# Gods, Domains and Alignment



## Vvashjr (Dec 23, 2017)

Hello guys, I am a little stuck on the religion aspect of my world, and I would like to pick your brain on it. Currently I'm having slight trouble with dividing my pantheon into "Light", "Neutral" and "Dark"

I am basing my pantheon of nine gods with them representing aspects of human/mortal evolution. The physical manifestations of the "physical" aspects like sun, moon, stars etc are taken by the older generation of gods that the world no longer worships.

Here is a rough breakdown of the three categories.

*Light*
God of Order, Law, Justice, and Rulership 
God of Faith, Mercy, and Agriculture
God of Music and Dreams. Trickster God of Secrets

*Neutrality*
Goddess of Love, Sex and War
God of Magic, Knowledge, Healing, and Wisdom
Goddess of Luck, Fortune and Fate

*Dark*
Goddess of Chaos, Anarchy. and Retribution
God of Wealth, Commerce, Crafts and Smithing
God of Strength, Conquest  Hunting and the Wilds

What I am trying to convey is that Light does not mean good, and Dark does not mean evil. Does this arrangement and their domain make sense? Or if Light and Dark seems too good and evil, perhaps changing the "category" to Order and Chaos would be better?

Is there any mortal aspects that I have missed out?


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## Annoyingkid (Dec 23, 2017)

Vvashjr said:


> What I am trying to convey is that Light does not mean good, and Dark does not mean evil.



if it's nothing to do with literal light and dark and if it doesn't mean good or evil, what does light and dark mean here?


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## Vvashjr (Dec 23, 2017)

Annoyingkid said:


> if it's nothing to do with literal light and dark and if it doesn't mean good or evil, what does light and dark mean here?



Mortals in the world classified them under Light and Dark due to the last war in the heavens where the gods fought against each other. Light were the winners. Losers deemed as Dark, especially since the ringleader was imprisoned.


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## Annoyingkid (Dec 23, 2017)

Vvashjr said:


> Mortals in the world classified them under Light and Dark due to the last war in the heavens where the gods fought against each other. Light were the winners. Losers deemed as Dark, especially since the ringleader was imprisoned.



And the people who didn't quite win or lose were deemed neutral?


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Dec 23, 2017)

Light and Dark have such a deeply ingrained association with Good and Evil, it's best to change Light and Dark to something else.


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## Vvashjr (Dec 23, 2017)

Annoyingkid said:


> And the people who didn't quite win or lose were deemed neutral?



Neutrals were the ones who voted to destroy the losers actually


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## Vvashjr (Dec 23, 2017)

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> Light and Dark have such a deeply ingrained association with Good and Evil, it's best to change Light and Dark to something else.


I think u r so right. It's hard to even warp around that.


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## TheCrystallineEntity (Dec 23, 2017)

What if you did it the other way round, that the "Dark" won and the "Light" lost? That would certainly be a twist.


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## WooHooMan (Dec 23, 2017)

It all boils down to how you define good and evil.  Without really understanding the relationship between the two, you won't get anywhere dividing your gods up by alignment.
Also, I find order vs. chaos to be several times more cliche and annoying than light/dark/good/evil.

How about you go Taoist.  Two opposing sides that are more-or-less good and a third "evil" side representing discord or unbalance.  Or maybe three aggressive/Yang gods, three passive/Yin gods, one balanced god who keeps the peace, one chaotic god who disrupts the peace and then a ninth ambiguous god who switches between sides.  Order would certainly be the balanced god and Chaos would be the discordian with music/dreams being the ninth.  I don't know about the other six though.  I guess strength, wealth and love would be Yang since they deal with more tangible things while faith, magic and luck deal with more intangible things.

I also had trouble with this exact situation but I decide to just create my own numero-symbolic meta-mythology (or whatever you'd want to call it) and, yeah, it can call get pretty frustrating.


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## TheCrystallineEntity (Dec 23, 2017)

I'd just ignore the good/evil part all together and make both sides equally flawed, myself.


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## WooHooMan (Dec 23, 2017)

TheCrystallineEntity said:


> I'd just ignore the good/evil part all together and make both sides equally flawed, myself.


Frankly, I don't see much practical use in that.  Every society to ever have gods have attached morality to them.  So, when doing gods of fictional people, you should at least make them good by the perspective of those people.
Then we get back to how one defines good and evil.

Also, I find it interesting that you use the word "flawed".  I don't think any post in this thread implies that the gods were going to be morally flawless.  Can they be equally flawed while one side is evil and the other is good.  Kind of like a villain vs. anti-hero situation?
I don't know.  I just find that word choice interesting.


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## TheCrystallineEntity (Dec 23, 2017)

I tend to write stories in which good and evil as concepts don't even exist, everyone is technically divine, and somehow there's still conflict despite the beings involved having unity-based instead of duality-based mindsets, so...

Most planets, planes, realms, ectc in my stories are at fourth dimensional frequencies to six dimensional frequencies to even seventh dimensional frequencies and higher. The fourth dimensional ones are the more duality-based ones, of course.


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## WooHooMan (Dec 23, 2017)

Ok, sure, you do you but when it comes Vvsahjr's dilemma, I think a good-evil dichotomy may be useful.


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## TheCrystallineEntity (Dec 23, 2017)

I was just sharing, that's all.


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## TheKillerBs (Dec 23, 2017)

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> Light and Dark have such a deeply ingrained association with Good and Evil, it's best to change Light and Dark to something else.


Not necessarily and examples of Light/Dark not equalling Good/Evil grow by the year.


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## WooHooMan (Dec 23, 2017)

I guess just to share some thoughts: light/dark symbolism is meaningless without the moral element.  It's either an allegory for good/evil or it's a subversion of the trope of light=good/dark=evil.
In reality, darkness is not a thing that technically exists.  It's just the absence of light.  And I don't think you'll get far doing a gods of substance vs. gods of emptiness.

Maybe you can do nature gods vs. civilization gods?  Law, wealth and love on the civilization side vs. chaos , strength and luck on the nature side.  With the other three being neutral.


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## TheKillerBs (Dec 23, 2017)

WooHooMan said:


> In reality, darkness is not  a thing that technically exists.  It's just the absence of light.  And I don't think you'll get far doing a gods of substance vs. gods of emptiness.


Just because darkness doesn't really exist in reality doesn't mean you can't have darkness as a concrete, discrete element in fantasy. Same thing with cold or death. However, I don't think this is especially relevant to what the OP is positing.


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## WooHooMan (Dec 23, 2017)

TheKillerBs said:


> However, I don't think this is especially relevant to what the OP is positing.


Yeah, you're right.  I'm just trying to push for some outside-the-box thinking.


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## Vvashjr (Dec 24, 2017)

WooHooMan said:


> It all boils down to how you define good and evil.  Without really understanding the relationship between the two, you won't get anywhere dividing your gods up by alignment.
> Also, I find order vs. chaos to be several times more cliche and annoying than light/dark/good/evil.
> 
> How about you go Taoist.  Two opposing sides that are more-or-less good and a third "evil" side representing discord or unbalance.  Or maybe three aggressive/Yang gods, three passive/Yin gods, one balanced god who keeps the peace, one chaotic god who disrupts the peace and then a ninth ambiguous god who switches between sides.  Order would certainly be the balanced god and Chaos would be the discordian with music/dreams being the ninth.  I don't know about the other six though.  I guess strength, wealth and love would be Yang since they deal with more tangible things while faith, magic and luck deal with more intangible things.
> ...



Oh right I totally forgotten about my Taoist beliefs! Hahahhaha Thanks for reminding me! So used to reading on Light,Dark,Order and Chaos till I didnt rmbr my own. I'll rework the whole thing!


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## Corwynn (Dec 24, 2017)

You could also take a page from Hinduism. They have a trinity of gods representing creation, preservation, and destruction. This could easily work into what you have in mind, with light/creation, neutral/preservation, and dark/destruction.

Instead of:


Vvashjr said:


> *Light*
> God of Order, Law, Justice, and Rulership
> God of Faith, Mercy, and Agriculture
> God of Music and Dreams. Trickster God of Secrets
> ...



You could have:
*Creation*
God of Music and Dreams. Trickster God of Secrets
Goddess of Love, Sex and War
God of Wealth, Commerce, Crafts and Smithing

*Preservation*
God of Faith, Mercy, and Agriculture
God of Order, Law, Justice, and Rulership
God of Magic, Knowledge, Healing, and Wisdom

*Destruction*
Goddess of Chaos, Anarchy. and Retribution
God of Strength, Conquest  Hunting and the Wilds
Goddess of Luck, Fortune and Fate


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## Vvashjr (Dec 24, 2017)

Corwynn said:


> You could also take a page from Hinduism. They have a trinity of gods representing creation, preservation, and destruction. This could easily work into what you have in mind, with light/creation, neutral/preservation, and dark/destruction.
> 
> Instead of:
> 
> ...


Thanks for ur advise! Will look into reworking it rather than the usual light dark theology lol


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