In the Dairwueh-Bryatesle world, several types of religions exist by the side of the standard religions, and have overlap of membership. How does this work?
These religions, much like the standard religions, have rituals, myths, a membership structure - often with a hierarchy, supernatural beings, and sometimes even texts. However, they differ in "magisterium" from other religions. A rather illustrative example of this are the two sailor religions.
The Dairwueh and Bryatesle are largely maritime civilizations. Sailors have always nurtured a lore of their own, and in the DB world, this lore has come to form much tighter, cohesive structures than on earth.
However, there are two competing, major sailor religions - and these can strongly disapprove of each other's views regarding a variety of things, and crews are therefore often rather uniform when it comes to religion. Sailors come from most of the normal Bryatesle and Dairwueh religious backgrounds, and have these religions as an equal part of their religious mental landscape. Conflicts between your "land" religion and your sailor religion may be just never resolved, or may affect how you pick which sailor religion to join. Options may be scarce, however, if you live in a port where only one of the religions are widely represented.
1. The western sailor religion
Appeasement of hostile spirits is an important part of the ritual system.
Certain colours of sails are considered lucky: red is especially favoured. Passengers need to participate in a special ritual on land before embarking and are forced to wear special clothing during their voyage. This clothing in fact also has some buoyancy, essentially being a type of proto-life vest.
The ritual includes eating a small amount of seafood, confessing to the captain any sins one has committed that may anger God and cause him to prevent the ship from reaching the harbour, and a form of baptism. The idea of the baptism is this: if it is your lot in life to drown, God should take this opportunity and not pull the entire ship down for your sake.
The spirits of the sea are not considered evil or good per se, but rather neutral and sometimes ill-tempered. Areas where particularly nasty spirits are held to be present are avoided. Spirits tend not to relocate.
Former sailors are still held to be ritually valid members, and must participate in sailor rituals rather than passenger rituals (and may not need to wear the passenger-clothing if travelling as passengers).
There are no, or nearly no 'secrets' that cannot be divulged to outsiders. Family members on land are expected to participate in some land-based ceremonies and even carry out their own rituals on land, and often contribute to the production of ritual articles - including the clothing for passengers.
There is a pope-like figure, the father captain. He has quite some political clout, and can, for instance, declare embargoes against city-states or villages. The clergy consists of the captains.
If circumstances allow, there are regular religious services on the deck - nearly every day. Even those sailors who are confined to the brig are permitted to be on the deck for this. Some parts of the rituals are not permissible for passengers (but can be witnessed). The service also includes judgement in case such is needed, and the administration of minor punishments may occur during or immediately after the service. Rewards, promotions and the sharing of plans occur during these services.
The services include tales of sea monsters and spirits, singing, often a shared meal, and sometimes a sermon. This sermon may include any kind of advice, not only ethical: "in our next harbour, avoid the bar at the western pier".
Songs are sometimes veiled in metaphors and allegory, but this is not a mandatory feature: the message can be clear.
2. The eastern sailor religion
Appeasement is considered an invitation; therefore, they instead try different types of ritual exorcisms. The lore teaches that there are two basic sides of spirits at work over the seas, and these blocks are basically "cohesive". Thus, there is one evil block and one good block. Evil spirits do not counteract each other (generally). Good spirits, are not to be invoked willy-nilly, and may demand quite a hefty price if invoked in vain.
Routes where evil spirits largely holds sway are avoided; however, a ritual exorcism may be successful, and an area may become acceptable again. Evil can also retake areas.
Some groups within the religion even make up plans for how to wage the spiritual war against evil spirits. There is no top leader. Sometimes, the dozen or so grand boatswains gather and hold synods. Individual grand boatswains may abstain from adhering by the decisions. Captains are also important authorities, but do not hold a comparable religious function as boatswains do, and are way less involved with the rituals of the eastern sailors.
Travelers are expected not to participate in the rituals, and the less a voyager knows about the rituals, the happier the sailors are. Former sailors are considered (respected) outsiders and must no longer participate in rituals. Family on land are expected to abide by their land-based religion and not to pry into the secrets of the seas.
The full crew seldom participates in services and rituals, but rather it tends to be subsets at any time. In harbours, however, some full crew services do take place.
Many songs sung to synchronize the work have lyrics that refer to the tenets of the religion; however, these are often shrouded in metaphors so as to prevent voyagers from being able to figure out what is what.
3. Pirates
Some pirates have subverted both of these religions in a way similar to how e.g. some forms of satanism subverts Christianity in our world. They may seek to collaborate with evil spirits, or even control them. They attempt to bind or prevent good spirits from doing their thing. There are both 'eastern' and 'western'-aligned (anti-aligned?) pirates, but the dividing lines are not as strict, and subverting both at the same time is possible. Western and eastern pirates thus have a weird ecumenism.
Interactions with land-based religions
Most of the land-based clergy respect the sea-based clergy, but there are a few minor conflicts. The main conflicts are between the western captains and the Kaildaper clergy. These religions have some shared roots (since kaildaper evolved among western fishermen), historically, but differ on how they interpret the traditions in rather conflicting ways. Despite, or maybe due to the even greater theological distance to the eastern sailor religion, there is no conflict between the kaildaper and eastern sailors.
Some crews are purely kaildaper crews for this reason.
Eastern ships grant land-based clergymen the right to minister to voyagers aboard, western ships do not. Western ships expect even clergymen to participate in western ritual. This is seldom, but sometimes, a problem.
Modern times
The long-term effects of these practices include:
- The emergence of two main sailor's trade union organization 'family trees'.
- Rather different structure of division of responsibility between the upper parts of the crew hierarchy in the two different unions.
- Many of the rituals survive even though few know or care about their meaning.
- Many superstitions about dangerous spirits on the sea are still held by significant numbers of sailors.
Herder religion
Among shepherds and other herders, certain ritual practices and beliefs are commonplace. Dogs are granted burials in dog burial grounds. Dogs that died fighting a predator get special rituals and special markers at their graves. Small sacrifices at dog burial grounds are a regular occurrence.
There are also rituals - some of them very short and low effort - to participate in when slaughtering a sheep; when acquiring sheep; when acquiring an already trained dog; when acquiring an untrained dog; when going to sleep in the fields; when acquiring new pastures; when selling pastures; when having pastures; when encountering thunder; when encountering fog. The use of willow flutes also has some religious significance, as does the use of horns made from sheep or goat horns.
Although not fully uniform, the similarity of herder practices over the entire Dairwueh-Bryatesle word is remarkable.
Early industrial-worker religion
As industrialization lead to urbanization, rural practices entered towns and were mixed - and as living conditions changed, the practices also adapted to their times. Organized religion conserved some of the rituals and practices fairly well, but those beliefs and practices that were outside of the scope of the major religions quickly morphed. Traditional wolf-scaring rituals morphed into carnivals full of revelry; the springtime celebrations of the first harvestable edible things morphed into slightly less intense celebrations full of revelry. In general, industrial-worker religion tended to be quite full of revelry - but early industry in the DB world was quite lethal compared to all other work except that of the sailor.
Due to the amount of revelry involved, university students adopted some of the industrial-worker practices as well, but there is an amount of distrust between workers and students, as they often come from quite different class backgrounds.
Miner religions
There are several mining-related systems of lore and ritual. There are even systems with miner monks. The miner religions are closely linked with mining engineering, the clergy essentially being mining engineers - but with required knowledge of the supernatural lore and rituals as well. Some miners are closely aligned with one or another system and will avoid working at mines where other ritual systems are prevalent. In some way, these are competing mining guilds which guard their knowledge carefully.
University religions
Universities tend to have their own identity, ritual systems, orders and hierarchies, and even beliefs. In the Dairwueh-Bryatesle world, the similarity to religion is even stronger than here, and in some sense the university ritual systems are essentially parallel religions. The university religion of course has two clearly separate blocks - the teachers and the students. Mostly, these have their own concerns, but on some occasions, the two blocks meet on an almost even footing in ritualized forms. Often including some level of revelry.
Medical doctors
In the DB world, medical doctors also have their own rituals, hierarchies and myths. Beliefs exist in this sphere as well, but evidence-based beliefs are mildly tolerated if they conflict with the historical medical dogma. Students of medicine do study at universities in the DB world, but tend to have their own separate system within the university world, unlike the other subjects.
