How to Design Rituals for a Fantasy World

Rituals are one of the best ways that you can add more depth to your fantasy world’s religion and culture and help to convey a lot about the people in your story. Creating rituals for your fantasy religion is also a great way to add immersion for the readers and to create a full-fledged religion itself. No religion in the world is without a ritual, so it helps to include one in a fantasy world. Today’s post will pretty much cover how to design rituals for a fantasy world and I’ll explain what rituals are, what they’re used for, and how rituals can help add more depth to your world’s culture and people and religion. 

What is a Ritual?

Rituals come in different types and forms and they can be done for different reasons. I’ll list a few of those reasons. 

Firstly, a lot of rituals are done as a part of religious worship. Worship is often performed to do things like honor deities and can include things like prayers, sacrifices, and ceremonies. For instance, in my series, The Fallen Age Saga, to honor Diabroka, the followers on Earth sacrifice people to their god. It obviously doesn’t have to be that crazy, as it depends on the deity and the reason for the ritual. 

Rituals can be performed as a part of marking significant events in one’s life. For instance, there are things like coming of age ceremonies, rituals for birth and death, and even for marriage. These sorts of rituals are typically performed to celebrate this new achievement and to help a person transition from one state of being to the next. 

Rituals can also be used for personal growth and spiritual growth like meditation, fasting, or pilgrimages. These can tie into religious rituals as well. 

Rituals are also often used for the preservation of cultural heritage and traditions, and it helps to keep certain beliefs alive from generation to generation. For instance, Mexico’s Day of the Dead keeps the idea of honoring dead loved ones and it’s been ongoing from generation to generation. 

Types of Rituals You Can Include

Rituals come in different forms and types, and for your fantasy world, you should think about the different ways your rituals will come in handy as well as what the reason they exist is. 

For instance, you can come up with things like daily rituals such as prayers. This can also be an activity like reciting something, burning incense, feeding birds, or whatever you feel fits the fantasy religion you’ve created best. 

You can have seasonal festivals that mark the changes in time or the weather patterns. In the real world, we often hear of solstice festivals or festivals that mark the coming of winter and spring. You can also have festivals that honor things like fallen soldiers, veterans, historical figures, the founding of a country and more. 

There can also be things like healing rituals or purification rituals to cleanse things or heal someone from many aspects (including physical) like emotional or spiritual ailments. There’s a lot of ways you can involve religion in this, as you can have these rituals be performed by religious figures or these rituals may need to invoke a religious text. 

What to Keep in Mind

There’s a few things that I recommend you keep in mind as you design the rituals you need for your fantasy world and fantasy religion. 

First, you have to consider the religion that you’re using for the rituals. If you have more than one religion, why does one include a certain ritual while the other doesn’t? Why does this religion venerate certain things the other does not? You can use my guide on creating fantasy religions and then use the fantasy deities guide to help add more information and detail for this part. 

You want to consider the setting of your ritual, as in where it will take place. Is there a specific location where the ritual must be done, or can it be done anywhere? Does this religion have temples that house these rituals? Can the ritual be done anywhere, or is that considered wrong? 

You want to also think about what objects are used in the ritual, if there are any objects needed. For instance, is there something specific a person must wear? Do you need to burn plants? Is there food at the ritual, and what kind of food and why that particular kind? 

What is actually done during the ritual? What sort of actions do the participants perform? Do people bow, dance, chant, etc… or are things like altars built? What is done at these altars? Are there offerings as a part of this ritual or not?

You want to think about things like language and spoken words during the ritual. What sorts of things are supposed to be said in this ritual? Are there specific things that must be said, or can someone ask for anything?

Furthermore, how often is the ritual performed? This is a big one, as it can really make a difference in the importance or the adherence requirements of the ritual depending on its frequency. For instance, Muslims pray five times every day and this is a very important part of Islam. 

How to Design Rituals for Your Fantasy World

This part of the guide will break the whole process down into steps and I’ll be using examples from my own books to help contextualize the idea of these steps. 

Step 1: Purpose

First, you want to think about the purpose/reason for this ritual’s existence in the first place. Why is this ritual being performed and what’s the point of it? Does the ritual have a historical root or is it a modern invention, and if so, why? 

For instance, there is a group in The Fallen Age Saga called the New Earth Movement. This group believes in the worship and veneration of the “holy ones” which are basically ancient demons that they believe are gods. In order to induct new members, a new inductee must bring a sacrifice to a ceremony called a Symposium. In this Symposium, the sacrifices are offered to the Holy Ones as a way to give the demons strength and to give the worshipers more power and magic. 

Step 2: Setting

Next, you want to figure out where exactly the ritual is supposed to take place. For instance, is there a specific location, or can it be realistically anywhere? Going back to the Symposiums, these events can take place anywhere and they often take place in a chapter leader’s home or in a fancy ballroom where you can gather lots of people. 

Step 3: Participants

Next, you want to figure out who the participants are and why they can participate in the ritual. For example, you want to think about who leads the ritual, who partakes in the ritual, and who can/cannot participate. 

Using the Symposiums again as an example, the leader of the ritual is basically the chapter leader. The inductee brings the sacrifice and the current members attend the sacrifice and then a feast is held after the sacrifice. The feast is hosted by the chapter leader. 

Step 4: Objects 

The next thing you’ll want to think about are the objects used during the ritual. These need to make sense in the context of your world and they need to hold a genuine significance in the overall religion or culture as well. Maybe there’s a certain metal or plant that is important historically to the people of this world, so you’ll want to have your ritual revolve around it or at least incorporate it in some way. 

Marble is used by the New Earth Movement in the symposiums because one of the demons they venerate came from a planet called Olympus, which had an abundance of marble, so the rock is associated with the Holy Ones now.

Step 5: Actions

The next thing you want to think about are the actions performed during the ritual. Is there a certain thing that must be done, such as lighting candles or washing oneself prior to the ritual? For instance, the New Earth Movement’s Symposiums have sacrifices performed in them and the sacrifice is offered up using a special ceremonial blade on a slab of marble to venerate the history of the Holy Ones. 

Step 5: Spoken Word

You also want to consider the words that will be spoken in your ritual. Is there a passage from a religious text, a prayer that must be said, or something similar? Is there a specific language that it must be said in? 

For example, the Symposium attendees say a prayer that depends on what the chapter leader wants to say, but in the end, there must be a veneration of some sorts for at least one of the gods in their religion. Additionally, the prayers can be said in any language that is native to the attendees of the Symposium. 

For example, this scene from Soldat, Book 2 of my Series: 

Step 6: Timing and Frequency

Finally, you’ll want to think about when the ritual takes place, how many times it happens, and what days it happens on. As you can tell from the dialogue I put above from my book, the Symposiums occur on days like a solstice, but it also does change depending on the individual chapter’s beliefs. It also can be done for inducting new members without anything special like a solstice. 

For the most part, when you think of the idea of a ritual, you want to think about what it means in the context of your story and the context of your fantasy world’s religion and ideas. Creating rituals for your world is a really great way at showing your readers that you have a strong grasp of world building and have created something that’s more in-depth than just a surface-level religion. I think that religion should feature more prominently in fantasy and sci-fi stories because it’s honestly a big part of daily life and the real world and it only makes sense to be a big part of the world building process too!

Before you head on out, check out my series, The Fallen Age Saga, and don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter to get updates on my WIPs, book releases, and more!