, and remains on the altar for the duration of the ceremony, after which it is placed in what is termed the "god's mouth" at the back of the altar, to feed the deity (and conveniently to remove the yolk from the premises - the mouth, actually a chute, leads to an underground area beneath the temple used for the ceremonial growth of mushrooms and fungi which are considered sacred within court. This is not widely discussed outside court ceremony, and the mushrooms tend to be used in ecstatic experiences among priests who belong to appropriate monasteries.) The god is thanked for his or her oversight over the state and for providing protection to the king's subjects. As the tightrope walkers lower themselves from the rope, particular recent examples in which the god is held to have engaged in acts of benevolence are mentioned. After this, a cup of milk also is placed on the altar. Then, the participants turn their attention to the god of the month, who will be one of the natural or domestic deities. The deities each in turn are associated with a given month, beginning with Clefrin, followed by a set of others in a 48 month pattern dictated by whether the color of the yolk was considered auspicious at the end of the immediately preceding portion of the ceremony. (The more yellow, the more likely a nature deity will hold a position earlier in the sequence, and the less yellow, the more likely that a domestic deity will hold an earlier position. Specks, whorls, and other variable characteristics of the may play a role at the judgment of the priest inspecting the yolk.)
In Clefrin's month, Clefrin is praised even more highly than Flimresh/Colmin, and the priest states his confidence that Clefrin will of the most immense assistance: he will return the moon to us from his coat pocket. The moon is symbolically considered both an egg yolk, referring to animal-based agriculture, and a seed packet for plant-based agriculture, and only by a royal flattery of Clefrin can the kingdom have a regular life cycle in the biosphere, so to speak. No ritualistic predictions are undertaken during the month of Clefrin - it is presumed that Clefrin will respond to the humble petitions of the king during this ceremony. During this stage of the ceremony, participants other than the chief priest will be leaping through a series of hoops, the number of hoops based on the prime number closest to the day of the month on which the ceremony is occurring. This is as acrobatic as any other comparable use of hoops described in this work or other treatises on this society.
When a god other than Clefrin is designated as the god of the month, the deity will be offered both an egg and a libation of some drink - natural deities are believed to prefer alcoholic drinks, while domestic ones will be given milk. Goat, cow, and sheep milk are associated with the spring, summer, and fall, respectively. During the winter, milk from any of these animals may be used without causing offense to the gods. The god is more directly badgered than Clefrin - in these ceremonies, Clefrin is essentially thought to have the active role in promoting agricultural processes, but the other gods may spur Clefrin to action. Therefore, the hymns, invocations, and so forth which are addressed to the gods other than Clefrin in this ceremony are more overtly transactional than the obsequious flattery given to Clefrin. Otherwise, the performance of the ceremony follows the general lines described above.
In the final portion of the ceremony, the priest engages in divination. No god is mentioned directly, but rather only a pious invocation of all the gods. The rituals are pointedly different than monastic rituals devoted to the gaseous deities but the implication is clear that the priests have the gaseous deities in mind. An offering is made of fish or frog eggs, and the participants sit and spend several minutes chanting in a manner intended to induce a trancelike state. After roughly a quarter of an hour, they may pause to ingest certain mushrooms or a drink containing secretions of the slickback frog, which will cause a very mildly hallucinogenic effect, and resume chanting for another 15 to 30 minutes or so. After completion of the chanting, the priest will approach the altar and place a duck or chicken egg among the fish or frog eggs, on its end. Which end is used varies by temple, and this was a point of controversy in past times - Lilliputian temples generally prefer to balance the egg on the small end and vice versa in Blefuscu, a point of argument around the time of the compilation of the Brundrecral. The egg is carefully balanced so it will stand on end for a period of time, and is allowed to fall naturally, and then broken by a soft blow from a silver hammer. The priest inspects the yolk carefully, and after observing whatever he can glean, mixes the fish/frog eggs with the egg yolk and detritus of the shell, and makes whatever further observations he can discern from the mixture. As above, interpretation is highly technical and beyond this work's scope. After the inspection is completed, the ceremony is finished, and the participants leave, with the priest recording his observations in the temple records for the edification of those court officials and temple workers who wish to inspect them. The divinations ordinarily touch on very general predictions and court officials are generally interested in learning of them, but will use other methods when seeking more specific divine advice.
The birthday of the gods does not involve divination, but rather a series of acrobatic and sacrificial activities in honor of the gods. The acrobatic ceremonies are specially choreographed anew each year and care is taken to make each year's ceremony distinct from the next in its use of acrobatics and the like. L. Gulliver famously described a portion of such a ceremony in which he participated, although he did not entirely realize the nature of the event - his description of displays of horsemanship on his handkerchief appears in Chapter III of his treatise and is described in temple records of the annual birthday ceremonies in Lilliput. The acrobatic displays are followed by a gift of the finest grain liqour available to the gods, placed on the altar of the chief temple.
Lunar eclipse ceremonies consist entirely of chanting and the consumption of herbs or mushrooms - the exact choice of item to consume depends on which monastery the priest in charge is associated with when not engaging in court ritual. It is an intriguing event to watch, but the eclipse is considered merely as an event to demonstrate the state's devotion to the gods via ecstatic chanting. Monasteries often will use the length of the eclipse and details concerning the shadow cast and the various colors of the moon during the eclipse for divinatory purposes (largely as outer constraints to assist in interpreting other divinations) but these are monastic rather than courtly affairs.
Coronations and important births are conducted in a state of semiprivacy, with the king, close family members, and important political and religious figures present in rooms closed off to the public. These are generally described as being too holy for details to be given to the public, but it is known that in coronations the king approaches a makeshift altar containing a ceremonial sword and cup, and announces to the gods either that his predecessor has left the throne vacant and that he, the new king, is assuming it. He takes a sip from the cup and passes it to those who are present, and places his hand on the blade of the sword, purposely cutting the thumb and index finger on his right hand. (This is believed to be the substance of the ceremony in both realms of the little people.) The purpose is not to seek the blessing of the gods but merely to inform them of significant political changes in the king's realm. At the birth of infants in politically significant families such as the royal family, the infant is brought to the private chambers and is wiped on the forehead by a priest with a cloth dampened in grain liquor, held in the same style of cup which is used at coronations. The priest then taps an egg on the infant's forehead lightly, allowing a slight breakage of the shell. The breakage must be small enough that the priest can then move the egg to a nearby makeshift altar to allow the contents of the egg to pour out for his inspection. He views the contents to divine the broad contours of the infant's future life, and prepares a divinatory report for the infant's family to possess for future consultation as needed.
Last edited by Civil War Bugle on Mon Oct 20, 2025 9:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Research on the religion of the islands of Lilliput and Blefuscu
Hi! I enjoyed your posts. In fact I went back to Swift's 1726 report and re-read a lot of it. I enjoyed how your work extends and sheds light on his.
Incidentally, I hope I'm within forum etiquette here? I see your post is a couple of months old. I'm still not sure how to reply to a series of small updates to a worldbuilding project....
Your explanation of the significance of big and little ends of eggs was also fun. So, stepping out of the in-universe POV for a bit, I think Swift had a satirical goal in making the dispute something trivial. And your providing a religious explanation has totally undermined what he was doing. And I love what you've done! I'm also happy with what Swift was doing - it's just fun to see that conflict of subtexts.
Finally: Are the penguins appearing in your account full-sized penguins? As opposed to the tiny humans, horses, etc.
Axas mlö
Incidentally, I hope I'm within forum etiquette here? I see your post is a couple of months old. I'm still not sure how to reply to a series of small updates to a worldbuilding project....
Your explanation of the significance of big and little ends of eggs was also fun. So, stepping out of the in-universe POV for a bit, I think Swift had a satirical goal in making the dispute something trivial. And your providing a religious explanation has totally undermined what he was doing. And I love what you've done! I'm also happy with what Swift was doing - it's just fun to see that conflict of subtexts.
Finally: Are the penguins appearing in your account full-sized penguins? As opposed to the tiny humans, horses, etc.
Axas mlö
Re: Research on the religion of the islands of Lilliput and Blefuscu
Why would that be a problem? This is not a live chat, after all. To some extent, it's even kind of pseudo-academic, and academics sometimes take years or even decades to respond to each other's points. Besides, for many people, it's difficult enough to get any kind of feedback here, so they'll probably be happy to get it late rather than never.
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Civil War Bugle
- Posts: 118
- Joined: Sat Jul 14, 2018 6:57 pm
Re: Research on the religion of the islands of Lilliput and Blefuscu
Thanks! And thanks also for the reminder about this... I keep intending to update further (I have basically one more topic planned, currently incomplete) but also keep getting distracted by things happening in my personal life (nothing bad, just the usual drift of potential distractions.)Axas mlö wrote: ↑Sun Oct 19, 2025 10:52 pm Hi! I enjoyed your posts. In fact I went back to Swift's 1726 report and re-read a lot of it. I enjoyed how your work extends and sheds light on his.
Incidentally, I hope I'm within forum etiquette here? I see your post is a couple of months old. I'm still not sure how to reply to a series of small updates to a worldbuilding project....
Your explanation of the significance of big and little ends of eggs was also fun. So, stepping out of the in-universe POV for a bit, I think Swift had a satirical goal in making the dispute something trivial. And your providing a religious explanation has totally undermined what he was doing. And I love what you've done! I'm also happy with what Swift was doing - it's just fun to see that conflict of subtexts.
Finally: Are the penguins appearing in your account full-sized penguins? As opposed to the tiny humans, horses, etc.
Axas mlö
The penguins are tiny penguins. As far as real animals go, Swift only mentioned ones common or well known in Europe at the time, and I debated how many additional ones to include if I included any. I basically decided penguins were the most fun, when I was bouncing ideas around in my mind, and therefore to focus on them.
I will make an effort to try and prepare the next post sometime in the near future, on the topic of popular practice. I have a decent amount of it developed in my mind, I just need to write it down in an organized fashion. And as usual, I give thanks to the peer reviewers in this thread and to those organizations which have been providing foundational support.
Re: Research on the religion of the islands of Lilliput and Blefuscu
Well, I'm glad to hear that slow replies are fine, especially since I'm continuing to be slow. And I don't mind if it takes you a long time, Civil War Bugle, to write more.
Tiny penguins are great. Definitely a fun choice.
Tiny penguins are great. Definitely a fun choice.
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Civil War Bugle
- Posts: 118
- Joined: Sat Jul 14, 2018 6:57 pm
Re: Research on the religion of the islands of Lilliput and Blefuscu
I'm perhaps halfway through writing things down, and hopefully will have it completed by the weekend.
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Civil War Bugle
- Posts: 118
- Joined: Sat Jul 14, 2018 6:57 pm
Re: Research on the religion of the islands of Lilliput and Blefuscu
Folk religion
The population at large is aware of the gods which are a focus of the state cults and certain priestly devotions, and enjoys the mythos which surrounds them, but prefers to make the gods a focus of storytelling rather than of worship. Children love hearing stories and the gods are as good a figure as any to serve as protagonists or antagonists, but the priests at court can do the legwork of worshipping them, just as the diplomatic service focuses on being belligerant with the island across the strait, or the tax office focuses on picking pockets, in the popular eye. The people at large focus on fortune-telling and spellcraft, holidays, and ritualistic practices focusing on the family and the dead. As previously mentioned, dreams figure in some practices of the monks and priests, and likewise play a large role in the practices of common folk. Most people are members of the so-called Brotherhoods, which organize festival activities, provide social support and certain ritual activities, and are means of certain types of fictive kinship. The term Brotherhood is the traditional term, and with the advent of feminism and a move away from traditional gender norms, some have advocated for a change to some other term, but this continues to be debated and no new term has, as yet, come to dominate.
The holidays
Most holidays revolve around agricultural and natural cycles, in particular the planting/harvesting cycle, and the migrations of certain penguin species which happen to correlate with the fishing cycle.
New year's day falls on the day after the spring equinox, and is the beginning of a four-day celebration, known as the Head of the Year. The first day of this period is reserved for feasts and celebratory events. Typically, a large parade marches down the principal street or road of each town and city. The Brotherhoods are primarily responsible for organizing the parades, and are the primary marchers, although monks and priests will also march. Each Brotherhood will march together, with members dressed as gods, ghosts, clowns, historical and mythological figures, and so forth, with each Brotherhood specializing in a different type of role. In the parade, the Brotherhoods will be separated by groups of musicians and singers. Everyone in costume is treated as though they are actually the person they depict, and will bestow blessings on the crowds attending the parade as they pass by. Once the marchers have arrived at the destination of the parade (the main town square or some similar location) there is a public feast in the form of tables covered with plates of food available for anyone who wishes to eat. Tall poles are scattered around the square (erected in advance for the occasion) and at a designated time, clowns will climb the poles. When they all are standing atop their respective poles, they ritualistically toss balls and eggs from pole to pole in complex patterns, and then toss ropes to each other, which they tie down to the poles in order to engage in displays of tightrope walking and other acrobatic displays along the rope. Eating from the tables is permitted while the clowns are doing this, but in general, eating begins in earnest once the clowns have completed this display. The clowns generally continue clowning around once they have finished and are mingling with attendees on the ground, but not in an organized way once the poletop displays are completed. Once night has fallen, there usually will be a fireworks display.
The following three days are more sober and serious, with rituals intended to recognize and bless the planting of crops. Members of the Brotherhoods will attend an early morning ritual in which they pour a ceremonial bottle of some alcoholic beverage onto the ground. The exact beverage varies - if a region specializes, say, in vinyards rather than grains, they may prefer wine over beer or grain liquors, or vice versa, and some Brotherhoods have traditional associations with particular beverages or with the crops which produce that beverage. During the day, members of each family will congregate together and call upon their deceased ancestors to notify them of the new year and to request that the deceased protect them and advance their interests over the course of the next year. Most families have an area of the home where they display pictures of the deceased and items associated with this general category of ritual. After the invocation of the dead, the family will place a small cake or sweetbread before the pictures, crouch down on the floor, and then arise to eat the cake or sweetbread, deliberately leaving some crumbs behind (which are cleaned up once the holiday has ended.) All of the foregoing will occur on each of the three latter days of the new years celebration. On the final day, the oldest man and woman of each community (with winking about who is oldest, if necessary), the local children, and anyone else who cares to participate will march around the community, with the elderly marchers loudly proclaiming the locations of the boundaries between various parcels of land. This originated in the time period when written land records were scarce or nonexistant, but has continued to the present day simply because it is considered a worthy thing to do on the new year. With the prevalence of land records, the proclamation of boundaries tends to involve noteworthy and scenic land parcels, rather than all parcels. The rational usually given revolves around the importance of liminal spaces, both metaphysically and in surface-level reality, although the laity may describe this in a less academic manner.
Once the holiday is all but over, a coin will be planted in a place of honor before most people's houses, or in a park or other common property, to symbolically sow prosperity for the coming year. The location may have been selected in previous years, but if there is some need to choose a new location, the head of the household or a public official will crack an egg and allow the yolk to seep onto the ground. The direction in which the yolk flows is held to indicate the prime location for this purpose.
The harvest festival falls shortly before the fall equinox, with some variation of date based on geographic region. This is a one-day affair. An individual in each community is designated as the manifestation of death, and dresses in ceremonial robes and a mask, obscuring his exact identity. He travels from house to house to collect some symbolic token from each household, and as he leaves each house, the members of the household follow him in what eventually becomes a large procession. The procession's destination is the local graveyard or some suitable memorial to the local dead, where he deposits the symbolic offering. Each family then will split off from the crowd to ritualistically drink fermented milk in honor of their dead. This procession happens early in the morning. Later in the day, extended families will meet at the household of a given family member, to repaint or otherwise touch up the images of the ancestors, followed by a feast. The mood is generally more somber than the new year celebration. At the end of the feast, a child will inform the ancestors of the completion of the agricultural cycle, and beseech the ancestors to remember the living members of the family. (Agriculture is mentioned regardless of whether the family is employed agriculturally or in some other career field, although families which do not have a personal connection to farming may also mention details relevant to their actual work.) On the actual equinox, families will display agricultural products typical of their region at the chief door of their homes.
The summer festival ordinarily falls in the first full week of the second month, and marks the arrival of the white-bellied penguin in its migration to its summer feeding grounds. This week is considered an especially auspicious time to conduct fortune telling, and public displays of acrobatics are held to increase the supposed accuracy of predictions. The precise details of the acrobatic rituals vary highly by town and region, but generally are organized by Brotherhood, with each Brotherhood having responsibility for a given day. Feats of juggling often are a significant part, with eggs being a commonly although not exclusively juggled item. The first day will be focused on fortune-telling connected with municipal and other public events; the second will be oriented around fishing and the various non-agricultural trades and industries common in a given area, and the rest of the week will be devoted to allowing private individuals to seek divinatory guidances on whatever matters the individual cares to select.
Each Brotherhood also holds festivals at set times throughout the year, to which it invites members of the public. The dates ordinarily are either the anniversary of the founding of the Brotherhood, or connected with some event important in the history of the Brotherhood or the life of its founder, and as a practical matter are more or less evenly distributed around the year. The Brotherhoods, being intended for the laity, are not so strict about observances as the monasteries may be, but only allow members to be present at Brotherhood events except during these festivals. Each one has a nominal tie to a certain deity and the feast given by a Brotherhood will normally include foods with obvious connections to that god. No set food is typical, and one could readily imagine the foods which might be selected in connection with a given god by reviewing the outline of the gods in a previous post. Before the feast, attendees will be able to view the Brotherhood engaging in some version of its private rituals, which ordinarily involve whirling or tumbling.
The Brotherhoods
Now may be a suitable time to delve into the role of the Brotherhoods in more detail. As alluded to above, the Brotherhoods are a significant social glue, and are religiously themed, but are much less formal than the monasteries. They are closer to the Knights of Columbus, say, than to monastic orders, insofar as membership is intended to be fully compatible with being a lay member of society working an ordinary job, leading an ordinary social life, and engaging in fraternal activities in one's spare time. It is not an exact comparison - when a member of a Brotherhood puts on a costume and assumes some role such as clown or deity at a holiday or festival, the member is considered to actually be the role depicted, in some mystical sense. People will pointedly ignore, for example, that they are capable of recognizing so-and-so's voice and body type, and treat a Brother who is in costume as an entirely separate individual, i.e. whoever the Brother is portraying. The purpose is, broadly, to cross the liminal zone between the ordinary world and the mystical, metaphysical world and to ensure that these worlds do not separate from each other - the two worlds are in a state of mutual support and would disintegrate if ties are not maintained. Those Brothers who assume the role of clowns will engage in the sort of raucous jesting we normally associate with clowning, along with a bit of commentary on the emperor's new clothes as needed. Brothers portraying a specific deity or cultural hero will generally lead or join in leading blessings appropriate for a given holiday (inaugurating the acrobatic displays and the like), and will give general blessings to those who pass by. People often will approach them to solicit advice on some topic about which a particular god or cultural hero is considered to have particular wisdom.
In the ordinary course of the year, apart from holidays, the Brotherhoods hold regular meetings of two types. Business meetings are of course a concern for any organization, and the business meetings of the Brotherhoods are quite prosaic, needing no further comment beyond what readers may surmise from their own experience with such things. The central meetings considered to be the central purpose of the Brotherhoods involve a quest for escape from the ordinary stream of thought into a trance state, usually through disciplined forms of spinning or tumbling, approaching dizziness and then moving beyond dizziness into what the Brotherhoods consider true perception of the state of reality. This perception, being hard to describe in words, is depicted in a highly abstract mystical way, with variations between Brotherhoods on the exact terminology used. Techniques for spinning or tumbling vary by Brotherhood but two things are noticeable: firstly, that the activity is much simpler than the acrobatics performed in many other religious contexts, and secondly, that the techniques are either core to, or very strongly relate to the core techniques of the acrobatic style prevalent in a given region for public-facing religious occasions. It is unclear whether one practice is the origin of the other or whether they arose and grew up together.
Beyond the mystical practices and role in the festivals described here, the Brotherhoods engage in charitable works, mutual aid, and other activities promoting civic values, and have a vaguely patriotic tinge, although they try not to delve into overt partisan politics. Brotherhoods also are the entities jointly responsible, along with monasteries, for the maintenance of roadside shrines dedicated to various deities, cultural and folkloric heroes, famous historical figures, and personifications of abstract values. These shrines allow passersby a brief moment to engage in any necessary or desired rituals while travelling, and in more populated areas may be venues to quickly access priests or monks who may be necessary for some sudden unexpected situation, whether by being located in the immediate vicinity of, say, a monastery, or by the presence of a caretaker who can make contact with an appropriate ordained individual. The typical uses for the roadside shrine other than as a venue for daily rituals would be to seek divinatory approval for the purpose of, or safe completion of, the travel one is engaged in.
Personal practice
As may be gleaned from the general tenor of this and other entries in this treatise, divination is a core element of the religion of the little people, and individuals will perform divinatory egg usage on their own behalf or seek divination by a monk or priest regularly. Personal divination is less formal than the divination performed by religious professionals, and usually seeks less specific information - if an individual wants to learn something more specific, or is unhappy with the results of lay divination, he or she may seek out a priest or monk, but usually lay divination suffices. The clergy and monks have manuals of divination but a layman looks primarily to three things - the brightness of the yolk's color in an egg, how the yolk flows with respect to the cardinal directions, and the size and shape of the broken pieces of eggshell. If there is anything unusual about the eggyolk, the layman may apply heuristics gleaned over a lifetime, but as or more often will consider such peculiarities a reason to consult an expert.
The dead are considered to exist in some kind of afterlife, and communing with them is considered important, but the exact details of the afterlife are considered vague. Each family maintains a shrine for its deceased members, as mentioned above, and at holidays and other important events such as births, marriages, and deaths, will engage in ritualistic activity to inform the dead of current earthly activities. Providing them with sweet food and desirable trinkets is believed to assist the dead, who in turn are presumed to be engaging in some activity in the afterlife which will generally benefit the living.
Daily life requires a few rituals, repeated daily or monthly. The sun and the moon are considered to be somewhat emotionally needy, and each day, people recite set statements thanking the sun and the moon for rising and setting. While reciting, an individual will bow at certain times, and will face certain cardinal directions at different points in the lunar cycle. It is not strictly necessary but is concerned worthwhile to perform these recitations at the family shrine, or at roadside shrines or shrines located in buildings frequented by the public.or employees of a given workplace.
Foods must be rendered ritually clean, and in certain cases rendered ritually compatible with each other. Whenever a foodstuff transitions from one state to another (killing and butchering an animal, harvesting plant products, cooking), or when it is from transferred from one container to another, it is considered to be tainted in some way by the previous state or container. The ritual cleansing at points prior to consumption are sufficiently complex that we can only hint at them here, but for meat generally requires removal of the brain and the bowels of the animal, and for birds requires a very thorough plucking, in specified manners. For food harvested from plants, the items harvested are sorted by shape and color, some of which are considered to have divinatory implications, with the exact details varying by plant. At the point of consumption, when food is placed on a plate, removed from its packaging, or what have you, the person eating it will inform the plate of what is about to be placed upon it, using one of a set of standard terms based on the food in question. After placing the food there, the person thanks the pot, packaging, or container which the food had been in, and offers in metaphorical payment the impurities of the container as a reward for the container's service.
Births are attended with less elaborate ritual than at court, but ordinarily will be observed with divination concerning the infant's entire anticipated life, and marked by the consumption of bread smeared with honey. Entry into marriage is considered more akin to a contractual relationship than a religious one, and while it may induce the partners to seek divinatory advice as with any significant decision, it has no major ceremonies beyond a celebratory meal attended by family and close friends after the appropriate legalities have taken place. It is considered an event of which the ancestors should be informed, but simply one of many such events. The funeral is possibly the most important life ritual. The family of the deceased will enter a mourning period of three days, preferring not to leave their homes, and being visited by members of the community who will usually eulogize the deceased during these visits. At some point a familymember will have made arrangements with local monks for a public ceremony. (Visiting the monks to begin these arrangements is, in ordinary circumstances, one of the only socially acceptable reason for leaving the home during these three days, with the funeral itself being the most significant of the other socially acceptable reasons, if the funeral happens to occur in that period.) The body of the deceased is cremated on a pyre in the middle of a room or other space. The pyre is oriented north to south, and the monks sit at the south end, chanting. Members of the Brotherhood with which the deceased was most closely associated sit on the west side, and other mourners sit on the east. The mourners, upon entry, will each individually place a small amount of straw onto the burning pyre. At the end of the ceremony, the remaining ash is placed in an urn in the form of a small statue intended to represent the deceased. Members of the family carry this statue to the burial ground, followed by the monks and Brothers in formation, and by the other mourners. The statue traditionally is held to be, metaphorically speaking, an egg which has been inseminated by the ash, and which will eventually grow into a reincarnated form of the same individual in the distant future. The statue is buried in a narrow grave, with its head at the bottom of the hole and its feet near the top. The reasons cited for this vary but two reasons are somewhat common. One is that in the future, the earth will flip over, and at that time, the statue, having remained still, will be right side up. The other common reason is that the statue is expected to sink slowly through the earth to the other side of the world, and pointing it in the grave in this way will allow its head to emerge first when it reaches its destination.
Dreams are considered a way of breaching the liminal divide between worlds, and often people consider it important to reenact their dreams, or some salient aspect of a dream, in their waking life. Often it is possible to reenact a dream by oneself, but equally often it may be required to request assistance from others, such as when a particular person appeared in one's dream and participated in the act which is to be reenacted. It is expected that if asked, people will make a reasonable effort to help reenact a dream in such cases, and refusing to do so is considered profoundly socially unacceptable. The types of dream elements which are ordinarily reenacted tend to be those which are not dangerous, or where any dangers can reasonably be mitigated through common-sense measures - swimming through a swift icy river can easily be acceptable, for example, if the participants are competent swimmers and appropriate equipment is available to dry themselves off and to assist those who find themselves in trouble. Some people find that a particular figure is a recurring element in their dreams, and that the presence of that figure is determinative of whether the dream should be reenacted. Otherwise, it is a matter of judgment, discussed with others often enough that most people feel they are capable of making the appropriate judgment.
The population at large is aware of the gods which are a focus of the state cults and certain priestly devotions, and enjoys the mythos which surrounds them, but prefers to make the gods a focus of storytelling rather than of worship. Children love hearing stories and the gods are as good a figure as any to serve as protagonists or antagonists, but the priests at court can do the legwork of worshipping them, just as the diplomatic service focuses on being belligerant with the island across the strait, or the tax office focuses on picking pockets, in the popular eye. The people at large focus on fortune-telling and spellcraft, holidays, and ritualistic practices focusing on the family and the dead. As previously mentioned, dreams figure in some practices of the monks and priests, and likewise play a large role in the practices of common folk. Most people are members of the so-called Brotherhoods, which organize festival activities, provide social support and certain ritual activities, and are means of certain types of fictive kinship. The term Brotherhood is the traditional term, and with the advent of feminism and a move away from traditional gender norms, some have advocated for a change to some other term, but this continues to be debated and no new term has, as yet, come to dominate.
The holidays
Most holidays revolve around agricultural and natural cycles, in particular the planting/harvesting cycle, and the migrations of certain penguin species which happen to correlate with the fishing cycle.
New year's day falls on the day after the spring equinox, and is the beginning of a four-day celebration, known as the Head of the Year. The first day of this period is reserved for feasts and celebratory events. Typically, a large parade marches down the principal street or road of each town and city. The Brotherhoods are primarily responsible for organizing the parades, and are the primary marchers, although monks and priests will also march. Each Brotherhood will march together, with members dressed as gods, ghosts, clowns, historical and mythological figures, and so forth, with each Brotherhood specializing in a different type of role. In the parade, the Brotherhoods will be separated by groups of musicians and singers. Everyone in costume is treated as though they are actually the person they depict, and will bestow blessings on the crowds attending the parade as they pass by. Once the marchers have arrived at the destination of the parade (the main town square or some similar location) there is a public feast in the form of tables covered with plates of food available for anyone who wishes to eat. Tall poles are scattered around the square (erected in advance for the occasion) and at a designated time, clowns will climb the poles. When they all are standing atop their respective poles, they ritualistically toss balls and eggs from pole to pole in complex patterns, and then toss ropes to each other, which they tie down to the poles in order to engage in displays of tightrope walking and other acrobatic displays along the rope. Eating from the tables is permitted while the clowns are doing this, but in general, eating begins in earnest once the clowns have completed this display. The clowns generally continue clowning around once they have finished and are mingling with attendees on the ground, but not in an organized way once the poletop displays are completed. Once night has fallen, there usually will be a fireworks display.
The following three days are more sober and serious, with rituals intended to recognize and bless the planting of crops. Members of the Brotherhoods will attend an early morning ritual in which they pour a ceremonial bottle of some alcoholic beverage onto the ground. The exact beverage varies - if a region specializes, say, in vinyards rather than grains, they may prefer wine over beer or grain liquors, or vice versa, and some Brotherhoods have traditional associations with particular beverages or with the crops which produce that beverage. During the day, members of each family will congregate together and call upon their deceased ancestors to notify them of the new year and to request that the deceased protect them and advance their interests over the course of the next year. Most families have an area of the home where they display pictures of the deceased and items associated with this general category of ritual. After the invocation of the dead, the family will place a small cake or sweetbread before the pictures, crouch down on the floor, and then arise to eat the cake or sweetbread, deliberately leaving some crumbs behind (which are cleaned up once the holiday has ended.) All of the foregoing will occur on each of the three latter days of the new years celebration. On the final day, the oldest man and woman of each community (with winking about who is oldest, if necessary), the local children, and anyone else who cares to participate will march around the community, with the elderly marchers loudly proclaiming the locations of the boundaries between various parcels of land. This originated in the time period when written land records were scarce or nonexistant, but has continued to the present day simply because it is considered a worthy thing to do on the new year. With the prevalence of land records, the proclamation of boundaries tends to involve noteworthy and scenic land parcels, rather than all parcels. The rational usually given revolves around the importance of liminal spaces, both metaphysically and in surface-level reality, although the laity may describe this in a less academic manner.
Once the holiday is all but over, a coin will be planted in a place of honor before most people's houses, or in a park or other common property, to symbolically sow prosperity for the coming year. The location may have been selected in previous years, but if there is some need to choose a new location, the head of the household or a public official will crack an egg and allow the yolk to seep onto the ground. The direction in which the yolk flows is held to indicate the prime location for this purpose.
The harvest festival falls shortly before the fall equinox, with some variation of date based on geographic region. This is a one-day affair. An individual in each community is designated as the manifestation of death, and dresses in ceremonial robes and a mask, obscuring his exact identity. He travels from house to house to collect some symbolic token from each household, and as he leaves each house, the members of the household follow him in what eventually becomes a large procession. The procession's destination is the local graveyard or some suitable memorial to the local dead, where he deposits the symbolic offering. Each family then will split off from the crowd to ritualistically drink fermented milk in honor of their dead. This procession happens early in the morning. Later in the day, extended families will meet at the household of a given family member, to repaint or otherwise touch up the images of the ancestors, followed by a feast. The mood is generally more somber than the new year celebration. At the end of the feast, a child will inform the ancestors of the completion of the agricultural cycle, and beseech the ancestors to remember the living members of the family. (Agriculture is mentioned regardless of whether the family is employed agriculturally or in some other career field, although families which do not have a personal connection to farming may also mention details relevant to their actual work.) On the actual equinox, families will display agricultural products typical of their region at the chief door of their homes.
The summer festival ordinarily falls in the first full week of the second month, and marks the arrival of the white-bellied penguin in its migration to its summer feeding grounds. This week is considered an especially auspicious time to conduct fortune telling, and public displays of acrobatics are held to increase the supposed accuracy of predictions. The precise details of the acrobatic rituals vary highly by town and region, but generally are organized by Brotherhood, with each Brotherhood having responsibility for a given day. Feats of juggling often are a significant part, with eggs being a commonly although not exclusively juggled item. The first day will be focused on fortune-telling connected with municipal and other public events; the second will be oriented around fishing and the various non-agricultural trades and industries common in a given area, and the rest of the week will be devoted to allowing private individuals to seek divinatory guidances on whatever matters the individual cares to select.
Each Brotherhood also holds festivals at set times throughout the year, to which it invites members of the public. The dates ordinarily are either the anniversary of the founding of the Brotherhood, or connected with some event important in the history of the Brotherhood or the life of its founder, and as a practical matter are more or less evenly distributed around the year. The Brotherhoods, being intended for the laity, are not so strict about observances as the monasteries may be, but only allow members to be present at Brotherhood events except during these festivals. Each one has a nominal tie to a certain deity and the feast given by a Brotherhood will normally include foods with obvious connections to that god. No set food is typical, and one could readily imagine the foods which might be selected in connection with a given god by reviewing the outline of the gods in a previous post. Before the feast, attendees will be able to view the Brotherhood engaging in some version of its private rituals, which ordinarily involve whirling or tumbling.
The Brotherhoods
Now may be a suitable time to delve into the role of the Brotherhoods in more detail. As alluded to above, the Brotherhoods are a significant social glue, and are religiously themed, but are much less formal than the monasteries. They are closer to the Knights of Columbus, say, than to monastic orders, insofar as membership is intended to be fully compatible with being a lay member of society working an ordinary job, leading an ordinary social life, and engaging in fraternal activities in one's spare time. It is not an exact comparison - when a member of a Brotherhood puts on a costume and assumes some role such as clown or deity at a holiday or festival, the member is considered to actually be the role depicted, in some mystical sense. People will pointedly ignore, for example, that they are capable of recognizing so-and-so's voice and body type, and treat a Brother who is in costume as an entirely separate individual, i.e. whoever the Brother is portraying. The purpose is, broadly, to cross the liminal zone between the ordinary world and the mystical, metaphysical world and to ensure that these worlds do not separate from each other - the two worlds are in a state of mutual support and would disintegrate if ties are not maintained. Those Brothers who assume the role of clowns will engage in the sort of raucous jesting we normally associate with clowning, along with a bit of commentary on the emperor's new clothes as needed. Brothers portraying a specific deity or cultural hero will generally lead or join in leading blessings appropriate for a given holiday (inaugurating the acrobatic displays and the like), and will give general blessings to those who pass by. People often will approach them to solicit advice on some topic about which a particular god or cultural hero is considered to have particular wisdom.
In the ordinary course of the year, apart from holidays, the Brotherhoods hold regular meetings of two types. Business meetings are of course a concern for any organization, and the business meetings of the Brotherhoods are quite prosaic, needing no further comment beyond what readers may surmise from their own experience with such things. The central meetings considered to be the central purpose of the Brotherhoods involve a quest for escape from the ordinary stream of thought into a trance state, usually through disciplined forms of spinning or tumbling, approaching dizziness and then moving beyond dizziness into what the Brotherhoods consider true perception of the state of reality. This perception, being hard to describe in words, is depicted in a highly abstract mystical way, with variations between Brotherhoods on the exact terminology used. Techniques for spinning or tumbling vary by Brotherhood but two things are noticeable: firstly, that the activity is much simpler than the acrobatics performed in many other religious contexts, and secondly, that the techniques are either core to, or very strongly relate to the core techniques of the acrobatic style prevalent in a given region for public-facing religious occasions. It is unclear whether one practice is the origin of the other or whether they arose and grew up together.
Beyond the mystical practices and role in the festivals described here, the Brotherhoods engage in charitable works, mutual aid, and other activities promoting civic values, and have a vaguely patriotic tinge, although they try not to delve into overt partisan politics. Brotherhoods also are the entities jointly responsible, along with monasteries, for the maintenance of roadside shrines dedicated to various deities, cultural and folkloric heroes, famous historical figures, and personifications of abstract values. These shrines allow passersby a brief moment to engage in any necessary or desired rituals while travelling, and in more populated areas may be venues to quickly access priests or monks who may be necessary for some sudden unexpected situation, whether by being located in the immediate vicinity of, say, a monastery, or by the presence of a caretaker who can make contact with an appropriate ordained individual. The typical uses for the roadside shrine other than as a venue for daily rituals would be to seek divinatory approval for the purpose of, or safe completion of, the travel one is engaged in.
Personal practice
As may be gleaned from the general tenor of this and other entries in this treatise, divination is a core element of the religion of the little people, and individuals will perform divinatory egg usage on their own behalf or seek divination by a monk or priest regularly. Personal divination is less formal than the divination performed by religious professionals, and usually seeks less specific information - if an individual wants to learn something more specific, or is unhappy with the results of lay divination, he or she may seek out a priest or monk, but usually lay divination suffices. The clergy and monks have manuals of divination but a layman looks primarily to three things - the brightness of the yolk's color in an egg, how the yolk flows with respect to the cardinal directions, and the size and shape of the broken pieces of eggshell. If there is anything unusual about the eggyolk, the layman may apply heuristics gleaned over a lifetime, but as or more often will consider such peculiarities a reason to consult an expert.
The dead are considered to exist in some kind of afterlife, and communing with them is considered important, but the exact details of the afterlife are considered vague. Each family maintains a shrine for its deceased members, as mentioned above, and at holidays and other important events such as births, marriages, and deaths, will engage in ritualistic activity to inform the dead of current earthly activities. Providing them with sweet food and desirable trinkets is believed to assist the dead, who in turn are presumed to be engaging in some activity in the afterlife which will generally benefit the living.
Daily life requires a few rituals, repeated daily or monthly. The sun and the moon are considered to be somewhat emotionally needy, and each day, people recite set statements thanking the sun and the moon for rising and setting. While reciting, an individual will bow at certain times, and will face certain cardinal directions at different points in the lunar cycle. It is not strictly necessary but is concerned worthwhile to perform these recitations at the family shrine, or at roadside shrines or shrines located in buildings frequented by the public.or employees of a given workplace.
Foods must be rendered ritually clean, and in certain cases rendered ritually compatible with each other. Whenever a foodstuff transitions from one state to another (killing and butchering an animal, harvesting plant products, cooking), or when it is from transferred from one container to another, it is considered to be tainted in some way by the previous state or container. The ritual cleansing at points prior to consumption are sufficiently complex that we can only hint at them here, but for meat generally requires removal of the brain and the bowels of the animal, and for birds requires a very thorough plucking, in specified manners. For food harvested from plants, the items harvested are sorted by shape and color, some of which are considered to have divinatory implications, with the exact details varying by plant. At the point of consumption, when food is placed on a plate, removed from its packaging, or what have you, the person eating it will inform the plate of what is about to be placed upon it, using one of a set of standard terms based on the food in question. After placing the food there, the person thanks the pot, packaging, or container which the food had been in, and offers in metaphorical payment the impurities of the container as a reward for the container's service.
Births are attended with less elaborate ritual than at court, but ordinarily will be observed with divination concerning the infant's entire anticipated life, and marked by the consumption of bread smeared with honey. Entry into marriage is considered more akin to a contractual relationship than a religious one, and while it may induce the partners to seek divinatory advice as with any significant decision, it has no major ceremonies beyond a celebratory meal attended by family and close friends after the appropriate legalities have taken place. It is considered an event of which the ancestors should be informed, but simply one of many such events. The funeral is possibly the most important life ritual. The family of the deceased will enter a mourning period of three days, preferring not to leave their homes, and being visited by members of the community who will usually eulogize the deceased during these visits. At some point a familymember will have made arrangements with local monks for a public ceremony. (Visiting the monks to begin these arrangements is, in ordinary circumstances, one of the only socially acceptable reason for leaving the home during these three days, with the funeral itself being the most significant of the other socially acceptable reasons, if the funeral happens to occur in that period.) The body of the deceased is cremated on a pyre in the middle of a room or other space. The pyre is oriented north to south, and the monks sit at the south end, chanting. Members of the Brotherhood with which the deceased was most closely associated sit on the west side, and other mourners sit on the east. The mourners, upon entry, will each individually place a small amount of straw onto the burning pyre. At the end of the ceremony, the remaining ash is placed in an urn in the form of a small statue intended to represent the deceased. Members of the family carry this statue to the burial ground, followed by the monks and Brothers in formation, and by the other mourners. The statue traditionally is held to be, metaphorically speaking, an egg which has been inseminated by the ash, and which will eventually grow into a reincarnated form of the same individual in the distant future. The statue is buried in a narrow grave, with its head at the bottom of the hole and its feet near the top. The reasons cited for this vary but two reasons are somewhat common. One is that in the future, the earth will flip over, and at that time, the statue, having remained still, will be right side up. The other common reason is that the statue is expected to sink slowly through the earth to the other side of the world, and pointing it in the grave in this way will allow its head to emerge first when it reaches its destination.
Dreams are considered a way of breaching the liminal divide between worlds, and often people consider it important to reenact their dreams, or some salient aspect of a dream, in their waking life. Often it is possible to reenact a dream by oneself, but equally often it may be required to request assistance from others, such as when a particular person appeared in one's dream and participated in the act which is to be reenacted. It is expected that if asked, people will make a reasonable effort to help reenact a dream in such cases, and refusing to do so is considered profoundly socially unacceptable. The types of dream elements which are ordinarily reenacted tend to be those which are not dangerous, or where any dangers can reasonably be mitigated through common-sense measures - swimming through a swift icy river can easily be acceptable, for example, if the participants are competent swimmers and appropriate equipment is available to dry themselves off and to assist those who find themselves in trouble. Some people find that a particular figure is a recurring element in their dreams, and that the presence of that figure is determinative of whether the dream should be reenacted. Otherwise, it is a matter of judgment, discussed with others often enough that most people feel they are capable of making the appropriate judgment.
Last edited by Civil War Bugle on Mon Nov 03, 2025 8:30 am, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Research on the religion of the islands of Lilliput and Blefuscu
A new instalment of this series always makes me smile, and this one certainly lived up to it.
LZ – Lēri Ziwi
PS – Proto Sāzlakuic (ancestor of LZ)
PRk – Proto Rākēwuic
XI – Xú Iạlan
VN – verbal noun
SUP – supine
DIRECT – verbal directional
My language stuff
PS – Proto Sāzlakuic (ancestor of LZ)
PRk – Proto Rākēwuic
XI – Xú Iạlan
VN – verbal noun
SUP – supine
DIRECT – verbal directional
My language stuff
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Civil War Bugle
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Re: Research on the religion of the islands of Lilliput and Blefuscu
Glad to hear it! The dream aspect was the only portion of this segment which survived my process of mulling over ideas… I think it was one of the first items I thought of when I was preparing to commence the project.
Re: Research on the religion of the islands of Lilliput and Blefuscu
That was a fun post too. I like the themes running through the post, such as liminal things, and through the whole thread, such as eggs.
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Civil War Bugle
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Re: Research on the religion of the islands of Lilliput and Blefuscu
I found the description of folk religion to be well done and quite interesting, particularly the details of celebrations and rituals (especially the funeral ritual) and the role of the Brotherhoods. I flirted with the idea of something like the Brotherhoods in my own conworlding, although in my case, they were more of an elite phenomenon, while in yours, they seem to be a feature of the common people.
It occurs to me that if construed broadly, this could open up opportunities for abuse by the unscrupulous. (To pick but one example, "I dreamed that you gave me all of your money!")Civil War Bugle wrote:It is expected that if asked, people will make a reasonable effort to help reenact a dream in such cases, and refusing to do so is considered profoundly socially unacceptable.
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Civil War Bugle
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Re: Research on the religion of the islands of Lilliput and Blefuscu
Thanks!Glenn wrote: ↑Wed Nov 12, 2025 7:06 am I found the description of folk religion to be well done and quite interesting, particularly the details of celebrations and rituals (especially the funeral ritual) and the role of the Brotherhoods. I flirted with the idea of something like the Brotherhoods in my own conworlding, although in my case, they were more of an elite phenomenon, while in yours, they seem to be a feature of the common people.
Yeah, I suspect it is susceptible to abuse by motivated individuals, however broadly it is construed. My general intention was that people would lean towards reenacting physical acts as opposed to reenacting things with legal significance (e.g. my example of swimming through a river) but that their history with their own dreams and the general discussions I describe in the post would somewhat guide choice of items to reenact. But even with a fairly narrow construction, there is potential for, say, deliberately causing an accident in a plausibly deniable way while swimming across the river, to stick with that swimming example. The primary countermeasures would, of course, be sufficiently inculcating the sense of piety which would inhibit unscrupulousness, and the fear of being caught, as with real religions which present similar temptations to the unscrupulous.Glenn wrote: ↑Wed Nov 12, 2025 7:06 amIt occurs to me that if construed broadly, this could open up opportunities for abuse by the unscrupulous. (To pick but one example, "I dreamed that you gave me all of your money!")Civil War Bugle wrote:It is expected that if asked, people will make a reasonable effort to help reenact a dream in such cases, and refusing to do so is considered profoundly socially unacceptable.
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rotting bones
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Re: Research on the religion of the islands of Lilliput and Blefuscu
Thanks. I always thought what isolated people are doing on remote islands is mysterious and interesting.