Covenant religion

The Covenant religion is the belief system that united the Covenant collective and its religio-cultural sphere, the Holy Ecumene. Its central tenet is the belief in the long-vanished Forerunners as gods, along with the promise of collective apotheosis to a higher plane of existence, known as the Great Journey, through the use of Forerunner technology, most prominently the "Sacred Rings" of the Halo Array. While the religion was too all-encompassing to have a singular name, it is variously known as the Path or the Way by its adherents.

Originally based on syncretized San'Shyuum Reformist and Sangheili beliefs, the religion is often cited as having been the primary binding glue that held the Covenant together, encompassing almost every area of society, having assumed cultural, political, technological and even economic dimensions. By far its most notable trait was its justification for the Prophets' power and the technological hegemony enforced across the Covenant, along with its caste system. Doctrinal orthodoxy within the religion was enforced by the ecclesiastical institutions of High Charity. While the Hierarchs and the High Council were commonly seen as having the final say in matters of faith, in practice the pillars of the faith relied heavily on its existing dogma and tradition. Administrations attempting to implement sweeping reforms were rarely successful as they upset the delicate balance of power between the various religious and political authorities of the Covenant.

Since the onset of the Great Schism, the Covenant religion has splintered among its thousands of denominations, along with a number of new sects emerging from the chaotic events that transpired during and following the fall of High Charity. With no strong central authority to enforce orthodoxy, these splinter sects are now able to grow even further apart than before. Another, previously-rare occurrence is the emergence of entirely different religions within the Covenant sphere, as well as the rise of secular thought in the mainstream. However, the majority of the post-Covenant still continue to subscribe to some variant of their original beliefs, though the particulars of these beliefs are now viewed with an increasingly critical eye by many due to the various revelations concerning the Halos. Even so, the religion's tremendous influence on the culture and societal arrangement of the Covenant meta-civilization continues to shape the ways its splinter civilizations develop and how individuals contextualize themselves within the post-High Charity galaxy.

Origins and development
Much syncretization and debate had to occur before the Covenant religion could truly come into being as a civilization-unifying force. The specifics of the San'Shyuum and Sangheili religions varied vastly, even within their own cultures (especially with the Sangheili). This meant there was much debate before unified dogma and practices crystallized. A group of 70 or 77 (depending on the account) theologians, philosophers, political and military leaders and other individuals of note, of both species, assembled together as the first grand convocation of the nascent Covenant and set out to reconcile the differences between the two faiths. This group would later be known as the First Saints, and what would later be regarded as their most noted observations and debates would be codified into the Covenant holy book, the Word of the Second Sunrise. The work of the First Saints and that of subsequent theologians in the next few centuries laid the groundwork for the Covenant religion as a theologically robust and internally consistent belief system, giving rise to much of the terminology and concepts used to debate, theorize and defend it.

In the process, many dogmas had to be rewritten or discarded; for one, the San'Shyuum had once thought themselves the Gods' chosen people exclusively, and even as they sought to convert the Sangheili, this was to be done with the latter in an explicitly subservient capacity, with the assumption that non-San'Shyuum would not join them on the Great Journey. The notion of all beings walking the Path side by side was codified only as part of the Writ of Union, though even then, many San'Shyuum of the stubborn "old guard" continued to hold that only their species would be eligible for salvation long after the Covenant's formation.

Human conversion
Some Covenant sects, most notoriously the Keepers of the One Freedom and the Sons of Heaven, continue to uncompromisingly subscribe to brands of the Covenant faith while rejecting the last three Hierarchs' ruling of humanity as a condemned species. Such groups are willing to accept humans into their ranks, provided they swear fealty to the Covenant faith. Secular or only loosely religious post-Covenant polities such as the Chikri-Merkaa Conflux usually make no concerted efforts to convert their human subjects, though many lesser religious groups operating within such larger organizations have had success in converting associated humans.

Theology
While it may be easily dismissed by an outsider as a mere suicide cult, the theology of the Covenant religion is actually very robust by even the standards of major 26th-century human religions. It is also notoriously abstruse and complicated, so much so that the average Covenant believer -- for example, a Grunt laborer or even low-ranked Sangheili -- is hardly aware of the finer points of the faith as such. Because of its mind-bending complexity, higher Covenant theology is mostly discussed by the clergy, though it is also taught in Sangheili war colleges and by the tutors in wealthier households. The religious sermons taught to the masses mostly take the form of parables or historical examples pertinent to the moral or philosophical teaching at hand in order to simplify otherwise impenetrable ideas to a readily understandable form.

The Axiomata
"First: To be mortal is to struggle with good and evil. This is a fight we must all wage, within our minds and within our hearts."

- Master Reader Luru Chianth, Axioms

Below the layers of tradition, myth and scripture added to the religion over the ages lay a set of fundamental assumptions about the cosmos and life's place in it, which in turn inform the goals of the religion itself; these are known as the Axiomata. The field of Axiomatics, the study of these fundamental causes underlying the faith, is a popular topic particularly among the esoteric traditions of the Ascetics.

Very early on, the scholars of both the San'Shyuum and Sangheili discovered the fundamental truth that all life -- themselves and the Forerunners included -- exist in a fairly narrow island of time within the Universe's total lifetime, and they take this to be a test for beings to show their worthiness before the untold eons of half light that will follow in but a relative eyeblink, and the eventual closure of everything; if that doesn't happen sooner due to a wildcard catastrophe like a vacuum collapse. This is also the fundamental question that post-Schism theologians and philosophers must tackle; even if the Great Journey through the Halos was false, how will the Covenant answer the problem of Closure coming forward? Do they merely resign themselves to it or attempt to find other ways to step out of the path of collapse, escaping the universe's inevitable demise?

The Ecumenic Communion
The Holy Ecumene and its Arterial Network of slipspace passages was often likened to a vast super-organism, and this was reflected in Covenant beliefs: just as an individual could not begin the Great Journey on his own, the entire Covenant was interconnected and engaged in holy communion as one being, feeding to the great synapses at the apex of High Charity, striving toward the ultimate point of brilliance that was the Unworlding. Pieces of this superbeing could be severed by trauma and heresy, but the body overall would survive. This is also why the Great Schism was so devastating - this holy communion and unity were shattered.

The Death Cycle
"Second: The struggle between good and evil is eternal. It ends in death, but through enlightenment we can reach salvation."

- Master Reader Luru Chianth, Axioms

One key part of the Covenant worldview is a doctrine variously transliterated as the "Ovun Dra'edai" or the "Ovun Drahedai". This is the cycle of death and rebirth of civilizations. Brave and virtuous people create strong civilizations that grow stronger and wiser as each generation builds upon what comes before. But complacency and corruption creeps in. The old virtuous ways are thrown aside for novelty and vice. The civilization descends and devours itself until a new generation of virtuous citizens can restore it. Cycles repeat after cycles. As it is for great clans and cities, so it is for entire planets, and even entire domains. It takes no great intellectual leap to realize that this might happen on a grander scale, across the Covenant Empire and even for the galaxy as a whole. It is hard to see the arc of the cycle, except in a generalized form that spans thousands of years, but the educated among the Covenant are at least aware of the shape of the cycle and how the Covenant has changed over the years.

It may be a shock to a peon or a lowly warrior that High Charity has changed from a powerbroker to a pawn to a powerbroker once more over its history, but it is common knowledge for nobility and learned warriors. As for what changes, history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme. There is also a certain event horizon to these cycles. Up to a point, decadence, complacency and sloth are reversible. But left unattended, they will fester, and begin to spread exponentially, and bring with them perils yet more terrible. This is Ruination, and the only way to fight it is to strive always according to your station. But even the cycles cannot go on forever. Even if a civilization were to remain stable indefinitely, eventually, all matter and energy freezes, and every pattern, memory and recollection shall be wiped clean in the long darkness. And the only way to escape this is to step out as the Forerunners once did.

Ruination, the Enemy and the Parasite
"Sixth: Sin is evil manifested through action. It leads inexorably to strife, entropy and death."

- Master Reader Luru Chianth, Axioms

Ruination, Chaos, or Oblivion is a state of being seen as the diametric opposite of the Great Journey. It is a state of total pattern-death, or non-being, in the face of the Abyss of Time, which is also known as the Ending Darkness and is associated with the Universe's long half-light long after the stars go out and entropy takes its toll. The Covenant believe that there is a point where all civilizations turn toward Ruination if they cease striving, both individually and as a collective; there is no difference between these as a civilization must work as one being, like organs and synapses in one organism. By far the most well-known and corporeal manifestations of Ruination is the Parasite, and its controlling intelligence, the Gravemind, the "carrion god" that is seen as the physical embodiment of Ruination and a horrific, twisted mockery of the miraculous preservation of life-patterns through the Halos' divine harmonics.

For much of their history, the Covenant mistakenly conflated the narrative of Mendicant Bias' creation - and its subsequent betrayal - with that of the Gravemind and the Flood, resulting in a general belief in some traditions that the Flood itself was a Forerunner creation. This belief had largely been phased out by the later centuries of the Covenant, as the nature of the Flood as a separate entity that had corrupted Mendicant Bias became clearer. However, some sects such as the Governors of Contrition continued to hold the belief that the Flood, too, was a Forerunner creation, and in the absence of real evidence to the contrary, the Ecclesiarchy did not altogether curb such beliefs.

Epistemology and Revelation theology
"Third: The Forerunner were mortal, until they were not. In seeking salvation, they found godhood."

- Master Reader Luru Chianth, Axioms

Most Covenant sects agree to the mainstream doctrine on Perpetual Revelation: that revelation is not fixed and happens as a continuum over time. This might actually save the Covenant religion following the Great Schism, as the truth about the Halos will merely be chalked up to another progressive step on the Path to fuller revelation. Later scripture is generally assumed to contain fuller information; it does not override the old, but can recontextualize it, or complement it, and is generally deferred to in seeming conflicts arise. Revelation is also teleological; the Forerunners have a plan for the order and time it should be discovered in, which means that earlier revelations were incomplete because the Covenant was not yet ready for the fuller version, but the lesser interpretation served a purpose in the collective at the time.

Hermeneutics, that is the interpretation and philology of Forerunner records or older Covenant scripture, is also a large part of Covenant theology. Interpreting Revelation is often challenging, as records, even intelligent machines, could be corrupted by time and/or malicious agents of the Enemy; and even seemingly-inviolate scripture was written for beings far greater. Therefore, Revelation must be carefully interpreted to attempt to divine the Truth behind the text.

Forerunner records were commonly categorized as thus:
 * Principal Revelation: Forerunner records regarded as authoritative
 * Applicable Revelation: Revelation with direct practical applications, e.g. technology.
 * Numinous Revelation: Revelation with no direct applications such as information on Forerunner life, culture and history. Even if it lacked direct material applications, it was still treated with utmost reverence as it provided more information about the lives of beings seen as paragons, and would often inform trends in how the Covenant organized its own society. For example, information about the Forerunners' mutations and rate system partially influenced the religious underpinnings of the Covenant's own caste system, namely the belief that each being is physically and psychologically tailored for certain roles.
 * Twisted Revelation: Revelation with identified traces of corruption by the Enemy; truth can still be salvaged out of such scripture at times, but theologians must tread carefully lest they lose their way.
 * Particular Revelation: Revelation relying on individual testimony; one that cannot be independently demonstrated or repeated

Proscription Against Particular Revelation
The Proscription Against Particular Revelation is a principle that holds that any discovery or revelation about matters of the Forerunner are only valid if they can be independently demonstrated. The Covenant faith is founded upon careful analysis of incomplete and time-corrupted records. Careless recovery could damage or destroy these volatile records. Likewise, unprincipled clerics could make a career out of fabricating new finds. The classic case is the story of B'sot Dhroat of the Second Age of Doubt. He claimed to have uncovered a recording from the damaged sections of the Partitioned Beacon, which revealed key details of the Forerunners' final year as well as daily life in the Bygone Ecumene. Unfortunately, the substrate that the record was stored within decomposed as the record played back, and all that was left of it was Dhroat's notes and a few key sections recorded on his personal device.

Dhroat made many more discoveries over the years, but his career came to a halt when key details of the Partitioned Record were proven to be false. He spent the last sixth of his life disgraced and exiled far from High Charity. To this day, it’s unclear as to whether he was a forger who made a few lucky guesses, or researcher of only middling talent who made a civilization-changing discovery, which he promptly misunderstood or misremembered. Whichever side of the debate one falls on, it is generally agreed that the Covenant would be better off if the Partitioned Record had never been taken seriously in the first place.

To prevent honest mistakes and forgeries from corrupting the faith, the Church as a whole adopted the Proscription Against Particular Revelation. San'Shyuum researchers are to carefully document their studies, and whatever doesn't hold up is discarded by the researcher's peers or by future generations. The problem is, burden of proof requirements have never stopped anyone from believing a lie that they really want to believe. So when Truth and Regret claimed that the Silent Oracle had given the Covenant a mission to exterminate the condemned humans, some of the more hidebound members of the clergy grumbled about the lack of proof, but the Hierarchs did not face any widespread pushback over the validity of their revelation until the war was well underway.

The Branching Tree
The Branching Tree, or Tree of Many Branches, is a Covenant religious tradition and common theological motif, representing the Holy Communion - the unity of the domains' particular churches and sects under High Charity. It is the belief that no matter their differences on the particulars, they all seek the same ultimate truth: Enlightenment through the Great Journey. It was often explained through the Parable of the Branching Tree: What is a tree without its branches? Though the Tree is a key tenet of the faith, enabling the plurality of beliefs to exist under one umbrella, some traditions emphasize it more than others. As such, Hierarchs from stricter denominations could be more zealous in curbing perceived heresies than more moderate ones.

The idea of the Branching Tree was borne partly out of practicality. There are a thousand different schools and denominations of the Covenant faith. The Hierarchs' word was law, but they couldn't stop different homegrown versions of the faith from festering on a thousand worlds, so they mostly elected to focus on the essentials. What is universally accepted is that the Forerunners are gods, and that through the Great Journey the younger species - under the Prophets' guidance and blessings within the holy communion of the Covenant collective - can join them in their divine transcendence, and in doing so escape the ever-turning grinding mill of the universe, which shall consume all at the end of time. Beyond that, and what the incumbent Hierarchs happen to declare in accordance with their own views and the religious traditions they come from, things get a bit more fluid.

Salvation Theology
The accepted doctrine on the nature of the Path to the Great Journey varied over time. Some traditions springing from the Many Paths school were actually accepted in mainstream doctrine even as they were downplayed in more zealous ages. One of these was the Incremental Path, which emphasizes lesser discoveries over the Sacred Rings, and most recently came to prominence in the 23rd Age of Doubt. However, all officially-approved doctrines must still include the Forerunners and their holy technology as prerequisites for salvation; a tenet known as Instrumentalism, which is contrasted with the heretical Solipsism. However, the distinction between corporeal and incorporeal could at times be elusive, especially when it comes to questions of salvation as an individual vs. salvation as a civilization, and the Forerunners' role in said salvation. The early Hidden Virtue and Inner Path sects believed that salvation could be achieved merely by studying and meditating on the Forerunners and their great deeds. Such cases led to the codification of the Instrumentalist doctrine as a core tenet of the Covenant faith to avoid distractions from the Covenant's civilizational mission.

Eschatology
Mainstream Covenant doctrine holds that none, apart from the High Prophets, has the authority to prophesy the time of the Journey, declare its imminence or attempt to hasten its coming by their own hand against the will of the Prophets. This prescription was established in response to various extremist millenarian movements active within the Covenant in the Late Antiquity and early Feudal periods, which broke off from the Prophets' rule over dissatisfaction with their perceived inaction in the search for the Sacred Rings and other holy relics, with High Charity instead focused on endlessly touring the Holy Ecumene, collecting tithes and gathering wealth to its clergy.

The Divine Wind and the Moment of Unworlding
Despite outward appearances and the religious trappings, the Covenant's technologically-oriented clergy actually understood how Halo works on the level of the relevant cosmology and higher-dimensional particle physics staggeringly well. Their discovery-priests have fairly robust of conceptual frameworks on the propagation of the "Divine Wind", and said frameworks have informed developments in other areas, such as slipspace navigation. It's just that they got the purpose wrong from the start. There were, of course, many scholars thoughout Covenant history who came just this close to that fatal epiphany; whose thoughts lingered on a particular passage of a holy text here or there. But the first principle of their civilization - that Halo is a tool of salvation, not extinction - was so strongly ingrained that they could never quite connect the dots even if it the terrible truth was staring them in the face. Most of them, anyway. There are tales of scholars who, at a certain point in their career, seemed to retreat to their own studies and close themselves from the world in madness; and even rare heresies that preached Halo would doom them all. But such cults were just as often born out of legitimate madness as rigorous scholarly research.

Besides, the Covenant were aware that Halo is a weapon. Many scriptures refer to "burning away" sin and corruption, and it seems this dual nature as a machine of both salvation and destruction came about very early in Covenant history to reconcile the seeming contradictions with the First Principle, while also slotting nicely into the beliefs about the Forerunners' triumph over the Enemy. Incidentally, the word for "Salvation" in the liturgical language, when used in the context of the Sacred Rings, also means "destruction" when it comes to those unworthy of the Great Journey, and the exact meaning of the word depends on who is being referred to.

Artifice and Divine Potential
"Eighth: The Forerunner did not build useless things, nor did they concern themselves with trivial ends."

- Master Reader Luru Chianth, Axioms

Unlike major human religions, in which the holy is spiritual and immaterial in nature, the Covenant religion is explicitly technocratic, and its revelation is built around demonstrable and tangible proof of the divine. This doesn't mean the Covenant's interpretations of Forerunner scripture are always accurate or that all Covenant doctrine has direct proof, but it does mean that the immaterial plays merely a secondary part in what they regard as sacred.

In Covenant theology, technology is one aspect of Artifice, which is the deliberate and skillful application of will to effect the material world; other aspects are generally agreed to include art and architecture, various crafts and sciences, and even philosophy, warfare and leadership (though it should be noted that the divisions between these categories do not perfectly correspond to our human equivalents). Will, in turn, is a manifestation of the Divine, or moreover something (imperfectly) translated as the Absolute, which is simultaneously the source and the endpoint of everything. It is also what all intelligent beings are -- consciously or otherwise -- drawn to. While it may be tempting to call this entity a "God", this is not entirely accurate; it is more akin to a formless and timeless expression of raw potentiality and wisdom originating from the Divine Beyond, expressed on the mortal plane. The Forerunners are gods because they mastered and manifested this divine potential in themselves, becoming exemplars of the various Arts, to the point of eventually achieving victory of Will over Entropy and becoming beings of pure Essence by using the Sacred Rings (though their godly forms were also the ones from which this energy sprang the first place, meaning they in a sense consecrated themselves -- Covenant theology gets complicated because it's not bound by time or causality). This is also one condition for the Covenant's definition of a god, which is understood as a being that can dictate the nature of its own reality.

This has various implications on the Covenant worldview and social order. For one, it means that the Covenant favor specialization and dedication; for he who attempts to master many arts masters none. It plays a part in the foundations of the caste system, which is heavily built around the notion of each species (and then each individual within their species) fulfilling a duty they are best suited for. It's a worldview that doesn't reward idleness but calls for constant striving toward improvement, on the individual and societal level; because the alternative is to turn things on a downward trajectory towards oblivion in the grinding wheels of Entropy. To believe is to strive always, according to your station, all without exception.

What it also means is that science, or any attempt to understand the universe, is fundamentally a religious act, because it's an attempt to follow in the Forerunners' footsteps and master what they once mastered. Consequently, the Covenant's understanding of cosmology is actually fairly advanced, even if it's partly dressed up in religious rhetoric and exclusive to the higher castes.

Discovery
The Covenant word used to describe science would translate something akin to "Discovery", as all science was based on discovering definite and Truth. However, the Covenant recognized the fallibility of their own methods and tools, and this was indeed even part of dogma; for however advanced Covenant creations may be, they could never surpass the Forerunners.

Sacred Geometry
The Covenant's dogma on discovery assumed strangely particular dimensions. For example, Khai'ul or Sacred Geometry was a fairly prominent field concerned with the study of Forerunner architecture and design, its patterns and peculiarities, and the divination of purpose and wisdom therein. One of the more prominent points of dogma to come out of this school of faith was the religious justification for the Covenant's curved and organic architecture, which was seen as "imperfect" in contrast to the clean lines of the Forerunners' divine geometry. There was a time in Covenant history when they mimicked Forerunner creations in religious architecture such as temples and even counterfeit relics, sometimes very convincingly. This eventually led to a schism and reformation which saw standardized edicts and closer supervision put on design, under the rationale that while the Covenant should strive to be akin to the Forerunners as an ideal, they should not attempt to pass their own imperfect creations as Forerunner ones.

Morality
Covenant views on morality differ from the oft-dualistic perspectives of mainstream human ethics, and are more concerned with the consequences of actions in relation to the fulfillment of the Covenant's ultimate goal of the Great Journey than in isolation; to Covenant theologians, an abstract "good and evil" juxtaposition would be seen as reductive and simplistic without this overarching context. While such terms can still be seen in common usage, ultimately the Covenant faith concerns itself more with the imposition (or retention) of order and structure in the face of the encroaching chaotic forces of Ruination than it does with whether an action is "good" or "evil" in isolation or even limited context.

Numina
The Numinous Truths, or Numina, encompassed the Covenant's knowledge about the Forerunners themselves and their society and culture. Typically, such information was studied to ascertain virtuous principles and practices to live one's life by, or as basis for sermons about the Forerunners' nature as divine exemplars. Numina was also used to justify the Covenant's own social structures and practices, such as the caste system, which was regarded as being patterned after the Forerunners' own system of rates and mutations.

The Covenant knew of the Mantle, the Forerunners' guiding ideology, though they initially believed it to be a physical artifact which granted the Forerunners their supreme power and wisdom. It did later become increasingly clear to the Covenant that the Mantle was merely a philosophy. In some traditions, the Mantle became associated with the Forerunners' divine guidance of future civilizations toward enlightenment. However, some interpretations, seemingly based on commentary by the Librarian in her messages to the Didact, went so far as to paint it as a facet of Ruination, which allowed corruption and complacency to set in within Forerunner society, and made them vulnerable to the Parasite.
 * The Mantle

Pluralist vs. Transcendental doctrines
One of the major theological points of debate that divided the Sangheili and the San'Shyuum Reformists of the early Covenant, in addition to the Sangheili's overt controversy over the Reformists' "blasphemous" utilization of Forerunner technology, was the nature of divinity and divine personages. When Forerunner worship became the mainstream faith on Sanghelios, through conversion and conquest, they adapted several of their old religious narratives (from various cultures across the globe) into the overarching framework of the Forerunners, as often happens when religions collide. As not much was known about individual Forerunners at the time, some of the old myths - as well as deities - were almost directly adapted to the Forerunner faith. Whatever their origins, Sangheili gods were personal, much like those in the Greco-Roman or Norse pantheons; concrete beings with distinct personalities, relationships, quirks and specialties- heroes, artisans, craftsmen, healers, rulers, tricksters and more. There were, of course, differences in traditions as there are in any interstellar civilization, but such gods were definitely the majority trend in the Sangheili sphere when the Reformists came into contact with them.

The San'Shyuum view of godhead was more elusive and transcendent. To them, the Forerunners became gods only after their technological apotheosis. Gods had no individuality or personality in the mortal sense; they merely floated in the heavenly spheres of the Divine Beyond, and their true nature was a mystery to beings of the mortal plane. Moreover, polytheism presented something of an issue to the centralization of religious authority and thus power; the early Sangheili civilization was split among dozens of different churches and traditions that favored certain gods above others, sometimes to the point of inciting competition and conflict between them. On the other hand, a religion without a pantheon of divine personages, each with their own priesthoods to champion their supremacy, would be easier to govern from the top down.

This difference was borne in part out of the lack of a solid Great Journey narrative among the Sangheili. The Forerunners were venerated as gods, but mainstream religious dogma did not recognize the notion of becoming like them. Many traditions did look to the Forerunners as exemplars, and some even contained the aspiration of becoming like them at one point, but this would be strictly through one's own path, for Forerunner technology was not to be tampered with. On top of that, the general consensus among Sangheili faiths was that the Forerunners had always been divine, whereas the San'Shyuum held that while enlightened in life, the Forerunners were only elevated to Godhead by the Sacred Rings. The Incremental Path tradition of the Covenant, which gained a mainstream following during the 23rd Age of Doubt, for example, added that the Forerunners' ascent had been gradual - that they had achieved enlightenment over time through their marvels of technology and science, and the Sacred Rings were but the culmination of this millennia-long progress. The most radical adherents of the Incremental Path would even go so far as to maintain the Sacred Rings may not even be necessary for transcendence, and the gradual accumulation and study of lesser artifacts would do. But such beliefs would typically surface to the mainstream only in Ages of Doubt.

This, in turn, led to another question that delved quite deep into esoteric territory, one that would occupy Covenant scholars for millennia - namely, what did it mean be a god? What would truly happen to one's self once the Divine Wind swept the soul away from the mortal plane? Would one truly be as one had been in life, or would one change irrevocably - and if so, how? Such questions were mainly the domain of theologians to debate on; the average Grunt, or even Deacon, would hardly have answers beyond vague religious rhetoric.

The question of the nature of gods was one of the many religious disagreements of the early Covenant, and one that kept theologians busy for centuries and beyond. In some ways, the debates on the nature of divinity never truly ended, even as the Covenant's mainstream religion settled into something of a balance between the two extremes, albeit one that tipped into either direction depending on the spirit of the Age (as well as the schools of faith followed by the incumbent Hierarch triumvirate). Some worlds emphasized particular gods, as did adherents of certain trades; engineers and builders prayed to the Master Builder, warriors to the Didact, healers, certain brands of discovery-priests and archivists to the Librarian and so on all the way down to numerous lesser gods (which also changed and increased in number with time as more named Forerunners were discovered, or when it was discovered that someone once thought to be two or more individuals was actually one with multiple titles or monikers; though just as often, especially in the early days, Forerunner gods were simply made up to fit existing archetypes). Other worlds and domains were content with leaving their gods as elusive as they had been to the early San'Shyuum.

This did not mean the split was uncontroversial, however. In the Covenant's Late Antiquity period, the conflict between the adherents of Pluralist and Transcendental doctrines nearly tore the Covenant asunder before the High Council stepped in to formally instate a balance between the two.

Pluralism
The Pluralist traditions of the Covenant faith emphasize the personages of the Forerunners as individuals, and highlight their deeds in life. Pluralist denominations often favor one god over others, at times bordering on monolatry, emphasizing and consistently worshiping only one god while acknowledging the existence and divinity of the others. Most of these cults center around the best-known gods, namely the Master Builder, the Librarian and the Didact. Today, strictly Pluralist churches are much less common than they once were, and mostly predominate in less-trafficked regions of the Covenant Sphere. As a general rule, worship of the Forerunners as individuals is more common among the lower classes of the Covenant than the religious elite, as it is considerably easier to grasp on a conceptual level than the rather esoteric nature of Transcendentalism.

Transcendentalism
The dominant doctrine in the Covenant's most recent period of history, Transcendentalism focuses less on the gods as individuals in life and more on divinity as a higher state of being free from the restrictions of the flesh; this is also known as the Sublime. Divine personages are acknowledged, but hierarchies or favoritism between them are avoided. It is usually assumed that Transcendentalist doctrines originally supplanted Pluralism largely for political reasons. The rising power, wealth and influence of regional churches began to threaten the unique status of High Charity, which led to reformations downplaying the role of gods as individuals and thereby undermining the power bases of lesser priesthoods throughout the Holy Ecumene.

The Metapotheotic Question
One of the foundational dilemmas of the Covenant faith was the question of whether the Forerunners were divine in flesh, prior to the firing of the Halos. On one hand, it was indisputable that the Forerunners' creations were divine, so the Forerunners too must have been gods to have created them; for creations cannot be greater than their creators (though this, too, was at times disputed). The Sangheili faith postulated that they were, while the San'Shyuum generally held that only the firing of Halo initiated their apotheosis. There were numerous smaller disputes over specifics e.g. when the Forerunners fired the Halos, did the souls of all Forerunners who had passed prior join them on the Great Journey? This ties to the question of Eternal Salvation; in the early days of the Covenant faith, it was not even decided if the Great Journey came to those who had already died or just those alive at the moment. Eventually, it was codified into the Covenant faith that Salvation was acausal and timeless, and all who believed would be saved. Below are some key schools or doctrines on this matter:


 * Perpetual Divinity: The Forerunners are and always have been divine in all their incarnations; thus it follows that the nature of godhood is eternal and unchanging. This did pose the theological problem that if the Divine was an immutable constant, how could the younger races - which were not definitively gods as of yet - attain it? While some apologists claim that the Forerunners' divinity was a special and unique case, their godhood being of a "higher" level than that of those who may later follow in their footsteps, this argument would still give rise to the later prevailing doctrine of Acausal Consecration. In addition, though post-Ascension theology was only understood and debated on by the most learned, it was commonly preached that following the Moment of Unworlding, one would ever grow in splendor and virtue, which seemed to conflict with the notion of a "fixed" Divine.
 * Acausal Consecration: The Forerunners were mortal albeit Supremely Enlightened in flesh, but because the Great Journey is free from the boundaries of causality, the act of firing Halo retroactively made them and all their deeds in life divine. This was the mainstream view as of the Covenant's latter ages, but its specifics varied among various schools, the most prominent ones being:
 * Inner Consecration: the retroactive effects of Halo left the Forerunners fallible in flesh but divine in spirit
 * Absolute Consecration: the retroactive effects of Halo made the Forerunners divine in both flesh and spirit
 * Singular Consecration: The Forerunners were mortal and flawed in flesh and were only propelled into godhood by the Great Journey. Now obsolete and generally regarded as heretical, as it implies Forerunner technology was not forged by divine hands.

Saints
Within the Covenant religion, saints are individuals who, through their deeds in life, were regarded to have reached the highest possible state of virtue and piety within their station, serving as exemplars to all of the Covenant. Saints are venerated throughout the Covenant, with tales of their activities often appearing as instructory examples in education and religious sermons. Though guaranteed to occupy a special place at the Forerunners' side once the Covenant embarked on the Great Journey, saints were still not worshiped as gods, though some of the more popular ones were occasionally prayed to depending on the denomination.

The Liminal Doctrine
The Liminal Doctrine is an older school of thought that posits that the essences or souls of those who died in faith are conscious or semi-conscious, existing in a Purgatory-like state while awaiting for the Great Journey. This state of being is variously translated as the Limen, the Limina, or the Liminal Realm. As the Great Journey's acausal nature has become increasingly codified in the Covenant faith, this is now widely held to be inaccurate; in modern Covenant theology, no actual time passes for the dead prior to the Journey as it is already happening to them across time. Still, references to the Limina continue to occur in Covenant philosophy and in figurative, common contexts.

Oracles
Functioning oracles were so uncommon as to be near-mythical in most ages, and even then rarely had any useful information (due to compartmentalization and the Array being very niche knowledge even among Forerunners). Most oracles found were known as Lesser Oracles, mundane machine-servants that knew little of their masters' grand plans. Oracles are revered, but it is also known that they can be confused or have gaps in their knowledge (for the Forerunners wisely saw fit to limit their knowledge base) while others can be tricksters, even in league with the Enemy; while they are holy, they are also associated intelligences, and are thus not to be unconditionally trusted. To establish an Oracle's truthfulness, stringent study and questioning is mandated. Specific attitudes regarding them also depend strongly on the religious tradition in question.

Ecclesiarchy
The Covenant clergy was in many places synonymous with its political authorities.

Grand Councils of the Wise
On paper, the Hierarchs' word was law, but even their decrees, actions and interpretations of scripture were subject to scrutiny. In addition to informal phenomena like the public opinion, the Covenant had several official mechanisms of enacting that scrutiny. By far the most important and venerable of these was the Grand Council: a religious court convened in response to major crises, revelations or discoveries, such as new species or major reliquaries. Consisting largely of religious scholars and monks rather than career politicians, the Grand Council was the highest such court convened in the Covenant, and often served as a kind of "devil's advocate" to the Hierarchs and the High Council. And even though formally an advisory assembly that the Hierarchs could overrule, they would not do so easily, nor without raising many eyebrows.

And this is why the onset of the Ninth Age of Reclamation was such a divisive event. There was a Grand Council convened to inquire the Hierarchs-to-be (largely Truth and Regret, as Mercy remained mostly out of the spotlight) regarding the Quickening of the Silent Oracle and the Reclamations on the new Reliquary. But the Council did not exactly follow proper procedure, and even voiced their qualms over various ambiguities with Truth and Regret's testimonies, including the suspicious inability to view sensor data from the Sacred Vessel, which put their claims in doubt in light of the Prescription Against Particular Revelation, an ages-old law which decreed that more than verbal testimony was necessary to codify Revelation. Even Mercy made remarks that could be, in hindsight, interpreted as contradicting the other two other Hierarchs' line. But, due to the power their home ministries wielded, as well as an upwelling of public support in High Charity, Truth and Regret managed to sway the Grand Council to defer to their testimony under an obscure and somewhat vague letter of the law.

It cannot be underestimated how important the tradition of the Grand Council is. The basic idea of the institution dates back to the First Saints, and later became an important check on the power of both the Hierarchs and the High Council, an arbitrator on matters of civilizational importance outside the political hierarchy. The Arbiter and the new government he's trying to set up couldn't just dismantle all the institutions of the old Covenant, nor did they want to. They sought to salvage whatever could be reasonably salvaged. So, one of the first thing they did, once they had major ex-Covenant leaders around a table, was convene a Grand Council- the first of the new order.

Enforcing religious orthodoxy
Beyond the basic universal dogmas, or whatever specific question was on the table at the time (e.g. Humanity in the 9th Age of Reclamation) it was generally not in the best interests of the High Council to interfere in the specifics forms of worship on individual worlds or domains. It hardly mattered to them whether this cluster or that subscribed to a pluralistic or unitary view of the godhead, or what specific gods they emphasized. What truly mattered was the amount of power those regional churches held within their respective domains and over their parishes, and their eagerness to defer to High Charity's decrees. What the Clergy was efficient at, with some exceptions, was in unifying - and thus keeping the peace - between the countless different denominations of the Path.

High Charity's ecclesiarchy (and eventually the Hierarchs themselves) served as the ultimate arbitrator of religious disputes, should the need call for it. However, such interventions were typically reserved for critical cases such as conflicts on the domain level. For provincial ministers, asking for high-level arbitration could be a double-edged sword: on one hand, it could end in their church's favor, but it could (often depending on the generosity of either side's "tributes" and their connections to the High Charity ecclesiarchy) also invalidate core tenets of their specific denomination. This was also why High Charity's clergy was careful to pick their battles, and did not easily intervene in lesser disputes: because it did not serve them to make large groups of subjects unhappy by essentially invalidating their denomination's view on some (often minute) religious question, at least if said subjects were wealthy and powerful. To circumvent the issue, High Council arbitrators would often attempt to find compromises that would not invalidate either side's views, only recontextualize them in a way that was at least supposed to placate the dispute.

With the fall of High Charity, many domains have fallen into infighting due to the sudden absence of that spiritual nucleus or its instruments of compliance. Regional churches may not have always agreed with the word from High Charity, but they respected it nonetheless; for it cannot be understated how enormous its religious authority was, and how much sheer weight the High Council's missives carried.

Conversion
Covenant policy on converting new species changed with time, but broadly speaking, the prevailing doctrine has been that of Universal Conversion: all beings capable of understanding the message of the Great Journey should be made to do so, and brought into the Covenant collective as per the divine mission given to the Prophets. The Unggoy were initially a source of confusion as there was no consensus on whether they were capable of comprehending the gospel of the Covenant faith, though many of them would later become one of its most devout adherents. Arguably the Lekgolo, the first species to be assimilated since the Writ of Union, were even more unconventional in their intelligence and thus set the standard for universal conversion. Species (and, technically, individuals) incapable of understanding and embracing the concept of the Great Journey were considered unable to walk the path, and thus little more than beasts.

As a result of the doctrine, conversion and incorporation into the Covenant proceeded more or less immediately following contact, though at other times political realities meant that species awaited conversion for ages, or were simply never converted. The Xar-Shaa, for example, were left largely to their own devices due to their extreme Enigmatic nature and lack of physical utility, while the conversion of the Cix-Tu was delayed indefinitely by internal unrest within the Covenant. Such species were generally grouped under the Covenant fringe category. Others, such as the Waquish'Dawn were too militarily powerful and had their core worlds too far from the Covenant sphere to be feasibly converted by force, whereas the Gryunjalla had largely left the Orion Arm by the time the Covenant came across them. The Jiralhanae remained in a fringe status for nearly a millennium before their formal assimilation into the Covenant hierarchy largely due to the overall chaos of the late Feudal Era they were encountered in.

Temples
There were different kinds of Covenant temple. In order to be formally consecrated, a temple needed to house at least one holy relic. Sometimes it was very unimpressive and inert, other times resplendent and active, and may even perform miracles; wealthy temples usually had more relics, and the most sacred ones were Forerunner structures themselves.

The temples of some reformed denominations are more plain and austere as too ornate styles are seen as garish and sometimes even heretical, as though attempting to outdo the Forerunners. The smooth, organic forms of Forerunner architecture are seen as lesser and humble, as only the Forerunners were permitted the divine perfection of hard angles and surfaces.

Representations of Forerunners
Statues and other visual depictions of Forerunners, often highly speculative and fanciful in appearance, were rather common in the Covenant's early history. As the Covenant faith evolved, the increasing focus on Transcendental doctrines over the formerly dominant Pluralist traditions, coupled with accusations of idolatry with an alleged emphasis on Forerunner statues over their subjects, led to a shift in Covenant doctrine, with representations of Forerunners eventually being banned as blasphemous. Not only were the worldly forms of the gods unimportant next to their divine perfection, they were also seen as a distraction which divided the Holy Ecumene as different local denominations emphasized their own favorite gods over others, and the regional priesthoods of individual gods began to rival High Charity in power and wealth. Still, idols of Forerunner deities remain in use in some of the Covenant's less-trafficked fringe regions, where cults venerating specific gods persist. Within the mainstream Covenant faith, statues and holo-images of saints effectively replaced the older Forerunner statues, with the gods themselves being instead depicted with the individual sigil-glyphs known to be associated with them.

As the furor of the iconoclast reformation wore off, later ages saw the development of the cynosure: a semi-abstract statuette or holograph representing a Forerunner. The cynosures serve as devotional images, meant to serve as the focus of one's attention in meditating upon the gods and the virtues associated with them. Vaguely resembling robed figures lacking any distinct humanoid traits, the sculpting of the cynosures has long been an artform in its own right, with highly complex rules and traditions associated with their creation. While a small degree of artistic interpretation is allowed, these rules are exceedingly rigid and specific; for example, cynosures must always use the same set of curves and other geometric motifs traditionally associated with the gods they represent. The creation of cynosures is a common devotional practice among the faithful, often carried out by monastics but also members of various martial orders.

Rite of Adoration
The rite of Adoration is one of the most common and treasured rites observed during temple services, and is a staple of Covenant worship. It entails a Forerunner relic being brought forth and then being adored by the faithful. Regional denominations have variants on the custom, such as bringing sacrifices for the relic as a sign of respect and honor; some even believe that relics can grant wishes (e.g. cure ill relatives). Though this is not substantiated by the official brand of the Covenant faith when it comes to all artifacts, some are indeed known to have healing powers.

The relics are seen as an interface between the physical and the spiritual, a manifestation of the divine in corporeal form. Even the smallest relic will do for the ceremony, this often being a small shard of Forerunner metal which is often carried by chaplains for battlefield services, though greater temples pride themselves on large Forerunner relics, especially those capable of miracles. Some Solipsist denominations were originally born due to an absence of Forerunner relics on given worlds or regions, which led to instrospective meditation on those relics instead; though others had iconoclastic ideas and sought to democratize the fundamentally hierarchical world of relics.

Because of the rite's importance across the Covenant sphere, counterfeit relics are dime a dozen. Even though forging a holy relic is a capital offense in the Covenant, there were still always enough entrepreneurs willing to get rich through it. In some earlier eras, there were denominations which substituted the Forerunner relic for a Covenant stand-in, but a later, particularly controversial reformation banned this as idolatry; consequently, hundreds of thousands of counterfeit relics were destroyed by the faithful, and much blood was spilled in the process.

Associated folklore and mythology
In addition to the canon and doctrine of the religion, there exists plenty of superstition and folkloric belief around regarding alternate spaces, realms, places, deities and beings, and more. This is especially true on less developed or partly cut-off worlds where dogma is less strictly enforced. In such cases, it is often difficult to draw the line between legitimate belief and folklore, as the two blend together seamlessly in the mind of the believer.

Demons
"Demon" is a common translation of a class of evil beings from Covenant folklore, which is best known as a common term for the UNSC's Spartan supersoldiers during the Human-Covenant War. Beginning with tales told by superstitious Unggoy footsoldiers, the Spartans' borderline-supernatural exploits eventually made the term common among even the higher castes of the Covenant. By the later years of the war, stories of Demons were widely circulated among the Covenant military organizations charged with prosecuting the war, but there their true nature or numbers were shrouded in ambiguity. Various legends were attached to them, some more plausible than others. Teleportation was a commonly hypothesized ability, but there were more also more outlandish theories; some postulated that demons could not be killed or would always be brought back from the dead, and some even went so far as to claim that the different sightings of "demons" were in fact manifestations of a single time-traveling individual.

Spartan-IIIs are an interesting case. While they were mainly built to fight the Covenant, the nature of their deployments was such that not many Covenant usually survived to tell the tale. As such, there was very little reliable intel on them, and nothing to distinguish them from Spartans in general; it was not conclusively known whether all demons possessed the ability to render themselves near-invisible, or if this was a specific kind of demon. The same applies to the Gammas' berserker mutations; even in their few deployments, the Gammas' ability to keep fighting well after they should rightfully be dead utterly terrified their foes and fed into the existing mythos about the demons as being undead or otherwise unnatural.

Symbols and imagery
Symbols are important in any religion, and the Covenant faith and its offshoots are no exception.


 * A key symbol and, indeed, perhaps the most powerful one, is the ring - an unbroken circle. There is some controversy about the use of the ring symbol in the post-war era, and some groups have adopted a "broken circle" symbol to oppose the Covenant.
 * The Mantle symbol or the Eld, known to the Covenant as the Branching Three, is popular among those emphasizing the unity of believers - unity in their faith in the Forerunners. Some versions of the symbol are more ornate and complex. Has its deepest origins in old legends of world-trees and the like, in faiths which predate Forerunner worship.
 * The Second Sunrise glyph is associated with the Covenant bringing order and enlightenment into the chaos left behind by the Forerunners' ascendance. It was also the symbol for the Word of the Second Sunrise, the Covenant's most widely-circulated holy book laying down the basic tenets of the religion.
 * Most of the various Forerunner glyphs are holy symbols, and are emblazoned on gear or weapons as protective runes.
 * Some Covenant glyphs, such as the oval one of the Har Tanqi tradition, are quite common as holy symbols.

Related pages

 * Kandonom Codex