World building involves many facets and designing different aspects of the world is honestly a great experience when it comes to writing speculative fiction. Creating cultures, languages, and even religions is a lot of fun and although it can seem intimidating, there are many things that can help make it more manageable. When it comes to designing fantasy religions, there are a lot of aspects that you have to think about, but one of the most important aspects has to be coming up with the deities for the fantasy religion.
What is a Deity?
A deity is a central figure of worship in a religion. There are different systems that include a different number of deities depending on the religious beliefs. Monotheistic religions believe in a singular god that created everything, controls everything, and is omnipotent. Furthermore, most monotheistic religions believe in things like fate and lives being written, with a creation story as well. Monotheistic religions believe that all laws and systems disseminate from the singular god.
Polytheistic religions believe in many deities and these deities each control something specific. Many religions include gods and goddesses that are in charge of certain aspects of life such as creation, war, love, education, art, agriculture, and more. The deities are often written in a way like humans are, with relationships, children, conflict and more. Polytheistic religions also include lots of myths and lore about things like creation and more.
There are also other religions that don’t follow a specific deity but rather venerate things like nature, spirits, or ancestors. These include more destructured systems and are more focused on the world around them rather than the worship of a central figure.
How to Design Deities for Your Fantasy Religion
How Many Deities?
Before you get into things like the role of the deities and the way the deity works, it’s important to think about how many deities you actually want to design. I’ve just discussed the different forms, but I’ll list them again:
- Monotheism: One, all-powerful deity
- Polytheism: Multiple deities that hold specific domains
- Animistic Spirits and lesser deities, connects more to the natural world
- Dualistic: Two opposing deities, often good and evil
What is the Role?
You want to think about a few things when it comes to the role of the deity/deities. Once you’ve decided which structure you want to go for, you’ll have to consider a few things.
First, why does this religion have deities and why are there deities in the first place? Do they serve as the creators of your species? Are they mortals who ascended? Are they ancient beings that designed the world? You want to think about this part when going into designing your fantasy religion as well.
You also want to think about how these deities interact with the world in your story. Are they a direct force of power over the people? Does their influence affect the story? Are they distant? Did they abandon their creation?
Finally, you want to think about their influence on culture and society in your world. Are there festivals or celebrations dedicated to venerating these figures? Are there rituals or sacrifices that must be made? You can take inspiration from real-world religions to do this part as well.
Characteristics
Your deity needs to have unique characteristics and it should work for your story as well. If you are using a polytheistic system, do you have deities that exist for certain aspects of life? In Greek mythology for instance, Ares was the god of war and Aphrodite the goddess of beauty. Maybe you want to do something like that. If you have one deity, what does this deity do exactly and what are their powers?
You want to also think about what sort of traits describe this deity. Is the deity merciful and kind? Is the deity cruel and destructive? Is the deity forgiving or punishing or both?
Finally, you want to also think about if there is a depiction for the deity. Some religions allow depictions while others don’t, so maybe you want to play around with this idea in your story too. Do the deities look like people? Animals? Something entirely different? Are they even portrayed in the first place, and if so, how?
Lore and Mythology
A lot of religions include lore and mythology that describe the deities/deity. You can have things about how the deity came into being if it is part of a polytheistic system. Maybe you have ideas about how the deities created the creatures of your world. Perhaps the deities chose champions and sent them on quests, such as in Greek mythology.
Lore and mythology are really important parts of creating a fantasy religion and are really great ways to enhance your deity’s backstory or involvement in the world. You can check out my post on how to write lore for your world as well as this post on how to create myths in order to get more inspiration on this point.
How are the Deities Worshiped?
Worship is a big deal in any religion and the way a deity is worshiped is often central to the religious practices of any system. Most religions include things like prayer, rituals, ceremonies, festivals and more.
You want to think about how people are tasked with worshiping this particular deity, as well as what rituals are performed to honor this deity. Maybe they need to pray daily or they need to offer up something. Additionally, where are these prayers done? At home? In a sacred spot? What holy sites are there and why are they holy?
How are religious practices led? Is there a hierarchy to religious leadership or is it disconnected, up to anyone’s interpretation? Are there cult centers? Are there priests or oracles? How does an ordinary person play a role in worship?
Deities and the World
One way you can also enhance your world building is to actually include the deities in the overall world itself. For instance, are there locations in the world that are sacred for some reason? What reason is that? What do people do in these locations to honor their deity?
Furthermore, does the deity play a role in the government? Does the deity set rules that people must follow? Are rulers selected by divine right? Are there champions for the deities?
Finally, you want to think about how religious beliefs and practices shape the lives of the people of your world. What sort of traditions, taboos, customs, societal norms and more come about as a result of the deities and the religion as a whole?
Conflict and Problems
You can include interesting things like conflict and problems in the overall world that can help define more about your fantasy religion and the deities involved in it. Firstly, if you have a polytheistic system or a dualistic system, you can include rivalry and conflicts between the deities which can spill into the human world and create problems in society.
Additionally, you can include things like sects, zealous groups, heretics, blasphemers, and the conditions for being part of them.
Finally, you can make your religion static or change over time depending on things like revelations, societal changes and more. Maybe there are reformist groups that fight against hardline groups or maybe there are problems with things like false prophets. You can do a lot with conflict and it can really influence how the deities exist in your fantasy religion.
Use Real Religions for Inspiration
Real-world religions are a great way to learn more about ideas for your religion as well. Taking ideas from how other people worship their deities as well as how lore and myth in some religions works can be a great way to add more depth to your story. Researching about real religions is a great idea, and if you want to learn more about different research techniques, you should check this post out.
Example from my series, The Fallen Age Saga
I want to show you this process in action using my series, The Fallen Age Saga. I’m going to specifically use the religion of Diabrokanism to describe this.
Diabroka is a being born from the fires of Hell and demands sacrifices in his honor. He promotes high levels of militarism amongst his followers. His followers are considered superior to all beings and must purge anyone who does not accept Diabroka as their true god.
Diabroka does not have specific requirements for worship from his followers, but he must be venerated by waging war and spilling blood in sacrifice. Honoring Diabroka is done by giving offerings of blood at the Temple of Enlightenment.
Diabroka’s holy text is known as The Book of Ascension and the Ascension Codes, which dictate what followers must believe as well as how followers should act.
Diabroka’s rivals are Akala The Titan King, Iblees/Satan, and God. He believes that he will win in a divine battle against them all and ascend as the final god of the universe and that his followers must purge followers of anyone other than him in order to allow this to happen.
Diabroka sends prophets to deliver his Ascension Codes to the people and spread the message of Diabrokanism more.
So, seeing all of this, you can see how there are obvious things taken as inspiration from real-world religions as well as things I made up to enhance the overall story and world. When you design a deity for your religion, you want to think about your world, your narrative goals, and how this religion that you’ve designed is going to add to your world building and story.
Before you head on out, check out my series, The Fallen Age Saga, and be sure to sign up for my newsletter to get updates on my latest posts, WIPs, book releases and more!