Worldbuilding Wednesdays: One Man Show

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 how not even monotheistic religions believe in a singular god.

What We Have So Far

We're going to focus a lot on the polytheistic religion we made last week, because it's going to be fairly similar to our monotheistic religion.  This is for two reasons.  One:  we're lazy.  Two:  it turns out that many religious founders are also lazy.

Unfortunately, while we don't like the idea of pulling apart a religion that is currently being practiced, all of the known monotheistic religions have adherents to this day... which is crazy, all things considered, but beside the point.  Instead, we're going to look at the oldest monotheistic religion.  It only has 100,000 or so followers, so the odds are good that if we do say something offensive, none of them will be reading this anyway.

Just in case, though, sorry in advance.

So let's look at Zoroastrianism.  It is regarded as the oldest of the monotheistic religions, having begun a few hundred years before Judaism.  It also has the hallmarks of monotheism that we're principally interested in.  Specifically, the parts that demonstrate that the "mono" part of the religion is not signalling that there's only one god.

Zoroastrianism:  A Primer

Begun by the prophet Zoroaster roughly 4000 years ago, Zoroastrianism holds that there is a single, supreme being responsible for the creation of the universe.  This would be Ahura Mazda.

Now, we've already stated this, but the word "monotheism" comes from the Greek for "one god."  However, Zoroastrianism states that there are many more than Ahura Mazda.  Some, such as Ahriman (the Zoroastrian version of the Devil), stand in opposition to Ahura Mazda.  Some are Ahura Mazda's servants, and others are both gods in their own right and lesser aspects of Ahura Mazda himself.  So why is it considered monotheistic?

The chief difference between polytheistic religions, such as the Divine Councils we made last week, and monotheistic religions, such as Zoroastrianism, is that, while both groups have spiritual beings with roughly similar authority and responsibility, monotheisms have one singular being at the top.  This being is as far above the others as they are above us.

We mentioned this kind of arrangement when we discussed Tolkein's Middle-Earth setting.  Though the people of Middle-Earth mostly believed they were ruled over by an order of gods (the Maia), themselves ruled by a small family of greater gods (the Valar), if anyone asked the Maia or the Valar they would have insisted that they were no more than servants of the sole true god, Eru Illuvatar.  Zoroastrianism works the same way- while there are quite a few spiritual beings throughout the religion, including several that are worshipped outside of the religion as gods (Mithra is a good example:  within Zoroastrianism, he is considered the guardian spirit who oversees contracts; outside, he is a god in his own right, associated with the cosmos), within the religion, only one being gets the God with-a-capital-G title.

When you look at monotheistic religions in general, you'll see the same thing repeated over and over again.  By and large, when people say that a religion is monotheistic, they don't actually mean there's only one god.  What they mean is that there's only one god in charge.

Which brings us back to the Divine Councils.

Hostile Takeover

Monotheisms don't form in a vacuum.  They always form in opposition to other religions.  Always!  Look it up.  Roughly the same sequence of events happen each time:

1. Someone who once believed in "the old ways" becomes disillusioned and decides to learn "the truth."
2. They discover, usually through divine revelation, "the truth."  The truth is always that there is one god, greater than all the others, who is actually in charge.  Depending on the religion, they may also discover that the gods worshipped through "the old ways" are either false gods or actually servants of the one true god.
3. Religious infighting begins.  Depending on the doctrines preached by the new monotheism, this may be peaceful all the way up to genocidal.

With that in mind, the easiest way to develop a monotheistic religion for our world is to start with the polytheistic religion we had last time and repeat steps 1 through 3.  So:

A few generations back, one of the priests of the Divine Council became disillusioned with all the factional in-fighting.  In theory, each of the three councils was to rule equally over creation, running like a well-oiled machine.  In practice, squabbles occurred constantly, as furries, nu humans, and scalies argued over which Council held dominion over those parts of creation that all three were interested in.  The arguments weren't fierce enough to split the religion, but they were sufficient that this one priest (we randomly selected: male furry) found it hard to believe that the bastions of Order could actually get anything done.  They wandered to the top of the rollstone tree on The Hill, looked up at the night sky, and prayed for diving guidance.

When they came down from the tree, the priest had news: they had been visited by a god.  This god was not furry, scalie, or nu human; they were beyond form.  They ruled the heavens, the region thought shared by the Councils, for they were unto themselves a fourth Council greater than the others, which the other three served.  This explained everything: of course there was squabbling at the level of the Divine Councils.  For all their power and majesty, the gods of the Divine Council were as children arguing over toys at the benevolent not-feet of the true God.

One can imagine how the other priests took this "divine revelation" that they were worshipping children, not gods.

Divine Ecology

We now have a cult, folk beliefs, a saintly hero, a polytheistic religion, and a monotheistic religion all interacting in the city-state that exists on and by The Hill.  As time goes on, these conflicting beliefs will interact with each other to make an amalgam that the average person believes, much as happens in real life.  And for those who believe that they are pure believers of the one true faith, we will not argue the point.  We'll simply mention that many folks go to one church their entire life, and believe that one god is in charge of everything, but also believe that saints can intercede on their behalf; that certain superstitions should be followed lest you invite trouble into your house; and that holidays first started by other religions are time-honored traditions that must be observed. 

The people of our world are the same way.  The average furry, for example, will likely state that they believe in one God, but worship a member of the furry Divine Council, who serves as an intermediary.  They will teach their children stories about Mama Aanaga, she of the ashen fur who so wisely convinced all peoples to work together to make The City, and that respect should be shown to Grandfather Tree, for he is an important elder in their pack.  A similar scene plays out in the houses of the nu humans, and many of the scalie inventor-gladiators loudly proclaim their love of a specific god while aspiring to the celebrity status of the cult leader.

This interaction between religions may or may not, depending on the story you want to tell, matter.  The existence of the religions, however, is important for a task that we've put off for far too long:  naming things.  The vast majority of basic concepts, such as the days of the week, the moons, the ocean, and the world itself, all get their names from various religions, both living and dead.  We aren't quite crazy enough to build an entire religion just to call it extinct and then pull names from it, but we will happily mine the religions we've just made for the same purpose.

Conclusion

We've found religion, and we've got a plan to use those religions to liberally color our world.  To do that, however, we're going to need to do one last thing.  We're going to need to name the various things in the religions that we are then going to name the other things after.

This means next week is going to feature less of an article and more of a list.  You've been warned, folks.