World Building 101: Of Gods and Men
Frequent readers may know I have feelings about faith. But to the new visitors, I should probably start with a small caveat here, before we start talking about Theology.
I was raised pretty religiously, and I embraced the teachings offered soberly and respectfully. I prayed, I studied, and I taught. Faith was my life. But along the way, I grew skeptical and pessimistic, though this disappointment was in mankind and not in any sense of the divine. I neither subscribe to nor condemn any sort of specificity when it comes to faith – I believe the path to one’s Higher Self comes from a person’s sincere desire to understand both themselves and God, no matter the form in which either man nor God may take. I believe, in point of fact, that it is this adherence to a desire to know Truth which defines a human being and the quality of the life they live, and that this effort is much more important than an organizational structure or the name by which God, in your eyes, is called. And even more, I believe that civility begins to crumble to pieces when we wrestle with each other to establish whose definition of the undefinable is more “accurate.”
In short, believe. Be good people. Love everyone. Try to be better. That’s my faith. Everyone has that right to pursue the eternal path to self-improvement. Whether we manage that path alone or in a congregation, we all have the right to find the place we feel most close to the divine. Cool?
Okay, so let’s talk about God.
And I’m not talking about what may or may not exist out in the great beyondness of space or heaven or Valhalla or whatever word you may associate with worlds without number. I’m just talking about how we humans have stared into the vastness of the night sky and looked for a reason or a sign. How we define “God” has in probable fact very little to do with what’s up there, but it is at least of some comfort to understand how we all looked up into the abyss and came back with different results.
Human beings have a good deal of skills and attributes passed down in our genetic mush – from how we look and move to how we think. One of those skillsets is pattern recognition. A baby can recognize faces – we all experience Pareidolia from time to time, and it’s just a function of how we see humanity in things that have little to do with us: clouds, trees, street signs (just seeing if you’re paying attention). We look into the stars and draw pictures of fantastical beasts and gods and goddesses. We develop tarot cards and runes to divine and define the present based upon our understanding of the patterns of the past. We deconstruct dreams. We look for meaning, answers, in the chaotic rollout of the world as it spins beneath us.
Old legends and fables were fascinating to me as a child. How a leopard got its spots, the fox and the crane, sour grapes, the whole lot of these old stories meant to grant insight where perhaps little actual truth was found – I thought this was immensely clever and couldn’t read these stories enough to satisfy me. Even though much of it was just conjecture or presentation, what really grew in me was an appreciation for the manner in which mankind attempted to understand the vague and undefined universe around them. As the world rose up and fell apart around them, they looked for meaning.
But of all the tendrils of entropy, death reigns upon a solitary throne. Most often, we look at death and ask, “why?” and “What happens next?”
Death, in its way, stands in as an allegory for all the mysteries of this life which refuse definition or clarity. The only way we will see the answer to what lies behind that particular door is when we pass through it ourselves. And the reality of that permanent interrogatory can either be a cloaked terror or a gentle companion, depending on how we choose to flavor it. And that’s how it is with the Gods to whom we turn our attention.
To explain the many inexplicable forces at work, Gods of all shapes and sizes were conjured up from the mists. The seasons, the harvest, the hunt; the sun, the moon, the stars; all these immense and incomprehensible forces, all too much for mankind to wrestle with, were elevated to the level of cosmic, immortal and immutable entities.
How does the sun rise? I don’t know. The gods must pull it behind them on a great chariot, pulled by giant winged lions. Ah, yes, of course.
How do the crops grow? Well, that is clearly the work of the gods of the harvest.
Why did my child get sick and die? The gods needed her at their side, and they called her to be with them.
We find answers where, sometimes, no answers can be found. And this isn’t an altogether bad thing. Sometimes, we need medicine to help us heal from illnesses or injuries from which our bodies alone cannot mend. Sometimes, when the darkness grows too deep, we need a candle to chase away our fears. There is nothing wrong with finding a belief that helps us grow stronger when the strength cannot yet be found within our own hearts.
Some gods grow out of myth and legends. Many a hero or villain has, through the re-telling of their deeds (or misdeeds) grown to mythic status through a long version of the “telegraph game”. And of course this happens. When I was in high school, we moved from California to Missouri. My first year in Missouri, I was a junior, and, being from California just meant that I was the big target of bullying and harassment. It was annoying, but I dealt with it. But, on the start of my senior year, I noticed that the mood seemed to have shifted dramatically. People were nice to me – almost deferential, in fact. I discovered why when someone quietly asked me during study hall if the rumors were true. I asked them to be more specific, and they inferred that I had HAD to leave California due to some legal trouble I’d gotten into. I was later to learn that a friend of mine had started a rumor that I’d killed someone in a fight and my family had been forced to leave California in the hopes of avoiding additional acts of violence. Over the summer, this rumor had grown and taken root, and my senior year ended up being REALLY quiet. I even tried to assure people that this wasn’t true, but my protestations just seemed to convince people that it was true.
So, yeah. Legends grow, and that’s just a way of things. My mom, a devout genealogist, tracked our family back to a man named Thor whose father was named, yes, Odin. Are these the same men played later by Chris Hemsworth and Sir Anthony Hopkins? No, of course not. But they could have easily been the inception for heroes and demigods, too. Also, not to break anyone’s illusions, but George Washington did not, in fact, chop down a cherry tree. But one century’s legend can easily become next millenia’s divinity. Time adds heft and unprovability to the words of the past, and, when you also consider the many centuries of oral tradition humanity has endured, you can’t deny that a lot of the things passed down from one generation to the next through only our spoken words can lead to a great deal of misunderstandings.
Also, Santa Claus doesn’t wear a red suit and fly around the earth with reindeer fed by magic corn. It wasn’t that many years ago people finally began recognizing the similarities in nomenclature between St Nicklaus and Santa Claus, so I suppose we can accept that some mythologies linger even in the face of reason and logic. BUT where the myth succeeds is in its unspoken invitation to be a part of the Claus legacy. Anonymous gift giving as a world-wide celebration of love and charity to those around us is an amazing thing, and I will always happily celebrate that enduring proposition.
So let’s bring this back to world-building.
A world has rituals; it has a reverence for the inexplicable, a reverence for the unseen forces which keep the world spinning. These entities, if they are defined by your world as such, serve both as a receptacle for gratitude or enmity, depending on how the beings of your world may choose to act upon them. It may not be the central premise to your world, but even in its background, people take Gods seriously. In our exaltations, in our despair, we elevate the names of our gods into the forefront of our minds. When we stare out into the abyss, it may simply be our own eyes that gaze back, but perhaps it is the reflection of something greater.
Just as when we talked about geological formations or city development, the mythology of your world doesn’t need to spend all its time in temples or worship – but mythology has its hand in the development of the world, whether obvious or not. Churches were often one of the first actual buildings put up in many cities; weekly worship helped define the structure and distance of a town – no sense living so far away that you couldn’t take a horse or wagon to your Sunday sermon. Wars have often been fought by something no greater than how to spell – or speak – the name of God.
Faith – whether strong or silent – is what creates change, both in the heart of one person or in the masses. Or, as Sting sang, “men go crazy in congregations, but they only get better one by one.”
When I first saw “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, I was initially amazed by the special effects and the wonderful music – it was a fine story, told as only Steven Spielberg could tell. But as I ruminated on its story later in life, I discovered another note from the film. For those of you who haven’t seen it (and by the way, shame on you – go watch it!), the movie tells a story of aliens coming to Earth, but certain apparently random people begin experiencing inexplicable premonitions, usually expressing themselves in the creation of strange paintings of a unique tower-shaped mountain. They trace the image to Devil’s Tower, Wyoming. But the people who follow these visions get arrested by the government, who tell them nerve agent has been released in the area and confine them “for their safety.” Several of them escape, including two of our main characters. Roy (Richard Dreyfuss) and a few others are traveling around the mountain to close in on what they hope to be the solution to this mystery, when one of his fellow escapees is urging them to travel one direction. Roy counters that that path leads to a box canyon, but that the other way is safer. The man indicates that his paintings never showed that, but Roy explains that he didn’t paint the mountain – he sculpted it and could see all sides of it.
To me, that’s the heart of studying theology. Know all sides. Find the best path.
And yes. It’s also incredibly helpful for writing your stories.
I only have two bits of “homework” for you this week. One is to choose a faith, religion or philosophy you know nothing about (I’m gonna ask you to not choose Jedism or Pastafarianism, just because I’d like you to take this a LITTLE seriously), and read up on it. If you can’t think of one, let me know and I’ll choose one for you. And my point is not to try and convert you or to cause doubt in your own faith - - I find either one of those two efforts to be cruel and selfish - - but to help you see for a moment how other people look into the stars. Understanding how others believe isn’t just a good idea for being a fellow human or a traveler through spacetime, but is also a good way to develop more empathy and, for you writers out there, a great way to generate new appreciation and ideas for fleshing out your worlds. And for those of you writers who write non-fiction, it will help you as well to see how others believe.
And with that, let us away, friends, until next time. And what is next time? Next week’s blog is entitled “Arroz con Pescado” - - so come hungry!