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Ideas on designing an eastern pantheon (Ainu/Japanese/Chinese inspired)?

I'm inspired by eastern cultures and am keen to have a quartet of deities implemented in my worldbuilding (myths and tales will come soon when the time comes).

As I wanted the deities to be as relatable as possible, I have chosen each one of them to represent a basic necessity of life that is deemed fundamental in east Asian culture: clothing (衣), food (食), shelter/home (住) and travelling (行).

Let me introduce you to some formed ideas before talking about what I am stuck on:

Horkew Ōkamui (狩する(ホロケウ)大神威), Patron of ceremonies, Upholder of rites and the Grand Tailor, is a white lupine god who embodies the aspect of clothing. Originally a wind deity, after seeing his followers freezing to death from his northern wind, he bestowed the first clothing to them in order to keep that warm. Horkew Ōkamui is also known as the Naked Wolf, after a myth where he witnessed a peasant freezing in the snow and ignored by well-dressed rich people, he took a knife and skinned his pelt the peasant. His sacrifice in this myth gave birth to the practice of gifting clothing during the Winter Solstice to reenact this gift. As clothing eventually turned more sophisticated as tailoring techniques advanced and clothing playing a key societal role, Horkew Ōkamui then adopted responsibilities of ceremonies, rites, formalities and etiquette. Those who witnessed him described the god as androgynous in appearance and looked good in either male or female clothing.

That was the most fleshed-out deity out of the quartet.

In my mind I also have Fufu (𛂱々), a tigrine goddess who is the embodiment of home/hearth. Her role was to shelter her followers. She is the wife of Horkew Ōkamui and is often worshipped along him.

For Fufu and the remaining two deities, I have yet to think of a catchy triplet title for her or an associated myth yet.
I do want to:
- Have the remaining deities of food and travelling to be a married couple, also one canine and one feline.
- Have the deities based on animals of Hokkaido/Kurils/Kamchatka/Pacific north Asia.

Seeing how messy the Greek pantheon is, I'm also open to have them cheat on one another or sleep with mortals because that somehow makes them more human, but let's see how that goes.

I am also inspired by how the ancient Greeks perceived Egyptian gods and vice versa, so I am quite keen to have the different cultures I came up with interpreting these deities differently.

If anyone has any ideas please feel free to discuss them here!
 

Queshire

Auror
I know that for Japanese at least Horkew doesn't really work as a name. The katakana posted looks like it'd come out to Horokeu.

Mmm.... talking about East Asian religions as a whole is a bit difficult because that's a lot of land. One thing to possibly keep in mind is the number of times that multiple religions have comingled in the same space. The Journey to the West notably features both Buddhism and Daoism while Japan has Shintoism, Buddhism and Christianity having something of a rocky history there.
 
I know that for Japanese at least Horkew doesn't really work as a name. The katakana posted looks like it'd come out to Horokeu.

Mmm.... talking about East Asian religions as a whole is a bit difficult because that's a lot of land. One thing to possibly keep in mind is the number of times that multiple religions have comingled in the same space. The Journey to the West notably features both Buddhism and Daoism while Japan has Shintoism, Buddhism and Christianity having something of a rocky history there.

Horkew (or horokeu) is the Ainu word for wolf. They also use katakana by the way!

That's fair enough, these interactions between religions and their syncretisms are quite complex and it's not something that can be worded in a few sentences. Location-wise to draw inspiration from, if I were to refine it, it will definitely be Hokkaido/Sakhalin/Kurils. I supposed they practise some form of animism there and might have been forced to practise Shintoism but at this point I am just assuming.
 

pmmg

Myth Weaver
While I am sure I can come up with a pantheon that has enough eastern trappings to get the feel of an eastern culture, I fear I would do poor justice to the aspects those in that culture would see as important or meaningful. I would say, I do not think the mythologies in that part of the world were full of a lot of sleeping around like the Greeks had. Birth and new gods seemed more to come from fantastical actions than taking mortals to bed. Such as, a goddess cried in a lake and two fish swimming near sprang out as her new son and daughter.

The Greeks likely saw the deities of the Egyptians as 'their Gods', or those Gods over there. They probably were skeptical of the Egyptian gods as being real, least as skeptical as they were of their own Gods, but if the Egyptians kicked their butts somewhere they might think the Egyptian Gods showed their strength, or think Zues had not blessed them very much.

But if I go deeper in, a lot of stories swirled around in that part of the world, and many myths seemed to carry the same roots but take different forms in different cultures. I'd not be surprised to learn the Egyptian's had a flood story just like most of Mesopotamia. But it is definitely true the Egyptian gods were significantly different from the Greek ones.

Moving ahead on the time scale, there were many Greeks who knew that Zues was not true, but maybe did not know what was true instead. They would not have found the Egyptian Gods to be true either.
 
While I am sure I can come up with a pantheon that has enough eastern trappings to get the feel of an eastern culture, I fear I would do poor justice to the aspects those in that culture would see as important or meaningful. I would say, I do not think the mythologies in that part of the world were full of a lot of sleeping around like the Greeks had. Birth and new gods seemed more to come from fantastical actions than taking mortals to bed. Such as, a goddess cried in a lake and two fish swimming near sprang out as her new son and daughter.

The Greeks likely saw the deities of the Egyptians as 'their Gods', or those Gods over there. They probably were skeptical of the Egyptian gods as being real, least as skeptical as they were of their own Gods, but if the Egyptians kicked their butts somewhere they might think the Egyptian Gods showed their strength, or think Zues had not blessed them very much.

But if I go deeper in, a lot of stories swirled around in that part of the world, and many myths seemed to carry the same roots but take different forms in different cultures. I'd not be surprised to learn the Egyptian's had a flood story just like most of Mesopotamia. But it is definitely true the Egyptian gods were significantly different from the Greek ones.

Moving ahead on the time scale, there were many Greeks who knew that Zues was not true, but maybe did not know what was true instead. They would not have found the Egyptian Gods to be true either.
Very valid points. I guess it's probably not the best choice to have tropes just for the sake of having them (unless they contribute to the world in a meaningful way then)
 

pmmg

Myth Weaver
Well, the choice is, how much effort to I want to give to get a far away culture right? I see a lot of western stuff getting adopted by them, so... I would not let something like, if I write this, that culture will get upset, stop me from trying to tell the story I want to tell. I just do the best I can. While I am not looking to upset those from other cultures, I'm also not going to be paralyzed by them.
 
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