Theologia: Religion, Mythology and the Essence of Belief in World Creation

Introduction

Hello everyone. I’m Kylarnatia - though most people know me as Kyle - and I’ve been playing NationStates for just over eleven years. I’m a long-time resident of the roleplay region of Gholgoth and I’m a member of the National and International RP Mentor Team on the NationStates forums. This is the third lecture I’ve given on the subject of NS roleplaying - the first was on the ‘Art of NS Empires’ and the second on the ‘Rabbit Hole of Worldbuilding’ - but since I am now much older and (I hope) much wiser, I’d like to take a more specific focus with my topic this year: the concept of Theologia and its value as a tool in worldbuilding.

Allow me to provide some context. When I was approached by Ghant a few months ago and asked to give a lecture at this year’s Roleplay Symposium, I was neck deep in the closing stages of my thesis. I’ve been studying Egyptology at university for several years, through undergraduate to postgraduate, and I specialise in the subjects of Religion, Magic and Identity. These are areas that have interested me ever since I was young and have become a greater focus of my life since I started on the long road into academia. This has bled into my creative pursuits, including NationStates: the Ancient Empire of Kylarnatia is strongly defined and shaped by its religious beliefs and institutions. Despite not being a religious person myself - though I do define as spiritual - I hold the firm belief that having a strong understanding of one’s spiritualism is key to your personal and social development as a human being. I believe the same applies also when creating characters and cultures in writing: spiritual beliefs (and by extension, larger strands of abstract thought) formed a part of “behavioural modernity” in homo sapiens, and led to the world we live in today. The same would likely be true of a fictional setting that takes many hallmarks from our own world.

So why write on this topic for NationStates? I’ve witnessed many cases during my time on the site of religion in roleplay being used as a key theme in a story arc or in the portrayal of a player’s nation or individual characters where I can’t help but feel there’s something fundamentally missing, or perhaps even misunderstood on the part of either the original author or their respondents. It can come down to a number of things, including but not limited to:

• A lack of understanding of where the ideas that form the basis of a religion come from and how they influence - either directly or indirectly - much broader ideas;
• A lack of religious performance and utilisation of ritual and magic in scenes to express the lived experience of a religious person or state beyond just their belief in some form of the divine;
• Failure to consider the impact of religious belief on the psychology of a character, or indeed an entire culture, beyond rather binary trends of being either devoutly good or zealously evil.

This is by no means meant to be a criticism of those players. I appreciate that I hold a degree of academic knowledge on the subject not often encountered in the everyday lest you go looking for it, and that by and large most people’s conception and exposure to religion these days is shaped by their exposure to it and the modern discourse on it, which I think is fair to say isn’t overwhelmingly positive. Therefore it’s understandable why those things would shape the way it gets portrayed in most narratives on the site: either as a source of divine judgement and moral good, or as the epitome of corruption and decadence. That’s not for me to judge in this lecture.

This lecture - which, depending on the response it receives, could see itself expanded into a much larger guide on religious worldbuilding - aims to provide players with useful knowledge on the substance of religious beliefs in the hopes of opening the door to a rich facet of worldbuilding which I think deserves to be utilised more, either on the basis of individual characters or an entire culture as a whole. Whether you’re creating something entirely unique or running with one of the world’s many present or historical faiths or something in between, I hope this lecture gives you - whatever your thoughts are on religion - a greater grasp of the concept and with that another useful tool to help give your NationStates nation the sense of being a living, breathing space.

A (Very Brief) Explanation of Theologia

Let me start by asking you all to consider this: What do the poetic epics of Homer, Virgil, Dante and John Milton as well as the philosophical works and teachings of Plato, Cicero, Hypatia, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther - just to name a small few - have in common? They are all, in one way or another, theologia. I use the Greek word theologia (θεολογία) - “discourse on god” - specifically because I believe it presents a way of considering the advent and development of religious ideas beyond the scope of pure religious tradition.

Religious tradition, as we’ll refer to it, is where you often find the religious canon and institutional framework that is accepted by the established authority/ies of the faith and therefore is often where most people first look when they either decide to build their own religion or indeed work with one that already exists presently or historically. Religious canon consists of such sources as:

• Sacred Scriptures: The Bible, The Qur’an, The Tanakh etc. - sacred scriptures are a special case as they’re seen as the supreme authority in their faiths, either because they’re believed to come directly from divine mandate or were compiled with divine inference. They often serve as the basis for the religion’s “official” canon in the eyes of it’s institution/gatekeepers, and as the basis from which laws and most other communal and state (in the case of state religions) actions can be carried out.
• Religious texts: Separate from sacred scriptures in the sense that there is a much wider corpus as to what this can entail. Ranges from things like prayers and hymns, proverbs and literature produced by or attributed to canonised saints or other important figures of the faith, to texts that concern a certain aspect of the faith’s beliefs and/or traditions (e.g. the Egyptian Book of the Dead can be considered a religious text of it’s day, due to its significance in funerary tradition and belief). What relates all these texts is that they have in some way been ‘ratified’ and ‘enforced’ by those with religious authority.
• Religious Laws and Decrees: A similarly broad corpus, but the important distinction here is that religious laws and decrees are often decided upon and published by the official institution of the faith and in some cases actively enforced in law by the institution (or the state in cases of state sponsorship). These are created, voted upon and ratified in most cases by the most powerful members of the faith’s hierarchy (e.g. see the Ecumenical Councils of Christianity as just one example and the laws/decrees born from them).

Theologia, by contrast, is where you will find the discourses that characterise the nature of the god(s) and the laws of the universe that comprise the very meat, if you will, of the faith for the faithful. The concepts that these works have presented throughout history are things with which we’re all familiar I’m sure, but I don’t often see these things being implemented or considered when roleplaying larger religious cultures. Theologia consists of such sources as:

• Myth, Folklore and Literature: In a nutshell, stories. Be it the poetic epics of the Illiad and the Odyssey which are often credited with having given the Greek Gods their popular characterizations, to stories such as Paradise Lost, which takes the idea of “the fallen angel” which is canonised in the Sacred Scripture, yet turns it into what is now popularly conceived as the belief: that the Devil, and by extension his followers, are those who reject the laws of God and seek to establish their own. Not all stories begin as physical sources, much more often they find their roots in the oral tradition, but over time they often become ‘semi-canonised’ through being put down in writing.
  
• Philosophical treatises: This one I find can often catch people by surprise, because when people often think of the works of Plato, Cicero and much later philosophers who write on a wide variety of concepts, religion isn’t always the first thing that comes to mind for them. What, after all, does a work on the ideal state have to do with religion? Well, context is important. It’s from these works, say Plato’s Republic or Cicero’s On the Nature of Gods that we get the definitive belief that all natural laws in the universe ‘descend from the heavens’ or from Gods, who in their day were believed to be much more powerful and greater beings than them. The point being, is that philosophical works can often serve as a framework from which discussion about the concepts put forth in religious canon are tested and effectively rationalised, the rationale of which still lasts in some cases to this day. Even if the treatise challenges the status quo of the religious institution - such as Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses - they can be in and of themselves a recontextualising of the belief system for present concerns, therefore giving it new life and keeping it relevant.
• Grimoires and Codexes: These works often comprise of spells or rituals with which the faithful can perform for a number of functional purposes. Codexes in particular serve as an almost lexiconical resource for certain aspects of the faith and it’s canon (e.g. think the Lesser Key of King Solomon which names and systematically describes the demons of hell). While not always written by their attested authors, as whoever authored them decided that attributing them to a certain name might lend it greater credence within the faith, grimoires and codexes provide an almost pseudo-to-near-scientific level of explanation for certain aspects of the faith or the tools which it uses in it’s everyday activities (e.g. magic and ritual, which we’ll talk more about shortly).

To put all perhaps more simply: whereas the religious canon will show you what a faith establishes as it’s foundation and lays out how it operates, the wide scope of theologia gives you a sense of the faith as a living, breathing idea. When we look at just the religion as an institution, it’s easy to convince ourselves that religion’s are very highly codified and are very rigid in their mindset - while this is true to a great extent (dogma is a key principle of most modern organised faiths), the works I define to you as theologia present the more real and organically developing facets of what gives a faith relevance to so many of its followers. It’s very often the case that, just as the theologia draw knowledge from the religious canon in order to formulate their ideas, those ideas will then in some way feed back into the religious canon and help shape it throughout time, if not having already provided the base of it to begin with: it’s for this reason that Plato, despite not being widely remembered as a religious figure, is often attributed as the origin for many of the philosophical ideas that form the basis of the modern Abrahamic faiths.

Therefore, when either building a religion your worldbuilding or trying to incorporate an already existing one into your nation or into the backstory of a character / subset of characters, it’s worthwhile considering where they draw their ideas from and the context in which those ideas were presented and why they have so much longevity: the works of Plato, Cicero and Martin Luther were all written within the context of times of great social and political change for their respective ages, and the focus on or use of religious themes was a way of rationalising their solutions to the upheavals they witnessed (e.g. Plato’s “philosopher-king” is very much a response to the Tyrants of Athens and their eventual downfall). When you do this, it helps to provide the basis for a religion that is more than just defined by what it believes in; it also gives you the chance to express how it believes in it and just how much that feeds into their view of the everyday world.

Religious Ritual, Magic and the Art of Storytelling

So now we have a grasp of where the ideas come from, how do they play out in practice? This is perhaps one of the bigger areas in which I think, if you’re aiming to tell the story of a character who is highly religious or intending to worldbuild a culture that is highly religious, a lot of focus deserves to be put both in terms of your own creating but also in terms of how you communicate that story to your fellow participants in a roleplay or readers if you’re writing something solo.

Religion comprises not just of a system of beliefs and ideas, but another key element of their function is the practice of rituals which helps establish a set order to the way in which things are done in a society or indeed the wider world, and that provides you another useful tool to help give your creations a sense of flair and character. A Religious ritual is often carried out with the purpose of attaining something for the participants in a transaction with whomever the ritual is a focus of - be it a deity or some other conceptualised form - but also serves as a way of justifying what has either come before or what comes after the ceremony. To use an ancient example, the Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt would partake in a ritual known as the heb-sed, in which s/he would “rejuvenate” their rule after thirty years on the throne by partaking in physical activities and commission the construction of religious monuments dedicated to this idea of eternal strength and life. These themes stem directly from the ideas of the faith - that the universe is a cyclical force of life and death in an eternal bind - and by conducting and partaking in the ritual, the participants effectively become one with those ideas and in effect, experience them.

To put it simply, religious ritual is the process of taking the ideas established in the faith - either by canon or theologia or both - and creating a practice by which they can be tangentially expressed and/or measured in and by the congregation. Take the more present day example of the Eucharist: in participating in what is effectively a reenactment of the Last Supper, Christians feel closer to Christ and in that moment reflect on his sacrifice and the charge he gave to his Apostles, who they take the place of in this ritual and thus the charge is now given to them. Religious ritual and practice is therefore a key component of any faith, and can take a huge variety of forms, thus giving you as the creator a means through which to explore a character or culture’s attitudes and mannerisms.

Magic is another element, which while often overlapping with ritual, can be treated separately in terms of how the participant acts and in the aims it’s trying to achieve. Anthropologically speaking, whereas religious ritual seeks to justify or explain an accepted truth within the faith, magic is very much a tool by which the active participant(s) is looking to rationalise one’s course of action in the face of a particular challenge. The fisherman who must go out to fish in treacherous waters in order to feed his community will pray to the God(dess) of those waters in order to dispel the anxieties of the upcoming voyage and may bind his contract by treating his boat as the temple; the warrior who is about to go into battle will pray to the God(dess) of war for strength in battle and will express their readiness by drawing blood or by taking devout care of their weapons and armour; the healer will evoke the God(dess) of healing when treating a patient and their meticulous method in treatment is an expression of their devotion. Therefore magic often occupies this interesting sphere of religious thought where there is this tangential crossing of religious belief and empirical knowledge, where the science of the craft or skill is further emboldened by the belief. If you’re planning on writing a character or indeed a culture in which religion is a key feature, it is worth considering how and in what way they use ‘magic’ to face certain challenges and what effect that has on them.

Then of course it is worth considering how the faithful transmit their faith, and how through storytelling both they themselves and you as an author capture the scope of their beliefs and how that plays into their own rationalisation of themselves and the world around them. Very often I find that our characters and cultures are only ever reactionary to whatever happens within a roleplay. Somewhat unavoidable, admittedly, due to the way in which telling the story goes (Player A does something, Players B and C will naturally have to react). Yet I think there is plenty of opportunity, particularly when you’re playing a highly religious character or culture, to be reflective on the narrative and to almost tell a story within a story. To go back and look at one of the examples of literature I listed earlier under theologia, one of the reasons that the Illiad has had such longevity is because it’s not just a story about gods and heroes; it’s a story about the gap that exists between gods, heroes and men and how that in itself feeds into the destructive nature of the tragedy of war and conflict, a tragedy that we have continually experienced throughout history. Human beings create stories as a way to reflect either upon their own nature, the nature of others and the relationship of those things to concepts both tangential and abstract. For a religious person or culture in particular, the personification of these concepts into deities or other beings helps to create some form of meaningful interaction with them, and the process of telling stories with them as characters is a way of reflecting upon the status quo of their time and space. Point being: think of how your character and cultures rationalise themselves and their place not just in the established world but also in the events at hand, and how the stories and parables that they’ve been raised on - and which they may go to tell - reflect on whatever it is that’s going down in a roleplay and what that means to them. Too often I find players only go as far as to say what their character thinks without expressing what it is that makes them think that way, especially with religious characters, and doing so would lend itself to giving the sense of what you’re creating being an organic world.

The Psychology of Belief

This brings me lastly to the psychological effects that religious beliefs can have on a character or culture and vice-versa, and this is something I think often gets overlooked when writing them beyond just very simple binaries of being a “good” person or an “evil” person. I’m particularly inspired to write this part after having read this article, and for the more acute science of what I’m about to say, I suggest you look there as a starting point.

It’s a natural part of the human condition to ask questions and to seek answers. This has been true ever since the process of “behavioural modernity” began and it is that which has brought us as incredibly far as we have gotten. Though as we’ve gotten further and answered many questions, we find ourselves not only with more questions, but over time we’ve built up a number of them that - for all intents and purposes - are simply unanswerable either in the present time or indeed truly ever. Where do we go when we die? Why are we here? What’s out there in the great vastness of the universe? Who could be out there? When will I know? Questions like these present a situation where the sheer scope can be overwhelming, and indeed very unsettling when considering the possibilities. These anxieties play a key factor in the way in which systems of belief - both religious and non-religious alike - seek to dispel them and bring a sense of finality to one’s own mind on the subject as well as a purpose or resolve going forward.

In religious ecstasy in particular, there is an aim to attain a certain level of oneness or closeness with the divine or a set of ideas. When one takes part in a religious communion or ritual, doing so can be an attempt to obtain a collective experience of ecstasy which creates a bond within that communion. As the often misquoted saying goes: “the blood of the commune is thicker than the water of the womb”. On a more personal level, religious ecstasy can be a form of personal realisation in the context of the religious doctrine: defining one’s purpose in the context of the whole, or finding answers to one’s personal challenges and indeed flaws. What matters then, psychologically speaking, is the openness of the individual and the communion: in the transmission and sharing of these experiences, the way in which they’re handled and subsequently treated often defines most explicitly the attitudes which the character and/or their commune adopt. Very often, those on the more ‘extreme’ end of the spectrum in terms of their interpretation and experience of those beliefs have ended up there either because they were rejected from the whole or because the whole dictates an iron-cast set of truths within which your experiences must fit, and they often conduct their communions/rituals in such a way as to guarantee it.

Whether that is entirely “good” or “evil”, however, not only depends on the perspective given to the participant (both in the sense of the player but also the player’s character) but also in the actions taken thereafter. Yet if their religious tradition states that heresy is intolerable, theologia has extrapolated that and rationalised ways in which heresy manifests and must be dealt with, ritual has emblazoned them to face it and ‘magic’ provided them the tools and stories the means by which to reflect on their own struggles against said heresy, at what point does that character consider themselves “good” or “evil”, if even such a binary exists in their frame of reference?

The point I’m trying to make, therefore, is that if you’re attempting to express the psychological state of a religious character and their culture, you will want to consider how all the pieces which we’ve previously discussed fit into the wider whole as your character/culture would see it, and then capture it from that perspective and emphasise the thoughts and emotions that causes them to experience and therefore justifies their actions. A lot to get one’s head around, for sure, but if you’re attempting to make your character or culture one which your fellow roleplay participants or audience someone which they can see into the mind of and properly understand, you must go beyond just describing their actions: you want to show them what it is they’re thinking, why that leads them to where they are and how that affects them both emotionally and otherwise. Sometimes I believe that we focus so much on objectivity that we forget that subjectivity itself has a purpose, particularly in storytelling, and that incorporating those things help to create not only more believable characters but also a whole sandbox through which we as creatives can explore those questions we all ask ourselves.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I hope that this lecture has proven useful to those of you interested in the subject matter as a focus for your storytelling, and that I have been able to effectively demonstrate to you how, by utilising wider sources of theological discussion and debate and by using more aspects of religious performance in scenery and in the actions of a character, and how all those things combined will come to help shape that character or cultures psychology, you will be able to go forward with ideas to consider and a framework with which to go on a deeper exploration of your world building - either individually or together as a group of players - and create something that will act as another source of storytelling ideas or at the very least to provide another dimension to your creation and give them a sense of being a living, breathing world.