The State Religion of the Great Ri was the state-sponsored syncretic religious system practiced by the imperial family and most of the conquest elite of the Yonggan during their ascendency. The Ri emperors also patronized a variety of other religious faiths, including especially those of the Air Nomad religious tradition and the folk religion of the Earth Kingdom.

At the root of Ri state religion is traditional Yonggan shamanism, as it developed under the pre-dynastic Nara Yonggan khagans. Yonggan religious thought was influenced by cultural contact with the Gan Jin and Abka. By the 1000s BG, it was a henotheistic religion worshiping the heaven-god Abkaiten ("Foundation of Heaven"), which developed into monotheism in which the other divinities of the Yonggan pantheon were interpreted as aspects or persons of Abkaiten. A hierarchal relationship of divine aspects was postulated, with Abkaiten's four coequal chief aspects being the goddesses Muke and Tuwa, and the gods Na and Edun. Respectively, they personify water, fire, earth, and air. The hierarchy goes much farther down, to the level of clan, family, and personal spiritual beings associated with individual humans; mystical thought, considered orthodox since the Shenxing era, extends this hierarchy to include to humans and animals themselves, who are considered themselves (rather humble) members of the divine hierarchy.

Other major influences include the Air Nomad religious tradition, particularly the traditions of the Southern and Eastern Air Temples, and the indigenous religion of the Central Earth Kingdom.

Except among the Nara in exile, most contemporary Yonggan Shamans consider the Great Ri state religion to be heretical, corrupted by foreign influences and political considerations.

Divinities and Spirits

Abkaiten, translated as "Heaven" rather than "Foundation of Heaven" under syncretic influence from the contemporary official religion of the Central Earth Kingdom, is the monotheistic God of the religion. All living things are a part (however humble) of this ineffable, supreme, God. In some Ri thought, Abkaiten is an impersonal source of fate or destiny mediating a principle of karma, or the thought-form of natural law in the minds of all rational creatures. Abkaiten is not a creator god, insofar as their involvement in the creation of the world was not an intended act. (See Cosmology.) Abkaiten does not have a gender; we here translate their pronouns as third-person plural, which is customary in Yonggan as well (though there is not general use of the third person plural for genderless or gender-neutral beings in that language.)

Na is the elemental god of Earth, and is thought to be the patron of the Earth Kingdom. Some Yonggan consider him to be the greatest of the elemental gods, whereas the Abka, who also believe in the four elemental divinities, consider Edun the greatest. Neither of these opinions were accepted by the state religion except in its earliest phase; rather, it firmly considered the elemental divinities coequal. This surprising fact probably reflected ambitions of universal rulership and Air Nomad syncretism.

Muke,

Edun,

Tuwa,

Niohon Abka, an aspect of Edun (in traditional Yonggan religion and in Abka shamanism, his son), the Eternal Blue Sky. Considered by the state religion as the patron of

Cosmology

Abkaiten begat their four chief aspects, and having developed a distinction of personality, they entered into conflict with each other. The creation of the material world was the result of the internal conflict between the chief aspects of Abkaiten, the elemental divinities Muke, Tuwa, Na and Edun.

The world is conceptualized as a sphere, but the surface on which human activity is focused is thought to be circular section of the sphere, dividing it into the sky above and depths below. The sky is the domain of air and water, the depths of earth and fire.

Under the Great Ri, it was understood that the world was a sphere, and the traditional cosmology was interpreted mystically. This is considered a point of disagreement with traditional Yonggan shamanism which interprets the cosmology more literally.

Souls and Afterlife

Living things have up to three souls. The rational soul is processed only by rational creatures such as humans and spirits that talk. The animal soul is possessed by all motile animals (including humans); whether or not spirits have an animal soul is a topic of religious debate. The vegetal soul is possessed by all living things, including plants, fungus, sessile invertebrates, etc.

Philosophical Thought

Strife is considered inherent to personal existence. (Peace is ultimately through the extinguishment of the self and being subsumed into a higher level of divinity, ultimately into the pleroma of Abkaiten, ending the cycle of reincarnation.)

Morality

Praxis

Writings

The State Religion has manuals of praxis, and its priests were quite productive in writing down their philosophical and religious thought. However, there is no written canon of belief as opposed to canonical rituals. Which writings practitioners ascribed religious authority to varied significantly, often with the shifting of the sectarian balance of power in the capital. None were considered divinely inspired in the sense of being the very word of God,