Spiritual Life:

A typical HW village has a shaman as the mediator of the spiritual focus. However, this is not to imply that villagers do not practice spirituality on an individual basis.

Most villagers have a small shrine or altar near the household fire pit where twice daily devotions to honor the spirits of her ancestors are performed. These devotions normally include a ceremonial offering of burnt bread or roasted grains and water to feed the ancestor. On anniversaries of the death of any ancestor within two generations, the offering is often elevated to include burnt meat and some beverage as sustainance for the souls of the departed. Also, typically, anyone who is observing the funeral date of a departed family member will tell a story or tale to the whole village about that individual during the evening meal. It is believed, that when properly honored, the ancestors will avert ills from a respectful decendant.

In many ways, because of the human veneration for their ancestor and the importance of marking their passage with ritual, the removal of family members, by BoneTalkers, from a village is one of the greatest crimes BoneTalkers commit against humans. For, if a person is uncertain whether a relative is living or dead, she can not perform the proper obesience to the departed. For this reason, villages try to maintain communications among each other to inform members about deaths and births. Thus, many trade goods carried by drones have a secret message of hope or loss.

The shaman’s role in the spiritual life of the village is to act as a unifieing focus to aggregate the atomic nature of worship. While villagers are responsible for the proper obesience to their ancestors, the shaman is charged with understanding and revealing the wonders and cautions of the SpiritWorld. For around human existance is a complex spiritual/supernatural ecology of which people’s ancestors are but a small factor: there are demons that cause disease, fates which help determine who the BoneTalkers will take, devils that temp the spirits or posses people with divine madness. A shaman uses his powers to direct the SpiritWorld to the benefit of the people he guides. This protection can be as simple as using imbuing herbs with healing spirits to cleanse wounds;to as complex as bringing down wrathful emanations as a malefaction on a villager who willfully sacrifices the interests of the villages. And in the most baneful circumstances, call up the dead for retribution.

Shamanistic rituals tend to be less frequently than family shrine rituals, typically occuring on the New Moon, Fool Moon and at the turn of the seasons. Rituals often involve story telling, dance, use of "shamanistic herbs", invocations of the dead and spirits.

The basics of human spiritual life fall into five major beliefs/types of worship for individuals and are as follows:

Ancestor observance: the sacrifice and prayer to ancestors as a sign of respect, but not with the belief that they are susceptible to beseeching.

Ancestor veneration and invokation: veneration and respect are tempered with the belief that the ancestors will aid suitably obescient family members.

Ancester observance and veneration within the cosmos of the SpiritWorld: subsuming the first to forms of worship into a cosmic view of a spiritual universe in which the ancestors are simply another (albeit benificent) entity. Therefor, other spirits are also worshipped and propitiated.

Redeemer worship: looking for signs and sacrificing to hasten the arrival of the redeemer—a being (supernatural or human depending on the belief) who will remove humans from the thrall of BoneTalkers.

BoneTalker worship: an obsessive veneration and worship of BoneTalkers in the belief that the powers they demonstrate indicate these creatures to be supernaturally divine beings.

The percentage of humans who worship in the various above fashions are as follows: 1—15%, 2--20%, 3—55%, 4—5%, 5—5%.