The Temple of the Seven is the dominant faith of modern Aetheria. Most inhabited isles in the Middle Reaches have a temple-house. Most homes have a small altar against an inside wall, kept clean, dressed seasonally, and attended without much fuss. The faith is old, sober, and lived; it does not demand much, and it does not promise much in return.
The teaching, in its plainest form, is this: the world is held together by seven living gods, who shaped Aetheria after a great breaking, who watch over the work of mortal hands, and who can be honoured but not commanded. Their names, in the order the temple speaks them at sunrise:
- Velisara of the Dawn — hope, beginnings, the first light
- Thorin Anvilbound — stone, smiths, the keeping of sworn words
- Vessen of the Hearth — harvest, household, the bonds between neighbours
- Korr the Broken Shield — courage, defence, the dignity of standing
- Aevan the Silent Eye — knowledge, judgement, what is seen but not said
- Sylth Keykeeper — death, rest, the passing of those we have loved
That is six.
The seventh seat at every temple altar — the one to the right of Velisara, in the standing arrangement most temples follow — is kept and dressed but not prayed to. The temple priests do not invite questions about it. The standard public answer, when a child asks, is that the seventh seat is “reserved for the one whose star is dim.” The standard private answer, which the priests give to one another, is that the seventh seat is for Mara, of the deep currents, whose star went out, and that the seat is not removed because the temple is not yet certain whether the star is gone or only sleeping.
This is the official position. It has been the official position for some four centuries. The official position is slightly different from what the temple teaches the laity, and substantially different from what ordinary folk believe.
What ordinary folk believe is harder to summarize. Most households keep their altar with all six living seats and the seventh seat empty, dressed with a small piece of blue cloth or a fragment of sea-glass — the folk-symbol for Mara — and they pray, when they pray, to whichever god their family has come to favour. A sailor’s family lights for Sylth when the ship is late. A smith’s wife polishes Thorin’s small iron horseshoe above the door before her husband’s first crossing of the year. A farmer on Threadmoor leaves the first stalk of his harvest at Vessen’s plate and the second on the seventh seat, “for the one who is missed.”
The folk-faith is also, in most homes, eight gods deep, not seven. The old name Nymira — of the wild green, whose forests once stood on the old land — is not on temple altars. Few children learn to say it. Older women in fishing villages will sometimes leave a green leaf at the edge of the altar in late spring, “for the one whose name we lost,” and will tell anyone who asks that they did no such thing. The temple does not prosecute this; the temple, in most places, does not see it.
The faith has its dissenters, though dissenter is too sharp a word. The Old Way is a small tradition that honours all nine — the six living, the empty seventh seat, and the two that fell — and asks nothing of anyone. The Silent Choir, more recent, holds that the gods have withdrawn deliberately and ought to be allowed to go. The temple is courteous to both. The temple is courteous to most things. It has been courteous for a long time.
What the temple teaches a child, on the first day of catechism, are the three truths:
The Seven hold the sky.
The Seven do not always answer.
The Seven are owed nothing, and so we may give them everything.
Most adults could not recite the rest of the catechism. Most adults still know the three truths. Most adults find that, on the days the world goes sideways, the third truth is the one they reach for, and that it holds.
The temples do not promise that this is enough. The temples do not promise much. What the temples do, day in and day out, is keep the altars dressed and the candles burning and the seventh seat clean. It is not a small thing. It has held the faith together since the world broke and may, the priests tell themselves quietly on the bad days, hold it together yet.
“Six gods at the table. Seven plates. Eight chairs, on the days I am being honest. We say grace to whichever number we can manage that evening, and the food is the same.”
— attributed to Mother Aelira, lay-priest, Pike’s Reach, in conversation with a Wren Academy delegate, 405 AU