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====== The book of earth ======

The book of earth, sometimes rendered into English as the Claravian Apocrypha, is a text composed by one of the Beholders (early Claravian preachers who witnessed the Theophany) that consists of a survey of the beliefs and practices of pre-Theophany Animism. Some of the Bright Way's core beliefs are rooted in this text, hence the name, but it is not considered part of the protocanon.

Primitive Animism is surprisingly well-documented thanks to the yinrih's innate literacy. It is not, however, uniform. Rites and beliefs differed from shire to shire. The goal of the book, as stated by its author, was to "find the universal truths hidden in the soul of all those who ask." The author sought to identify common elements that converged on an underlying universal understanding of the supernatural, and to see what could be reconciled with the revelations given in the Theophany. 

Among the beliefs identified in the book as possessing this universality are a belief in two distinct kinds of spirits. First are spirits inhabiting natural things including celestial phenomena like clouds, the sun, and stars; flora and fauna; and features of the land such as rivers and rocks. Notably, celestial spirits were not given cynoidomorhpic features such as gender or family affiliations. It was thus deduced that the Uncreated Light also lacked these features.

The second kind of spirits were the souls of sophonts who had passed on. while presapient yinrih had gone extinct well before the Theophany, the earliest texts written while they were still extant overwhelmingly regarded them as beasts, albeit beasts due special consideration. 

The four seasonal feasts as well as the three daily liturgies draw their essential elements from this text as well, though other than times and dates as well as a connection between the shaman's fire and the sun there was little held in common. It was also noted that while most liturgies were performed alone or with a girl or two acting apprenticed to the shaman, every man, woman, and pup in the shire would attend a liturgy on a semi-regular basis, often right before or after their torpor, in order to seek the shaman's aid or blessing.

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