Read the Rot's Rhythm
Just as life ebbs and flows with time, so to do the seasons. Follow the rhythm of the Earth around you, and you will find the path to the Maw's garden.
Spring - The Seeding
“Bury the bloom beside the bone, and something new shall rise.”
This rite marks the awakening of the earth and the start of the Pairing Season. Wolves offer bones and blooms to the earth, praying to the Maw for mutation and fertility in the months ahead. It's also when public pairings are blessed, and those wishing for mates might make their intentions known.
Traditions
- Pairs and hopeful singles bury symbolic items together
- Songs and dances celebrate the cycles of mutation and birth
- The Glimmermarked bless dens and future litters with sacred ash or flowers
Summer - The Lightfall Reverence
“Even in ash, they glimmer. We carry their light.”
This is a communal remembrance for all nonlethally mutated pups who died in seasons past. While The Gleaming Rite is personal and immediate, Lightfall Reverence is a sect-wide memorial; joyful, public, and bright. It celebrates the pups' role as Returning Light, thanking them for their beauty and their blessings to the dens.
Traditions
- Ash from past Gleaming Rites is mixed with flower petals and scattered across the gathering grounds
- Tales of each pup are shared as myths
- Wolves wear flower crowns and paint their fur in ash or lightly colored dyes
- A shared meal of foraged fruits, berries, and meat honors the joy those pups brought
Autumn - The Maw's Entreaty
“Before the frost, may we be seen. May we be filled.”
This is a direct rite of worship to The Blooming Maw, offering praise and petition before the harshest of the seasons. Wolves thank the goddess for their survival and ask for fruitful final breedings and bountiful hunts before winter. It’s a deeply reverent ritual, full of music, incense, and spiritual storytelling.
Traditions
- Glimmermarked recite sacred verses and chant her many names
- Wolves offer bones marked with flower-paint to a sacred pool, hoping to appeal to the Maw's mercies
- Pairs may have their dens ritually blessed before the final breeding attempt of the warmer seasons
- Any meat hunted the day of the rite is left at the outskirts of the territory for The Maw to “taste”
Winter - The Vigil of the Undying Bloom
“Even frost retreats from the Bloom. Let her mercy root within us.”
The Vigil of the Undying Bloom is a quiet, sacred rite of protection and supplication. As winter's harshness threatens fertility, health, and life, the cult gathers to seek the Blooming Maw’s aid in preserving litters, guarding bodies, and granting miraculous endurance.
During this rite, living Eternal Blooms are given the highest reverence. They are treated as divine conduits, living prayers made flesh, and often serve as symbolic centrepieces for the ceremony, cloaked in flower garlands or sat beside altars.
The rite is solemn, hushed, and emotionally charged, but not grim—a sacred night of holding on, together, illuminated by living proof that The Maw never withholds her miracles entirely.
Traditions
- Wolves form a circle around an open fire, kept burning all through the night
- Each participant offers a branch to the fire, whispering a prayer or wish for survival or mutation
- Eternal Blooms are presented with wreaths and warm cloaks, tended to by high ranks within the fold
- Dried petals (harvested in spring and preserved all year) are crushed and scattered in the snow to "root warmth in cold ground"
- Expectant mothers are ritually blessed with ash and warmth-symbols (fire-colored dyes or pelts)