Before You Read: A Note on Psychological Distress
The Litany of Begging is not meant to be read in its entirety in one sitting. It is ten thousand lines of deliberately repetitive, droning and circular text. Reading long stretches of it can be genuinely unpleasant: readers have reported tedium, frustration, restlessness, a sense of disorientation and a feeling that the words have stopped meaning anything.
If you have a history of anxiety, depression, obsessive or intrusive thoughts, dissociation or any other mental health condition, please do not attempt to read the whole Litany. Its themes of begging, debt, need and worthiness, wrapped in mock politics and endless procedure, can land harder than intended when you are already struggling.
Read it in small portions. Stop whenever you like; there is no prize for finishing and Xal'Reth keeps no score. If reading it, or anything else, leaves you feeling distressed, step away and talk to someone you trust. If you are in crisis, please contact a local crisis line or emergency services (in the US you can call or text 988).
The Litany is satire written for a World of Warcraft roleplay guild. It is a joke about boredom, not a test of endurance.
It is finished. Or rather, it has stopped, which in the case of the Litany of Begging is the closest thing to finishing it will ever do.
Today the Inner Scale releases the Litany of Begging: ten thousand numbered lines on alms, humility, procedure and the endlessly complicated generosity of Xal'Reth. It was written, by request, to be the most boring and most complicated text in the history of the Coil. Early readers agree that it succeeds.
What the Litany is
The Litany grows out of the Politics of Begging, the cult's teaching that to ask humbly is itself a gift, because it gives another the chance to give. Where the Politics teaches this in a thousand lines, the Litany performs it ten times over, through committees of supplication, sub-clauses of gratitude, amended petitions, appeals to the Ministry of Spare Change and the solemn tabling of motions to reconsider the tabling of motions.
It is droning by design. It circles. It repeats itself with small changes that may or may not matter. It is, in the words of one acolyte, "like being slowly wrapped by something patient." That is, theologically speaking, the point.
How to read it
- On the website: the Litany page opens behind a formal warning. Read the warning, then read a few lines, not a few thousand.
- In game: the free Litany of Begging addon on the Addons page lets you target a line and perform it as an emote, one line at a time, for Rites, sermons or the quiet punishment of a guildmate.
- As a ritual: the Rites suggest reading a single line aloud before a raid, as an act of humility. One line is plenty.
Why we wrote something this boring
Xal'Reth holds the world by not letting go too fast. Patience is the Coil's first virtue, and the Litany is patience pushed past all reason, until it becomes funny. Read a page and you will understand the joke. Read the whole thing and you will have misunderstood it.
So take it in small sips. Perform a line in guild chat. Laugh at the sub-clauses. Then close the page, stretch, drink some water and go do something warm-blooded and pleasant. The Eternal would want that.
Glory to Xal'Reth. Take only what you need, including from the Litany.