Conreligions

[Izambri]

speaking of which, have people here done any monotheistic conreligions?

It depends on your definition of monotheism.

Hellesans believe in a Divinity (sagheu, in Hellesan) whose nature is non corporeal, omniscient and omnipresent. From a physical point of view is what causes the Universe to have energy and movement (and, obviously, life) in contrast to the static part of the Cosmos (which some Megadelanean cultures believe to be another deity, generating a dual divinity in those cases). It's not really worshiped by many cultures though (among them the Hellesans), being basically a matter of study for theologists.

In what we could call the cult sphere we have various groups of beings that are worshiped. The Gods (mans "God(s)" or maires "Great ones" in Hellesan) are a group of people from another race that once ruled the world and gave the Humans enough knowledge the to develop science and build civilizations. There are corporeal and mortal beings, and are worshiped by practically all cultures.
Among Megadelanean cultures they have enough protagonism and are the top deities to be worshiped. Some cultures, though, among them the Hellesans, prefer to worship only a few of them (Gam Tinoc, Idi, Dianame, Metres and Idachi) and only in an idle way (with the very exception of Idi, since she is, in a certain way, the unifying force of the Hellesan people).

The group that gets more attention are the spirits (terasmis in Hellesan), a generic name for the energies of nature, living beings and dead beings. Natural spirits are classified into various groups and subgroups, and represent the active ( "deities") and passive (feris "genies") forces of nature. An inbetween group is that of the spirits of living beings; that is the souls of beings that are not dead yet. All of them are worshiped in the public (ecclesia) and private (at home) sphere, and get much more attention and devotion than the Gods.

From the perspective of Hellesans and the other Megadelanean cultures the cult of the Sacred (sagandame) implies the worship of all these beings, so we could think of them to be polytheistic, but at the same time they recognize the existence of a single, superior, Divinity (so the monotheistic element is also present). Pantheism and pantheistic may be more appropiate in that case.

[Imralu]

I didn't know di/bi/double-theism was so popular! That's the system I've had for the Taahe for a while. I haven't developed it too much but basically the two deities have an opposition thing going on. People who want to be monks/nuns go to worship one of the two gods specifically, and they try to keep both sets with about the same amount of members. If they don't, then when the unevenly powerful god becomes enraged they will destroy the world (by fire or flooding depending on which one it is). Also Kíihes'éw (land of the Taahe) is a theocracy, so blasphemy etc. is illegal.

That's pretty much how my system works (in all three of my con-cultures - because I'm a self-thief) except it's not water vs fire, it's creation-life-female versus destruction-death-male. The number of members worshipping each is balanced by the ratio of females to males, however, their acts of worship must be reasonably balanced, and not too weak.

[Rhetorica]

So far I've got two systems worked out, Ksreskézaian emotionalism and Lilitic polytheism.

The Ksreskézai, being large creatures of volatile temperament, often found themselves at odds with their own emotions; so much so that they began inventing supernatural explanations for regrettable decisions. Eventually this spread to their entire emotional palette, and as a result all of their emotions were eventually interpreted as possessions by spirits; any inkling of a thought would be latched onto by a nearby "whim". The spirits then fed on the emotional high, explaining why the emotions would dissipate.

There were several different schemes for categorizing the emotions, adhered to by different levels of theological inquiry. The simplest was that the mighty sun was the home of all courageous, outgoing emotions (revelry, anger) and the cowardly moon sent forth all introspective emotions (sorrow, serenity), leading to some persecution of those who did not live by the sun's glory. More educated persons would orient their worldview around a constructive/destructive alignment first, and then a self/others alignment within that. Finally, many alchemists constructed detailed bestiaries of the spirits, assigning them Lovecraftesque appearances and hideous-sounding "true" names.

Throughout all of this, their slaves (who would later become the Lilitai) went along with this scheme, not knowing much better. Because of constant contact to the Ksreskézai, they developed a sort of culture-bound psychosis where it was normal to experience such overwhelming emotions. When the Ksreskézai died and the constant high-strung, abrasive emotional environment finally dissipated, it was interpreted as the spirits being vanquished—except for those that fed on mourning, anyway.

As they developed as a society the Lilitai came to terms with an essentially agnostic worldview, but having been governesses and copyists in many cases they were keenly aware of the power of myth and fairy-tale. The great writer Reséa Tshúkotía (23081 KSEPO - 1029 LILPO), known usually by her agnomen Sarthía ("author"), was the most productive myth-writer, inventing a pantheon based on personifying emotional needs. Central to this pantheon was the goddess Zeltetéa, the spirit of creativity, so chosen not just because Sarthía herself was an artist, but because creative expression was a key asset in managing the crippling depression of a group of homeless nomads trapped in a handful of tin cans in an infinite black void.

To a degree, all Lilitai let themselves get carried away by the fantasies Sarthía wrote, even though her notes and intentions are a matter of public record. The afterlife Neptarlekína is a form of eternal shared dreaming, but the wicked and cruel must spend aeons in purgatory before they are renewed enough to join the dream-time. As dreaming is thought to be a glimpse into all potential unrealised realities, graceful entry to Neptarlekína is highly desired. The newly dead contribute their experiences to the afterlife and unlock more of the canvas of all potential realities (even benefiting the living, who may now dream of more things), so there is incentive to live a full and interesting life that will add constructively. (Eternal judgement by one's peers gets surprisingly tiresome.)

More information on both systems (slightly out of date since I just made up the sun/moon stuff.)
Index of deities and other belief-related articles

[Zaarin]

I have a quasi-monolatrous conreligion, wherein there is a pantheon of thirteen deities but every individual devotes himself (or herself) to the worship of only one of them. All the gods regard order and respect for authority as the very highest virtue, and chaos and rebellion as the worst evils. They're also pretty well convinced that only humans have souls (which makes their relationship with my other conspecies more than a little rocky--but who cares what a bunch of soulless savages think? ).

[R.Rusanov]

...You've outlined a very unstable recipe for a suicidally reckless culture. In practice the only type of malignant religion/culture that really thrives is an empire that can take what it wants and then absorbs new followers, as with the Ottomans, Catholics, or Nazis.

I guess your argument is that a religion can only be succesful if it keeps making converts. In that case it might behoove you to think of Pacÿn as a frat, guild, or other brotherly organization meant to provide its worshippers with a community to belong to and tangible benefits for doing so. That kind of organization does not benefit by recruiting wantonly. Rather the Jdag tend to buy from each other, keeping resources within the community; to have their children worship, study, and associate with each other, creating lasting bonds; and interact as a group with other societies, not siding with others against their brethren. Trust and group rituals are important in their culture...

It has been well known for a long time that individual groups in a free-trade society benefit by mercantilist practices and the Jdag fill this niche in the societies around them.

[Dewrad]

In spite of a couple of weird ideas (see, for example, the world-view of Akana's Proto-Westerners) I'm actually relatively pedestrian when it comes to creating conreligions. The speakers of Proto-Wenetic practiced a fairly bog-standard Indo-European polytheism. The speakers of Classical Tailancan had a relatively unexceptional polytheistic religion, with a sky god, a death god, deities of the dawn and the moons etc. In the descendant cultures this transmuted into a vaguely Zoroastrianism-style revealed monotheism, with the original sun god (Pharnos) at its head.

However, the forerunners of the Tailancan speakers as dominant Adeian civilisation, the Achaunoi, had what I think is a pretty funky religion. On the surface, it was an almost shinto-like animism/polytheism. However, the catch is that the Achaunoi believed that their gods were dead. All of them: their creation myth has the gods creating the earth out of their own bodies. Reasonably, the Achaunoi believed that without a body you're dead, and your spirit goes to the underworld. So ultimately, all of their deities were dii otiosi, without involvement or contact with the corporeal world.

Obviously, this is somewhat inconvenient from a religious point of view. For example: you desperately need rain or your crops will fail, your children will die, your neighbours will riot and society will collapse. In a normal society, you pray for rain, you sacrifice the appropriate animals and you will (hopefully) get rain. For an Achaunese peasant, this is somewhat tricky. The deity you pray to is too dead to care, let alone do anything. Somehow, you need to revive your deity, bringing him back from the dead so he can send rain. Luckily, the deity's body is all around you. But it's dead. What differentiates a dead body from a living one? Blood. You pour out (copious) amounts of living blood on the ground, the deity revives long enough to grant your request, everyone's happy.

As far as action is concerned, so far so normal. Having your petitions to the divine accompanied by copious amounts of gore is relatively unexceptional as far as most archaic polytheisms are concerned. Even having incredibly localised deities actually located in the surrounding landscape isn't all that weird (you can't pray to the neighbouring city's deity as his body is under that city: the blood you spill here can't get there). About the only thing that was initially a bit weird is the idea that any prayer had to be accompanied by blood: pious Achaunoi would nick their forearms with a flint knife for any kind of prayer, even things like mealtime prayers.

It only started to get weird as Achaunese culture developed and became more powerful. To give thanks for a big victory, you need a big ritual, for which you need lots of blood. As the victories got bigger, so did the rituals and the amounts of blood. And big rituals became status displays: pretty much any ritual would be accompanied by a scale of death which would make even the high priests of Tenochtitlan blush. All of which is fine when things are going well. Unfortunately, a combination of factors (environmental degradation, global temperature increase, deforestation and catastrophic soil erosion) meant that eventually things stopped going well. Clearly the dead gods had stopped listening: more blood was needed. Catastrophic, desperate wars were waged to provide prisoners and when those started to go badly, bands of death-priests would roam the country snatching and sacrificing Achaunese peasants at random. This is not sustainable, obviously, and the whole civilisation eventually collapsed.

However, Achaunese religion lingered on to resurface as varying species of heresies and necromantic cults in later Tailancan culture. While the classical western image of a mage is a vaguely Faust-like figure summoning demons, the corresponding Tailancan image is of someone soaked in blood trying to wake up the dead.

[Rhetorica]

I guess your argument is that a religion can only be succesful if it keeps making converts. In that case it might behoove you to think of Pacÿn as a frat, guild, or other brotherly organization meant to provide its worshippers with a community to belong to and tangible benefits for doing so. That kind of organization does not benefit by recruiting wantonly. Rather the Jdag tend to buy from each other, keeping resources within the community; to have their children worship, study, and associate with each other, creating lasting bonds; and interact as a group with other societies, not siding with others against their brethren. Trust and group rituals are important in their culture...

It has been well known for a long time that individual groups in a free-trade society benefit by mercantilist practices and the Jdag fill this niche in the societies around them.

That's alright; but now it's just even more like the Illuminati or Freemasons and cult-like. The whole cur-slaughtering policy still going to get noticed and raise eyebrows, pitchforks, and torches, though. Best be careful!

[Matrix]

However, the catch is that the Achaunoi believed that their gods were dead.

I've actually got something vaguely similar going on with the Salenzians on Maikros. They started off with IE-style pantheons, with the twist that they believed that the power of a god and the power of its worshippers were correlated. Naturally, when the Prophans conquered the southern Salenzian mainland, its native inhabitants despaired not only at their own loss, but the loss of their gods, as well. They were hit so hard that they actually believed that their gods were lost to them, and kind of sulked in a cultural haze for a number of centuries until the high point of the Prophan Empire, the Pax Prophana, during which the great classical writers of Salenzian culture did their thing.

The main point that was passed down to posterity was that the gods were lost forever, but that this should not inspire despair, because people shouldn't be putting hope into these sorts of external things. In fact, lack of hope = lack of despair is a major factor in Salenzian culture. The product of this is a philosophy called Collective Self-Reliance, in which the group is responsible for its own affairs, especially solving its own problems. Note, though, that 'the group' can be defined at multiple levels - while an individual village would be responsible for dealing with its own thieves, it would not be expected to deal with, say, an invading army, which would be a problem of the state, and as members of the state, the villagers could expect help from - and to help - other members of the state.

This also has the consequence that traditional Salenzian culture is sort of atheistic - while they believe that various deities exist and are worshipped by other people, they believe theirs are gone, and so they do not include any form of worship in their culture. That doesn't mean that there is no religion on Salenzis, however. This traditional view, while the most widespread, is only one option. There are actual religions practiced on the continent: In the south, you have the Prophan pantheon, which has some adherents mostly in the most southerly reaches. There are also Sublimism and Onyxianism, which are both monolatristic faiths. Sublimism arose during the Pax Prophana, so there is a bit of crossover between it and Traditional Salenzianism. It is centred around the worship of a figure called the Sublime Goddess. She is most well known outside of her religion for preaching equality and anti-necromantic sentiments. Onyxianism, on the other hand, comes almost two centuries after the end of the Pax, and is a revival of an ancient pre-Salenzian faith based in the magical transit of the land of Ticondera into the continent of Salenzis. It is endemic to the city-state of Onyxia, while Sublimism can be found all over the south - especially its homeland, Igion - aside from Zarcos, where religion is outlawed.

The people of Zarcos are actually not Salenzic in origin, though they are part of the larger group, Salenzo-Toletskan - Zarcosic peoples are the original settlers of Salenzis, and as such, their native religion was quite different from that of the Salenzic peoples. It was based on the worship of a figure called the Phoenix King, who valued such things as stasis, protection, and healing, among other things. This focus on stasis eventually put the religion at odds with the Hatiianzo dynasty of Zarcos, who, in their mad, paranoid search for non-magical power, began implementing research programs that eventually made Zarcos the non-magical technological powerhouse of Maikros. The Hatiianzo monarchs, feeling threatened by the dissenting clergy, campaigned against them, disseminating propaganda, burning sacred texts, and holding lots of executions. The religion only survived in a few, very tiny, very underground enclaves, weathering through the Hatiianzo dynasty, until the social reforms of the post-Great Salenzian War Torimo dynasty allowed them to come out into the open and grow.

In the north of Salenzis, there are various IE-style pantheons, untouched by the Prophan Empire.

If you want blood sacrifice, however, you have to cross either the Vast or Dotted Oceans to the Talurmen Empire. The state religion of the Talurmen Empire is based around emperor-worship. Its adherents believe that there is a Heaven where various gods reside. However, these gods want nothing to do with Maikros - except one. He is said to have descended to Maikros because he loved humanity and wanted to lead it to glory. This First Emperor, however, found himself eventually growing old - surprise surprise, descending to the mortal word made him mortal. So he furiously did research and experimentation and eventually found a way to have a pseudo-immortality. This is the practice of the heir to the Empire ritually sacrificing his predecessor (usually his father) and eating his heart. This is supposed to transfer the Imperial Soul, and thus the right to rule. This practice eventually spread to the high warrior class - the much-feared cavalry of the Empire - wherein the warriors will take and eat the hearts slain opponents and allies to gain their power. There are also many other faiths within the Empire, which it tolerates as long as the Emperor comes first.

I haven't done much about Toletskan culture, but given that they are the other major half of the Salenzo-Toletskan linguistic family, their religion(s) will probably be an elaboration on IE-style stuff.

[sirred]

One major function of the priesthood in Chompi society is to act as an oracle. For example, when a Chompi couple is engaged, the bride-to-be's family will bring a goat to the local temple (poorer families will use a chicken, or a dog). The priest will slaughter the animal and read its liver. If the omen is good, a date will be set and the animal will be consumed. If the omen is bad, the couple will not be wed and the animal will be burned.

[Edit: Added.]

[Torco]

sounds like romantic challengers to the spouses-to-be would be wise to ingratiate themselves to the local priests then!

[sirred]

How absurd, Torco! Surely no rational person would do such a thing. Sure, getting with the (wo)man of your dreams and all, but it would waste a perfectly edible goat! Joking aside, that sort of thing could crop up with anyone in a position of power. Those who have the powerful's ear can (and do) influence them to their own advantage.

[احمکي ارش-ھجن]

Has anyone done a religion of UFO/Aliens being portrayed as gods? In other words, UFO religions?

[Genome]

Has anyone done a religion of UFO/Aliens being portrayed as gods? In other words, UFO religions?

OMGeez !!!!!! I love the show Ancient Aliens !!!!!!

[KathTheDragon]

I looked over a religion sketch my friend did for his aliens (in a story he's rewriting), and I managed to work out a way to link that pantheon with the Nordic pantheon via aliens, if that counts.