Sylvan Marriage Customs
Community Marriage Customs
By Iscikella Zinnonn
Sylvan Cultural Lore
************EDITOR'S NOTE************
This bit of cultural lore is strictly player "legend" and is in no way forwarded as official.
************END NOTE************
PREAMBLE:
I suppose the most difficult thing for me to accustom myself to when I first arrived in the halfling city of IceMule Trace from the forest which was my sylvan home was the idea of formal clergy to worship deities and perform certain religious rites, such as marriages. As any sylph born in the woods knows, we have no such esteemed holy personages within our culture. Worship of the forest spirits is communal in nature, and most religious rites involve no spoken prayers or vows.
This said, I must admit I myself, and most sylvans I have found living outside the forest, seem to quickly learn to tightly embrace formal religion. I think this is because it is a means to share something akin to the unity of mind we were part of within the sylvan community.
Yet, within the community itself, there is never any need for something to enforce that unity. It simply exists. The Council of Hierophants rules, in a manner of speaking, but there is little in need of regulation. All know what benefits the community as a whole, and all instinctively adhere to what will so benefit the whole community.
It is because of this that all marriages within my sylph community, and within all I know of, are what would be termed "planned".
THE LORE:
Once every other year, during the season of fruition -- autumn -- the Council of Hierophants convenes and researches who in the community is now of an age and status (whether never married or now widowed) suitable to wed, what families are in need of new blood to continue, which have best served the community as a whole, and where unions have taken place within the past four generations. (Needless to say, sylvankind keep very detailed genealogies. That of my community is carved upon acres of wood gleaned from the natural refuse of the timberland and fitted together like the complicated pieces of a great jigsaw puzzle, each piece perfectly interlocking into the next without so much as a splinter being removed from its original shape.) Armed with these facts, the Council decides who will marry who and in what season. (Season is regarded as most important in the union of a sylph.)
Once the decision is made, lists are drawn up on clay tablets which are hung from the branches of the modwir of the correct season within the Holy Cluster which surrounds and includes the Celestial Modwir. The Celestial Modwir serves as the base of worship and the location of most public occasions within the sylvan community. Imbued with the gift of Eternal Life by the spirits of the woodlands, it is said that the death of the Celestial Modwir will mark the death of all sylvankind within a given communiy.
In total there are Seven Modwirs within the Holy Cluster, as most even non-sylphs know. The outer four -- one facing east, one west, one north and one south -- represent the seasons such that the one facing east is known as the Renewal Modwir (spring), the one west as the Fruition Modwir (autumn), the one north as the Hibernation Modwir (winter) and the one south as the Proliferation Modwir (summer). The two just inside this outer ring of four are known as the life modwirs, and of these the one facing southeast is known as the Somatic Modwir (embracing the realm of the physical), and the one facing northwest as the Essence Modwir (embracing the realm outside the physical).
At the center of the Holy Cluster -- regally dominating the other six -- stands the giant Celestial Modwir, it's branches reaching so high into the heavens, its full height has never been spanned. Standing before the Celestial Modwir is an experience like embracing the universe. There is a feeling of total oneness with nature, with all the aspects of oneself, and with all the gods -- whoever ye accept them to be.
When the predetermined season for the marriage in the year within the span of two upon which the families of the bride and groom have agreed as being most congenial to both, the wedding couple enter the Holy Cluster and go to the season modwir bearing the tablet with their names. They remove the tablet from the season modwir and take it to the Essence Modwir and hang it upon an available branch. By so doing they have declared without words their marriage rite to have begun. That rite will take a total of seven days to complete, as all sylphs know, and will involve no vows of any spoken type.
Instead, during the first four days of the seven, the two individuals forming the couple are expected to learn to communicate totally without words. This is an extension of the communal mind of the sylvankind. Each member of the pair learns to focus the broadness of that communal mind into the narrower stream of communing mentally with a life-partner.
There is no physical consummation of the union during this phase, nor during the next, which is the two days devoted to emotional bonding. This second phase will often involve the community providing instances where the couple can "sacrifice" for one another.
In the final phase, the couple takes the clay tablet with their names from the Essence Modwir and hangs it from a branch of the Somatic Modwir. A Hierophant will then bind the left arm of the bride to the right arm of the groom with a pliant vine, known from then on as the twining vine. For the full-day span of this last phase, the pair are expected to stay physically joined in this manner, all physical tasks just becoming shared. It is during this final phase that the union is also consummated in the normal manner of all living creatures.
Once all three phases of the marriage rite have been completed, a Hierophant moves the couple's clay tablet to the groom's family branch of the Celestial Modwir. By doing so, this representative of the governing body of community unspokenly declares the union bound, fixed and unbreakable. The pair then come themselves before the Celestial Modwir in the presence of a Hierophant. That member of the Council slips the twining vine from about the arms of the two, never tearing or cutting it (a skill Hierophants are taught upon becoming part of the Council). Finally this twining vine is placed upon the husband's family branch of the Celestial Modwir, replacing the tablet, which is then handed over to the couple as the legal documentation of their union.
