Of not so generous gods - The trope of religion

 Hi there!

It’s time for a good, old fashioned Dissecting Literature post since we haven’t done this for quite some time. As we said in the last post, editing and life carried us away, but there are many interesting topics left in the world we’d like to cover. 

This post was in my mind for quite some time, I just didn’t want to stick my head into a hornet nest with today’s topic – religion. But live at let live is a great motto, so now I’ll try to stay objective and keep away from anything judgemental (it’s a great way to find peace with others and yourself). 

Religions exist from the beginning of human culture. It’s in our nature to seek answers about the world, because – as H. P. Lovecraft put it – our greatest fear is the unknown. On a practical side, every religion tries to answer the same questions: the beginning, the end, and what happens in between. Science can answer most of these to a certain level, but there will always be more questions. 

A professor of mine said that where recognition ends, God begins. (He was deeply religious, but he’s got a point). We can’t know everything, not now nor in the future, and thus there is always a place for interpretation. Beyond knowledge is always faith; that’s why religion has a rightful place even in science-fiction with advanced technology and science. And of course, fantasy usually takes place before the industrial revolution of its world, so religion is part of everyday life, just like in reality. It is a basic need to find comfort in something divine if people have a lot of questions, uncertainty, and death.

If a religion claims to be realistic, there are a few concepts that are almost always present, stemming from the human psyche. To dissect this absolute unit of a trope, let’s head back to the questions I mentioned earlier.

I. The Beginning

First, we need a deity who created the world. In many ancient and/or tribal religions, this deity is either passive or dead, or someone’s death serves as the act of creation. A good example of the latter is the death of Ysmir in Norse mythology whose corpse literally became the world. (https://norse-mythology.org/tales/norse-creation-myth/) Some myths are more extreme, like with the Aztecs, where all the gods sacrificed themselves to create a new age. One of my favorite books, the Magicians by Lev Grossman also chose this option and implemented it perfectly in the third book, The Magician’s Land. 

Other times the creator entity isn’t so important, it just does the Big Bang then leaves. In Greek mythology, there was a bird born of the void called Nyx (sometimes identified as the goddess of night and mother of all personification deities like death and dreams), who laid a golden egg. From this egg emerged Eros, the god of love (actually more like sexual desire), while the lower half of the egg became Gaia, the Earth, and the upper turned into Uranus the Sky. Now Eros, Uranus and Gaia remained active participants in Greek myths, Nyx, however, is barely mentioned at this point.

II. Birth and life

A very frequent figure in real-world religions is some kind of goddess, mostly a consort to the chief deity/world maker. In many ancient cultures, this goddess was a personification of Earth and everything birthed from it, like animals and crops. Later concepts of fertility and childbirth joined it, as sometimes the fertilization of the land was also considered a sexual act, making the plow a phallic symbol (like in ancient Rome). Archaic communities relied on fertile land, but they only had a basic idea of why the food grows and how can the soil be fertile. Where recognition ends, God begins, so they did the only thing that was seemingly working: they prayed for the good harvest.

The concept of womanhood was never unified for any culture, and as such, different goddesses were created for the many aspects of a woman’s life. Like Hera as the wife, Aphrodite as the beautiful and oversexualized seductress, or Demeter as the caregiving mother (especially if we consider her relationship with Persephone). You can also look at the Morrigan who had three different aspects, the Maiden, the Mother, and Crone (a really common division). 

The concept of worshipping a goddess was so strong and rooted in culture it leaked into Christianity. Many pagan aspects were christianified to make the Church more alluring to different peoples, and the goddess of women and fertility turned into the Virgin Mary, mother of Christ and sole human born without sin (a note here, considering Mary as a goddess is still unorthodox and goes against catholic canon, but her worship is sometimes indistinguishable from that of God’s; this is one of the problems the protestant church has against Catholicism). 

III. The end

The third very basic concept is death. Every religion has an afterlife and an idea that what will happen to the soul after death. To inspire people to live a good life  - what is considered as a good life is a matter of culture – they need a “good place” to go after death and some “bad place” for those who failed to uphold the teachings. It’s not necessarily a hell-like place with fire and brimstone, it can be lonely, or grey, or anything but happy and vivid. Both the underworld and damnation needs a ruler, an overseer who smites the vile and rewards the just. 

The god of death isn’t necessarily evil, because death itself isn’t evil, but a natural part of life. People need something to ease their fear of it or at least explain it somewhat. Those who still live also need rituals to say goodbye to their loved ones when their time comes. It’s a psychological need even among those not of any faith, and the lack of a proper burial can lead to pathological grief.

IV. The bad and the scary

When the death god is a decent guy or girl, something still has to explain all the pain and suffering, and since no other god would harm humanity, there’s a deity in most religions solely to cause evil. It can be a mostly harmless mischief god (like Loki), or the concrete opposite of the chief deity, embodying fear, plagues, catastrophes and cruelty like the Slavic Chernobog. Even monotheistic religions kept that part, like the Abrahamic devil or Satan.

Since most people need a last straw to hold onto, every patron deity is a nice touch to a realistic religion. A god for the scholars, a god for the craftsmen, to soldiers, every group of people to have someone personal, who will pay attention just for them. If you have mages then of course you have to include their creation to the equation as well, maybe give them a god too. 

Elements of nature were also commonly known to have their own gods, like lightning (imagine how frightening it could be back then!), volcanos, the oceans and the sea (also terrifying, have you ever seen a deep-sea fish?!). Anything unexplainable and terrifying lead to the creation of gods such as Pele, Thor, and Poseidon.  People need the illusion of control. Even if you can’t understand something, you can still pray to an angry god to withdraw his fury and calm the storm. Forcing the gods to do something for you is more like magic, however, and that is another topic in another post. 😊

What about when everything is piled onto one being, you may ask? Well, portraying monotheistic religions is a beehive in itself, but the principles and the questions still stand. That one deity can be both the creator and taker of life, but you will still run into questions your characters may ask, like where do evil and suffering come from, or where is this omnipotent god. You will need rituals, a concept of the afterlife, and some answers to natural occurrences Do it at your own peril, though.

As you might have realized, I didn’t really talk about concrete literature examples for fictional religions, because then this post would swell tenfold and nobody would read it. We’ll return next week, however, taking a look at how the more and less famous authors implemented these topics into their work.

See you next time,

Lory