Primalism

Primalism is the common name for a political and cultural trend fashionable in the Covenant at its most prominent around the 23rd Age of Doubt and the 9th Age of Reclamation.

Most popular among some high-ranked San'Shyuum, Primalism was a form of "noble savage" romanticism centered on the Jiralhanae. There had long been an academic cultural interest in the Jiralhanae, a longtime fringe and auxiliary species which had raided and settled on the marches of the Holy Ecumene's spinward side for around a millennium. The Primalists took this interest further, asserting that the Jiralhanae were more pure, uncorrupted by complex civilization and the evils of sophistry, and once converted to the Path, also pure in their faith. The Jiralhanae had vigor, earnestness and strength and no pretensions of nobility. This was contrasted with the haughty and quarrelsome Sangheili provincial nobles or High Charity's bloated and decadent upper classes who cared more about stability and their own power and wealth than the Great Journey.

This underlying dissatisfaction was largely influenced by the so-called "Ages of Complacency", a period of several consecutive ages culminating in the 23rd Age of Doubt when little real progress was made on the search for the Sacred Rings or other major relics. The Covenant public's faith was wavering even as internal conflicts such as the 14th Unggoy Uprising periodically rattled the Covenant from the inside. The grand expeditions and expansions of the Covenant were far in the past, and even the consolidation of High Charity's power in the Second Illumination began to show signs of waning once again, which if left unattended, might usher in a new interregnum or Feudal Period in the future.

The Prophet of Truth was notably influenced by Primalism and admired the Jiralhanae. Truth was a San'Shyuum supremacist first and foremost, but he also saw the Jiralhanae — united under Tartarus and thus under a controlled hierarchy with Truth at its apex — as useful tools, much less finicky and far easier to control than the Sangheili. To Truth, the Writ of Union had been a bothersome compromise, and even as select Covenant administrations would periodically reestablish High Charity's power over the Sangheili nobles, the very existence of this cycle of waxing and waning was evidence of a broken system. A Covenant remade in Truth's image would be no equal union between the San'Shyuum and the warrior caste, but a strict hierarchy in which the warriors unquestionably followed the Prophets' bidding. Had the Prophet of Regret and the unexpected developments of the late Human-Covenant War not lay waste to his plan, Truth may have accomplished this over his lifetime — a rejuvenated Covenant with no counterbalance to San'Shyuum ascendancy.