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Religion(s)

Masronyx

Minstrel
What is the best way to document a religion in your fantasy world? This is the one thing I seem to have trouble with. Mainly because religion can be the basis for strife, wars, and the main conflict in a story. Religion is also a way to control the population with fear and devotion.

The best way I can describe my difficulty is trying to build each individual religion, especially if there is more than one culture in the story line. It's easy to look at the religious conflicts today and in history, but where do you begin? Where do you begin and how do you keep them separate? Does this go along with the creation of a people/tribe? Do you build the people first, THEN the religion or vice-verse?

Here is the best way I can describe my predicament: A monastery holds power over a people, based on a Sandman-like god. Over the years, the religion has become corrupt so much that the high priest controls the dreams of the populace, those "unclean" are found via their dreams.

These peoples are descendants from a group that left their homeland because of religious prejudice. I am stuck on the religion of the homeland and on trying to build the religion of the people and the aborigines who live around the people.

Should I do some research on religions, or is there a system so to speak? I'd really appreciate some input. :)
 

Ravana

Istar
At the risk of repeating myself on this topic…

Rule 1: Decide if your gods are real. Because that changes everything.

If the answer to that question is "yes," then the religions are probably exactly the way the gods want them to be–at least to the extent they care about religious practices, and especially as concerns their priesthood (who will keep everybody else orthodox… that's their job, after all).

If the answer to that question is "no," make up whatever nonsense you want, because I promise you someone, somewhere, at some time in history, has believed more implausible things than you're ever likely to come up with.

As a more general response: yes, I'd encourage research. If for no other reason than to see some of the aforementioned nonsense in context.

-

Here's my far-more-detailed response to the topic; post #8 (and to a lesser extent post #9) in this thread:

http://mythicscribes.com/forums/world-building/918-pantheon.htmll
 
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Hans

Sage
If you want to write a believable religion it is never wrong to have a look into comparative religious studies. There is a lot more to religion than the book religions or the main graekoroman cult.
To represent the religion the first question is how does it influence the daily live of your characters? Are there religious phrases they use without thinking about it, do they wear special clothings, a special hair style or attire, do they follow some rituals at special times? Do they have taboos they don't question, don't even realize that these are taboos?
That is what I do when creating religions. I don't care about the big conflicts. The small everyday things are much more important (to me). Big conflicts result from these.

A lot of phantasy has been written without any thoughts about religion. Just the mention of some god does not make a religion. But if you want to go deeper into that I doubt it is possible to create a culture independent from it's religion or one before the other. They influence each other too much.
 

SarahM.

Acolyte
If your gods are "real" then you have to decide to they actually interact with their people or have a hands off approach. Having your gods interact regularly, physically with their people can be fun and leads to interesting situations as some newer fantasy novels have shown. If they're hands off then you have to decide what makes people still believe in them.

I usually start with making up the culture then I tackle the religion. I usually start with the creation story which can tell so much about a society and its values.
 
I usually start by building up the culture and general "world"...and then if I come across something that needs to be explained...oh botheration.

Example: I had this brilliant idea (not) to create a race called the Jehkira. They were horses...only better. Jehkira were faster, stronger, more intelligent, and far more beautiful than the horses of our world. Because I was bored and thinking fantastically, I said "Why don't these horses sparkle!" And so I had to have them be the offspring of a comet and the star goddess Kirali, to explain their "sparkles" which was really stardust....and thus, the first goddess of Eireann was born.

In short, I let my imagination run wild, find something completely rediculous or unbelievable, and explain it with a god...it's essentially how the Greeks created their gods, if you think about it. ("Lightning! Ahhhhh!!!" "Don't worry, that's just Zeus throwing a lightning bolt at a bad person." "Ahhhhh Tsunami!!" "Don't worry, that's just Poseidon getting ticked off at a random mortal.")

Thalaea
 

Leif GS Notae

Closed Account
While it seems there is a more detailed link provided by Ravana, I would make mention that the religions I enjoyed the most are the ones that are interpreted differently. Human perception, even a village away, can lead to an interesting and complex deity. My god of farming helps my yak plow harder, but your god of farming (under the same name, mind you) hates yaks and is swaddled in yak hair to signify the dirty beasts are not worth his while while the third village over the hill says the yaks are divinity and should be worshiped as his agents in the flesh.

Even if you do it a few times, I think you can find more interesting things about your people and about your gods. Then again, I love me some Norse gods (I wear Mjolnir) so I am a sucker for it.

Hope that helps and best of luck on the research!
 
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