Dear Brother
I am writing you this letter to help you better understand the dilemma I am faced with here on Arn. You see I fear that we are about to destroy The Regling. The Regling is under threat and I am concerned that I may not be able to save it. The General Authority has taken a position and declared its intent according to the changing will of the majority. I fear that if the General Authority takes this step, I shall have to resign my Order and flee. I seek your wisdom on this most pressing matter as someone fully independent of our world.
Since you come from another place, I'm sure you do not know what The Regling is. I'll explain. Our people mature, owing to our longevity, at a much later age than your people do. As you know we are all born as gels, neither 'male' nor 'female'. We have, before The Regling, aspects of both genders. However, in our hair patterns, there are clues as to how we might mature after balding. We enjoy a very extended youth, carefree but also sexual. After about 30 of your years, changes occur in our bodies which make us sexually mature at which time our sexual activity and energy is redirected. It's rather like your puberty in reverse, but a bit more dramatic. Specifically we very suddenly grow a new covering to our sexual organ and our hair patterns generally fix. Either a Phanth or a Virse grows during The Regling and we begin our lives anew as P or V.
The Regling is the formal rite of passage for our people that puts meaning and discipline around a physical change. It is an educational, spiritual and communal activity. For thousands of years, The Regling has taken place in one of our many Circs on Arn. I am from the Order of the Janesek Circ which has a tradition of carrying out the rite of The Regling going back to the Fecund Migration. The people of Peylyx return to this system from all over the sector to enroll their balding youth in The Regling at the Second Janesek Circ here on Arn. It is something of which we are very proud. We have responded to the desire to keep the primary tradition as it was handed to us. In general, parents bring their youth to a Circ about 30 days out when they started to bald and then bid them farewell, leaving them under our care for The Regling for about six weeks. As we are very proud of our hair patterns you can imagine that we don't necessarily want to be caught in the public bald. At the first sign, we get to a nearby Circ. For some young gels, balding without guidance can be a traumatic experience.
Gels then taken in by members of the Regling Order. I am such a Master. But the design and purpose of the Circ has not really changed. What happens is basically pretty simple. As your hair starts to regrow about four days after full balding you can pretty accurately guess if you will be P or V, and your organs begin to grow too. Of course as Masters, we are rather expert at making this determination, although mistakes have been made. You will go to the Left or Right in the Circ and formally take your role.
It should be noted of course that not all Peylyxian gels bald in Circ. Surely you have seen our people on other worlds manage such affairs in private. There is also Wild Regling. I have even heard that some outside of the system have performed variants of the rite in the hands of saecular masters and even non-Peylyxians. Of course we frown on such things, orthodox as we are, but we are liberal enough to recognize no soul is lost or deserving of any less respect for such choices.
I'm sorry to take so long to explain but these are, as you can imagine, very difficult and emotional matters. I'm trying to be brief and I am attempting as best I can not to rely on arguments you might call appeals to religious authority. There are people who reject Regling, or perhaps I should say that they think the formality is unnecessary. These people accomplish 'Regling' outside of the Circs. That's basically called Wild Regling. That's bad enough, but then there are people who reject Regling entirely, or fake it. They're called all sorts of names, but the generally accepted term is Fry. You see they basically want to be, well.. they reject their new adult pattern. They play the child's game.
As you can imagine, not really knowing how you are going to mature and what role you will play for the rest of your life can be traumatic and understandably so. But it is a feature of youth, so acceptance of The Regling is a sign of maturity. You will now be P or V and you must accept that. You can now take a mate, have gels of your own, etc. Maybe I'm just being emotional because I am V, I apologize. But so long as you are a gel or even balding, there are sexual games you may play that are fully stimulating. It's all very much accepted until The Regling and then you must accept your role which is to be more modest and leave such sex games aside. That was the way I learned in my Circ, and this is the generally accepted matter of social order for Peylyxians on Arn all of the inner planets.
Now the power of law of Arn is held by the General Authority and it is part of the deep Covenant that the rites of the Circs would be preserved from outside interference. Obviously the Circs have their conventions and the Janesek, as one of the major Circs is quite influential. We represent in most Arnian opinion the most respected and traditions of the Circs. Legal power is not wielded by the Janesek Order but we have considerable social influence.As you can imagine, since we do The Regling in Circs among many other things, like Unction when we die or Bartan when we are born, these traditions mean a great deal. Of course one can do all of those things Wild, but it's not quite as respectable. I mean what's the point of having a Wild Unction, that's just depressing. Anyway what has been going on for the past 230 years or so is that Fry have been gaining power and have been lobbying Ps and Vs to change the attitude of the General Authority towards intervention in Circ affairs. For the most part they have been successful, especially in the outer planets of the Peylyx System (Car and Mezsia). We all have come a very long way in understanding and respecting the choice of the Fry, so long as they keep to themselves. I mean I suppose I'm a little bit prejudiced but isn't everyone? Surely you have similar social issues among your people.
But I digress. At Regling, the Masters sort the balding and bald gels into their respective sides. Potential Ps go Left at The Regling and potential Vs go Right. During this time, you experience your first feelings of adulthood with other Ps as becoming P and Vs as becoming V as the gel sexual energy subsides. You attend to each other's hair patterns as they emerge and you grow together and give each other support. We believe that as the physical gel subsides, there emerges the spiritual. The adult Pylyxian is a vessal of that thing - which is unspoken of directly. You might think of it as something akin to what you call a soul. The Regling is an invocation of that spirit.
During the rite you only look at your former youth friends across the brook for the six weeks of The Regling. I forgot to mention there is generally a body of water that separates the potential Ps from potential Vs during the rite. I'm sure you've heard all the stories about how we Peylyxians are hydrophobic - but that is a myth. Water to us is sacred, as we require water to transmit our genetic material in adult mating. No balding gel, bald gel or potential would dare cross into the water during The Regling. It is simply not done. I share these secrets with you because I need you to understand how important this matter is to us. The point is that after The Regling finally you emerge with all your doubts of youth removed because you've the adult hair, you have Phanth or Virse. You accept your pattern. You have chanted your proverbs and made your vow, you now don you modesty and return to life as full P or V.
Now obviously this differs from Circ to Circ depending on the Regling Order but the basics are the same. But now the Fry want the General Authority to declare them P or V. Now I am V of the Janesek Circ and my pattern is of a willing and accommodating sort but I cannot accept that the General Authority has any right to make such declarations. Fry reject The Regling, that's what makes them Fry, but they are demanding full equality with P or V. We are all Arn, I understand that. We all, in order to be civilized, submit to the General Authority. But the G.A. has never dictated the rites of the Circs and it is part of the deep Covanant that it will not interfere. The Fry and their advocates make the point that Wild Regling makes Ps and Vs of Arn who don't have an Order and don't accept traditional rites. But the Wild don't call themselves P or V, they are just Arn. Simply because you grow Phanth doesn't make you P. Not that they respect themselves.
It probably sounds a bit disrespectful of me, but I am, after all, a V Master. I have taken an oath to remain true to the letter and spirit of the rites of the Janesek Circ. I have a duty to my Circ and to my Order. Nevertheless, we do not seek to pass judgment on those who pass into adulthood without the benefit of The Regling. Nor do we condone any of the horrible acts which have been perpetrated against those who do not declare. No one would suggest that it is absolutely necessary and many find their pattern on their own. But we have political opposition that causes us to be defensive out of necessity.
So a bit of history. About 400 years ago on Fesra, the third moon of Car, a P Master by the name of Stanwyl famously took in his own gel, Merk who was balding. He loved his own gel so much that when he balded he sent him Left so that he could personally oversee his Regling, even though Merk was growing Virse. Merk objected but Stanwyl insisted. This traumatized Merk and his entire cohort. There was a revolt and Merk killed Stanwyl and all of the masters of the Circ on Fesra and burned it to the ground. The gels retreated to the forest of Frysson and reverted to their childhood. It is a tragic story in our history. But the lesson of Merk and the gels of Frysson has been interpreted many different ways. Obviously it resonates as a story of sexual liberation and it is from the forest of and river of Frysson that the Frys take their name. But Fry is now the generally accepted term for anyone not satisfied with their role and pattern. Perhaps you've also heard the term 'merker' which is pejorative, meaning a psychopathic misfit. You've probably also heard the term 'splasher'. And while it is certainly true that some Frys will get into the water with anyone, there are Ps and Vs who abuse themselves as well.
I'm sure that you, as a member of the Culture may find our sexual traditions and rites of passage quaint. Arn is, after all, just a small world that is poor in water resources and we Peylxians have only been space faring for one millenium. But it is our primary world, the world of our origin and the seat of our accumulated wisdom. We understand that you possess technology that allows you to change your gender at will. I know our ways about water seem strange to you in that we could manufacture unlimited supplies but we remain parched. But we find compelling reasons to follow our original genetic disposition and not to meddle with the way it makes our species unique. We find strength in our discipline and in our traditions.
The Fry have been content to live on Fesra and are fairly influential in various places on Car. For some time we have lived at a comfortable distance. And surely they have political allies among the P and V. While obviously the majority of Peylyxians pray very fervently that no-one is made to suffer by being sent in the wrong direction at Circ Regling, some simply don't believe our Regling is meaningful any longer. We do suffer from a crisis of confidence over this issue. But now there are factions gaining strength in the General Authority who want to place a saecular inspector in every Circ. They also are establishing rights for gels who do not wish to be submitted to The Regling - that they can go Wild even after the rite has begun. Leaving the rite as it is in progress is almost unthinkable, though not unheard of. The point is that the General Authority has determined to usurp our authority and to rewrite The Regling according to its purposes 'in light of the greater good'.
What is still astonishing is that on Fesra there is support growing for a new Circ that will initiate gels into F. Can you imagine? Who knows? They already may have done it. As much as that appalls me, it is for my own Order and Circ I must concern myself. It is a violation of the Deep Covenant to have the General Authority interfere with the rite of The Regling. And while some orders don't seem to mind the Fryssonian movement, mine strenuously resists. Yet we may, if these steps are taken, as the General Authority suggests they will, have to disband, or fight. So there is a very long and deep history behind the recent antagonism between the Frys and we of the orthodox Orders, and now with the impending actions of the General Authority it has reached a crisis point.
I have spoken about these matters at length in coordination with other Masters and Grandees of the Order and I have been appointed by them as the official emissary of First Among Equals Grandee Hartke Rax to your people. Grandee Rax has ordered me to secure outside counsel and open communications so this missive explaining our situation. There are also legal scholars of the Order who specialize in interpretations of the Deep Covenant. I lack those particular skills, but I do understand that a movement such as the Fryssonians have mounted can very well modify the Covenant or sway the General Authority to interpret it to their advantage.
So in summary, our ability to control and direct The Regling is under threat. The desire of the Fryssonian movement to exert control over our affairs through the General Authority is clear, and while they have their own worlds of the outer planets to do with as they please, they have chosen to bring their complaint to Arn, Gaia, Unicum and Destra. The Peylyxian System is on the verge of war with itself, a quiet war that will sublty and surely destroy one of its great traditions under the guise of 'equality'.
I seek your opinion in this matter. I will try to make sense of any confusion I may have presented in this brief history.
Sincerely yours,
Peylyx-Arnsa Parlek Reglimus Orsimer dam Ckas
V Master, Ordus Janesek (Circ 2)
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