Kirrinism: Its Roots and Practice

Kirrinism is at once a philosophy and a religion, wavering back and forth between the two in true Tessalindrian paradoxical form, carefully balanced, as one might expect from the root of the word, and drenched with history and debate. From its roots to its modern practice, Kirrinism has both inspired the vorn and divided families with the energy of full religious zeal while simultaneously denying any religious conformity in its purest practice. It is debated on street corners, argued in classrooms, sneered at in political tirades and lived to some extent in every vorn on the surface of Tessalindria.

Kirrinism is a relatively modern term, ported into the age of isms as naturally as any political or sociological form. No one person could claim coinage of the idea, because the deep-rooted and ubiquitous understanding of the concept of Kirrin in Tessalindria. Perhaps there is no other word that carries the visceral depth of kirrin in the vorn of the Tessalindrian, to whom it is the epitome of states, the place between all the extremes that is held in tension by those extremes and yet represents no extreme and the balance of all the extremes at once. In the Tessalindrian mind, if one took all hate, love, joy, sorrow, kindness and selfishness, patience and impatience, greed and generosity, anger, acceptance, forgiveness, grace, truth, lies, impertinence and every other vacillation of human emotion and put them all on a large plate, the plate would balance perfectly and would require no effort of the vorn to keep it there.

To most, Kirrin is an ideal, something that is sought after without any substantial expectation that it will be achieved, but it is held out as the ultimate achievement of the vorn, to reach kirrin and to remain there. To some it is a futile exercise in religious nonsense, something unattainable and vague and for a few, it is the passion that must be sought.

Interestingly, kirrin is the twin sister of psadeq, which, although it is well understood to stand side by side with kirrin, never had the honor of garnering a name. The two are seen as inseparable, similar and distinct. Similar in that they both represent a state of being: kirrin being that state of balance and calm of the self, at peace with all the warring demands of the vorn and psadeq being the same state of balance and calm in the multitudinous relationships that besiege a person in a complex society. The adoption of the two, understood and inseparable, are lumped together in the singular word, kirrinism.

All but the fewest of Tessalindrians would confess to being kirrinists, but the next sentence would always be prefaced by warnings about which of the multitudinous factions and splinterings to which they might belong. The disputes start with the origins of the Kirrinath, the ancient systematic presentation of the eight Kirrinath elements that are supposed to comprise the whole of life. It then migrates to arguments over various teachers and practitioners who influenced it over the ages and dives deep into the socio-political fabric of modern Tessalindria, where hundreds of hawkers scrabble over the right to be the one to present the ultimate path to kirrin.

All the great religions of Tessalindria, be they atheistic, polytheistic, pantheistic or those who give allegiance to Mah’Eladra and Vishtoenvar, lay claim to the Kirrinath and their own version of where it came from, what it means and how one lives by it to achieve kirrin.

There are those, among whom the most prominent are the Ontalarans, who claim that the Kirrinath is simply a collection of human observations about the way Mah’Eladra created the mankind, that, over the years, have been collated and congealed into a profound system of finding balance before Mah’Eladra. There are others who believe that the Kirrinath was given to the mankind directly through the agency of the Eladra. It was a gift. Some believe that it can be achieved by the rigor of self-discipline, that it is in the jurisdiction of all men to achieve kirrin by self will and there are those who claim that the vorn of the mankind is incapable of balancing the Kirrinath without the El of Mah’Eladra to help balance the vorn first.

In spite of all the rancor, kirrinism lies deep in the roots of Tessalindrian culture and forms a foundation of sorts for all thinking and culture. To understand Kirrinism, one must understand something of the vorn and how the Tessalindrian thinks about the vorn. In addition, one must understand the presence of the Kirrinath. It is from the Kirrinath that the word Kirrin is derived and has its root.