Aya
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| Aya, The Serene Rose | |
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| Domains | Love, tranquility, madness, flowers, harps |
| Subsidiaries: | Pandia, Demigoddess of generosity, alms, selflessness (daughter of Aya)
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| Additional Symbols | heart-shape, harp, basket, arbor, arches, bridge |
| Colors or Aesthetics | Bright Yellow |
Basic Overview
Called "The Tranquil Rose" Aya is the gentlest of all the gods. She is a pure pacifist, guardian of peace and tranquility. She is also the guardian of those who suffer from mental afflictions, and her clergy are known for being learned in caring for the mad, in an effort to bring tranquility to troubled minds. She is also the goddess of love, in the sense of a generous love of others, true love, total love, love of kin and brethren, and the deep and eternal love between soulmates. Aya's love is vast and unimpeachable, and is distinct from but not mutually exclusive to romantic love and sexual attraction. This love also includes a love of the world, a love of animals, children, and neighbors. She is the goddess of flowers, though many others share some affinity for flowers as well. She also is the goddesss of the harp, because she is known to play the harp to soothe those who suffer and need her care. The sound of harp music is said to be her blessing on the world. As a curious aside, Aya is also the patron goddess of bureaucracy, as it is the divine ambition of bureauocrats to keep things running in a peaceful and tranquil fashion.
Mythology
Aya is the eldest child of Thorin and Valerian, and with her birth brought a new and divine kind of love into being far beyond the simple or animal attraction and bonds of one to ones mate or kin. Many of the gods are envious of Aya's peaceful strength and far-reaching power to inspire devotion, and have tried to overthrow or harm her, but she is a wise and thoughtful goddess, adept and undoing the anger or jealousy others feel towards her with kind words and understanding. Aya's true love is too vast for her to have found a single being with whom to share the entirety of it. Instead, she is wed to her beloved followers - all priests and priestesses in all temples of Aya are married to their goddess and share in her divine love. Aya has had three children, all born of devoted priests in her service to whom she made a divine visit. To each child she gave responsibilities. Pandia is the demigoddess of alms, generosity, and selflessness. She often walks beside Artaq on his journeys and rewards those who are kind to beggars and the helpless. Agronia is the daughter who shares her mothers work tending those who suffer in the mind. When Aya must attend to other godly duties, it is Agronia who stands as vigil keeper to soothe the hearts and minds of the desperate. Her third child, Spero, she gave the task of spreading hope. He quietly journeys to places of great misfortune and kindles glimmers of hope within the hearts of the downtrodden, to seem them through hard times.
Popular Stories
Thorn adores Aya and has intermittently pursued her love for millenia. She will assure him that she loves him dearly, but never more so than any other being she loves, because her love is eternal. Thorn, determined to win her affection (and possibly not entirely understanding the concept he's dealing with), set out to find the perfect gift to win her heart. He gave Aya a series of five gifts, each more spectacular than the one before it. First he gave her the gift of a single blooming rose, which had always been a real crowd-pleaser for him in the past. She swore to treasure it but didn't yield to his desires. So he brought her a a pure golden harp strung with wisps of dream, and she played it for him beautifully, but was still both lovely and aloof. So he brought her a basket woven of starlight and the reeds from the delta of the river from which all life was born, and she praised the gift and filled it with blessings, but still she wouldn't lie with Thorn. He brought her bolts of silk made of sunlight, and she made them into a gown, wore it, and loved him, just not quite the way he wanted. Not specially loving him, particularly amongst all others. In desperation he pulled out all the stops for the last gift: he went all over the world and stole into all the finest gardens in it. From each he stole the seeds of a different variety of roses. Then he took and filled a cup with sacred water blessed by Gwynna herself, although she might not have seen him do it or given permission, and he wheedled a favor out of Palles (one of Gwynna's servants) to borrow an ox, and another favor out of Coron to make him a plow, and tricked a small army of children into handling the work of planting. From all the vines of all the roses of all the finest gardens of the world, he built her a bridge to the mortal world - high and arcing and graceful and made just for her feet to tread upon. She came down on the bridge and met the mortals and then, only then, did she find something she loved even more than everything she already loved as much as could, and that was mortals. Not Thorn. Indignant, Thorn stole a diamond from Aya's perfect anklet and sold it to buy a boat to sulk on. Aya forgave him immediately.
Worship
Simple Devotions
Aya's primary symbol is the rose, and any shrine to her is likely to include a fresh or dried red rose. Basic shrines to Aya tend to be in quiet places, away somewhat from roads, not infrequently in places where wildflowers are inclined to grow. They could be as simple as a stone altar engraved with emblems or more elaborate shelters featuring the traditional canary-yellow drape over an altar. Most formal shrines involve an arbor, with a climbing rose if possible, as part of the structure, and if possible a place to sit or kneel in contemplation. Imagery and décor, if any, will reflect the emblems of the rose, harp, basket, or heart. There are sometimes effigies of a beautiful woman contemplating a single flower. Offerings at the temple tend to be flowers or depictions of flowers, particularly paper flowers made with meditative folding. It is also common to light a candle to reflect a wish of the heart. Devotions take the form of holding internal conversation and dialog with the goddess, seeking calm and inspiration, confessing, explaining problems to her endless patience. Home devotions include this manner of confessional prayer, and keeping a basket of blessings. The basket of blessings is a small basket in which go objects or written notes enumerating the good things about one's life for which one is grateful or pleased. The contents may vary widely, but the basket, usually placed on a mantle or high shelf, is meant to remind the believer of the good in their life and to make them hopeful towards the future.
Major Religious Centers
Beautiful old temple in Lycia, Thracia Unitas (Etruscan state). Also a magnificent ruined temple on the Uthmanli coast, and a thriving modern temple in Sterling, Inishmora. Temples tend to be gently austere, constructed of pale stone or painted white with accents in the bright yellow color she is known for. They usually feature flower gardens, prominently rose gardens, and consistently favor generous open spaces for contemplation in a central building, along with accommodations for those in need spread out around the core structure.
Formal Orders
Aya is a popular goddess whose temples see a variety of structure and forms in various countries. They tend to be democratic and contemplative orders with few stages of hierarchy, and to communicate with one another on a fairly regular basis to keep abreast of trends and theories in mental medicine. A priest of Aya typically resides in and stays relatively near his or her temple, seeing to the tranquility of visitors and tending to those in need. They are absolute pacifists to the point of self-sacrifice and will not employ guards of any kind in or around their own temples, trusting in love to preserve and shelter them, and acquiescing to fate when it is not so. To join the priesthood is not deeply exclusive, but includes a lengthy term as acolyte and intended before one may marry the goddess and become a priest or priestess during which a great deal of education is accomplished.
There is a substantial itinerant order devoted to the worship of Aya, a mixture of priests who have taken particular vows of outreach and of devoted worshipers who wish to pay forward the benefits they have received from such priests. This organization is called "The Tranquil", and its members are subject to a much more structured hierarchy than at the temples. One enters The Tranquil as an initiate and proceeds through ranks of novice, lector, auditor, and ultimately heirophant, an ascension which takes many years. Heirophants of the Tranquil tend to be sextogenarian or older, and meet to democratically manage issues impacting their order on a semi-annual basis, communicate by letter with temples and one another, and generally administer the order itself. The role of The Tranquil is to go out and ease the suffering and heartache of people who are not blessed with the gift of a temple to Aya's love in their own midst. They find those who are suffering and care for them in situ, and transport very serious cases to temples whenever they can. They are to relentlessly pursue the task of bringing peace and harmony wherever they go and easing the suffering of any they can. On the road, members of the Tranquil are not permitted to perform any violence, but they may prevent a blow from striking their body (which priests in temples may not do.) Additionally, the Tranquil are permitted guards, though those guards are very carefully chosen for minimizing the potential for any violence or harm.
Presence in Alba
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