Worldbuilding Wednesdays: Choosing Chosen Ones

Welcome to Worldbuilding Wednesdays!  Every Wednesday, we spend what is probably far too much time walking through our worldbuilding process.  This week, we're going to talk about the close, personal relationship people have with their gods in folk religions.

Locally Sourced

Let's open by going through how folk religions work.  And we'll explain that by discussing hardware stores.

Let's say that you've moved into a new neighborhood, and belatedly discover that your house belongs to a Homeowners' Association, or HOA.  Now, there are a lot of horror stories about HOA's out there, but this one is surprisingly reasonable.  They only have one rule: you have to build and maintain a shrine to the god that watches over the HOA.  Not god with a capital "G," they aren't omnipotent or anything like that.  They simply live in the area and represent the HOA's interests when interactions between gods in general occur.  They're the supernatural version of a lawyer the HOA keeps on retainer, just in case, and your shrine dues are what pay the retaining fee.

A little weird, but hey, you know that it could be worse.  There is one small issue, though; you are the newest homeowner by a couple of decades, and it's been so long since anyone had to build a shrine that nobody really remembers how to do it.  No problem, you say.  You ask for, and get, permission from your neighbors to take pictures, take measurements, and do some sketches of the shrines that are already up.  You do some Googling, watch a couple of "Make Your Own Shrine" YouTube videos, take notes, and head on down to the hardware store.  You take care to only pick up and use the same materials you found in the other shrines, and you do your level best to put together a shrine that looks just like everyone else's.

And hey, it's more or less a success!  Your new shrine isn't identical to the older shrines, but it's pretty close, and your neighbors are reasonably impressed.  Some jokes are made about how you're the local handyman now, and you feel proud and accepted when you get an invite to the next neighborhood barbecue.  All's well that ends well!

Something that you probably won't consider, though, is that this was literally the best-case scenario.  You were never going to get it exactly right, and the reason is the hardware store.  See, despite the fact that you sourced your materials from the same hardware store, you didn't get the same materials.  You couldn't; the exact same materials don't exist anymore.  For example, even if you and the people who built the older shrines both got 2x4 lumber from the hardware store, and even if the hardware store has been using the same lumber supplier for the past 100 years, the trees they're using for the lumber have changed.

This is, by the way, a real, actual problem in construction.

Now imagine that this HOA has been around for awhile.  As in, centuries, maybe more.  And every time a shrine gets replaced, something similar happens.  One guy has to use screws instead of nails, and once the older shrines are gone, everyone moving forward thinks that all shrines are supposed to have screws.  Another couldn't get the angle right on the shrine's roof and just made what he could; eventually, all the shrines have a shed roof instead of a gabled roof.  Given enough time, even with the best of intentions and people who know what they're doing, the shrines are going to differ drastically from how they looked originally.  Given just normal people making the shrines, the changes are going to be coming much faster.

And that's how folk religions work!

Nuance Needed

Well, okay, there are some differences, but the process is fairly similar.  Folk religions typically don't rise to answer the big questions that the other religious forms do.  They tell local stories and teach local practices, often derived from other religions whose structure has gone through an exceedingly long game of "telephone."  Folk religions are the result of generation upon generation explaining, in a spiritual sense, "Well, they might do it like so over there, but over here we do it like this."

When this is done on purpose, it's called heresy.  When it's done on accident, it's called a localized variant.  And when the region has enough of an identity to influence the changes, what you have is a folk religion.

To give you a real-world example, look at North American trickster gods.  Raven in the Pacific Northwest and Coyote in the Southwest are worshipped as powerful gods by multiple peoples, and are semi-independent of the religions that worship them.  They are also perceived quite differently, based on the religion and the people in question.  To the Lakota, Raven is an enigmatic messenger, a psychopomp, and a guide.  To the Tlingit, Raven is what would happen if you put Jesus and Loki together, to the point that he impregnates a woman with himself, causes her to have a virgin birth, and grows to become a son so loved that he got away with stealing the sun, the moon, and the stars to give to everyone.  Similarly, Coyote is considered a creator deity by the Crow and a bit lower on the ladder by the Pueblo.  The Aztecs considered him but one of the forms of their god of night, Tezcatlipoca.  Each version was venerated in a different way, viewed in a different light, and demanded a different form of sacrifice, from alcohol to human.

In each case, the broader religious figure was reinterpreted a different light depending on what the local people needed from them.  Folk religions work in much the same way- not only do they take beliefs and adapt them as necessary for the area, they also take religious mythology and mold it into their own image.

Which leads us to our last topic on folk religions, and how we're going to make a folk religion for our city: the folk hero.

The Chosen One(s)

We have three peoples living in the city by The Hill.  The nu humans, furries, and scalies have all been residing in this city for mutual benefit since before writing was a thing.  Obviously, as all people do, they'll want to tell the story of how they all got together.  They'll pass it down via stories told around fires, and over time, the stories will change.  Some of the changes will be unintentional.  Some will be designed not just to tell a story but also to teach a lesson.  Some will fall victim to the self-aggrandizement common to all people.  Quite a bit will be mixed with other stories, such as the stories told about Grandfather Tree from last week.  Over time, the history of the city's founding will become the myth of the city's founding.

And, because we think it's funny, each of the three species will tell a slightly different version of the story.  All three will agree that the city's founding was spearheaded by one person, Mama Aanaga.  Mama Aanaga will, over time, take on aspects that depend on which species is telling the story; to the scalies, she drives men to heights of innovation with her beauty and charm, while to the nu humans her keen vision is instrumental in putting the city together, and to the furries her silent patience is legendary.  She is the patron saint of the city, the one figure that any citizen will rally to and defend.

And nobody can agree what species she is.

The scalies argue that Mama Aanaga watches from the heavens, urging her children to greater heights, exactly as a female scalie would.  The nu humans point to her pervasive activity, a sure sign of humanity.  The furries quietly assert that no one but a furry could accomplish so much with nary a word spoken.

The truth is beside the point, and honestly, if you were making a folk religion built around the antics of Mama Aanaga, we would recommend against ever deciding what the truth is.  The important thing is that there is enough for each of the folk religions that worship her to make a case that they have the correct answer.  After that, you build a religion as normal, colored by her teachings and flavored by the locals.

Conclusion

We've passed the halfway point on religions.  We still have to work through polytheism, which we'll do next week, and monotheism comes after that.  Last will be nontheism, which may be either the shortest or the longest discussion, depending on how well we manage to word it.  Depending on how much you like our rambling, you can place your bets and say your prayers accordingly.