Anachturian nature ceremonies

The Anachturian nature ceremonies are used by the Anachtur nation to prepare their young males for the path into warriorhood and eventually manhood. It is believed to bind an animal spirit to the future warrior's spirit, which allows the warrior to show bravery and stregnth in battle.

Process
When a male child reaches the age of thirteen years, the child's parents are required by tribal law to inform the village shaman. The shaman will then, usually within a few days, engage in a trance with the help of the quinike plant. This trance is used in order to, according to the shamans, find the appropriate spirit for the child and lead it to the village.

Once this is done the child is fetched from the village and brought to the shaman's ceremonial circle (which is usually located at some "place of power" slightly outside the village). There the shaman meets the child and both child and shaman enter another trance, again with the quinike plant, and the binding ceremony takes place.

Which animal a child is bound to determines his future role in society. The system is that if the animal is an animal brought from Earth by the blue-collars, the child is a farmer, if the animal was brought by the scientists, the child is to be a shaman and is to be taken into apprenticeship immediately by the shaman conducting the ceremony, and if the animal is from Promus the child is to remain a warrior for the rest of his days.

After the binding ceremony the child is considered ready to serve as a warrior, and is usually sent out for training at the capital city with the grand army. What animal their soul is bound to is often one of the first topics of conversation among rookie warriors.

Why does it work?
There has been much debate between the spiritualists of the Anachtur and the scientists of the other nations over why the ceremony, which does have noticable and measurable effects in Anachtur warriors, works. The effects do not become apparent when other nations attempt the ceremony, even when every details is matched.

Almost all those who study this phenomenom agree that a prime effect in the ceremony is belief, true and complete belief. The Anachfur shamans believe that it is because spirits will not visit those who do not follow their ways. The other nation's scientists believe the explanation is more complicated. Some propose that the mixture of quinike combine with the placebo effect induced by belief in the ceremony in order to produce lasting and strong effects, where the power of the effect is determined by the degree of placebo, and thus belief. They propose that it is the combination that makes it lasting over decades, but this does not explain why believers in other nations are unable to soul-bind.