Hayamana

Hayamana is a formalized pantheistic pantheon, venerating the various aspects of the godhead, the creator of the world. The Hayamana was the primary philosophy of the Old Ecclesia, before the time of the Saints and of Valen.

It was the faith of a thousand gods, all of whom were avatars of the godhead. Hayamana holds that mankind are the children of the godhead’s avatars and that the avatars of the godhead who walk among men grants souls to infants and council to the heart. They taught that all creatures are one with the godhead and when they die, they return to the godhead. These gods are venerated in their own separate shrines according to the locations of their legends, but also in great cathedrals that venerated as many gods as affected the locals.

The religion is the religion brought by the Tarë. It was the work of the Avatar of Aman that these beliefs took form. Most central to this religion, and the inheritance of the east, was the concept of caste. Some individuals in the community are lesser by birth and in spirit. These people are born into the caste and die in their castes. This caste is usually determined by ethnic group and clan.

Over the millennia, the Ecclesian temples took root in the south, though the ancestor worship continued in one form or another. After the rise of Davahaya, the religion of Valen, those loyal to the old gods became rarities as missionaries rode forth from the new Ecclesia.

Aman became a ghost of the old Ecclesia and only small pockets of resistance to the new Godhead remain in the south. Only a few members of the Old Ecclesia remain and the city of Aman is occupied by a shadow garrison of Priests. The practicers of the Davahaya despise the clingers on of the old faith. But though the temples are to the Dava, many shrines remain for the gods or gods who take the names of Saints.