Boles of Dahan

The Boles of Dahan is the name given to the pre-Wesmodian clerisy of the god Dahan. This all-male institution was an organised and dedicated religious order who held tremendous social power on the Alluvial plain before the Wesmodian Reformation. Being the subject of a particularly vitriolic attack in the Wesmodian Invectives, they suffered a loss of social leverage in the resulting Reformation greater than that of most of the other sects of the religious tradition of the Eleven Cities.
Unlike the followers of deities such as Maryas or Krezzan the Boles of Dahan appear to have been institutionally illiterate, in that there is no record of the clerics themselves leaving any written accounts of the cult's beliefs or operations. What is known about them is therefore drawn from outside sources, mostly from those written by urban dwellers such as Wesmod. While these sources do not contradict each other more than is to be expected from such texts, Dahan was a largely rural deity with no great following in the cities themselves and it is difficult to know if any given source is an honest description of the cult or a caricature drawing - honestly or otherwise - from second-hand information and cultural prejudice. Thus little enough is known for sure about how the cult operated.
Even what they called themselves is not actually known; the term "Boles of Dahan" was coined by Tyrosian thaumatologist Margyas Maray as the title of her 378 AWR book on the folk traditions of the alluvial plain. An interesting source of information, the book presents a highly romanticised view of the sect and its accuracy has been called into question by subsequent researchers, who refer to these men more commonly and simply as the Cult of Dahan. Conversely Maray's book is a major source of inspiration for multiple attempts to conduct Dahanian rituals in recent years.

Practices and doctrines

Like most gods Dahan was worshipped by the general populace in a series of public rituals led by a professional, full-time clerisy who passed the knowledge of the deity down via oral transmission.

Societal role and training

Wesmod implies the clerics of Dahan were figures of tremendous social influence, serving as magistrates and village headmen as much as religious leaders. They are said to have arranged the planting and harvesting of crops, voicing ritual chants over both newly-sown fields and post-harvest stubble in an effort to court the favour of the god of the vegetable kingdom and to thank him for bountiful harvests. In most communities these rituals gradually developed into seasonal festivals, possibly lasting several days, in which the clerics served as masters of ceremonies, overseeing and carrying out a variety of other rituals. For this service they received the support of the community in the form of the first measures of the harvest and a variety of other boons.
This is not a state of affairs Wesmod was prepared to countenance; indeed it has been suggested that the entire Wesmodian Reformation was started essentially as an effort to stamp out this influence. In the first and seventh Wesmodian Invectives he furiously indicts the clerics of Dahan for their role in organising the festivals, rituals and sacrifices to their deity, painting the sect as bullies holding the ignorant rural populace in their thrall and demanding harsh and inhumane concessions from them. Wesmod attacks the sect for its perceived greed, caprice, self-interest and violence and heavily implies that they are also abusing their societal authority to gain sexual gratification.
Wesmod also provides the only known contemporary description of the training of the clerics of Dahan, claiming it was accomplished via the oral instruction of likely candidates, in private, over a period of years. One cleric would assume primary responsibility for the tutelage of a likely candidate and call upon other members of the clerisy to provide specific instruction on rites and mysteries they were less than confident on. Very often, Wesmod avers, the candidate was the primary tutor's son, and he expresses deep cynicism about the precise nature of this training, arguing that it consisted mostly of explanations of how to use theatrics and superstition to keep the general populace in line and ensure that the supply of material support continued. This assessment does not come from any known first-hand research - Wesmod is not known to have visited any areas in which Dahan was worshiped until after his Invectives were spreading through the cities - but there are no more reliable contemporary sources.

Organisation

All writings on the clerics of Dahan agree that they were an organised group with a rigid hierarchy, the ranks of which were named after trees; it is from this that Margyas Maray found the name of her treatise on the sect. Wesmod mentions this hierarchy in only passing, noting how oaks grew out of acorns. Maray itemises the ranks, in ascending order, as willow, poplar, larch, elm, ash, chestnut and oak. Subsequent researchers, notably the Pholyan fieldworker Qrovatan Medys, have observed the lack of clear archaeological evidence that this hierarchy was as linear as Maray suggests, or for the elaborate, picturesque initiation ceremonies by which she describes clerics advanced through the ranks. Medys in particular draws on his fieldwork at dolmens and riverside shrines to provide evidence that such advancement was achieved by punishing self-mortification and rigorous oral examinations.
All sources also agree that members of the sect met at certain times of the year at megalithic sites, where rituals were conducted and discussions on sect policy probably held. Again, the precise nature of these meetings is widely disputed, though all sources agree they were strictly private affairs at which no laypeople or spectators were ever permitted. Wesmod describes human sacrifices, specifically of women, being conducted at these events. Margyas Maray rejected this, insisting that animals were the sacrificial victims and that the purpose of the sacrifice was to display the common properties of animal blood, vegetable sap, and water. Qroyatan Medys falls between the two previous scholars, arguing that human sacrifice was a regular part of the worship of Dahan but that it did not take place at the megaliths, but instead at the public spring festivals. Recent research building on Medys's ideas suggests the practice was already in abeyance in many areas at the time of the Reformation.

In mythology

Denqyod appears in various mythological and mythopoeic sources, most of which identify him as a son of Dahan, though the identity of his mother varies. Denqyod is an itinerant thaumaturge of great power and gnosis, with consistent power over the vegetable kingdom, capable of turning animal tissue (including his own) into vegetable matter and back again, communing with trees, commanding sudden exponential growth in plant life and turning toxic plants edible and vice versa. He is also a figure with evident control over human fertility, being noticeably lascivious in his habits and capable of impregnating women with a wave of his hand. He also has an abiding concern for children, at times demanding them as payment for boons and favours.
Mythographer Jephyos Kalamb argues that the character is actually a cultural memory of the clerisy of Dahan, possibly at a time when their theurgic potency was greater than it appears to have been at the time of the Reformation. The name Denqyod ("Son of the Green" in Old Zolian) is by his estimation a title once applied to a member of this brotherhood. He admits there is a problem with this theory; all other references to the clerisy describe its individual members as settled in given communities, usually for life, whereas Denqyod's itinerant lifestyle, lived mostly in deep dark woodlands, rather more closely resembles the recorded modus operandi of the Beast Men of Pergyad.

Wesmodian Reformation

When Wesmod's ideas were spreading through the cities, he was reputedly distressed that they were not penetrating to rural areas where Dahan and Pegyad were the primary deities worshiped. He thus undertook a voyage to Pholyos and from there a long, semicircular, westward itinerary through the alluvial plain to Ramoros visiting communities and giving public speeches against clerics in general and the priests of Dahan in particular. He evidently expected more resistance from the peasantry than he appears to have encountered, since he is known to have traveled with a significant contingent of bodyguards but (for polemical purposes) no religious or thaumaturgic precautions. The biographical tradition surrounding Wesmod records confrontations with traditionalists, including some direct debates with clerics of Dahan, who are generally described as irritable, heavily-bearded men wearing white robes. The clerics invariably lose these debates, however, which often climax with them invoking their god to no effect, and sloping off defeated. Debates continue between thaumatologists as to whether these events actually happened or serve as rhetorical exercises by writers keen to emphasise Wesmod's success.
What is clear is that Wesmod's mission to the south appears to have been almost wholly successful in stamping out the cults of Dahan and Pergyad. Within a decade of his mission the former priest of Dahan, a desperate old man in a threadbare white robe futilely demanding to be accepted as a god of earth, had become a stock character in popular ballads in Chogyos. The fact that public oratorical explanations of scepticism were required to get his ideas across is largely attributed to a lack of literacy in rural areas, where his Invectives could not avail by themselves. The speed with which the general populace abandoned the cult once the case for doing so had been made may be evidence that Wesmod's characterisation of the Boles of Dahan as a repressive theocracy has some merit.

Aftermath

Though the Boles of Dahan appear to have died out completely within a generation of Wesmod's mission, the social order they regulated continued in a number of ways. Furthermore efforts have been made since the Reformation to re-establish the cult.

Spring and harvest festivals

Most rural communities on the alluvial plain observe festivals at spring and harvest time. Amid much general frivolity, these festivals involve such traditions as the spring princess, fruit pies, well garlanding, mummery and river processions. Such traditions are generally presided over by a mummer playing the role of Father Han, a folkloric character associated with joviality and plenty. In most places there is also a particular corpus of seasonal music and folk songs, many of them unrecorded.
Thaumatologists are of one mind in their observation that these traditions contain echoes of the popular worship of Dahan, which would have been presided over by the local member of the Boles of Dahan. Active debate, however, surrounds the precise significance of the rituals and their potential thaumaturgic application. Most agree that Father Han fills the role that would have been taken by the local cleric of Dahan, but commentators are divided on whether the traditions surrounding him are numinous or sinister survivals from the pre-Wesmodian tradition. In the last two centuries the general thrust of the debate has swung from viewing these traditions as romantic and picturesque (as influenced by Margyas Maray) to seeing them as troubling (as Qroyatan Medys did) and back to calls for them to be revived as genuine religious observances by contemporary thaumatologists like Garyod Somay. What has often become lost in this debate is a drive to properly record the rituals and their permutations; the solid data on which these debates rest is interestingly sparse.

Archaeological remnants

The sacred sites of Dahan were largely abandoned after the Reformation, but most continue to exist. Overgrown dolmens and herms exist near many villages, particularly those near rivers, while Qroyatan Medys catalogued five major stone circles on the plain, using their locations to speculatively plot the locations of another three. Medys is of the opinion that these circles were the chief ceremonial locations and cult centres of the Boles of Dahan, though he disagrees with Wesmod's assertion that they were the sites of human sacrifice. He also argues that the herms were not connected to Dahan-worship, instead linking them to the cult of Pergyad or Ajqyod. Medys believes that great thaumaturgical effect could be achieved at these sites, but has developed severe backaches as he has aged and is unable to perform further fieldwork himself.

Neo-Dahanian sects

In recent years groups of urban youths have attempted to reconstruct the worship of Dahan as a functioning religion. In Ramoros Garyod Somay currently leads a group he calls The Green Circle and claims to be an earthly incarnation of Father Han, who he argues - drawing extensively on the work of Marqyas Maray - is a stern but benevolent fertility spirit. His group perform rituals to Dahan in the hilly forests to the west of Ramoros, claiming to commune with the god on a regular basis.
One of Somay's former disciples, Margyas Hosyan of the Green Crown fled his circle to form an all-female group known as the Ivied Ones in Loros. The group rejects the primacy of Father Han in the rituals of Dahan and instead argues for the existence of a continuous underground tradition of female clerics of the god - a point that directly contradicts historical evidence. They have conducted rituals at one of the stone circles on the plain, but decline to say which or to disclose their results. Hosyan of the Green Crown consulted Qroyatan Medys to determine the location of the circle her group used, but he is reputedly furious at their use of it.

Type

Religious, Cult