DIY 30 #8: the Mourners -- Cult of the Dead God

To the east and south, on a peninsula far and away where the tribes of the Druugii, Dravidians, Aldacians, and Cassites now dwell in dominion under the Cytherean Kingdom, the Good God himself once stepped down to the world, incarnated in flesh, to teach mortals how to love one another.

Born to a virgin shepherd-girl, Tumuzid was raised as a shepherd himself, and his childhood was marked with the little miracles of enlightenment that usually accompany miraculous births; but it was not until his full manhood that he was called to the wilderness to dwell in a cave as an anchorite, from thence to return to civilization revealed in his glory as the Good God made flesh.

He wandered the wilderness and the little towns, preaching love and simplicity and mortification of the flesh to turn to higher virtues, and crowds gathered round him, and many miracles were performed by him and his followers. And in the cities, he disputed with the priests of the Lawful city cults, the priests of Bel, the philosophers of Zalmoxis, and the priestesses of Cytherea, and too rebuked the Snake-Handlers for their evil ways.

But all this earned Tumuzid the hatred and envy of the priestly sects, and they complained to the Four Kings that the shepherd-prophet was slandering the gods and teaching people to turn away from anything but their own selfish salvation, and refusing to give money for the liturgies of the city-gods. So Tumuzid was arrested by the Four Kings; each questioned him, and disputed with him as to the nature of virtue, and he bested each in his knowledge and personal piety. But though the other Kings would have released him, the King of the Druugii was ashamed of his failure, and acting alone without the consent of the others of the Four Kings, he had Tumuzid scourged at a pillar and crucified in the wilderness.

Then all the land was aggrieved; calamities were reported for and wide, of storms suddenly blown up, of the earth cracking open, of plagues descending on cities. The followers of Tumuzid took down his body and washed him and buried him, and prayed for his return--but he did not return. He lay dead in his tomb, cold and unmoving.

So this is how the cult of Mourning sprang up; the followers of Tumuzid, who saw that the Good God was dead, put on their mourning black, cut their hair and flagellated themselves in anguish, and refused to touch good things to eat or wine to drink. They held a funeral game for Tumuzid, in which the most wretched among them took up swords and in pairs plunged the blade into their partners' bellies to die alongside the Dead God. And though is is not mete for the mourning period for a mortal to last more than a year, the Mourners did not put off their black cloaks, and still refused good things even after thirty years, still waiting for the return of their god.

Two major sects arose out of this Mourning: 1) those who believed that because the divine Good had died, then mortals must perforce resurrect the Good in themselves; and 2) those who believed that because the divine Good had died, that all Goodness was gone, and that therefore all moral strictures and boundaries are henceforth broken. Needless to say, there is much bad blood between these two sects ...

Unfortunately, for those not well versed in the intricacies of Mourning theodicy, the two sects can be difficult to distinguish. Both go about in robes and cloaks of black, shave their hair, and mutilate their flesh, all in accordance with public displays of mourning. They are to be found in their places of worship keening and wailing, and each sect holds regular funereal games in which men and women are encouraged to kill one another. And both sects advocate the abandonment of the traditional city-cults--though the former because they wish for people to turn toward righteousness and salvation, while the latter ridicule the other gods as upholding a meaningless facade of "order".

The clearest distinction between sects is whether they allow the drinking of wine or not--those who seek righteousness tend to abstain completely from any wine, preferring milk as it is the traditional libation for the dead. Those who flout strictures, however, prefer wine at their funereal games.

And the games themselves are another way to distinguish the Good sect from the Evil sect, for the Mourners of the former hold austere games with sober food, simple wrestling-matches, and simultaneous dispatch of the death-seekers. The latter, meanwhile, often throw elaborate games that for all intents and purposes resemble great gladiatorial games, sometimes with slaves forced to fight one another, sometimes with trained gladiators dueling in earnest before the assembled Mourners (and perhaps other citizens attracted to the sport of blood ...).

Because of their excessive mourning practices and because of the unclear mingling of Good and Evil philosophies, the Mourners are often reviled by other cults, and must practice their cult on the outskirts of civilization. Nevertheless, many slaves and others who are downtrodden are attracted to the philosophies, be it the promise of salvation for all men, regardless of status--or the promised transgression of the boundaries established by Lawful and aristocratic elites.

As a final note, the cult of Tumuzid the Dead God is often confused with the cult of the God of Shepherds, Aristios, who also performed miracles for herdsmen and rustics, and who also died. But Aristios died because he gave himself up as a sacrifice, and when he died his gut split open with good crops and good things to eat, given of himself for the people; and in the hollow breast of his corpse, a tribe of bees built their hive, and from the honeycomb of the bees, Aristios himself was reborn, to walk the earth again.

DIY 30 #3: Skotia, Goddess of Darkness and Death

She is the darkness. And out of the darkness of her womb sprang Mother-born Ophalle, who has no father. And Ophalle walked the earth, planting his seed in the fields that they might grow thick with good crops, and filling women and animals with children, so that all the earth teemed with living things. Where sheep and cattle were, he learned from the shepherds and kine-herds how to increase their flocks; and where wheat grew, he learned how to reap it, and where grapes grew, he learned how to press them, and he gave seed to the mash so that it fermented and so wine was made. And when the darkness of night came again, Ophalle was delighted that men and women would pair off and go into the darkness of their rooms to lose themselves in sleep, or the little deaths of love.

But in the darkness Skotia came, and Ophalle saw her and was smitten, but he knew her not. He called to her and she did not answer, for she is the Silent One. He gave her wine, and she drank it, but she did not laugh for she was silent. Then he came to her, and together they lay down in the darkness, and the night lasted for many days, until she got up again from his couch and went away; but she was ever silent.

And she was his mother, so she was wroth that they had lain together; and when she came again and found that Ophalle was asleep, she took up his sickle for reaping, and she reaped the hair from his head, and it was wheat, and it wilted in her hand. And she raised the sickle again, and she reaped off his phallus, and it was a gourd that she devoured. Then she raised the sickle a third time, and now she cut apart his body, limb from limb, bone from bone, and she scattered the pieces across the earth and buried them.

Then winter was upon the world, and crops died, and the animals starved, and the people shivered. The sun himself was wan, for he feared the anger of Skotia, and the heat of the world had gone out of it when Ophalle's life-source was cut from his trunk; and the winter was dark.

But Skotia is the darkness, and in her belly Ophalle grew again. And out of the darkness again sprang Mother-born Ophalle, and again he walked the earth, and filled it with his seed and with growing things.

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Skotia, that is, Σκότια,
She is the Darkness, the Silent One, the Destroyer, She of the Long Sleep

She is the Darkness (to quote Glen Cook), the darkness that was before the world, and which some believe comes with death, or will come after the crack of doom. Her shrines are either secreted in necropolises, or hidden away in unlooked-for places, and always shrouded in shadow. Her visage is fearsome: skin black as obsidian, she dances with her six arms upraised, each bearing a sickle, a harpe-sword, a kris-knife, and other symbols of her godhead--including the phallus of her son Ophalle, a Priapus-like god of sex and fertility, whom she castrated for the sin of seducing her.

Yep, I just based Skotia on images of the goddess Kali ...
a many-armed goddess of darkness was a fixture in my
dungeons well before I codified her as Skotia. Also, notice
the harpe (sickle-sword) in the top-right corner ...

Not specifically a goddess of the night, nevertheless she is associated with that darkness; and because she is Death, and sleep is a presage of death, and orgasm is metaphorically the "little death", so she is also a goddess of sleep and a fertility goddess in her own right. But ever is she silent, never revealing what happens to those who enter her embrace in the long sleep; not even her priestesses (and few priests) have ever received an answer from her after their most strenuous prayers--nothing but the vaguest of omens are offered to her followers.

This silence has allowed for a great schism to arise in her cult, and differences in the particular interpretation of her place in the cosmology are as myriad as the priestesses who serve her. Most devotees fall into one of the two major cults (and the majority of all devotees fall into the first): 1) the Silent Sisters, and 2) the Death Cult.

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The Silent Sisters do not exactly worship Skotia, so much as recognize her embrace as the ultimate destination for all mortals, and so do what they can to aid the passage into the Long Sleep. They do this primarily by accepting the bodies of those who are too poor for proper funereal preparations, or those who have no family and so have no family tombs in which to be interred; these bodies the Sisters wash and prepare for burial, and then inter in their necropolis-shrines. The Sisters also take in and care for those who are too poor or downtrodden to receive proper care otherwise--beggars, lepers, plague-victims, etc. are received into their shrines to receive care under the Sisters until such a time as they are healed, or have passed on in Skotia's embrace, thence to be interred like the others ...

Most people understand Skotia in this light, that of an embodiment of a natural inevitability. Her footstep is feared as the tread of doom, but she is certainly not seen as any kind of demon or moral evil--all men die, and so all men must eventually come face to face with Skotia.

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Some, however, would use Skotia as an idol and object of a Death Cult whose members revel in spreading death and destruction in imitation of the goddess' avatar as the Destroyer. These Death Cults of Skotia are some of the secret Evil cults that plague the world; and sometimes those who worship the Destroyer intermix secretly within the cults of the Silent Sisters, making their detection even more difficult.

The cultic imagery of the Death Cults is virtually the same as that of the Silent Sisters, including an idol of the goddess, six-armed and dancing, shrouded in shadow (sometimes magical, sometimes not); but the rites include monthly blood sacrifice, of kine or swine at least, but preferably human or demi-human, be they slaves, prisoners, or free and willing. Such rites take place only at night, in utter darkness and utmost secrecy; and those initiated into the higher mysteries of the Death Cult are often tasked with further secret rites.

Priestesses who worship the Destroyer are often accompanied by undead, which they raise as walking avatars of the end that comes to all mortals, and high priestesses are also often served by demons, much as any Evil cult might be. The Spiders of Darkness, those silent and implacable hunters, are their preferred servants.

Most of those initiated into the higher mysteries of Skotia tend to be women and priestesses; nevertheless, males are not excluded from the priesthood, and many do rise to power. Of these, however, many priests are self-made eunuchs! For in their enthusiasm in the greater rites, it is common for men to emasculate themselves in imitation of the myth of Ophalle or to become more feminine like Skotia (similar to the Galli, priests of Cybele and Attis, who castrated themselves during a certain holiday, and thereafter went about dressed as women)

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She is the darkness. Out of the darkness of her womb sprang Seed-sowing Ophalle, who took the earth as his bride, and forced her to bear his myriad children.

The earth groaned with the pangs of her labor, and in her despair, she cried out to the gods to relieve her of her woes, but the gods denied her. "We have built our kingdom over your children," they said. "Shall we give up everything we have made?"

And the earth groaned, for her pains were great, and she called out to the sun. But he turned his face from her, saying, "Do not ask this thing of me. I would help if I could, but the gods have set me here to light their kingdom, and they would destroy me if I desert my place." So it was night because his face was turned.

Then the earth called out to the stars, whose children are the Elves, because she was wracked with the hurt of her labors. But stars only shone and laughed among themselves. "It is absurd," they said. "What do we, who are so high above you, care for your pains?"

"Will no one aid me?" the earth cried at last.

But Skotia had heard, and so she stepped down. In silence did she walk, and in the night Ophalle saw her, and was smitten. And he went to her, and he asked her name, but she was silent. And he gave her wine, and she drank it, but she did not laugh, for she was silent. Then she took his hand and led him to lay down, and he laughed, but she was silent.

And when Ophalle slept beside her after his exertion, Skotia rose up, and she took his sword, called Harpe, so that he would go unarmed at the final battle when the Gjallarhorn is sounded. And with Harpe she cut his hair so that she might bind him with it, there and thereafter; for witches often use the hair of their victims in rituals of binding and unbinding, and so Skotia would do at Gjallarhorn's winding. And raising Harpe again, Skotia unmanned Ophale a third time, cutting off source and member; these she took, and holds them yet.

So, taking Harpe, hair, and phallus, Skotia went her way again, and Seed-sowing Ophalle was left unmanned in his pain. And when Gjallarhorn sounds, he will try to rise up; but he will be weaponless, for his sword is gone; and his limbs will be bound with the magic of Skotia; and his blood will be cold for the lack of his life-source, and all things will pass again into darkness, and the earth will groan no more, but will know peace in oblivion.