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One of the most well-known elven books on Aldor and its neighbors. Being a god-fearing and pious person, An-Dunnah was especially thorough while describing Western faiths and their differences from Takiya, the religion of the Jacinth Kingdoms.
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Book content
...Heironites, as they call themselves, also worship Dair, the Circle of Existence, but their name for it is the Host, and they adhere to different dogmas. The hierarchy of the Aldorian Hieron is rooted in distant Axonian history and therefore is just as complex and elaborate as its teachings.
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The priests who perform divine service and conduct sermons are known as hierophants. However, before they can assume this title, each claimant has to spend at least a few years as an exoteric.
Exoterics adhere to strict ascetic practices and perform distant pilgrimages. During those travels, they visit every important holy site and spread the Word of the Host to far away villages that lack their own temples and priests.
Upon reaching old age, the hierophants who prove to be capable and pure of heart usually distance themselves from preaching and become hermeneutists - scholars and interpreters of holy texts, tasked with unraveling secret meanings still hidden in millennia-old ancient manuscripts.
The proper understanding of hermeneutics is a necessary step in becoming a theognostic, a person who has a direct connection to the Host. Theognostics no longer rely on food, drink, or sleep: not unlike the oracles of Hazzun, they are spiritually fulfilled, receiving sustenance from the depths of their own souls and the endless mercy of the Divine Powers they worship.
An immaculately pious theognostic receives a chance to unite with the Host in life, thus becoming a thaumaturge, capable of performing miracles. Thaumaturges can do many things: heal the suffering, bless those of noble spirit, and smite all things wicked and unholy.
The most powerful theurgist are annointed with the title of Archtheurgist, which makes them conduits of the Divine Will in this world and leaders of the Hieron. As a rule, there can only be one Archtheurgists at a time, but there are records of occasions when multiple hieronites would become Archteurgists simultaneously, forming diarchies or triarchies.
According to chronicles, some of the greatest wonder-workers could restore razed cities, put an end to waves of pestilence, and send huge heathen armies fleeing in fear with nothing but their raw willpower...
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