Fantasy religion and culture

[salamandraga]

So originally I was thinking about adding a few little things to help flesh out my fantasy religion while avoiding cultural appropriation. I've created the mythology and come up with the structure of the faith. My characters pray, blaspheme, and utter minced oaths. I've made holidays, festivals, and folklore. I've got holdouts still clutching to

Comments

[clawfoot]

Frankly, I find it hard to believe that a religion led and run by women would have so little impact on a culture that women become second-class citizens.

I'm not an historian or anthropologist or theologian or anything, but I do know that in our world, church officials have had (until relatively recently) a HUGE influence in politics and law-making, and some could convincingly argue that they still do.

Because of this, I've got quite a strong opinion that organized religion had a massive impact on our culture, especially in regards to gender relations.

If your female priests were at all powerful or respected (and if it's a major religion of the world, I can't see how they weren't), I can't understand how the culture turned against them so thoroughly and pervasively, especially if they still enjoy a large share of the religious influence in the world.

[anonymous]

Something which occurs to me is, is thtis a scripture (book) based religion at all? Your reference to growing out of cunning women etc suggests not; and if that's the case literacy won't necessarily have been as closely linked to clerical status as it was in Christianity and Islam, where being able to read was essential. Another kind of religion altogether might not need that. OTOH, your wartone socity with the men going off to war all the time migth mean women were at home running the businesses and farms, and wider female literacy might develop from that instead.

In your faiths, what do the priests actually do, and why?

[sollersuk]

Further thoughts (there are so many issues here that this is going to be a bit shot-gun like

[crossoverqueen]

If Druids are to be seen as a sort of clergy, they were reputed to be resolutely anti-literacy because literacy damages the memory.

As a pagan myself, I've never heard that sort of mindset expressed from the druids OR the other bards. In fact, a lot of us LOVE books and are quite literate. The main reason literacy wouldn't have caught on was not because they hated books, but because the bards and druids themselves were pretty much living encyclopedias and they wouldn't have thought books were necessary. Christianized bards and druids had no problem adapting to literacy; a lot of the reason we HAVE any of the mythology is because a bard/druid who kept the pagan mentality knew they had to write it down.

For example, I rarely read sheet music anymore because I learn music by ear, but I haven't abandoned sheet music and I didn't use my choir music as scratch paper when I got it. Far from damaging my memory, writing things down or reading sheet music actually helpsSince books in antiquity and medieval times were made of expensive hides,

[randomstasis]

No, Sollersuk is correct; emphasis was placed on memorizing and developing mental skills, not reading skills in the Celtic bardic and Druidic traditions. That's why books weren't necessary, as you say. They did have a writing system that was not used for storing information; that was strictly verbally stored.
And literacy does in fact have an adverse impact on memory development, as evidenced in many cultures that rely on oral traditions.

You're referring to neo-pagan "Druids" which are not at all the same thing

[crossoverqueen]

Ah. My mistake on both counts--it's REALLY hard to tell between syncretized Christo-paganism, outright propaganda, and what they actually believed. Especially since the only options I have are the internet and secondhand bookstores.

And, well, I came from a heavily syncretic background (Filipino Catholicism), so a lot of stuff seems to fly under my radar in the first place.

But even the other Irish Reconstructionist pagans I've met don't seem to hold with the "anti-literacy" mentality, what with the necessity of being literate in modern society.

[crossoverqueen]

I had a huge comment last night on how to get into a non-Christian mentality, but my internet wisely decided to crap out. However, I appreciate your efforts to do so and since others have commented on the structural side, I'll focus more on the mental side.

On "Christianity but with more gods:"
Your main trouble seems to be because you've drawn mostly on the Abrahamic faiths in the first place. Prayer beads were a HUGE giveaway; the religions that even use prayer beads are Abrahamic to start with, or were heavily Christianized.

Or perhaps it's because you're calling them prayer-beads, and not something more generic like "fidget toy/beads/string" . Not to say that you absolutely can't have prayer beads, but semantics are very powerful and when I see something like "prayer beads," I immediately think of a rosary

[giveyoulife]

Your main trouble seems to be because you've drawn mostly on the Abrahamic faiths in the first place. Prayer beads were a HUGE giveaway; the religions that even use prayer beads are Abrahamic to start with, or were heavily Christianized.

Or perhaps it's because you're calling them prayer-beads, and not something more generic like "fidget toy/beads/string" . Not to say that you absolutely can't have prayer beads, but semantics are very powerful and when I see something like "prayer beads," I immediately think of a rosary.

First: no. Prayer beads exist in many religions outside of Abrahamic ones, fully outside of Abrahamic influence. Just because you associate them with Christianity doesn't make them Christian.

Prayer beads themselves don't carry the same connotations in those cultures. In Christianity, obviously, they are used almost exclusively for prayer, and additional circumstances are incidental. But in Greece and Islamic nations, they're mostly seen as fidget-toys and status symbols. If a Christian plays with their rosary, it

[crossoverqueen]

And again, I realized that I've been drawing on experiences with Catholicism, not Christianity. I keep running into that problem when I try to talk about my former religion.

On rosaries being fashion accessories: I do indeed know that rosaries are a dime a dozen because, since my family has them all over the place. The OP, on the other hand, was calling her accessories "prayer beads"--that specific phrase in itself would be very hard to conclude with "accessories that happen to have religious details."