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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tristissima" data-source="post: 7994387" data-attributes="member: 6162">We next get a list of the Great Kuthite Ceremonies, preceded by a note that everyone in the realm must find some way to join the public celebrations, whether it is performative or not, by dint of the generally oppressive atmosphere of the place. Which is a thing I’m certainly down with; my love for Nidal doesn’t mean I think it’s a nice place to live, nor even does my desire that Nidal be written in such a way that I coud play a good character who doesn’t reject everything about its culture. However, the writing gets a bit lurid and eager to convince us of Nidal’s EEEEVIIILLL for me.For the 10 days before the first new moon of the new year, communities choose a victim (usually an enemy or prisoner, if they can, though the improperly pious function just fine, and the smaller villages often substitute a pig or a goat or, inviting Umbral suspicion, even an effigy) to lavish with the good life, no luxury denied. They then torture and eviscerate them on the night of the new moon, looking for portents in what are only described as the “ritual’s details.” I think I would choose to interpret that as a combination of, like, ancient Roman haruspicy and some of the things involved in the lead-up and interpretation of Afro-Diasporic sacrifice rituals, looking at like how the animal behaves and gaining knowledge therefrom. I actually kind of hate this ritual, the Eternal Kiss. For one thing, it seems quite unconnected to anything in Kuthite ecclesiology, theology, or cosmology other than the timing. A shift of even just a handful of words would have been sufficient to shift that, sadly, making it the religion’s effort to learn what the coming year had in store for them. I am fairly certain that wordcount could have been cleared for another sentence giving us a brief description of how the Nidalese Kuthite faithful view the changing of the calendar or the passage of time. The other reason I hate it is because of its resemblance to a lot of Nahua/Azteca human sacrifice rituals involving an ixiptla (a word I’ve seen translated as “deity impersonator”). The issue isn’t taking inspiration or having resonance with Nahua culture ~ that’s something I’d love to see more of, actually ~ but in the text’s attempts to drive home, again, the EEEVIIILLLL of it. If you’re going to do that, it’s probably best to avoid any semblance to actual oppressed/colonized peoples.The autumnal equinox plays host to the Festival of Night’s Return, which is given the couple of words necessary to tie it into the Kuthite approach to the world. Elements of Beltaine and Burning Man and medieval Catholic mortification of flesh all combine into the description of the holiday. The distinction between rural and urban celebrations is very clear in the Festival of Night’s Return. Out in the country, the villagers flagellate themselves with simple knotted cords or leather straps, causing no more injury than, say, a light-to-moderate SM scene, and the prayers are kept simple, largely similar to those of farmers everywhere, only worded to fit the Midnight Lord’s ways. Bonfires burn effigies of Sarenrae or Shelyn to show their god’s victory over beauty and light. (I’ve said before that I prefer a much more complicated relationship between the two siblings, and I’m frankly kind of surprised that no mention is made of Desna here. She is both an ancestral deity of the Kellid Nidalese and the primary divine agent working to end Zon-Kuthon’s hold over Nidal, after all). As the bonfire dies down and the self-whipping slows, villagers break off in groups or couples to, well, I believe the tasteful way to put it is the way the book puts it: “to celebrate.”In the cities, Night’s Return is a carnivalesque affair, grand and grim. The Midnight Lord’s pre-dominance permits him to share the flames with no one, not even those he has vanquished. Well, the bones of the previous year’s sacrifices burn amongst the wood, but that’s different. The parade is filled with those who want to attract the Court’s attention or even favor, so everyone seeks to best those next to them, pushing themselves beyond their limits to shows of bloody, grisly devotion amongst the extravagant displays of shadow magic that burst throughout the streets. Here, the holiday drains the energy from all but the masochistic, preventing the kind of eager seeking of the fesh that marks the village holidays.The third of the Great Celebrations is the one most tied to Nidalese culture, and thus my favorite among them. The first Moonday of Lamashan (mid-autumn, October-ish) remembers the terrible time just after Earthfall. Well, terrible for those without a shadowed god providing for their needs, anyway. Originally, it was celebrated by scavenging the bones of foreigners who’d starved, constructing a ceremonial table from them and serving a harvest feast upon it. Now, the bones are of a community’s dead, stretching back through the long generations, and it is a festival of remembrance of the past and thankfulness to Zon-Kuthon for having protected those ancestors so that they could give birth to those celebrating the rite. Among the Great Celebrations, I envision the Feast of the Survivors to be the homiest of them all, not too far in feel from a Kuthite Thanksgiving, to give a rough analogy. It’s when family members gather to spend time with everyone they love, even the ones they don’t love.I am always annoyed by fantasy holidays with formulae like these, honestly. I mean, unless Moonday itself is important to the celebration in some way (think “the 7th day” in Abrahamic traditions, or the various associations of the days of the week with the orisha in Ifa and Yoruba-derived Afro-Diasporic traditions, for examples), it’s very much an industrial way of schedule things. As far as I can tell, most pre- or non-industrial festival calendars timed things to the seasons or the position of celestial bodies or the rhythms of agriculture than to any sort of an idea of “weekend” (which is an artifact of struggles against industrial, capitalist bosses).The last of the Great Celebrations is the Shadowchaining. The first day of Kuthona (early winter, December-ish) hosts a parade of all those with animals magically bound to them, many changed by shadow but also those who are not, flaked by kneeling inhabitants who repeat standard prayers of humility and gratitude. The animals are allowed to hurt those praying, though not to injure or kill them, and then at the end are released to a snarling display of nature red in tooth and claw against some enemy of the faith from outside of Nidal, as the crowd cheers and roars.Has anyone ever compiled a calendar with all of the various national, cultural, and religious holidays of Golarion, or even just Avistan? There have been so many described, I’m just kind of curious to see what lines up with what….</blockquote>

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