Rites and Duties

Chauntea's priests tend to be folk of all races who have a deep love for the land and an appreciation of natural ways and balances, seeing intelligent life as part of an ongoing series of cycles. They tend to be gardeners or farmers by trade and training and have an increasing appreciation for the beauty of plants that brings them at last to the veneration of She Who Shapes All.

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Chauntea is spoken of as "Our Mother" or "the Mother of All" by her clergy. They know that she is very powerful in a quiet way—and like her, they tend to be quiet and patient in their ways. Also like her, many members of her clergy are female. In the communities in which they dwell, they are known for their wisdom and appreciated for their willingness to freely (without fee or obligation) tie up their skirts and pitch in when agricultural work must be done, especially where farmers are ill or injured.

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Chauntea's church has two wings: standard clerics who minister to the faithful in towns, cities, and civilized areas, and druids who work in more outlying regions. With the success of the town priests, the druids have been moving farther and farther afield. The relationship between the druids, who call themselves "True Clerics of Chauntea," and the more civilized clerics is cordial, but at times strained. The druids have always venerated Chauntea, and consider the more recent city disciples to be upstarts. The more civilized priests, in turn, feel that the druids' day is done, and while druids are still useful in wild lands, the rising nations need and organized, professional faith controlled by a more reasonable and rational clergy. The percentage breakdown of clerics and druids in the clergy is about 40% clerics and 50% druids. Mystics and shamans, and those of other occupations who work alone outside of either wing of the church and report only to She Who Shapes All herself, comprise only 5% of the priesthood together, and monks, who are always allied to a particular group of servants or druidic circle's leader, round out the remaining 5%.

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Though Chauntea's faith has some large, impressive temples and shrines whose granaries ensure that food for all is abundant in their vicinity, the backbone of the Earthmother's faith is composed of small, local temples, many of which are little more than huts or caverns near pure wells. Often these used only for storing seeds and grain. Chauntean services are most often held in open fields and druid groves.

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Every day begins with whispered thanks to Chauntea for continued life and close with a prayer to the setting sun, from whence (Chaunteans believe) the Great Mother sends her power. Prayer to the Great Mother must be made whenever things are planned, but should otherwise occur when worshipers are moved to do so by the beauty of nature around them, which they are always encouraged to notice. Prayer to the Golden Goddess is best made on freshly tilled ground, farmland, or a garden, or failing that, at least at a well or a watering place. Chauntea listens best to those who enrich the ground, so before prayer many priests bury wastes, dispose of the litter of civilization, or plant seeds.

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Few ceremonies of worship fall at set times. Passing one's wedding night in a freshly tilled field is held by Chaunteans to ensure fertility in marriage. Greengrass is a fertility festival, wherein uninhibited behavior and consumption of food and drink is encouraged. The much more solemn High Prayers of the Harvest celebrate the bounty Chauntea has given a community and are held at different times in each community to coincide with the actual harvest of crops, rather than precisely on Higharvestide.

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Priests of Chauntea are charged to learn—and pass on to others, both fellow clergy and laity—all they can of horticulture, herblore, plant types, and plant diseases, and to encourage all civilized folk to enrich the land by replanting, composting, and irrigation, not merely to graze or dig it bare for what it can yield and then pass on. They replant trees wherever they go, root out weeds that strangle and choke crop plants, and till plants back into the soil. They strive to let no day pass in which they have no helped a living thing to flourish.

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Clergy of Chauntea are encouraged to work against plant disease wherever they go. They often hire nonbelievers to help them burn diseased plants or the corpses of plague-ridden livestock to prevent the spread of sickness. They keep careful watch over such blazes—Chauntean clerics do not like handling fire, and refuse to use magical fire.

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Chauntea encourages her faithful to make offerings of food to strangers and those in need, freely sharing the bounty of the land. It is also said that money given to one of her temples returns to the giver tenfold. Worshipers should plant at least one seed or small plant-cutting a tenday, tend to it faithfully for as long as possible, and see that their own wastes are always tilled back into the soil to feed later life. Any extra seeds yielded by plantlings should be taken to a temple of the god for distribution to the less fortunate.

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