Although there are eight known Deities in the Temuairian world, there has been much friction even between the followers of the same Deity.  Interpretations of their religious texts and claims of hearing the divine voices themselves have caused some Temuairian religions to break apart into various sects.  Whenever such a difference occurs on a mass scale, scholars label this a schism.  It is impossible to cover every theological schism within the bounds of one mere treatise so this will be a specific case study in my particular area of knowledge, that is of the worship of Ceannlaidir.

 

The formalized worship of Ceannlaidir as we know it today was established shortly after the appearance of the first warrior in Danaan 1501.  The Schism among Ceannlaidir worshippers occurred in Danaan 1980, the year of the Great War between Danaan and Chadul.  As one might expect the influence of the war had much to do with the Schism, and in fact most of the significant religious schisms are also marked by dates of other very influential events in Temuair.

 

The specific case of the Ceannlaidir religious split is also similar to most other splits on the grounds that each sect makes an attempt to align the worship of their Deity in closer relation to another of the Deities.  However, unlike like other Schisms, in which the sects usually divide each in favor of one of the allied Deities, this occurrence divided the worshippers between an allied Deity and neutral Deity.  Ceannalaidir's allies consist of Fioschad and Sgrios, however the Schism caused worshippers not to split between focusing between those two Deities, but rather a split between Sgrios focused Ceannlaidir worship and Gramailian focused Ceannlaidir worship. 

 

Since each Deity represents a part of the natural Temuairian order it has always been established that they are in all in some way related.  However, the War of Danaan 1980 for the first time called into question to Ceannlaidir worshippers proper relation to the order.  The ravaging of Temuair caused some worshippers to be naturally inclined to associate Ceannalaidir's war centered religion with the its inevitable result, death.  In this case, similar to other schisms, extremists would often defect to worship the allied or other chosen Deity that they saw in closest relation to their Deity.  In this particular example a very large number of Ceannlaidir's worshippers were lost to Sgrios in the wake of the ravaging, but an equal number remained to keep alive the concept of Sgrios focused Ceannlaidir worship.  Usually in most cases the number of defectors is not as significant.  In the case of the Ceannalaidir Schism though the large number of deserters caused a branch of supporter for Gramailian focused Ceannalaidir worshippers to speak out, with a surprising number of supporters for a non-allied Deity.  The theoretical explanation for this anomaly is explained in the Temuarian War Disruption Theory, created by the philospher Harial at the close of the Shadows War in Danaan 3171.  The argument for those of the Gramailian focus was that Sgrios relation to Ceannalaidir is merely a relationship of byproduct while Ceannlaidir's true relation was actually to Gramail, on account that war's relationship to law is a reciprocating relationship, the seeking of one to produce the other.  There were few extremists on this side but some went so far as to assert that Ceannalaidir was subservient to Gramail's purpose and defected. 

 

The illustration of each sides reasoning provides an example here of the how most sectarian reasoning operates.  The main argument between sects usually falls in the category of dispute among the nature of the relationships within the religious pantheon of Temuair.  Since the Pantheon is fairly open for interpretation the main attempts to focus on the relationships between the Deities in worshipping leads to dispute over the precise nature of their relationships.  The following are the major categories that are usually attempted to be defined.

 

1.  Cause and effect relationships