The Dirt

Divinity: An unnamed teacher who left; the faith reveres the Earth itself
Adherents: Small; concentrated in Nashriam, with pockets in Vas'tek, Curath and southern Caliharah
Related To: Widely believed to be an offshoot of Eos
Practices: Dirt-stained hands, noon meditation, carved prayer runes
Clergy: Parsons, who serve their whole community regardless of faith

The Dirt is a small religion of service to the soil, widely believed to be an offshoot of Eos. Where Eos venerates the harvest, the Dirt venerates the ground that produces it — and, by extension, the people who will one day return to it.

"True power lies in the Earth, where all life comes from and all life returns to. How can we serve the Earth, which eternally serves us? How else can we serve but by serving others, who, as we all are blessed to do, join the Earth in death?" — Parson Almas

Almas was a mole-kin, and is quoted more often than any other parson. The Dirt has never treated that as an irony. It holds that the words sit better in the mouth of somebody the Earth made twice.

Daily practice

Followers keep their hands in the earth. For peasant believers this happens through work, and the state of their hands is itself the observance. Wealthy devotees stain their hands, wrists and feet with red clay, using true soil only on occasions.

The other daily practice is meditation, usually at noon when the ground is warmest. Believers sit barefoot with their hands on the earth, listening, and reflecting on what the soil gives and what they can give back. Many take up gardening, pottery or work with stones and gems, on the principle that everything the earth yields is a gift.

Prayers are carved into flat river stones and buried. Common runes ask for hardier crops, better harvests or brighter flowers; others guard fields against predators, flood and fire. A rune is laid under a new building's foundation, thanking it for holding up the house.

Parsons and the labyrinth

Each community has a parson, who functions less as a religious leader than as a therapist and arbiter — settling disputes, hearing complaints and advising anyone who asks, whatever Divinity they follow. A parson trains one apprentice at a time.

Monthly prayer meetings run from an hour before noon to an hour after, on the first of the month, in a prayer labyrinth traced into dirt or sand. Some are enormous permanent carvings maintained by the apprentice; others are cut fresh as each season requires.

Specialised prayer

In spring the followers trace the labyrinth's path and pray for healthy growth; in autumn they trace the chaff-strewn earth and give thanks for the harvest. The labyrinth serves as both meditation and petition, and as with everything else in this religion the core of it is personal reflection and service to the community.

Death and the soil

The tenet outsiders find strangest is that a body must not be used after death. A follower's body is owed to the soil and should decompose naturally. Most hold that a believer who is reanimated will never reach the Well of Souls, and will be forced to roam instead.

The kin are the hard case, and the Dirt settled it early. A kin's first body is never left behind — it becomes the body they go on living in — so nothing of the animal is ever given back to the soil, and on a strict reading a kin carries a debt they have no way to pay. The Dirt's answer is that the debt was never theirs to begin with: the Earth made the animal, the animal was not taken from it, and a kin returns everything it was lent at the end like anybody else. Parsons are open about how convenient this reasoning is, and hold to it regardless.

Origins

Texts recovered in recent years are held by many to show that Eos and the Dirt were once a single group following Eosaani. Records from old parsonages tell of the first followers communing with a strange, near-primordial creature that taught them to revere the soil itself; where that Divinity went is a matter of constant speculation and of pilgrimage. By those texts the split was doctrinal — the Dirt held that the Earth, not the harvest, was the ultimate source, and turned away.

A prayer of the Dirt

Recorded during a famine.

Let the grass partake of me

Let the insects feast on me

Let my bones become dust

Let the soil consume me

I am but nothing

I consume to be consumed

Great Earth, Great Earth!

Let my purpose be continuation

I will not know true sleep

Until I slumber in the soil

Great Earth, Great Earth!

I long for you

Let the flowers sprout from my fingertips

Let the birds have their fill

Let me come home

Let the soil consume me

(Note: it does not appear that followers of The Dirt are actively suicidal, this prayer is a lament I heard during a time of famine. They believe there is purpose in living, but death is sacred, a true connection.)