LibArc Blogs

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Okay this is sorta of a companion piece of sorts to an article a friend of mine wrote on his live journal. You can peek at it here. I'll be doing look on religion and it's roles to help you figure out how to build a realistic one for your fictional culture.

Now a quick note, this guide is for the most part meant for use if you are building a pre-industrial world and is mostly aimed for Iron Age or lower. The Industrial Revolution or it's equalivent changes the rules drastically. I'm writing mostly from classes I have taken while here at ASU, these classes are Anthropology and Religion classes in the main. I'll be going mostly on memory since my home connection is down. If it ever comes back up I'll drag out the books and notes and see if I can find any errors Okay? Okay.

Okay let's start with Religion:

There are some basic religious beliefs that you'll want to know about.

Animism is the belief that all things have a spirit or soul inhabiting them. They inhabit animals, plants and inanimate objects and of course people. Because of this, the priest or shaman (most societies practicing this are tribal in nature) spends alot of his time speaking to and placating these spirits. He may also have spirit guides who aide him in his religious tasks. Any god like spirits are going to be exactly that, just really powerful spirits, who while packing alot of mojo aren't necessarily separate or special compared to other spirits.

Polytheism is the belief in many gods. These gods are distinct and special compared to spirits, which may or may not exist in Polytheism. Priests tend to serve a certain god, but admit to the existence of all of them and will do sacrifices to the others if warranted. Usually there pretty large number of gods most of them being "place" gods. For example the Greek's believed each river had it's own god and the Sumerian believed each city had a local god of it's own. These gods while important to the locals didn't have the pull of the higher up gods (the classical 13 of Greece or Marduk and company for the Sumerians) and so if you wanted something really big you had to go to the big boys.

Dualism, two gods, which are usually opposite in some manner from each other but not always opposed. Zoarastrianism divided the two gods on moral grounds. Ahura-Mazda was the god and leader of the forces of good and light. Ahriman was the god and leader of the forces of evil and darkness. They both were determined to duke it out for the fate of the world until someone won. Zoarastrians were pulling for Ahura. Wicca on the flip side divided the two on natures, not morals. The goddess is female and has the attributes associated with that gender in our culture, the god is male and has his attributes. It is interesting to note that Wiccans generally pray to the goddess half of the duo, influenced maybe by frustration and alienation from generally a Christian or other male monotheism background.

Monotheism the belief in a single god. This god can be one single whole (Allah, Jehovah) or a union of sorts (The Trinity of Jesus, God the Father and the Holy Spirit). Currently it is the belief system of over half the planet (Christianity at last count clocked in at little over 2 billion, Islam with over 1 billion, Judhism in the low double digit millions and a number of other monotheist sects like the Baha'i in the low millions). While there is only one God, there is usually a rebellious evil figure (Satan) along with servant spirits on both sides (angels and demons) and mortals can be risen to positions of power (saints in Catholism and Orthodox Christianity as well as the 12 Imans of Shitte Islam).

Now each of these religion types share similarities and have differences, there are examples in the real world that blur the differences between them as well. We're not going to get to into that though since I'm not writing a damn book on this.

The role of religion is a large one in a pre-industrial society and alot of that has to do with the role of religion in farming. No you didn't read that wrong. Before we came up with factories and power tools, farming took up the vast majority of labor within a group. While 9 times of out of 10 the farmers themselves weren't high status folks (think now, who ranks higher, the knight or the serf? The peasent or the Samurai?) they were doing an important job and everyone damn well knew it. It was also a messy, smelly, back breaking, man killer of a job and everyone knew it.

Because of this fertility spirits, gods and goddess are the ones that most average day folks are concerned with. Most of the time these supernatural beings weren't just concerned about the fertility of humans but of animals and plants. This is a big deal when if your corps fail you die. Priests or Shamans were often the most learned guy in the area, so it feel to them to tell ya when to plant and when to harvest. If you had problems with the corps or animals, you went to the priest. Fertility rites and rituals are likely to be the most widely practiced of a religion and depending on the ritual itself will be a community event (community events are usually tamer then the stereotypical orgy you're thinking of, of course one way to cure to a barren field was to pick a young couple to go out and have sex on it so your mileage may vary). Until Catholicism, most religions did not require their priests and priestess to be chaste and celibate (yes they're two different things look it up) in fact in some religions like ancient Canaan where temple prostitution was practiced it was the opposite. In other faiths, it was expected that the priest would marry and have children and the skill at which they did this and kept the family would reflect upon the priest's professional abilities as well. You can see a little of this in early Christianity as well when Paul writes that only married men with children who kept their families in good order should be made bishops. So I would strongly suggest against Priests who don't have carnal relations.

Religion also dictates a bit in war as well. It tells you when you can fight, why you can fight, how you can fight and who you can fight... I hate to say it but this is often completely ignored or twisted into a pretzel . It might be realistic to have your religion have rules of conduct and then show the majority of the people not following them very well. Unless god/the gods gets up and actually enforces those rules.

I'll use the Catholics as an example. This may be shocking to some but the Catholic Chruches role in European wars was actually to limit the violence. Or I should say attempt to limit the violence. The Peace of God and the Truce of God were religious limitations on warfare. Christian armies were not to fight each other on certain days (Christmas, Easter, the days surrounding those holidays, Saint days, fasts days, and Sunday was always right out), they were to always grant quarter to each other (taking prisoners and such), women, children, serfs (who weren't suppose to be armed) and of course priests were to be left alone. Prisoners should be treated with respect and not tortured. Rape, murder and other such acts are out the window. A quick read of history shows that Catholism didn't quiet get what it wanted in this regards, in fact if we're gonna be honest, it failed utterly and often ignored it own rules. What about the others?

Islam declares that muslims shouldn't fight other muslims, to fight only in self defense, not to torture, lie, or molest noncombatives... (looks at Iraq Iran war, medieval wars between Islamic powers, Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Arabic rebellions against the Ottoman empire)... Okay, Islam had all the success of Catholicism. Moving on.

Japanese Buddhism prompted the rules of Buddisho and giri. Part of this was an heavy emphasis on personal honesty, honor and loyalty. The Samurai I am sad to say were as shifty and prone to back stabbing as the rest of them.

The rules in various Polytheistic religions were varied. The Norse gods encouraged one on one combat and family loyalties. The Greek gods didn't have a unifed policy but didn't lay to many rules on war either (expect maybe don't fuck with our temples). It was perfectly okay by them to throw Hector's infant son off a cliff and enslave his wife after Troy fell for example, but they came down on Ajax pretty hard for defiling one of the temples during the sack.

Religion is also going to be an innate part of how the culture looks at the world. It influences and is influenced by what is going on around it. Look at it this way, a warrior people living in a harsh land where survival is difficult are not going to have a religion where they're told to take it easy and just be cool. Harsh environments are going to have harsh cultures and religions. More lush and fertile environments will have more laid back cultures and religions (this doesn't mean they're peaceful ones, just not as harsh).

More to come.