I have previously mentioned details about the Bryatesle-Dairwueh religions. This article presents one of these imaginary religions in greater detail. The BD religions form a religious union, whereby they consider each other valid forms of worship and belief. This example comes from one of the western branches of this complex of religions.
A Migdaper Prayer Tradition, and the Subversion of its Intent
Among the early migdaper sages, an important idea seems to have been that charity has four components: material charity, behavioral charity, verbal charity and mental charity: gifts of kindness, acts of kindness, words of kindness and thoughts of kindness.
When these four are practiced in parallel, righteousness increases. Different parts of the religious rituals are meant to increase this.
Daily communal prayer has been an established practice in the western bryatesle-dairwueh religions, probably since before the three modern western BD religions were established.
The daily prayer contains two almost fixed parts - the introduction and the end. These, however, are replaced by specific versions on holy days, and under certain other circumstances - war, famine, plagues, comets and other calamities, but also during harvest and sowing. If the community has a funeral, this is also reflected.
In between these, there are a few cycles. The festival cycle has special prayers for certain days, but is omitted on most days. The agricultural cycle follows the times of the year (and is tailored to local climates), but is omitted on some holy days.
In addition, there exist a few other types of cycles with different geographical distribution, and then the free parts - the leader of the congregation says a prayer loud that often covers recent themes, congregants may be invited to improvise or quote prayers they like (the frequency and number of congregants invited varies strongly), and a private, quiet prayer.
The most recent cycle to be almost universally shared among the migdaper is the "human cycle". A group of sages set out to gather prayers composed by people from every walk of life. The idea was that praying these prayers would teach empathy for those in different situations.
It is clear that the prayers were not entirely composed by the people they represent, but it seems beyond doubt that the sages did base the prayers on examples they encountered among the type of people represented by each prayer. After eliciting prayers, they seem to have done some poetic touch-ups, possibly some theological corrections and redacted them in other minor ways.
The relevant walks of life do not correspond entirely to occupations or social class, although many examples of that are included. Prayers can be found that originate with kings, warriors, orphans, bankers, scribes, sailors, fishermen, wives, caravan traders, farmers, a barren woman, widows, mothers grieving a lost child, the father of a heretic, a member of a "pagan" religion, a child, noblemen, the elderly, thieves, slaves, prostitutes and so on. The ones mentioned above are present in all the original variations of this cycle, among about fifty other near-universal walks of life.
There exist a few different sets of these of slightly different lengths - which is why I wrote "almost universally shared". Nearly all migdaper communities have some variation on this cycle, but there are differences in the number of prayers. The cycle was partially meant to have some stability, but also to permit for new walks of life.
An early book written by one of the originators of this cycle suggests that the cycle length should be kept steady in a community for as long as possible - any added prayers should be added to be said on the same day as some old prayer. Lengthening the cycle should only be done if the daily prayer gets exceedingly long. The book states that a cycle length is permissible as long as it is coprime with the length of the year, the length of the leap year and the length of the leap year cycle - but it is a preferrable cycle if it also is coprime with the length of any sum of one leap year and one, two, three, four or five normal years as well.
This should guarantee that all walks of life get their prayers said on all the holy days at some point. In the eyes of God, and in the eyes of the religious calendar, all humans are equally precious, and so should be equal in this cycle.
This might seem like a nice enough sentiment, but the practice is broken in four different ways, and quite intentionally: failure to attend, rioting during attendance, manipulation of the cycle and omission of the prayer. On the day of the prayer of the prostitute, and to a lesser extent those of the thief and the slave, attendance often drops significantly - in places with many migdaper prayer houses that follow different cycles, other houses whose cycle is at a different point sometimes see quite an increased attendance. The prayer of the prostitute is sometimes also met with loud derision and even riots in the houses of prayer.
Some communities refuse to read these prayers on holy days. Different solutions exist: either, saying the offensive prayer on the same day as another offensive prayer during years when they would coincide, just dropping them altogether from the cycle on those years, or shortening / lengthening the cycle by adding or moving some prayers around in it for the sake of not giving prostitutes, slaves and thieves the honour of having their prayers said on holy days. Some particularly brazen congregations have removed these prayers altogether from the prayer cycle. One congregation does nominally keep these prayers in the cycle - but has no communal prayer on those days except if they are holy days, in which case the prayers are omitted.
In some cases, where a leader of a congregation has read the prayer on holy days despite disapproval, the congregants have celebrated the holy day anew the next day, to mark that they consider it as if the holy day did not take place at all as the taint from the prayer of prostitute is enough to cancel all holiness.
It is notable that these three prayers are not in any way explicit, nor do they advocate anything that anyone finds offensive. Notably, the prayer that generates the greatest offense generally is the prayer of the prostitute, and secondarily that of the slave.
