The Jogun religion, or göttlich weg, encompasses the religious beliefs, practices, and teachings of the Jogun people of the Creeping Desert. The Jogun religion believes in a universal supreme deity called Saba. Traditional Jogun religious practices employ ancient chants and poems, veneration of and offerings to deities and spirits, astronomy, initiation rites, medicine, cosmology and Jogun history.
Beliefs
Practices
Festivals and Ceremony
Religious Law
Beliefs
The Jogun people believe in a supreme deity called Saba. Jogun tradition deals with various dimensions of life, death, space and time, ancestral spirit communications, and cosmology. There are also other lesser gods and supernatural spirits.
Saba is the embodiment of duality to whom offerings are made at the foot of trees, the sea, the river, in homes, or at community shrines. Saba is reachable to a lesser extent by the Jogun high priests and priestesses who have been initiated and possess the knowledge and power to organize their thoughts. However, Saba is always in watch of its adherents and always available to them.
In Jogun, Saba is the lifeblood to which the incorruptible and sanctified soul returns to eternal peace after they depart the living world. Saba sees, knows, and hears everything, but does not interfere in the daily affairs of the living world. Instead, lesser gods and goddesses act as Saba's assistants in the physical world. Individuals have the free will to either live a good and spiritually fulfilled life in accordance with Jogun religious doctrines or waver from such doctrines by living an unsanctioned lifestyle in the physical world. Those who live their lives contrary to the teachings will be rightfully punished in the afterlife.
For the ordinary Joguns, they addressed their prayers to the spirits as they are the intermediaries between the living world and the divine. An orthodox Jogun must remain faithful to the ancestral spirits as the soul is sanctified as a result of the ancestors' intercession between the living world and the divine. The spirits have both a historical significance as well as a religious one. They are connected to the history of the Jogun by virtue of the fact that the spirits are associated with the founding of Jogun villages and towns as a group of spirits would accompany village founders - who were their ancient kings - as they make their journey looking for land to exploit. Without them, these exploits would not have been possible. In the religious sense, these ancient kings created shrines to these spirits, thereby becoming the priests and custodians of the shrine. As such, they became the intermediaries among the land, the people and the spirits.
Whenever any member of the priestly Jogun lineage dies, the whole Jogun community celebrates the exemplary lives they had lived on earth in accordance with the teachings of the Jogun religion. Jogun prayers are addressed to the spirits who act as intercessors between the living world and the divine. In addressing their prayers to the spirits, the Joguns chant ancient songs and offer sacrifices of quadrupeds or harvested crops.
There is no heaven or hell in the Jogun religion. The immortality of the soul and reincarnation is a strongly held belief. The spirits are canonized as holy saints, and will be called upon and venerated, and have the power to intercede between the living and the divine. Acceptance by the ancestors who have long departed and the ability to intercede with the divine is a feeling similar to the state of gimti or liberation posed in other world religions. Rejection by the ancestors and becoming a lost and wandering soul is the harshest punishment for Jogun practitioners.
Each Jogun family has a totem. Totems are prohibitions as well as guardians. They can be animals and plants among other beings. Any brutality against the totem or what the totem represents is prohibited. This respect gives the family (or totem-bearers) holy protection.
Practices
The most well-known practice among Joguns related to ancestor veneration. Joguns may wear an item belonging to their ancestor, such as the hair of an ancestor or an ancestor's treasured belonging, which they turn into juju on their person or visibly on their necks. The dead themselves, especially those from the upper echelons of society, were mummified in order to prepare them for the afterlife. They were accompanied by grave goods including gold, silver, metal, their armor, and other personal objects. Mummification is less common now, especially in the post-independence of the Freestate of Io.
The Joguns also have an ancient knowledge of herbalism which is passed down and takes years to acquire. Almost all governments in Marcwith sponsor a school to preserve this ancient knowledge and teach it to the young. The Indigenous Jogun Practice (IJP) alone consist of at least 700 professional Jogun healers, many of which reside in the Freestate of Io.
Several traditional practices linked with land and agricultural activities are known. For example, prediction ceremonies organized by the Zakhira, who are considered to be the custodians of indigenous knowledge. Such meetings are aimed at providing information and warning people about what will happen in the village during the next rainy season.
The cult of the Upright Stone, which were probably built by predecessors of the Jogun, were also a place of worship. The location is still considered a sacred site, although few pilgrimages venture there now due to the harsh terrain of the Creeping Desert that surrounds it.
Festivals and Ceremonies
Both men and women can be initiated into the secret order of the Zakhira (Spiritual Elder). In accordance with Jogun religious doctrines, for one to become a Zakhira, one must be initiated which is somewhat reserved for a small number of insiders, particularly in the mysteries of the universe and the unseen world. The Za’taira ceremony is a special religious event in the Jogun religious calendar. It is the time when the initiated Zakhira (Jogun High Priests and Priestesses) come together to literally predict the future in front of the community. These diviners and healers deliver sermons at the Za’taira Ceremony which relates to the future weather, politics, economics, and so on. The event brings together thousands of people to Jogun Sanctuaries from all over the world. Joguns sometimes spend months planning for the pilgrimage. The event goes on for several days.
The Živ is a rite of passage as well as a religious education commanded by Jogun religion that every Jogun must go through once in their lifetime. The Jogun people being an ethnoreligious group, the Živ initiation rite is also linked to Jogun culture. From the moment a Jogun child is born, education plays a pivotal role throughout their life cycle. The živ is one of these phases of their life cycle. In Jogun society, education lasts a lifetime, from infancy to old age.
Religious Law
In Jogun religion, Monday is a day of rest where no celebrations or business may be conducted. Cultural activities and weddings are also prohibited on Thursday.
Women are given respect and honor in Jogun religion. The woman must not be dishonored or engaged in a physical relationship until after she has been married. When a man desires a woman, the man provides the woman gifts as a mark of interest. If the woman and her family accept, this then becomes an implied contract that she should therefore not court or accept gifts from another man whose aim is to court her. Were a young man and a woman found engaged in premarital relationships, both are exiled to avoid bringing shame to the family, even if pregnancy resulted from that courtship.
Adultery is dealt with by the Jogun jurisprudence of the rule of compensation. If a married woman engaged in adultery with another man, both adulterers are humiliated in different ways. The lover would be shunned from the Jogun society; no family would want to marry into his family, and he would be excommunicated. When women marry in Jogun society they braid their hair in a particular style which is restricted to married women - it is a symbol of their status, which is highly valued in Jogun society. An adulteress's female relatives unbraid her hair. These actions are seen as so humiliating and degrading for a married person that many Jogun have been known to commit suicide rather than endure the shame. The wronged man can forgive both his wife and her lover if he chooses to. The adulterers and their respective families must gather at the Zakhira or elder's compound to formally seek forgiveness. This will be in front of the community because the rules that govern society have been broken. The doctrine extends to both married men and women. Protection is given to the wronged spouse regardless of his or her gender.
In the past, where someone kills another person, the victim's family have the right to either forgive or seek vengeance. Again, the murderer and his family will gather at a local center headed by the Zakhira or the palace headed by the King. Before this judgement, the murderer's family will cook food to be shared among the community and the victim's family. The victim's family will nominate a strong man armed with a spear with a piece of cooked lamb or beef at the end of it. If the assassin killed the murderer with his spear, the food that had been cooked would not be eaten and everyone would disperse. From that day on, the families are strangers to each other. If on the other hand the assassin fed the murderer the piece of meat, then the victim's family have forgiven the murderer. In that case, the community would enjoy the meal and the two families would be sealed as one and sometimes even marry off their children to each other.