The Ultimate Universal Pantheon

The project of creating a universal pantheon that included all others was a major theological endeavour of the late pagan period in ancient Rome. Varro and others devoted decades to the creation of a monomyth out of Pharonic, Greek, Roman and other pantheons within the Empire.

I don't comprehend your project at all, though, because I'm not sure of what the setting is for it.
 

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Well, I dont know if this would work, but the Dragonstar campaign setting has a universal type pantheon.

Since the game takes fantasy races and put them in a psuedo sci-fi settings, it uses the concept that the individual gods and pantheons worshipped on individual planets are all just facets or aspects of universal dieties-I think Dragonstar calls them the 12(?) so once the races got to be space farers, they "distilled" the various gods into a universal pantheon.

Anyway, the pantheon are broad types which have (I think) different aspects. The Warrior, the Healer, etc.. are examples. I dont have the book with me but you may want to check out FFG's website.

For what its worth anyway.
 

With the smell of frying bacon in the air a short very "Big Boned" Hobbit appears Did someone mention the "perfect pantheon" ? Why dear boy all you have to do is ask around here ! The "perfect pantheon" has been at ENWorld since , since Eric was the head honcho ! Never ask for the pantheon, Kid you might get it.
 

that sounds a lot like my pantheon here - downloadable from about the 8th post from the bottom. feel free to take inspiration from that as desired!
 

GURPS Religion is a great reference book. It talks about several different kinds of gods, pantheons, and aspects of life.

1. You don't need to cover all aspects of human endeavor with a god. Not even most of them. Pick out a handful of key things that your society values and build gods around those.

Don't be afraid to combine areas in interesting ways. And remember aspects of gods; one god can have many different faces (in history, this probably comes from assimilation of conquered peoples, but you can make it work differently).

Backstory and the hows and whys of the pantheon can create RP opportunities and local flavor for the game:

Vashina, Dread Mother, is the goddess of death and prophecy. In the Before-Time, all time was one thing. To see into the past or future, the priest must kill a living thing (usually a small animal or bird) so that they can see through the rift into Death.

A gods portfolio can expand in interesting ways:

Derin is the God of Merchants. He's also venerated as the god of wine and food, so his effigy is almost always found in taverns. His symbol is also found on the coins. Derin could be expanded to be a general god of crafts, which makes him the patron of all who make things, or as a god of roads and bridges. Things that connect up with the concept of 'merchant' or 'exchange' can be added to his portfolio. Eventually, Derin could be the God of Civilization for a great mercantile empire, and could be considered the King of the Gods.

Try doing what some ancient peoples did, and combine concepts of gods as you go along. Now, in your world the god has always existed in this form perhaps, but it adds 'false verisimiltude' (probably didn't spell that right); it adds depth to the campaign. Little bits of color can go a long, long way to getting your players to accept the world as 'real'.

Suppose that Derin, god of Merchants becomes God of Civilization. Then he could embody concepts that lead up to Civilization. He could have an elemental side: Fire. Fire is the One Big Step towards civilization. His temples always have a fire burning in them. Every Midwinter, the city douses it's lights at dusk. Then the priests of Derin move through the city, lighting lights from brands lit from the central fire, representing how Derin brought light and hope to mankind.

The Wheel is another big step. Temples to Derin often are round, or have a wheel motif in their decoration. Maybe the special coins the temple mints are called 'Wheels'.

Combining aspects is also a good step. Vashina is the Dread Mother; Dread because all men fear death, but Mother because she is also the patron of women and midwives.

Differing aspect of a god may be difficult to pull off but they can also keep every temple of God X from being like all the others. In the real world, religions fracture after a time. Cults form. Forms of worship drift. Wars are fought over such things. The alignment spread in 3E actually helps encourage this.

A LN god can have a LG cult, a LE cult, a LN cult, and a N cult, all worshippoing the SAME god. Those neutral-alignment gods tend to be, as you might expect, embody broad concepts that don't fit within easy moral boundries. If Derin is a LN God of Civilization then he's mainly concerned with lifting people from simplicity to complexity.

Maybe the LN cult, the main body of the church, is dedicated to laws. They catalog, they investigate, they regulate. They form the judicial system, since civiliation is built on a foundation of just and fair laws, applied impartially.

The LG cult are those that beleive that knowledge should benefit the populace. They are the ones that open schools for the city poor, the ones who walk in the rural communities and teach farmers to write their own names. They create trade networks that bring needed food to places that have none. They are diplomats who seek to bring all humanity together.

The LE cult sees Derin's gifts as meaning that they are mean to rule. A more civilized society will crush a primitive one without extraordinary bad luck. They will seek to spread their empire through domination of trade networks, or by military conquest.

Another LE cult will be the Inqusition, the ones that root out anarchy and dissent.

The N cult is dedicated to knowledge, pure and simple. They take it all in, the good and the bad.

2. The 'Kingdoms of Kalamar' approach is an interesting one: the gods are known by titles, such as 'Bringer of Death'. Each society, though, has a different name for that one god. If you're talking about a universal pantheon here, as in 'one pantheon created the entire world and all the peoples on it', then different societies might worship different gods. Much like ancient Egypt, where one city would have a patron god, who might be venerated more than the others.
 


There is no perfect pantheon.

It all depends upon the culture, the cosmology, the world in which the pantheon exists.

Something as simple as 'where the gods come from' could drastically change the flavor of your pantheon. Did the gods appear before everything else? Hatch from an egg, or from the bodies of greater beings before them? Or maybe they just kinda 'popped' up...but where'd they get their ideas of dominion from? Do people create gods by believing in things? Then what is important or essential for those people?

If following a real-world dichotomy, it seems that the environment in which a people lives dictates, to some extent, the culture which they cultivate, which governs the forces that they worship.

Would a people who live purely underground have a sky god? Would a world cloaked in eternal night have a sun god?

Think of agricultural gods -- deities and spirits of corn, olive trees, growing things and earth goddesses or rain gods?

There is no such thing as a universal pantheon, because there is no such thing as a universal environment, or a universal culture, or a universal cosmology. There are infinate variations on every theme, and no one or twelve can really contain them all (with the exception of Monotheism, which, really, one can argue that though there's one god of everything, there's countless servants to which one prays for specifics).
 

If you look at certain ancestral peoples, you might find something like a universal pantheon. Greek, Roman, Norse, and Aryan-Hindu- these pantheons arguably share commonalities in their Indo-European heritage.

The only way to create a real universal pantheon for a fantasy setting is to list out, say, no more than 15-20 general topics and leave out all attached cultural values. God of War, God of Creation, God of Death, and so on. Maybe write up some reasoning on adapting this list and the gods it names to different civilizations. Individual cultures will view these might beings differently, maybe even having different names for them.

What you can't have is a universal *religion* without a universal culture.
 


Dragon issue 278 had an article about "classic archtypes" in religion. I'll summarize some of deific archtypes below.

* Earth Mother: A Good fertility and horniculture goddess. [Gaia]
* The Green Man: Wild nature and fey folk. [Obad-Hai]
* The Reveler: Mirth maker and partier [Dionysus]
* The Trickster: Perverter of Law and society [Loki]
* The Celestial Queen: A vain a beautiful woman who controls the night and magic [Hectate]
* The Destroyer: The bringer of pain and the end [Siva]
* The Sun God: Bringer of light [Pelor]
* The God of War and Storms: A warrior and storm god [Talos, Thor]
* The guardian of the Dead: An evil or neutral figure associated with death and the afterlife [Hades, Hel]

I made a whole pantheon on these nine archtypes and a bit of expansion.
 

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