#worldbuilding religion

[whereserpentswalk]

Imagine if in the future there was a culture that viewed nuclear explosions and power as the ultimate sign of divinity. Like, that was the most powerful earthly expression of God/a god/the gods in their religion.

Entire fields of barren land turned into basically open air temples that are constantly nuked during worship as a way of honering their gods mabye sacrifices would be put within the blast radius to give them fully to the gods. Thousands watching from a safe distance in prayer.

Some temples might be filled with eradication to the point where worshippers have to wear hazmat suits to even be there, and in a way it keeps them at a safe distance from the divine. Perhaps the oldest and most honered priests enter sections of the temple nobody else can, because they're finally old enough so that they'll die before the cancer from the radiation has time to set in.

Mabye nuclear war would be their ultimate taboo. Using the power of heaven to wage war on earth. And the warnings of mutually assured destruction have shifted into warnings of divine punishment.

Mabye they see the ancients as foolish for fearing nuclear power. This is a place of honer, great deeds are esteemed here.

[yumemiyas-wips]

According to my scant, second hand knowledge of the Jewish religion (idek the proper name, don't @ me), Catholicism, and Christianity, back when Jews were nomads, way before they settled down in one place, their god Yahweh was, in two words, a vicious dickhead of a storm god, and only after they settled down in Canaan did they try to calm him down by doing the theological equivalent of murdering the real wise and kind skydaddy god, El, blessed be his name, and then have Yahweh wear his flayed skin like some sort of grotesque mask and eat the rest, and that frankly goes pretty hard. Anyways I'm SOOO co-opting that into my writing, imagine worshipping the god that killed the supreme skydaddy and ate his corpse to gain his might. That's baller.

Edit: After further study, I have concluded that Yahweh was once an aspect of Qos, a mountain, weather and war god of the Edomite people. The ancient Israelites of Canaan then did a systematic eradication of every other god in the greater Canaan religion, including such gods as El and Asherah, Yam and Lotan, Arsu and Azizos, Aglibol, Malakbel, Yahribol, Bel, and Ba'al Hadad. In their shame after the crushing of the ancient Jewish kingdom under Babylon, the Jews, jealous in the banning of sacrifices to Yahweh, later wrote into their own Bible the banning of sacrifices to all gods. But Yahweh took sacrifices, and Yahweh took sacrifices in human infants, for Yahweh was a fellow Canaanite god just like the rest of them.

Edit 2: THIS POST IS ABOUT THE PRE-JUDAISM YAHWIST CULT OF THE ANCIENT CITY STATE OF ISRAEL AND HOW IT BECAME THE MODERN CULTS. Having to add this because some fucking [REDACTED] in the comments think that literal historical facts (with added hyperbole) is antisemitic somehow. They know who they are.

[redd956]

Do you have any advice for worldbuilding religions? I have an idea of what i want practice of a certain facet to look like, but beyond that I'm stuck

Yes!

A few major things to always think about when worldbuilding religion

Size of religion

Cultural influence

Rituals/Festivities

The first thing I try to decide is what tone am I gunning for, and what do I want religion to do/represent in my worldbuilding. I work from there. It decides how extensively I want to work on and plan.

Pantheons & Gods

Decide if the religion is Monotheistic or Polytheistic, and balance your pantheons

(Also note that monotheistic religions often times technically still have pantheons due to how the religions formed over time, take for instance Christianity, with its saints, prophets, god, great angels, and demons)

For polytheistic religions try to create a general idea of what role each god plays in the lives of its followers. A common thing people forget about, and a thing that plagued me with two years of plothole filling, is how do the believers use an overall pantheon.

Are believers separated into groups who worship a particular god, but also acknowledge the others?

Are believers set to primarily worship one god out of a pantheon, the others being sidelined in their beliefs?

Are believers worshipping the majority of the pantheon, perhaps viewing a handful as powerful necessary evils?

Are believers equally worshipping the entirety of the pantheon?

Festivities & Culture

If holidays aren't originating from historical events, they often derive from religion, mythology, and folklore. Big influential religions become intertwined with culture, whether people like it or not.

This could be Christmas going from various Pagan religion's celebration of the winter solstice to a Christian holiday celebrating Jesus' birthday to a national tradition of gift giving many celebrate despite not being Christian. Every country sees culture influenced by religion in one way or another.

Other examples IRL

Religious clothing & accessories: Hijab, fez, kapp, modest dressing, clergy robes, cross necklaces, etc.

Calendar & work day: Working the majority of the week except for Sunday, national holidays, length of the month, start of harvest, etc.

Laws & society standards: Isms, Anti-Cannibalism, cleanliness culture, food consumption rules, etc.

Rituals

Rituals are also a major thing people think of when going to worldbuild a religion. This is the praying, the blessing food at the table, the enchanting a knight's sword with holiness before they charge into battle, the sacrifice into a volcano, the donating entire sheeps to a god's altar...

Rituals in worldbuilding are what can help differentiate and make the worldbuilding unique! Game of Thrones, Six of Crows, and Metro are all popular series that utilize religion heavily in their hard worldbuilding. In soft worldbuilding we also see a lot of unique religion; Hollow Knight, Spirited Away, and Dark Souls.

Ruling out the rituals and their important to the worldbuilding can do wonders to making a religion feel more real for the world it is in

Conflict

Sadly with religion usually comes conflict. This includes Isms (racism, sexism, religion vs. religion). Either way religion can play a greater role in military, government, conflicts, and more.

Take for instance warrior religion culture! Whether it be the Norse Vikings of Europe, the Pagan Roman Soldiers of the early Roman Empire, the Christian Crusaders and the blood trail they left behind, or even deities of war seen all over the world throughout history

(Im a sucker for war gods in worldbuilding)

Religion can be conflict, and for us worldbuilders, conflict can be very fun to play with!

IRL Controversy

A growing difficulty with worldbuilding religion is what I call mimicry, religion bad, and censoring

Mimicry

It's easiest and often even advised to pull from what we know when creating anything. However there's a point where we're not jumping off the deep end enough, and sometimes unintentionally we just end up making a slightly altered copy of an already existing religion. This can not only be offensive to the religion or it's people, but also limiting to the worldbuilder's potential.

There are always moments where this can be intentional in worldbuilding, especially for Alternate History and futurism worlds that are just an extension of what we know. But if its not what you're going for its a major thing to try to avoid.

Religion Bad

For many people extremism has ruined religion, and this can bleed into their work positively and negatively. That's when we run into religion bad! Where every single time religion appears, it is only there to be an evil, a badness, a stain. (This an awful way to think about religion in general, including in worldbuilding) This can cause people to skip over cultural worldbuilding, as well as limit them by forcing them to never indulge in any potential goods religion can cause.

Censoring

Now taking the previous two in mind, don't hinder yourself! Modern day Puritan Culture and Cancel Culture makes this last part hard to stop yourself. Self censoring is becoming more and more common for creators of all types, including worldbuilders. If you want to something guttural and grim dark do it! If you want to do something gory and cult-like, do it! If you want to do something whimsical and Ghibli, do it!

[noovorous]

Now, I don't plan on really writing it but I am amused by an idea for an alternate history setting in which some branch of broadly defined gnosticism (probably one with no ban on reproduction akin to Mandaeism) becomes the mainstream of christianity and world's most popular religion. It would be a delight to have a shallow/"orientalist" depiction of more "standard" christians by members of this faith. Something along the lines of:

"World's oldest doomsday cult, widely known for obsession with displayed bones of their martyrs, they worship the foul demiurge conflating him with the Most High Monad. Their most venerated figure analogous to John the Baptist, Greatest of Prophets is the born fatherless abomination Yeshua the Nazarene alongside his witch mother. Despite the common belief the cannibalism in their rituals is purely symbolic."

You get my vision? And then the POV characters can encounter those non-gnostic christians and be like: actually, they're not that bad, weird maybe but no worse than us.

[tildeathiwillwrite]

🌍 - What are this oc’s religious views?

(in response to this ask game)

The Wheel chose Draven Cozenson from The Hunter, the Myth and the Cure for this one!

Fantasy religions for me are either all or nothing; I either have a whole lot of details or I don't even remember to address it. Lucky for us Valaria worldbuilding has a bit of the former! (not as much as Trials of the Six, but definitely more than Forsaken)

In the oc interviews and similar tag/ask games I've done in the past, you've probably noticed that Draven mentions celestials a lot, or something called the depths. (Minor worldbuilding tangent: Celestials are the Valarian equivalent of angels, and the depths is the Valarian name for hell.) He doesn't really believe either exists, but he swears by them anyway. I suppose that makes him an atheist.

[traveling-and-wandering]

Behold, the primary religion of the United Islands! Lore under the cut!

Lore:

Behold, the great Ten Faced God! Or the Pantheon of Ten, if you subscribe to that belief.

Because, as is with history, the nature of the divine is a contentious subject in the United Islands. There are three main camps of thought:

The Ten Faced God asserts that there is one god, and that god changes forms throughout the year. They are one entity, although each form is not the same as each other. This is the newest interpretation, the currently dominant school of thought, and is practiced in most urban areas of the mainland and on the larger islands.

The Pantheon of Ten asserts that there are 10 different gods, with their own domains, who rise and fall in power throughout the year. They have relationships and a family tree (comment if you want to know more). This is the older of the two more common forms, and is practiced on the smaller islands to the south, and in some rural sections of the mainland.

The 10 Realms asserts that the gods are not entities at all, but a collection of spirits that serve under one of 10 divine domains people thing of as gods. This is the oldest form of the religion, only practiced anymore way out in the desert and in remote mountain villages, in small cults dedicated to specific spirits.

What all of these schools of thoughts agree on are the names and orders of the gods and their domains. In order there is:

The Shepherd: Also known as the Maiden, Queen, or Mother, the Shepherd is the goddess of fertility, animals, spring, and the soul. She is also known as the divine symbol of womanhood, motherhood, and children. She represents the love shared between a parent and child, and will strike down those who would bring harm to children. In the polytheistic model, she is the queen of the pantheon. Her divine symbol is the Shepherd's Crook.

The Dancer: Also known as the Paramour, Drunkard, or Trickster, the Dancer is the god of the arts, sex, emotion, games, and celebration. He is also the divine symbol of mischief, romance, creativity, and tricksters. He represents the fiery, passionate love in young relationships, and protects and tends to love wherever it may grow. His divine symbol is a basket of party favors, including wine, grapes, and fruit.

The Guardian: Also known as the Soldier, Sculpture, and Watchman, the Guardian is the goddess of war, the body, fire, and summer. She is also known as the divine symbol of strength, protection, and the land itself. She represents the love between a person and their country, and literally shaped the land to protect the people, according to mythology. Her divine symbol is her spear.

The Sailor: Also known as the Fisherman, Captain, or Storm, the Sailor is the god of the oceans, the weather, instincts, and fish. He is also known as the divine symbol of determination, the tides and currents, and the unpredictability of the world. He represents the love between a person and their craft, and will bless those in need of the drive to finish the job. His divine symbol is a compass.

The Merchant: Also known as the Gambler, Craftsman, or Surf (very controversial), the Merchant is the goddess of wealth, trade, luck, and commerce. She is also known as the divine symbol of fortune (both good and bad), workers, the artisans. She represents a love in the sense of aesthetic appreciation or infatuation and tends to follow flights of fancy whenever it strikes her. Her divine symbol is a coin purse.

The Farmer: Also known as the Father, King, or Reaper, the Farmer is the god of fertility, agriculture, work ethic, and autumn. He is also known as the divine symbol of manhood, fatherhood, and marriage. He represents the older, mature love between long time committed partners, and will strike down those who would threaten their own family, particularly their partner. In the polytheistic model, he is the king of the pantheon. His symbol is a pitchfork.

The Judge: Also known as the Debt Collector, Politician, or Balancer, the Judge is the goddess of justice, conscience, shelter, and leadership. She is the divine symbol of politicians, the courts, leaders, and even criminals. She represents the love between a person and society, and watches those who may abuse such society, both the criminals and ones who prosecute them. Her divine symbol is a balancing scale.

The Traveler: Also known as the Wanderer, Stranger, or Vagabond, the Traveler is the god of roads, the mind, winter, and knowledge. He is the divine symbol of curiosity, scholars, travelers, and storytellers. He represents the love between a person and the world around them, and is known to compel people to wander away from home. His divine symbol is his walking cane.

The Guide: Also known as the Weeper, Ferryman, or Mourner, the Guide is the god of time, rivers, the moons, and medicine. They are the divine symbol of the aging, frost, and endings. They represent the brotherhood love between two friends, ones who would die for each other. They are the divine protector of the sick, dying, and those who mourn for them. They are described as neither man nor woman, but something in-between. Their divine symbol is their lantern.

The Whisper: Also known as the Mist, Silent, or Shrouded, the Whisper is the god of death, sleep, and cycles. They are the divine symbol of mist, dreams, and the dead, as well as the end of the year. They represent the compassionate love one must have for themselves, and only is said to act upon the world during the last two days (or three if it's a leap year) of the year, collecting those who have died and take them back to the garden from which they were made. They are described as completely genderless. Their divine symbol is the death bouquet.

[prolibytherium]

One of my all time biggest pet peeves with historical(ish) fantasy is when the writer constructs a religion with a clear bias that it's stupid and false and therefore only the Stupid People and/or commoners believe in it and all the smart/elite main characters are like, quasi-atheists or otherwise just routinely flout established religious conventions of orthodoxy and/or orthopraxy because they're Too Smart for it or etc.

It's usually an extension of assumptions that people in the past were just less intelligent than in the contemporary, just being like "I know that the sun is a star millions of miles away that the earth orbits, but this ancient religion describes it as a chariot flying through the sky" and not really bothering to learn the context and just (consciously or subconsciously) settling on 'that's a crazy thing to think and was probably believed in because they were Stupid'.

And that whole attitude pisses me off so much. People were as 'smart' 10,000 years ago as they are today. These beliefs aren't just desperate, random flailing to explain phenomena that could not directly be accounted for either, it's not like people just looked at the sun and went "Uhhh I don't know what the fuck that thing is, actually. I guess it might be a chariot or a boat or something?? Yeah let's go with that." and based entire religious practices on this. Every well-established belief system exists within broader contexts of cultural values/subjective perceptions of reality/knowledge systems/etc, and exist as part of a historical continuum of religious practices that came before. Even when not Materially Correct, they have context and internal logic, they're not always dead literal with zero levels of allegory, and they're never a result of stupidity.

[prokopetz]

Level 1: Characters in a fantastical setting with no clear analogue of any real-world culture or religion celebrate Christmas; the implications of this are never examined

Level 2: Characters in a fantastical setting celebrate a secular, non-denominational mid-winter holiday which just coincidentally involves many of the same rituals and observances as Christmas

Level 3: Characters in a fantastical setting celebrate a mid-winter holiday commemorating an invented folk-hero whose mythos furnishes elaborate alternative explanations for various Christmas observances

Level 4: Characters in a fantastical setting celebrate Christmas because in spite of the setting's history otherwise bearing no resemblance to that of Earth, for some reason Catholicism still exists

Level 5: Whatever C S Lewis was on

[changeling-moth]

I am including her in my worldbuilding for my steampunk world now. As one of the angels/ascended saints/young gods. Her name is Aerta. And she’s a 8ft tall transfemme butch with solid red eyes and the power to manipulate rust. I will draw her.

Random idea. Transfem Ares.

Like the Greek god.

That’s it. I think she’d be cool.

[alpaca-clouds]

Worldbuild Differently: Unthink Religion

This week I want to talk a bit about one thing I see in both fantasy and scifi worldbuilding: Certain things about our world that we live in right now are assumed to be natural, and hence just adapted in the fantasy world. With just one tiny problem: They are not natural, and there were more than enough societies historically that avoided those pitfalls.

Tell me, if you have heard this one before: You have this fantasy world with so many differnet gods that are venerated. So what do you do to venerate those gods? Easy! You go into those big temple structures with the stained glass in their windows, that for some reason also use incense in their rituals. DUH!

Or: Please, writers, please just think one moment on why the fuck you always just want to write Christianity. Because literally no other religion than Christianity has buildings like that! And that has to do a lot with medieval and early post-medieval culture. I am not even asking you to look into very distant cultures. Just... Look of mosques and synagogues differ from churches. And then maybe look at Roman and Greek temples. That is all I am asking.

Let's make one thing clear: No matter what kind of world you are building, there is gonna be religion. It does not matter if you are writing medieval fantasy, stoneage fantasy, or some sort of science fiction. I know that a lot of atheists hate the idea that a scifi world has religion, but... Look, human brains are wired to believe in the paranormal. That is simply how we are. And even those atheists, that believe themselves super rational, do believe in some weird stuff that is about as scientific as any religions. (Evolutionary Psychology would be such an example.)

What the people will believe in will differ from their circumstance and the world they life in, but there is gonna be religion of some sort. Because we do need some higher power to blame, we need the rituals of it, and we need the community aspect of it.

Ironically I personally am still very much convinced that IRL even in a world like the Forgotten Realms, people would still make up new gods they would pray to, even with a whole pantheon of very, very real gods that exist. (Which is really sad, that this gets so rarely explored.)

However, how this worship looks like is very different. Yes, the Abrahamitic religions in general do at least have in common that they semi-regularily meet in some sort of big building to pray to their god together. Though how much the people are expected to go into that temple to pray is actually quite different between those religions and the subgroups of those religions.

Other religions do not have this though. Some do not have those really big buildings, and often enough only a select few are even allowed into the big buildings - or those might only be accessible during some holidays.

Instead a lot of polytheistic religions make a big deal of having smaller shrines dedicated to some of the gods. Often folks will have their own little shrine at home where they will pray daily. Alternatively there are some religions where there might be a tiny shrine outside that people will go to to pray to.

Funnily enough that is also something I have realized Americans often don't quite get: Yeah, this was a thing in Christianity, too. In Europe you will still find those tiny shrines to certain saints (because technically speaking Christianity still works as a polytheistic religion, only that we have only one god, but a lot of saints that take over the portfolios of the polytheistic gods). I am disabled, and even in the area I can reach on foot I know of two hidden shrines. One of them is to Mary, and one... I am honestly not sure, as the masonry is too withered to say who was venerated there. Usually those shrines are bieng kept in a somewhat okay condition by old people, but yeah...

Of course, while with historically inspired fantasy settings make this easy (even though people still hate their research), things get a bit harder with science fiction.

Again, the atheist idea is often: "When we develop further scientifically, we will no longer need religion!" But I am sorry, folks. This is not how the human brain works. We see weird coincidences and will go: "What paranormal power was responsible for it?" We can now talk about why the human brain has developed this way. We are evolved to find patterns, and we are evolved (because social animal and such) to try and understand the will others have - so far that we will read will in nature. It is simply how our brains work.

So, what will scifi cultures believe in? I don't know. Depends on your worldbuilding. Maybe they believe in the ghost in the machine, maybe there si some other religions there. You can actually go very wild with it. But you need to unthink the normativity of Christianity to do that. And that is... what I see too little off.

[death-of-cats]

Septon Meribald’s statement here strikes me as getting at something intrinsic to the essence of sacrifice in ASOIAF. A sacrifice's power comes from its voluntary nature. Seems like an important point in a world where so many religions practice human sacrifice.

[mrkida-art]

Where the bowels of the earth meets the sky, they dance.

[redd956]

Video Essay Wednesday:

[inkeyjay]

Your lord asks for blood, are thou willing to spill it? 🩸

This is my preview for Book of Devotion, a fanzine about deities and their devotees. And it is now LIVE on kickstarter!

If you like ttrpg's like dnd, religion based worldbuilding and sick character and creature design, this is your anthology. I had the honor to be a part of it alongside super talented writers and artists. You might remember Tome of Pacts, well this is its little sister. Let's make it a reality 🩸

(i beg you, really, i need it in my bookshelf)

Book of Devotion. Kickstarter

Cover by Cristigupa. Illustrations by Eliot Baum, Planets and Yazmati. Texts by Chewy905 and gothHoblin. Back cover text by ImNotAMarySue.

[joshuamj]

In Stars And Time? More like In Ace And Gender

+ some alts

[writingwithcolor]

Any advice for handling race in reincarnation situations?

@swamp-spirit asked:

I'm writing a story that includes characters being reincarnated with completely different appearances. It's a fantasy world, and most of the characters are being reborn in the same region, but I still want a range of skin tones and features in the main cast (this is a comic). I have weird feelings about a character being 'reborn' with notably lighter or darker skin, but it also feels implausible and lazy for people to Just Happen to have a similar appearance when the theology of the story doesn't support it. Characters being reborn, and taking out things specific to real life groups, what are the major things you'd want an author to read up on or take into account? (Note: there is not a 'white' looking ethnic group in this story)

I don’t think it’s a problem as long as the skin tones don’t have any correlation to the circumstances that they’re reincarnated into.

- SK

It’s an interesting question, because in most religions where reincarnation/ transmigration of the soul is a feature of “what happens after death”, remembering one’s past life is not really part of the package deal. From what you’ve written, it’s not clear to me where the “memory” of these characters’ lives are held. Is there a 3rd person omniscient narrator telling the audience who each person is in their next life or do the characters themselves retain memory of past lives?

Assuming this is your typical reincarnation scenario where characters retain no memory of previous lives, it doesn’t much matter. The next life is the next life. Who a person was in their previous life and that identity, in theory, means nothing to them. This also means whatever personality, values, experiences and so on they had in their previous life no longer has meaning. They are, in effect, another person. However, you say you feel awkward about the above which makes me wonder if characters are remembering past lives, in which case…

If you study pretty much any major Asian religion where reincarnation is a part of the belief system, having no memory of the previous life is par for the course. In present-day religions like Jainism, Sikhism, Hinduism and Buddhism, only “special” (I’m using the term very casually here) entities like bodhisattvas, guru, arihant, buddhas, etc. usually get to keep their memories, while the rest of us (literal) mere mortals are supposed to lose our memories between lives as a part of Samsara. In Hinduism, even the gods often forget their previous lives, unless their reincarnation had a targeted purpose (Like being born to defeat an evil entity). 

For most people, it is only through prayer, devotion, meditation and accumulated virtuous/ good/ compassionate deeds that humans are thought to deepen their understanding of the nature of the universe, and thus have the capacity to remember past lives (I’m, again, paraphrasing very loosely here from several years worth of university history+religion courses).  

This is why the isekai genre in Japan is largely regarded as a “cheat”/ parody genre of fantasy. The protagonist, according to common Japanese cultural beliefs, which are quite heavily grounded in Buddhism, is definitively “cheating.” Not to get too ironically biblical, the character’s success often comes from the forbidden knowledge borne of their previous life. 

Thus, there are two ways I look at your characters’ predicaments: 

It’s not technically reincarnation - not by the way most major world religions define reincarnation, anyway. You have people who died now inhabiting other bodies, but that’s not the same as the transmigration of the soul. Also, you want to delve into the weirdness (and maybe heaviness) of “Wow, I went to sleep with one face and woke up with another.” There are certainly stories about people who have had dramatic cosmetic plastic surgery, weight loss surgery, HRT, etc. and then experienced the difference in the “before” versus “after” of how their altered physical appearance makes them feel, as well as how other people treat them. Even if the community your characters are born into now differs from their previous community (Which I guess would make this more a “I traveled between dimensions, and my appearance altered in the process” sci-fi adjacent affair), their new life will still have social environments with differing attitudes towards human physical appearance that will affect your characters’ emotional states. 

Isekai it up and play with the ridiculous contradiction of having past lives and differing memories of one’s appearance. Isekai manga, manhwa and webtoons all make use of this trope heavily, especially with protagonists who experience a “glow-up” (Ex. Going from a Plain Jane OL to beautiful fantasy heroine) or, by contrast, protagonists who end up in very different forms from their original lives (Tensura, I’m a Spider, So What?). I’d be creative and go even more granular. Being able to tan after a lifetime of getting sunburns or no longer needing glasses might be nice, but what if the new body lacks the enzymes to process dairy or alcohol? What about dealing with differences in hair texture? Skincare routines? What about living life as a very tall person after being quite short or vice versa? What if you bumped into an acquaintance from your previous life, and one of you clearly got a more “coveted” reincarnation?  See how far of an extreme you can take this idea until it feels too uncomfortable or ridiculous. 

Marika.