sythyry | First Day, part 5 [1 Thory 4261]

First Day, part 4 [1 Thory 4261]

Most of my friends are sensible about having other things to do just now. The First Day ceremony at the Temple of Virid ranges from boring to insipid to tedious to uninteresting, and then goes back to boring again for dramatic unity's sake.

Boring: It starts with Herethroy choral singing. There's a 244-part song. They sing one bit every day, or every day but today. The day's ceremony starts with the last bit in the cycle. Typical religious silliness, starting at the end. That's the boring bit. There may be 244 parts to the song, but they all sound exactly the same to me, and they go on and on and on and on and on and on and on, forever, or for nearly a sixth of an hour, whichever comes first.

Insipid:Then the High Priest of Virid, looking entirely old-fashioned and ridiculous in a plum-colored waistcoat and a ceremonial topiary of a hat-thing, stands there with giant acorns in all four hands and explains in pompous pious polemics about how primes were created 4260 years ago to expand and rule the World Tree and be the right people and all of that obvious stuff. Then he creates a big arken tree in a big wooden pot in the plaza.

I do not understand that part of the ritual in the slightest. This isn't the anniversary of the day that the World Tree was created -- I don't know if we even know what day that is. It's the anniversary of the day the Herethroy were created. He should create, oh, a huge pile of hosh grain or something.

Tedious: Then a dozen other priests strip off their old-fashioned ridiculous clothes, and climb up the tree, and start chopping bits off of it and tossing them down to other, less agile priests with meng-nut sickles beneath. The less agile priests, still carefully ridiculous in Herethroy clothing (even the two-thirds of them that aren't Herethroy, so they've got limp floppy sleeves) stripped the leaves from the branches, and tossed them in baskets, and went around giving them to everyone. There is Symbolic Meaning Here. The high priest declaimed this and that.

Boring: It ends with Herethroy choral singing. There's a 244-part song. They sing one bit every day, or every day but today. The day's ceremony ends with the first bit in the cycle. Typical religious silliness, ending at the beginning. That's the boring bit. There may be 244 parts to the song, but they all sound exactly the same to me, and they go on and on and on and on and on and on and on, forever, or for nearly a sixth of an hour, whichever comes first.