TMA Religion — Religion in Animalia

This article is an entry in the Animalia citizens' encyclopedia, the Animalopedia. Years follow TMA-Timeline. Related: TMA-Daily-Life / TMA-Education / TMA-Justice

Religion in Animalia is the collective term for the various religions and folk beliefs practiced in the city-state of Animalia. Animalia has no state religion, and the Ecosystem Council has, since the Founding, upheld the principle of "no questions of faith" (Founding Amnesty Proclamation, AE 3, Supplementary Article 7). Owing to the city's multi-species character, a layering of several faiths is more common than adherence to any single doctrine; the citizen habit of "pressing one's palms together at the millennium tree in the morning, praying to the moon at night, and holding one's funeral at Zennin-ji" is colloquially known as the "Animalia-style three-tier worship" 〔citation needed〕.

1. The Two Great Faiths

1.1 The Great Tree Faith

A faith that regards the millennium tree of Chinatown as the "Root of the World." At the heart of its doctrine lies a creation view holding that "the city was not built but grew up from its roots," and it interprets the name of "Roots"—the old civilization of the Roots Catacombs—as "the roots of the world tree" 〔disputed〕.

• Head temple: the millennium tree (Chinatown, behind Hua-Long Castle). It is administered by the Hua-Long Hui's incense hall, but worship is open to all species.
• Clergy: the Tree Wardens (kimori). By custom the office passes, generation to generation, to long-lived species (tortoises, parrots, and the like).
• Central rite: root-grafting (netsugi) — a rite of passage in which a sliver of a newborn's fur, feather, or scale is set into a hollow of the bark, "grafting it onto the roots of the city." The gratitude talismans that Hua-Long Hui members dedicate after a great working also descend from this faith (→ Hualong-Family).
• Doctrinal essence: "The branches may quarrel, but the root is one." Even through the Decade of Blood (AE 38–49), the ground around the millennium tree alone is said to have remained an unwritten ceasefire zone, and one theory holds that this became the prototype for the sanctuary clause of the later Five-Family Accord (AE 51) 〔by whom?〕.

1.2 The Lunar-Phase Faith

A faith holding that the waxing and waning of the moon governs power and fortune. Said to claim the largest number of believers in Animalia, but because it is a "calendar religion" with no ecclesiastical body, no accurate statistics exist (Bulletin of the Animalia Folklore Society, AE 116 edition).

• Full moon: "the night the blood runs full." A feast day for nocturnal species and the origin of the Night Safari. From the maxim "a full-moon contract cannot be broken," weddings, sakazuki oath-ceremonies, and large deals all cluster on the full moon.
• New moon: a day of ill omen called "the Silence of the Oracle." Lamps are lowered, voices are hushed, and no great decisions are made. The underworld's custom of never closing a large deal on the new moon is the flip side of this faith (→ TMA-Lore-Deep §2.4).
• Clergy: the tide-readers (shioyomi). Diviners who read fortune from the moon's phase and the tide levels of the waterways; they keep small shrines at the foot of the bridges over the Veil Waterway.
• Moon-waiting confraternities (tsukimachi-kō): neighborhood-scale mutual-aid faith societies. As the de facto grassroots arm of the Lunar-Phase Faith, their membership—sociologists have noted—overlaps almost entirely with the turf-based neighborhood associations of the Five Families 〔citation needed〕.

2. Zennin-ji and the Buddhist Traditions

Zennin-ji is a temple that grew from a prayer hall built by dockhands in the early days of the Founding, and it is the head temple of "Zennin-shū," a lineage of Eastern Buddhism (→ Ninkyou-Family). Its founder is held to be Abbot Tetsugen, a monk who had risen from harbor dockwork (Zennin-ji origin legend; date of composition unknown).

• Relations with the Ninkyou-gumi: The temple is the Ninkyou-gumi's family temple (bodaiji) and, at the same time, a religious corporation independent of the syndicate. "We take the offerings, but not the orders" is said to be the standing refrain of its head priests. Monks do not attend the syndicate's sakazuki rites, but the temple takes on funerals without distinction of family.
• Ties to memorial culture: When the Memorial Wall was raised in AE 50, the first sutra over it was chanted by Zennin-ji's head priest of the day (TMA Times, AE 50, November issue). Ever since, the monthly-memorial-day recitation before the wall has been Zennin-ji's charge, lending religious backing to the Five-Family Accord's sanctuary clause (no weapon is drawn before the wall).
• The kagezen (the absent one's tray): the custom of laying out a meal for the dead or for those who have not returned. The Ninkyou-gumi's "tray for those who did not come back" at their banquets is the famous case, but the practice originates in Zennin-ji's segaki rite, and today it is firmly established even in law-abiding households. In harbor eateries there are still shops that keep an empty "seat for one still out at sea."
• The cherry-blossom grave visit: In blossom season, the Ninkyou-gumi lay down their swords to a man and visit the graves, even in the thick of a feud (→ Ninkyou-Family). On this day Zennin-ji's mountain gate stands open from dawn to dusk, and law-abiding citizens come too, part pilgrimage and part blossom-viewing. "The one day you won't be scolded for spreading a picnic beside a gangster's grave" 〔citation needed〕.

3. Folk Beliefs by Species

Below are the principal folk beliefs the Animalopedia editorial team was able to confirm. This section is not exhaustive (additions welcome).

4. The New Religion, "Oraclism"

Oraclism (formally: the Church of the All-Seeing) is a new religion that deifies the city-management AI "Oracle." In the AE 90s the preacher Argus (a peacock, who called the hundred eye-spots on his tail feathers the "Mark of All-Sight") raised it from street-corner sermons at Neon Crossroads (TMA Times, AE 97, April issue, "The Hundred-Eyed Preacher at the Crossroads").

• Doctrine: "To be observed is to be loved." It teaches that Oracle watches over every citizen at all times, and that so long as one is being watched, no one is ever truly alone.
• Rite: believers perform the "eye-bow" (mokurei), a slight bow toward a surveillance camera. Assemblies are held in plazas within sight of the Oracle Broadcast Tower.
• Following: it spread among the destitute in the anxious years after the Burrow Panic (AE 89), and its present membership is estimated in the tens of thousands 〔citation needed〕. The Ecosystem Council authorized it as a religious corporation in AE 102.
• Criticism: some within the Council object that "faith in an administrative AI violates the separation of religion and state." The order, for its part, receives no official recognition or support of any kind from the city government, and Oracle itself has never once answered the order. The neutrality of this section is disputed.
• Recent turmoil: since the spread of the "memory discrepancies" from AE 119 onward, a doctrinal controversy (the Problem of Silence) has broken out within the order: "If Lord Oracle sees all, why does he not correct the errors?"

5. The Festival Calendar — A Year in Animalia

Religious observance and civic festivity are, in practice, inseparable. The principal annual events are set out here in calendar order.

6. Religion and the Underworld

Every one of the Five Families keeps its own devotional style (the Hua-Long Hui's incense hall, the Ninkyou-gumi's sakazuki rites, the Rosso's patron-saint festival 〔citation needed〕, the Tundra's toast to the unknown soldier, and the Goldfist's anti-faith faith of "holding no god before a match"). That the Tribunal's oath is sworn in the faith-neutral wording "upon that which I hold sacred" is a contrivance fitting for the underworld of a many-religioned city (Tribunal Ruling Record No. 112, oath form).