- the life of its founder, and the influence these narratives have on the religious community
- the variation in interpretations of the life of this person
Less interesting, but sometimes of some interest are the rituals and more general beliefs held by the Kaildaperans. This post mainly will deal with the founder, Regnom.
Regnom was a fisherman, who also did a far share of trade voyages at times. While considering life and death, after a boatload of close friends had perished at sea, he started having visions and hearing God's voice telling him the rules of good conduct, the secrets of land and sea, past and future. Regnom apparently was a very charismatic advocate of his teachings, and thus quickly gained a large following among dwellers of the large archipelago where he lived. Since the early Dairwueh navy largely consisted of people from that region, his teachings became closely associated with the navy as well.
Like Islam or Judaism, Kaildaper has a religious legislation that rules on various issues - how to trade fairly, how to judge in cases of breeches of contract or downright violations of terms, obligations with regards to saving fellows in need, war, a ban on slavery, rituals related to fishing, hunting and agriculture, obligations to the empire, and so on, but also rules on acceptable beliefs among those who have taken the Kail-vows. Not all Kaildaper adherents take these vows, but they give significant religious status and are required if one wants a position in the clergy.
About two decades into his career as a religious innovator and prophet, as the first to have taken the Kail-vows, Regnom actually turned heretic-apostate by his own rules, and was punished with the punishment prescribed by the strict rules applied for those under the vow: immolation. Different sub-movements of Kaildaper interpret this in a variety of ways: one of the most popular ones explains that Regnom, because he was the greatest mortal enemy of the Dairwueh analogue of the devil, was possessed by the devil himself. Thus, Regnom's death, the devil too was killed. Another popular opinion is that he had to teach by his example both the right way to live and the wrong way to live, so people could chose the one by which he gained success in life, and reject the one by which he failed. Another posits that a certain failure to live up to God's demands made him fear he had been rejected, and he went to excesses in response to this fear, and thus has a very 'psychologizing' explanation with no real religious content. Some believe he can still be turned back, and hope he will one day materialize out of a flame, returning to the true path as a mere adherent and not a leader – a position he sometimes, during life, seems to have expressed a desire to have rather than his status as a leader. Some think he was allowed to die before his body, so he would not feel the pains of age, and his body went on without guidance from the spirit leading to heresy. Furthermore, there are all kinds of mystical interpretations that interpret it in all manner of strange ways; some marginal groups also find emulating his apostacy (and martyrdom) commendable, and during the 'pre-modern' days of the religion, at least a few dozen were killed each century for such reasons. A final, and rather fatalist position (in a way, the Kaildaper version of hyper-calvinism) is that God showed his utter omnipotence by manipulating the greatest believer into rejecting right belief – and only by doing so could this be properly illustrated.
Different clergymen may hold different opinions on this, and even in a small community, different opinions may thrive. Believers may gather for many shared rituals and services, with smaller groups holding some of the specific beliefs possibly gathering to celebrate some of the aspects of their beliefs at separate times or in separate venues. Especially the yearly remembrance of Regnom's apostacy and the remembrance of his execution are celebrations that differ strongly between these subcommunities.
Bruogdaper adherents tend to accept stuff also from the post-apostacy part of Regnom's life as potentially inspired, Migdaper theology is more closely aligned with Kaildaper theology on rejecting post-apostacy ideas of Regnom's, but tends to attribute less significance to his apostacy in general – Kaildaper adherents and even the Kaildaper religious court system has no problem with non-Kaildaperans accepting whatever ideas about Regnom's post-apostacy ideas. Other movements generally do not have great reverence for him, but he can be invoked as a saint sometimes – and especially as a patron saint of fishermen, sailors, apostates and those who have been sentenced to die by immolation.
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