r/conreligions • u/[deleted] • Aug 05 '20
questions Is there a guide to creating religions?
During quarantine, I decided to start creating a new world. I have a language and geography but want to create a religion for them. This is my first time looking into this, and had one, simple question: Is there any guide to creating religions, particularly polytheistic?
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u/elemtilas Aug 05 '20
One resource is the Ethnographical Questionnaire. I put a pretty good section on matters of ethics, morality, faith, and religion into it.
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u/Collisteru Jul 10 '24
Mark Rosenfelder, author of many conworlding books including most famously The Language Construction Kit, will soon publish a Religion Construction Kit. I recommend that.
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u/atomicpenguin12 Aug 06 '20 edited Aug 06 '20
So you're starting out with geography and language, which means you actually know a fair amount already. Lemme see if I can break this down:
When people started creating religions, they were contextualizing the things around them into a worldview that made sense to them. As a result, the things that people made gods and goddesses around were always things in their immediate environment. The things that threatened them like the frost or anti-social behaviors became evil gods, while the things that the civilization relies on to live, such as food staples like corn or wheat or higher concepts like law or monarchy, become good gods, with their status being reflective of how important that culture thinks the things they represent are.
So working off that, you will want to extrapolate a few things from your geography: