The Stewards of the Earth

This article is archived, and is no longer part of Vekllei canon.

Upen is the animistic religion of Vekllei. It doesn’t have priests, but it has ceremony, and it shapes every part of the country today. From apartment cooperatives to the types of cotton used in clothing, Upen has extraordinary reach for an ostensibly agnostic and secular country.

It works out that way because Upen is not an organised religion, and resembles more closely a collective spiritualism with supernatural beliefs. It is not incompatible with theism, a quirk we’ll explore below, but it manifests outside of churches in the passing of seasons, code of dress and rural egalitarianism.

How exactly a person goes about their animism is their business, and depends on personal faith. Most Vekllei people are atheistic and believe there is another plane of existence which houses their ancestors, spirits, sprites, and demons. This is reflected in how they see the world:

​Upen, as atheistic and animistic, shelters the landscape from becoming ‘simply nature’, as it does when viewed as a product of a monotheistic creator god. To these people, agnostic of ’landscape’, nature is not ‘simply nature’; it is a spiritual vessel in itself, inalienable and inextricably linked to human purpose and satisfaction. Industry is divorced from the whole concept; it is a country of forest commons, collective stewardship, and volcanic unrest.

It is not always easy to reconcile the basic assumptions Upen makes about the world. Viewed through Tzipora’s nonpracticing Roman Catholic lens, the mess of her religious beliefs look something like this:

There is a single creator God, who took on man’s flesh as Christ. He

(and in her mind, it is most certainly a He)

is not omnibenevolent or even totally omniscient. Humans, as weak and mortal, must obey Him until they have the power to usurp Him. He is a guiding force of the world. Spirits, as physical manifestations of the landscape, are fellow travelers on this planet and should always be treated with respect, as humans are guests. With a fragile, physical form, it is a uniquely human burden to cultivate and protect the land, and actualise their purpose as a species.

So, to dissect her version of Upen, we have here four (five) different characters in the spiritual world:

First are spirits and sprites, which are the souls and fabric of the forests and hills. They are as old as the Earth itself and predate humans by billions of years, a fact that seems implied when you are joined in physical presence with them. They treasure, and indeed, embody the Earth and can reap wealth or chaos among us. Spirits take many forms, sometimes anthropomorphic, sometimes only partially corporeal. This one here has collected jewellery, gold, and peratin leaves, as they are fiercely attracted to precious metals. Just as we dress up for them, peaceful spirits will dress up for us and mimic parts of our bodies. Sprites (as opposed to spirits) are smaller, more emotional, and are fragments of reproduction – think of them like spores of ferns, of the pollen of flowers. You can see a small one floating beside the spirit.

Christ was the first and only time that God is recorded to have walked among the living. He might visit the spirit world often; Tzipora wouldn’t know. As a creator and guide for humans, He was born as a human and taught ways to live well. Humanity is very young and is still learning to live on the Earth. The ritual of communion is a way of reminding us that We are in His image, and We are unworthy. He died for our sins; sins Tzipora is very sure will eventually usurp Him altogether in whatever deicidal sci-fi utopia she’s got going on in her head.

Then, there are humans themselves. Here, Tzipora is in full costume designed for religious ceremony to talk to spirits. You can read more about the costume here. She might ask for rains, or a long summer, or for the forest to return a missing child. Food offerings are presented. She forms a whole rune with her body as part of Upotenne, or the language of spirits. Upotenne itself is an ancient type of Potenne, which is modern Vekllei sign language. This is a calming rune, indicating maternal affection, and you can see the written hieroglyph appears visually similar to the pose.

Finally, demons walk the Earth and can manifest in many different ways. This one has taken the form of a girl, and carries the severed head of a goat. Its eyelids are painted with ritualistic eyes in mockery of proper funeral rites. They often wander aimlessly through uninhabited areas, as noise in intolerable to most demons. They are mysterious creatures, and their purpose is unknown. They come from the place spirits go to die. Like apex predators, they wander aimlessly and without purpose, hunting and feeding at random. They are feeble in physical forms, with one exception: they can form physical runes quickly and maliciously. The one cast here is an omen of suffering (translated literally as ‘harpoiseanin’, or overpowering the body with its own stomach acids). In Vekllei, a ‘demon’ is any biplanar or otherwise supernatural creature that takes corporeal form and harms folk directly. Spirits can maim and kill, but only through the forces of nature – a demon attacks physically. There are many types of demons, and you can read more about them here.

If you have any questions about Upen, just ask. You can read more about Vekllei by clicking on my profile or visiting www.vekllei.city! Thanks for stopping by!

-– Post scriptum: Upen is also the reason Vekllei does not recognise either private or public property, and was actually the inspiration for making this post. Although many people exert ‘ownership’, the concept of property as something other than ’nature’ is not recognised, and so society in Vekllei remains thoroughly decommodified. Looking at Vekllei through the lens of Upen, it becomes clear that a moneyless domestic economy is not the product of grand secular collectivist ideals but a natural extension of egalitarian environmentalism; essentially urbanised agrarian socialism.