Writing Religions Part 2! Creating a Religion
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 9 фев 2024
- Hey! Welcome back and hope you're excited for Part 2! A lot more art and a lot less cohesion in this one, but if you love Anthropological Religious Classifications then you're gonna love the first five minutes of this!
And a Huge thankyou to Vincent P. for helping to edit, factcheck and write portions of this videos' script!
My Patreon: / hannahsmth
Music Accreditation in order of Appearance:
Music track: Chocolate by Lukrembo
Source: freetouse.com/music
No Copyright Vlog Music for Video
Music track: Butter by Lukrembo
Source: freetouse.com/music
Royalty Free Music (Free Download)
Music track: Jay by Lukrembo
Source: freetouse.com/music
Free Music No Copyright (Safe)
Music track: Flowers by Lukrembo
Source: freetouse.com/music
Royalty Free Music for Videos (Safe)
Coming back to this because I wanted to share a couple things:
-- If you're having trouble deciding which of the four schools at 0:50 to use, consider trying the two you like most and doing a Greek gods vs titans or Norse Aesir vs Vanir situation (note, for example, that Thanatos is the titan of The Process of death while Hades is the god of People Who Died). Whichever set comes out thematically weaker can be written in as the ones who lost, largely ignored by the common folk but still relevant for specialist work or specific holidays if the two do not perfectly overlap (and let's be real, they probably won't).
-- On the note of 15:17-17:00, ESPECIALLY if you're writing a world for D&D or other settings that need to accommodate player characters, consider using leaving a few holes, skipping over a few parts giving you trouble, or allowing a bit of conflicting information into the players' understanding of the world. Then, when asked what's in that gap, say, "Your characters don't know--but they *do* know that there was a BIG war fought over it a couple centuries ago". This is a fun way to gloss over parts of the worldbuilding that need more work until you can actually *get* to them, but it also gives them a secular conflict to ease their way into the religious lore without going Full Exposition. Even if they don't (yet) care about the difference between, to use the Wild God here as an example, a cult of dudes in tiger pelts vs a cult of dudes in lion pelts, D&D players will *gladly* use any flimsy excuse to turn them against each other--and then pay *close* attention to any details you give them in the hopes of repeating the feat when they stumble across a high-level cleric stepping out of an ancient glacier while wearing a sabertooth pelt. Details about feline taxonomy that the table had never even *considered* will suddenly become plot-critical when the party Bard starts trying to run social interference keeping the cults fragmented long enough to get some way of countering the Old Magics that Sabertooth Cleric uses--and at that point, you've got them hook, line, and sinker to literally paint the walls of the next dungeon with Obtuse Deity Lore to your heart's content.
Weve learned a lot about the Wild Gods unpredictability, association with missfortune, and roots in primal fears, but this still leaves the big questions: How fluffy chaos kitty? Can pet?
This was quite educational. Thank you for telling us about your method. Made me think of how I want my world to show the importance of religion. Of what I want it to be and how it could have came to be.
Forgive me if you've already mentioned this, but a very old 'school' of religious analysis is Euhemerism. The concept that a real human being could become deified, or perhaps the memory or story of the person becomes subsumed into the mythology of an already existing deity.
You could see this in the Jungian lens, where a real life human being represented or embodied a psycho-religious archetype so closely to the worshippers, that their deeds become undistinguished from a deity that also fulfils this archetype. Or they perhaps give birth to the worship of a new deity all together, possibly connected to new rites that the person established (giving more association with the idea of ritual as a basis for religion).
This overlaps with an Astrological idea that people's stories become attributed to deities because of star-signs they had in life that people remembered them by later on, also being associated with deities or spirits. Consider that ancient people had less light pollution, and utilized the stars in the night sky to remember things, especially through oral tradition which can become warped over time.
If the religion already had a concept of worshipping ancestor spirits, then it isn't a big leap to suggest that the deeds of accumulative ancestors over a very long time can give birth to new gods, or new mythology of existing gods or spirits.
Examples of a real person becoming deified is the Roman Imperial Cult, and even the Pharaohs of Egypt. The former of which having an Astrological element to it also.
Euhemerism is a really simple but broad concept and can interpenetrate each of the schools you mentioned. Conversely, Euhemerism can also be the reverse of what I mentioned previously. Deities in a mythic tradition can become characterized as real people in the past. An example of this is how Irish monks portrayed the Tuatha Dé Danann as ancient human beings, while they were actually the pre-Christian pantheon of the Pagan Irish.
that's a heck of a work! Although I would recommend a thing about the wild god: ancient religions rarely have a "good vs bad" dychotomy, it's usually order vs chaos. Thus, I suggest making the wild god be the god of nature and chaos, not strictly evil, since nature is also the source of food and new life. The hunter god would be the god of civilization that actively helps humans, but is also harmful to the environment, which the wild god wishes to preserve.
As an English-Anthro double major I am absolutely stoked that this is a niche that you are filling.
A cool megastructure was discovered in the Baltic sea recently. They dated it to 11,000 years ago. It’s a half-mile long wall believed to be for hunting purposes. I’d be interested to see what you think of that.
Oh wow that's amazing! Definitely sounds fun to look into, Thankyou! And Thankyou for the high praise too, I'll try not to disappoint! ^^
A sunken wall in Baltic Sea? Huh, I guess some will have their "Vineta", depending where exactly it is
I think a good way of making complex gods is through merging of multiple similar gods and the splintering of a god.
Back to the Wild God, it could have been multiple unrelated gods of wildlife, famine, and misfortune, but then a terrible time happened, and it was easier and more practical to appease them all at once which over time merged them all into one god, which also merges their stories. Now you have a god with three conflicting origin stories, three personalities, and three modus operandi.
A tribe could have a terrible Winter which then made them more conscious about the cold which warped their conception of the Wild God to be more Winter focused and the Hunter to be Fire focused which in turn could warp the Spring as some sort of time when the Hunter triumphs over the Wild God.
It may be noted that gods are stories, and stories change with time and circumstance. No two tribes would tell the same kind of stories, and that means the gods are different to them.
This was really interesting, I’m currently working on a story where most religions and cultures were stripped away generations ago due of fear and propaganda, and it’s interesting to delve into how they would have acted, and their religions
Indeed, writing is hrad 😞
😔
Legit choked on my water when you talked about Thrawn lol
It's so nice to FINALLY see someone who is obsessed with attention to detail as I am, which is, a lot, and it's even better to see the effort you're putting into all of this :)
Thanks Hannah, it’s so great to hear how you think and plan your writing. What a wonderful video.
This was such a cool Video :D I loved the worldbuilding techniques but also the amazing artworks you showed.
Thank you for these videos.
It's a pleasure! Thank you for watching :)
The eldritchness is a wondeful touch.
One critique I have as a fellow writer is it would be cool to give the Hunter a companion that is a wild cat. Cats being hunters themselves and adds nuance to a very black and white theology.
... Your starting point is so cool I must admit a little disappointment to see it turned into something so similar when boiled down to christianity and god vs satan...
I'm shit at receiving criticism of my own work, so please don't take this as harsh. As long as you love it, that's what counts, truly.
The art in and of itself here makes me very interested to read your work. Keep creating!
"Daily Life" is our personal historical specialty!
We love seeing what people did to pass the time, how they made their clothing, food, tools, etc.
How people interact and how they just get by from day to day is the coolest part of history!
If you're feelin it, consider making more of those! ^^
I love how you condense a LOT of research into understandable chunks. This is excellent material to start me down my own rabbit holes of research.
On the topic of “not too many gods” the general rule of thumb is 7 plus or minus 2. From psychology around seven is the number of items easiest to remember, thus that’s a good upper limit to the number of gods (or major gods) in your pantheon. But different groups may have slightly different lists, even in the same overall culture.
You’ve got 40000 years before you get into my favorite bits of technology and cities, but do you have a magic system? Or is it just divine forces?
It is a useful rule, but you must also think that the most complex pantheons are those created by kingdoms or empires that bring different populations under them (the Egyptian or Indian pantheons) and it often also happens that after the fall of the kingdom/empire the pantheon thus enriched remains (for example the pantheon created by the Babylonians when they conquered the fertile crescent and which remained after its collapse). So you can play a lot on this thing to enrich the Lore.
That's a great rule of thumb, and not one I've heard before, so thank you! And I know what you mean, I've got a particular soft spot for sci fi and Cyberpunk so it will be hard to wait so long for even modern cities! Unfortunately Immortal won't have a magic system, but the divine forces will have plenty of magic to them! :)
@@vincenzopiras9765 you’re correct that as people get absorbed into an empire they add to the complexity of the pantheon. But you still tend to have a much smaller number of “primary” or “major” deities.
@@highlorddarkstar This is true
I am so thankful that content like this exists. Am working on a Sun god vs Moon goddess mythology but am struggling on how to make it more distinct from real world mythology.
Largely agree with everything you say about the practice here, but one point I think you may have unintentionally dodged here: Religion is largely about worldview. You mention this as a foundation, but although you use it as a basis for gods, there's no reason a religion needs to contain any particular entities, divine or otherwise. I would say that the way people think about the world is what's going to root the most in your themes, and then the stuff like gods or practices are more like flavor or characters that you can include if you want.
I think it's not entirely accurate to say that dualistic opposition is present in "practically all religions". It's fairly widespread in Eurasia but tends to be rarer outside of it and the cases where it appears, it's hard to say that these really represent dualism in a meaningful sense, independent of the bias of the categorizer. Of course some things have picked more themes like that up since influence from the Abrahamic religions. In fact, I think dualism is a great example of an element of worldview that deeply characterizes religion. The idea that there are a definied good and bad which are divine in nature, or at least beyond human subjectivitty, is highly pervasive when it comes to how a person makes their decision-making and perceives their world.
This was a great video. I struggle mostly with the Messy aspect of religion. My religions tend to be too neat and tidy, but I am working on it.
Always Coming Home, and The Telling, both by Ursula Le Guin, are both great examples of stories in which religion plays a central narrative role. I would recommend reading both (The Telling first, as it is a much more conventional novel than Always Coming Home) if you’re interested in this topic!
Been a while since I saw a video from you in my recommended, glad I subscribed.
I’ve actually been working on a world for fun recently and I was debating myself on religions so this came at just the right time to give me some new ideas
The Soviet Anthem came at a wrong time! I had your video playing in the background as I worked on my game, in said game there is a Tsar and I needed to know what the wife of a Tsar was called. So I typed in "Tsar" in the search bar and promptly got the Soviet Anthem as a response :D
Oh by the way, one of the couple religions I made is called Teutanish and it is a warrior religion with a god named Modka. But over time it was taken and molded into a couple different forms with different Modkas such as Mark, Modque, and Modoza!
SO glade i found your channel! You have such a unique and interesting way of conveying and illustrating ideas, its been super helpful for me and i can't wait to see where you go from here!
I was just toying around with some myths and gods for one of my settings, to this is very timely for me! Yay!
That's amazing! ^^
I started my D&D campaign about a year ago and I wanted to make the world with original deities. My method of creating them was (maybe?) a bit unorthodox. I looked at all the various figurines and statuettes I have on top of my bookshelf. They're from some of my favorite stories including but not limited to, Hellboy, Alien, RWBY, Fire Emblem and more. I decided that each figure would be one god in my world. They started with some pretty basic characterizations including, Sun Deity, Ocean Deity, Nature Deity, Forge Deity, War Deity, etc. I set down a basic history of the gods and how they interacted with the world. I didn't worry about getting everything characterized and all the beliefs set in stone before I started (that's a lie, I was super worried but I had to start the campaign) and I let the gods and the way people in the world worship them evolve as the players explored the world. I also let the players influence how the gods developed based on how they interact with them and "worship" them in their own way. In the party I have a Cleric, a Ranger who worships a deity, a fighter pretending to be a Paladin and a Druid who hates all the gods. So that's definitely help things grow and evolve over time.
one of the most underrated channels on youtube:) ur content is gonna go really far!
Really enjoyed this! Excited for future videos
went in for writing tips, left with both writing tips and a history lesson. really cool video!! :D
Greaat stuff. Loved your ramble at the end
I havr been putting off watching this video, but man they were both so cool!! I absolutely love what you do here, and will ve following along. Yhe drawings like the hypothetical Luck-Goddess and thr different societies absolutely captured my imagination! Thanks so much for making this video! +1 sub :D
thank you so much for this video, it really helped me learn a lot for my own worldbuilding! next time, it would be great to see you talk about the daily life and how religion can impact it, since i think that is something that is very important to keep in mind when intergarting religion into a world :)
These videos have been very helpful in getting my gears turning for constellations in my fantasy novel. Well done and thank you. I struggle a lot with (and ignore) politics in my novel, but have a highly social society that I need to worldbuild. There’s a potential video idea for you 0.0
Some FASCINATING work here!
We particularly like how traditionally heavy set the hunter God is!
He really represents some confident, healthy, well fed and well prepared individual!
Great for something that brings good and leads the people to the wild herds, etc!
The Sumerians had words for all-seeing-eya and informants so their gods were at the top of a surveilance state that gave them the power to know what jane was saying about the king...
I'm currently looking into other religions to gain insight for my worldbuilding project, your videos helped me with how religions and worship formed and evolved, I am some theistic Christian myself, and lemme tell you...
My religion is a mess, but that's where the fun is at!
Since your story is intended to cover the Paleolithic period until modernity, I assume that at some point we will pass through the ancient age (I don't know what it's called in English, the period between the discovery of writing and the fall of the Roman empire), yes? I would love to see a video about architecture, especially about the architecture of the Middle East and North Africa. Recently I started to write about some characters that came out of my head, and this developed into a ""story"" of 5 empires born from 5 ancient deities (dragons, because yes). I had a lot of fun writing about the greatest of empires, which would have a lot of contact with the mesopotamian empires, and I would love to see how a pro writer would approach the subject! I'm obsessed with your videos Since I discovered your channel on the video about stone tools and they're making me think about better building this fanfic that's been bouncing around in my head for years
7:38 Whoooooo!!!!
also I see large potential for the hunter gid to split into new gods
Love these videos, would highly recommend checking out some Elden Ring lore videos for some good specific examples of what you're talking about here (tarnished archeologist is the best but there are other great ones)
I'm loving this channel so far! Is there somewhere that I can read Immortal?
superb
So, idk if this will be helpful or not but what I did was a went to a site that listed out all or just a lot of Greek mythology figures and I took index cards and wrote down things they created god's and goddesses for, grouped them together to how I thought it would fit, like Spring, flowers, and tea. I gave them a sort of form and named them, like the example one is Eposels which I made from translating her different domains into other languages and then forming it into a name.
After that, to create like the things they do to worship these gods and goddesses I just took things I like and made it something they do. For example they have these kinda crochet mats they put on doors depicting flowers to kinda idk what it's called really but it's for Eposels since she created flowers and their worlds version of crocheting. And I like accessories and jewelry so I made it to where the more you have of it the more powerful and higher class you are. (Sorry, I'm really bad with words. And it may be easier for me since these gods and goddesses are real in their world)
Beautiful signoff
I somehow suspect there's more to the four schools of thought on the origin of religion than it merely being one answer; more likely, the human psyche and social structures are intertwined as the latter is formed from the former, the two together form a basis for belief, this belief is codified as rituals arise to strengthen the higher ideals arisen from those beliefs since action is the best way to strengthen those ideals in your heart, and the final shape of the religion takes form as a sort of symbolic resonance between natural phenomena and the belief itself make it natural to integrate those phenomenon into the religious art, which while not intentionally, it accidentally forms an explanation of said phenomena where an explanation is missing.
Another method to create religious beliefs or figures without creating prophets is to posthumously deify a character. What comes to my mind is Guan Yu an figure in chinese history that become deified for there acts over his life.
A character long ago could have pulled off a great feat such as saving a hunt by catching large amounts of game in a short time. At first the story of this person might be retold with gradually distorted details until generations down the line the individual may be regarded as a god of the hunt.
Running off of like, one/two hours of sleep and been up for 24 hours or so, so I might be typing up the kind of gibberish to summon Cthulu, but I had random thoughts I wanted to shove somewhere-
A deity who represents "Bad" things doesn't have to be an "Evil" deity itself, I think.
Assuming a typical fantasy setting with magic and all of that jazz;
If we had a 'Sun' god, who represented good things like sunrise and/or noon, and also things like the birth of a child, luck, etc; Essentially all the good things in a person's life, and then we had a "Moon" god who represented the bad things, like deaths, things in the dark, etc or whatever, the moon god could easily be worshipped for things like funerals, it's a sad thing, and perhaps the moon god is the one who judges and brings those dead individuals to their afterlife(lives?). Perhaps the moon god has their priests act as some sort of necromancer that goes to battlefields and raises the corpses to bring to their families back at their hometowns for burials, cremations or perhaps other kinds of burials, and while perhaps during a battle, war or general purpose the sun god would heal people with their power through their worshippers/priests, the moon god's worshippers would participate in battles, wars or guarding something due to their abilities given from faith with their own holy blessings instead of hanging in the back.
My brain can't cook up anything else at the moment a god of bad things that's not really 'Evil' would perhaps be went to or worshipped for, (or what their worshippers would do, really) but I hope my two cents at least look like cents, haha.
Typing this, I realize this is just one big text block, but I dunno how to re-format it properly. I hope it's readable.
You can place more neutral entities, while the wild goddess is the representation of hostility towards human beings, another entity could represent nature itself as a neutral element in this conflict. Furthermore, the wild goddess can also represent the conflict between human beings and cannib*****lism
Second comment: Finding out you based your "all things bad god" on what is essentially a fertility god... I've had a lot of talk with some people about how there are a lot of destructive feminine chaos deities that started out as fertility goddesses. The one that comes to mind is Tiamat; though I forget which fertility goddess specifically she descends from.
... From what I understand, the back and forth between worshiping the "earth mother" vs the "sky father" has been a long standing cycle; and the one that broke out of that pattern to find balance (Egypt) was one of the longest standing civilization known. For that very reason, I prefer the idea of the two ruler gods are a married couple; a knight and a (female) dragon. Perhaps the knight god has the most worshipers and worshiped in cities, but the dragon finds worshipers everywhere, from the hermit in the woods, to the rural farmstead, to the orphans in the back alleys; a constant reminder that even those who live outside the system can if nurtured come to thrive, and in some ways, as with the knight's relationship with the dragon, it is perhaps best for the cities as bastions of order to support those outside their walls such as the farmers that make their lifestyles possible.
Wonderful video! Something that I'd also mention is that you need to decide if your religion is REAL. Not to the characters, but in relation to the reader. Are the gods they're worshipping very real, tangible entities, or are they (to the reader) explanations that exist only to the characters? If the veil was pulled back, would your characters find actual living gods - accurate to their beliefs or not - or would they find nothing?
Consider this: in Classical Greek plays, the gods are REAL, PHYSICAL beings. The audience is meant to be aware that the gods *exist*. In more modern Science Fiction writing, entire religions exist where once knowledge had been. In Litany of the Long Sun, what's being worshipped aren't actual, living gods: its old technology and science that's been forgotten. Both of these religions are fleshed out and "legitimate", but knowing whether it's a "God of the Gaps" situation is 100% necessary to allow for your own writing to evolve or not.
one of my earliest... how you say, interesting worldbuilding ideas? anyway the idea birthed when I was 8 for a race of aliens whose religion and deities are based on and symbolized by color, so all the gods exist somewhere on the visible color spectrum. this allows for common symbolism between colors and a deity's purpose, as well as a ton of superstition around the implications of an object's color. I still use this idea for one of my most developed worlds. for example, you have Torolu, goddess of Life (one of the few gods ever referred to with a specified gender), who is of course represented by the color green, or Akizu, god of Wisdom, represented by Cobalt and is the patron god of the whole alien species. Or Agarus, god of speed, represented by the color orange, who is the namesake of their home star, which is an orange dwarf.
So I think the functionalist school is not necessarily the best for explaining where religions and gods come from, but I think it is at least a useful tool to keep in mind for how they change for insistence how one stripe of Christianity has turned into god bless Regan America and the second amendment.
Is there a link to the chart at 14:47? There's just social media handles in the corner, which makes it hard to find the individual post.
Of course! The original chart was uploaded to X/Twitter by Simon E. Davies, though I found it through this article link:
www.worldreligionnews.com/religion-news/christianity/evolutionary-tree-religion-map-simon-e-davies/
Hope this helps! :)
Groete van die Kaap af:)
writing is hrad but this video was helfpul :)
I'm so gald! :P
I'm surprised anthropology is ignoring a 5th source of religion that is so obvious, not sure what to call it, but maybe Founders?
I mean there are super well documented cases of religions forming from the ideas of a single individual (Bahá'u'lláh for the Bahá'í Faith for example). I find it really weird that this isn't considered at least one of the sources since there is so much evidence to back it up...
3:36 5:34 6:50
14:48 this religion map chart is quite inaccurate iirc
For one of my cultures, which is the major human culture in the world they have a religion that is very much reminiscent of old Christianity, but here’s the twist, it's all a made-up cult.
It was created by a young man named Gerath Berchamme because originally the humans were unpaid prisoners for another race, but Gerath freed like 12 or so camps of these prisoners and bargained with another group of people for some land. In the end he wanted the humans to believe in something greater so he made himself the figurehead of a religion and over 500 years it's just grown into this very conservative and restrictive thing.
Next time if you feel like doing it can you cover conlanging in brief please
The human psyche is good at telling stories - mythologies, where the storm becomes personified - combine those stories with rituals and you have something akin to a shamanistic belief pattern. Combine that belief pattern with a priest cast that uses the memes in order to manipulate people and you get religion. My two cents since I don´t believe the four theories to be mutually exclusive - they all structuralize what we call modern religions - I wouldn´t only focus on one when worldbuilding more modern religious belief patterns.
On a side note: 2:04 - ma girl, that´s not Marx. Imagine talking about John Cotton and showing a picture of Hitler. Not that I would be opposed to such tomfoolery but I had to point it out.
On another side note: 10:55 - Dualism isnt inherent to our human psyche. It didnt have to be a black/white good/evil dichotomy.
Interesting viewpoint on what 'real' religions are, I'd argue the opposite. Real religions start orderly, and its cults, sects, and changes made to make it fit in with regional beliefs that turns those beliefs from an actual religion, into a colection of convenient superstitions.
🗿👍
I think it's a very interesting choice to make just one of your two gods eldritch. I wonder how their power levels scale up to each other. I mean the eldritch part can just be vibes, that's fine. They're cool vibes and they fit. But typically eldritch beings are so far beyond us that we cannot understand them. Which brings up the question how powerful the hunter is to be seen as an equal.
Maybe he is less powerful. A god from this world, while the wild god is from beyond this world. Maybe the wild god isn't as interested in our world as the hunter, so their total influence ends up being about the same. Maybe the hunter is as powerful here as the wild god is anywhere.
Or maybe the hunter is also from beyond this world, but his very nature is to be comprehensible. Or he chooses to be understandable to humans.
I think every choice you can make here is interesting, and I'd love to hear how it works in your world.
You had me at marxist
Marxist school
*Shows stalin*