In an attempt to get the setting forums to actually talk about setting stuff, I've decided to create an occasional set of posts asking people to show off their creations. Considering I'm building my own at the moment, I've decided to start with pantheons, meaning a collection of deities worshipped within the same religion. Both true and false (in-universe) are welcome.
What a cool thread! I wonder how many people prefer Pantheons to Polytheism in their writing? Does yours have a central "King of the Gods" like Zeus and other, less powerful gods that surround him? Or is it more Shinto where everything has a spirit and Gods are seen more as powerful supernatural entities? (I don't actually know anything about Shintoism so please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about that!) I read once that monotheism evolves naturally out of polytheism, because when cultures trying to inculcate the other throw their pantheons at each other, the God with the strongest value to the culture emerges, and they all start worshiping that.
It largely depends on my work. At the moment I've got a story set in a late renaissance equivalent period (complicated by fantasy of course), where the majority of the world is monotheistic. There are however no definitive traditional gods, but there are some Lovecraftian monsters hanging out in the background. The other story I'm working on is high medieval equivalent where there were definitive gods which are still somewhat worshipped, but Enlightenment thinking is popping up and some less religious places are starting to appear. While there wasn't a definitive "king of the gods", there was a god of governance who was generally in charge and others deferred to. What about your own works? Any gods pop up there? As for Shinto, I'm not 100% on it because it appears to be a largely regionalised affair, with the rituals sharing similar thematic purposes.
In my fantasy work, the civilized nations were reached by French missionaries centuries ago, so they are largely Catholic. However, the barbarous goblins from the eastern steppes have a whole host of savage gods. I haven't worked it all out yet, but the foundations of their nomadic culture are cattle for the meat and hides, and giant goats for the riding, so I'm expecting that to play a role. I want to incorporate blood sacrifice and fertility rites, the slaughter of victims on ancient altars, sacred groves, etc. The mother goddess, who is the goddess of fertility and madness, is associated with the moon. Harvest moons are caused by her menstrual blood. That's what I've got so far.
My beings don't have pantheons as such. Not complex systems of spirits they worship. Giants honour the Earth Mother, they come from her, work with her, and return to her. They form spiritual relationships with trees and rocks. Dragons honour the divine Star Serpent and they talk to the Stars which they understand as great intelligent beings of light and fire. Elven race prefers to understand the world through science, eschewing religion, though they can be just as dogmatic in their beliefs as any religious doctrine. My Mer creatures are mystics, the sea is the all, the ocean of unbecoming. It isn't personified.
If giants honour a purely female figure, is their society matriarchal as a result? If dragons view the stars as intelligent, how does that affect their view of things like constellations? Was there a period when the elves were more religious? If the sea is the all, how do they react to land entities that live largely outside it?
There are no female giants. My giants do not mate or have social hierarchies based on sex. The earth is their mother literally, they also honour other semi-sentient aspects of material creation as brothers and sisters (trees, rocks, stones, flowers). Constellations are a part of the great sky map that tells the story of the universe: from things great, down to things small. What was, what is and what will be. The relationships between stars and planets, the angles they form and the patterns they make, can be interpreted and understood as forms of communication, ie: astrological guidance. Mer beings are largely indifferent to dry land, and to land creatures unless they bother them (it happened once, and they caused the flood wiping out most of the beings on land). They are mystified however by land creatures who desire separation (self identity), as they see that as a form of suffering. Mer creatures can be quite compassionate killers, drowning those they think are in pain, encouraging them to let go and become one with the all. Did the elves ever have religion? I haven't contemplated that question. It's one worth considering. Perhaps they may have, pre-flood. No-one saved the elves, but the elves. No higher being solved their problems for them, they got themselves out of the fix they were in by applying scientific knowledge. If they ever had religion, they probably ditched it when they realised they couldn't rely on a spiritual saviour.
If there are no female giants or a mating amongst giants, do they view the concept of motherhood different than others, considering it's a combination of two things that are completely foreign to their existence? As for lack of religion then, how do elves explain their existence then? Do they believe in evolution? Or just not think about it?
Speaking of bringing out our Pantheon, is it OK to pitch a real-world, published Pantheon, here? I'm the editor and co-writer, Awet Moges the artist. Above is volume one. Today, at the Emerald City Comics Convention in Seattle, chapter one of volume 2 is on sale for the first time! Be there or be square.
There aren't any magical creatures. Goblins are flesh and blood, and the only magic that takes place is dark magic practiced by the goblins, and the necromancy of the Dark Lord, which would be condemned by the church, I suppose.
By magical, I should have said "fantasy based creatures". It's kinda awkward if God made the world in six days with Adam and Eve and then there's a goblin family there.
Just to be clear - this thread is only for legitimate pantheons, and not a place to show off our fantasy deity & religion?
The Latin word for mother is mater. Mater forms the etymological root for our English word matter. Basically I'm borrowing from an age old notion that matter - the earth, the material world - is fundamentally maternal in nature, giving birth to all living things. This is how my giants understand motherhood. It is the primal power of matter itself, to bring forth life. (Note: the first gods in most of our human pantheons do similar things, be they female or male deities. They create without mating (ie: by autogenesis), because there isn't anyone yet to do that with.) Alchemy (a science to elves), rather than evolution, is the key to life for my elven race. Their studies are based on the premise that there is a primordial monad, 'the one thing', from which all other things are derived via a natural process of continual division and separation. Elves have a thirst to understand how this process works, and also, how to put the monad back together again and thereby attain command over various natural forces that other beings (via separation and specialisation) possess. My main bad guy is the elven Archalchemist; he desires to understand the pure essence of fire which only dragons possess. To attain this knowledge, he explores 'blood alchemy' (ethically awful experiments involving the involuntary cloning and hybridisation of sentient beings) to try to capture its secret for himself. Thanks for the great questions by the way!
I have a story with a pantheon. I went a little Greek/Norse with the structure, but Milton-ed up the mythology. The creator goddess made her brothers and sisters and placed them in charge of things like fertility and reincarnation. Some of them had enough creation power to make lesser god sons and daughters who were then put in charge of lesser things. When the creator goddess saw the way various mortal races were pairing off, falling in love, etc., she decided she wanted that too, and created another goddess to be her lover. She gave her everything she ever asked for, including tons powers, but her lover used those powers to murder her and conquer heaven. The story is about the creator goddess reincarnated as a mortal with no memory of heaven going to war with the evil goddess's mortal daughter who's basically an antichrist.
In my main writing project, an urban fantasy novel, there is one, single deity. She is enigmatic; the few times she shows herself to humans, she refers to herself simply as "Keira". Her first name, however, was simply "Granddaughter" -- or, rather, whatever that translates to in "godspeak". You see, in the beginning, there was nothing. Then came the goddess known as Mother. After a very long time she created the god known as Father to keep her company. Father naturally possessed the traits Mother sought in him: He loved her back, he was powerful -- even, perhaps, more powerful than she was --, and he was capable of giving her offspring. And he did. They had a son, named Son. Son wanted a mate of his own, someone even more powerful than himself and his parents. And, with their help, he created a wife, a goddess whose name has been lost to the ages. Let's call her "Wife". That's when problems arose. Father had begun spinning wild tales to Son and Wife about how he was the first and most powerful deity. This naturally deeply angered Mother, who had spent eternities alone and lonely in the empty void of space trying to concoct a recipe for the perfect husband. Soon, there was all-out war between Mother and Father, with Father bolder and fiercer than anyone could have imagined, and Mother as stubborn and staunch as they come. Son was eventually caught in the crossfire, and perished. This obviously infuriated Wife, who began scheming to bring down whoever remained at the end of the war. In the end, Mother won the war, and killed Father. But it didn't matter much. Mother could not prove she had been right all along, and, regardless, Wife took her first opportunity to stab her in the back, in as literal a way as metaphors go. And so Wife was the conflict's sole survivor ... except she had kept a secret. She was pregnant with her late husband's child -- a girl. As the years went by, the girl -- AKA Granddaughter, or Keira -- grew tired of what she correctly surmised was her mother's propagandistic stories about how both Mother and Father had been violent, evil and wrong, and how she and her husband had been right. But Keira harboured no good will for the father she never had, and did not like her oppressive and domineering mother. And Keira was special ... She was ambitious, and she was powerful. And she was willing to go to any lengths necessary to have it her way. Not even her own mother could in any way stop her from reaching her destiny, even despite noone knowing what that destiny actually was. So, without much of a fight, Keira murdered her mother, and again a goddess lived on her own in the vastness of the universe uninterrupted for billions of years. She didn't know where to start, but she knew she wanted for something more to exist ... just not another deity like herself, who would only seek to take the glory and limelight away from her. So eventually she created a star, a planet, and a moon. And then another star, another planet, and another moon. Soon there were uncountable stars, planets and moons. And one day she created what we know as the Sun, the Earth and the Moon. She didn't think much of it at first; they were just like all the others she had created before them, and the ones she created after. But when she stumbled upon the maddeningly enticing idea of creating life on her barren space rocks, she also stumbled back across Earth, and found it perfect for her project. Eventually Earth would provide her with her masterpiece of creation: Humanity. She adored humans. Finally she had something to live for. She didn't micromanage, in fact she just stayed away and watched as humans progressed and multiplied. She was perplexed. Mesmerised. Overjoyed. But even as humanity entered its most exciting epoch, Keira again grew bored of the universe she had created. She decided to act upon an idea she had had in the back of her mind for millennia: Intervention. ... And that's the set-up for my novel!
I'm more trying questioning why a race which has no women or breeding would have a concept such as the maternal or even birth in the first place, unless it was introduced to them by a group that had those ideas. They might instead just read their creation as a "making" as you put it. More akin to sentient crafting. Unless they read it more as them just springing up in the world, though they might associate that more with plants than animal biological processes.
Considering the female origins and designation of power, does this mean that religion in the world takes on a largely matriarchal tone?
In my current, main project this caste of future humans have the Imperial Faith (otherwise the Imperial Cult, as outsiders refer to it) which is best described as a future, polytheistic version of Christianity founded by a religious leader in the distant future. Without going too deep into lore, this woman, Aria, basically gains access to the capacity to view future events due to a combination of luck, God's will and the fickle nature of FTL travel--these visions or "Callings" lead her to be deified as an aspect of God and found the "New Path", a future iteration of Christianity which encompasses like 80% of the Human race (or "Mankind") adhere to in this future. The primary difference is that, one, it's WAY more strict and fanatical than modern Christian beliefs and two, it encourages and allows for polytheism. The pantheon, or Four Paths, espouses that there are basically four main aspects to God: The Father, who is the original incarnation of God and creator of the universe and represents creation and birth. The Son, who was the Biblical figure Jesus and represents salvation and mercy. The Spirit, who is the metaphysical existence or "mind" of God and who represents physical existence. And then, the Meta-Emperor, who is... Ok lore dump...the Meta-Emperor is a transcendent AI that exists billions of years from now and encompasses the universe and seems to be the source of Aria and her descendants having the Callings. Basically, broadcasting future events back to them. To hear her tell it, the Meta-Emperor was created by some future iteration of Mankind as a material vessel for God's essence. This is a fancy way of saying it's a giant robot the size of a galaxy that acts as an avatar for God on the material plane. Now, Aria never considered herself to be a god, but after her death her inheritor declared himself "God-Emperor" and by default she became recognized as God-Empress and is worshiped by Mankind as a Second Coming. This was the official start of the Imperial Faith, since previously she just called it the New Path/Four Paths, and now her descendants are considered incarnate deities as they're descended from her. Aria also preaches the idea of a kind of polytheism, which overlaps broadly with sainthood in Catholicism, so within the Imperial Faith/Imperial Cult people can be "anointed" and deified, usually after their deaths and rarely during their lives, and many powerful individuals or military commanders have thus become "gods" or are worshiped as "living saints"--and considering the fact that the Meta-Emperor is kind of empirical, scientific proof of God's existence there genuinely is reason to do this from a practical standpoint and not just a religious one. Human souls, it seems, become part of the Meta-Emperor's matrix or programming when they're blessed or sainted and you can basically pray to them or preform rituals to contact them which afford certain...abilities. This is easier for certain people who have psychic abilities but it's an actual, proven cosmological model in this future. So the Imperial Cult has four-man pantheon (The Father, The Son, The Spirit, The Meta-Emperor) along with a variety of lesser deities, with Aria and her descendants being chief among them. An example for this, one particularly legendary figure was called the "Mercenary God" because in his lifetime he was a near-mythical military leader and mercenary commander and had a direct hand in the founding of the Empire, and is prayed to by most or all "Free Companies" (essentially civilizations made up of PMCs) as a deity. The God-Emperors, and Empresses, are viewed as living deities too and prayed to by the common-folk and the Imperial Faith officially recognizes roughly one-hundred demigods or living saints. Now, as you can imagine, the kind of fanaticism this inspires, along with the Human Empire's extreme militarism, makes a LOT of other races extremely uneasy around Mankind. The fact that Mankind has also embraced "hypercapitalism", which is post-scarcity capitalism run by powerful hereditary dynasties, and the God-Emperor is fine with near-constant conflicts and wars between the corporate houses and this kind of "survival of the fittest" mentality among the dynasties, also means Mankind is viewed as "those crazy cult people who run half the galaxy and fight constantly" by other races. This includes this one race which is basically the Federation, who view Mankind as religious fanatics with an imperialist streak (not that they can point fingers, being fanatically socialist post-scarcity nomads).
A religion centered around a goddess would almost necessarily be matriarchal, but religion is sort of the wrong term in this case. There are devotees, of course, but they follow the teachings of the first mortal. The "Adam" of this world, if you will, wrote down the teachings of the goddess, all of which were morality based, and taught the rest of the people. The book and a long line of teachers, always an elder and a student, are still around millennia later. There's no mandate for worship though. That just wasn't her thing. The teachers also have no position of power, something closer to a Dalai Lama than a Pope, if the Dalai Lama wandered the world in poverty. There's more to it than that, obviously. There's a whole side story involving the last student and the missions passed down from the beginning, but I won't get into it. Anyway, between a female goddess and a male Adam/Moses/Jesus/Buddha hybrid, neither matriarchal nor patriarchal societies take their cue from religion. In fact, most are fairly gender equal. A monarch or a chief or a priest is just as likely to be female as male. There are smaller religions, including a voodoo analogue based around finding favor with the god of the dead. There are also a number of magic disciplines that closely resemble religions, but again, none of those would have much to do with the sex of a deity. They're more akin to Jewish mysticism, Transcendentalism, Wudang, Wicca, Druidism, things like that, only with Harry Potter/Doctor Strange level magic as the result. All magic, regardless of the method used to access or harness it, comes from the energy left in all matter during the act of creation. There's literally magic in the air. It's just really hard to utilize. Back to the question of matriarchy versus patriarchy, the MC and MV are already strong feminist statements, and there are heavy themes of fluid sexuality. I plan to keep gender-based oppression, or even dominance, a non issue in most societies. The nomadic society into which the goddess is reborn has fairly traditional gender roles, but no second class status as a result. It just won't be a message I bother to discuss much. My views on gender equality and the various spectrums of sexuality will be fairly forefront already.
Not exactly. When she's mortal, she's very fluid. Everyone's fairly sexually fluid, including the gods who don't really have genders beyond a more male or female essence. I've always thought that attributing primary sexual characteristics to ethereal beings was silly. The argument of whether God is a man or a woman presumes he or she has physical genitalia, or at the least, a gender identity, if we want to get into gender versus sex. ETA: What would be the purpose of a penis on God? There's a best seller in there somewhere.
The following notes cover the religion of a kingdom of arctic dwarves. I hope to feature them in a short story or two in the future. ~~~~~ Nearly all Froreland dwarves worship Cryon, the Frore Father, god of Froreland and its perpetual winter. The organized faith of Cryon is called the Cryocult. Its clerics—mostly women, as ministering the Frore Father is the most ambitious & influential path available to female dwarves—serve as the kingdom's historians, in addition to being its spiritual councilors. Spoiler: Creation Myth The Froreland was completely uninhabited for much of its existence. Not a single creature plodded across its tundras or swam beneath its icy waters. Until Cryon, the southern arctic's god and custodian, desired a shakeup in his wintry domain. He sculpted scores of animals from glacial ice. But as beautiful as his sculptures were, they would remain inanimate without the spark of life. So he plucked three stars from the night's sky. One star for the fish, whales, squid, and crustaceans of the sea. A second for the mammoths, muskox, bears, and other beasts of the land. And a third, final star, for the dwarves—intelligent beings made in Cryon's own image. The Frore Father's creations, grateful for their new existence, spread across his lands and waters. It was a success, but even a god's actions have consequences. Koma, one of the celestial daughters of Selsys, the goddess of the moon, was furious that Cryon stole precious stars from the heavens. So in an act of retribution Koma manifested onto Froreland and attacked the god who had wronged her and her family. It proved a foolish act, for Cryon—in his domain—was truly mighty. He was victorious against the celestial, and left her bleeding out in the snow. With Koma's dying breaths, she cursed the newly created creatures of Froreland, and vowed that even after her death they would suffer. Her hateful blood seeped below the snow and ice and took root in the land's bedrock.
