Help me create some Religions

[Crying]

Alright, so I've got the beginnings of a TL in my mind, with a POD taking place around the Bronze Age Collapse (12th Century BC). This obviously means that most, if not all, of the religons from OTL will not be made ITTL. And while I probably could make up a bunch of the 'replacement' religions myself, I thought it would be fun to make it something of a group project.

What I 'need' is:

• I need at least one religion to come out of India/the Dharmic traditons, thought it'd be cool if there were a couple of different competing religions.
• Something to come out of Iran, though it doesn't necessarily need to be like Zoroastrianism at all
• A couple different religions to come from the China-area, the more different the better. Keep in mind that so far I've got some ideas of China being balkanized, which will probably affect the development of any religions there.
• Something to come from Celtic traditions, preferably with some heavy Greek influences

Some other things that I don't 'need' but would like to see:

• Something to come from the Berbers/Tuareg, possibly with some Egyptian, Hebrew or Punic influences
• Maybe something from Egypt itself, though so far in this ATL my plans involve them being (temporarily) conquered by the Sea Peoples who I plan on being a "confederation" of different peoples from around the Mediterranean.
• Possibly an adaption of Hittite mythology that survives in the Caucasus, though I'm not too sure about that
• A Mesopotamian religion might be cool, though in TTL it'd probably end up fusing into Iranian religion instead of being it's own thing
• I've always liked the idea of some sort of religion or philosophy coming out of Southeat Asia, specifically Java, and the loose ideas I've got for it in my own head have it being heavily syncretic
• And finally I might end up having some sort of Korea-Manchu hybrid culture be very important ITTL so some ideas about what their religion might be like would be welcomed

If this should be moved to somewhere else, tell me and I'll try to do so.

 

[Mental_Wizard]

Sea People wank? The High King of the Sea Peoples in a TL alternate to yours approves of this. As long as a dashing young Hittite is not leading them to conquer Alashiya, the world, and the admiration of his billions of fans, and as his story is not told through EUIV maps I am all for it.

Anyway...

1.Pick polity that you want to have a new religion
2.Take major deity of region
3.Change name of said deity and try and eliminate a sin or two
4.Get people riled up
5.Profit off the fact that you are a prophet


Now as for what you specifically said
Iran- have Elamite religion thrive
India- make syncretized version of Hinduism with slight changes.
China- much less affected by the collapse than other states. I find it doubtful you could balkanize it that hard. And even if you did, if anything the religion would reunify it. Not sure there is potential for many to develop there in this period.
Celtic(-Greek?)- Butterflies galore. You could have Celts living hundreds of miles from where written records first show them... they had no written records then. Greeks could also be completely different. I cannot judge enough to offer advice.

 

[Balaur]

Alright, so I've got the beginnings of a TL in my mind, with a POD taking place around the Bronze Age Collapse. This obviously means that most, if not all, of the religons from OTL will not be made ITTL. And while I probably could make up a bunch of the 'replacement' religions myself, I thought it would be fun to make it something of a group project.

What I 'need' is:

• I need at least one religion to come out of India/the Dharmic traditons, thought it'd be cool if there were a couple of different competing religions.
• Something to come out of Iran, though it doesn't necessarily need to be like Zoroastrianism at all
• A couple different religions to come from the China-area, the more different the better. Keep in mind that so far I've got some ideas of China being balkanized, which will probably affect the development of any religions there.
• Something to come from Celtic traditions, preferably with some heavy Greek influences

Some other things that I don't 'need' but would like to see:

• Something to come from the Berbers/Tuareg, possibly with some Egyptian, Hebrew or Punic influences
• Maybe something from Egypt itself, though so far in this ATL my plans involve them being (temporarily) conquered by the Sea Peoples who I plan on being a "confederation" of different peoples from around the Mediterranean.
• Possibly an adaption of Hittite mythology that survives in the Caucasus, though I'm not too sure about that
• A Mesopotamian religion might be cool, though in TTL it'd probably end up fusing into Iranian religion instead of being it's own thing
• I've always liked the idea of some sort of religion or philosophy coming out of Southeat Asia, specifically Java, and the loose ideas I've got for it in my own head have it being heavily syncretic
• And finally I might end up having some sort of Korea-Manchu hybrid culture be very important ITTL so some ideas about what their religion might be like would be welcomed

If this should be moved to somewhere else, tell me and I'll try to do so.

If it's a bronze age collapse POD, the obvious choice of Massalia as an origin point for the Celt/Greek religion is out. Hmm. A sort of "Celtic Hinduism" with a stable, long standing polytheist pantheon could be interesting. Add some kind of hermetic tradition brought over by greeks via Egypt and mix it with druidism for maximum protoneopaganess.

 

[balthasargettysburg]

Hi.

What's the POD? I can't dance very well without a stage.

I'll give you two.

Berbers - Mother-of-the-Sea. Kind of a fundamentalist/Easter Island Moai type deal.

Egypt - The cult of Bes made into an emotionally important house-church cult that extends from the birthing bed to the cradle to a well of Messianic visionary folklore akin to Osiris born in fully human form as a Redeemer of the vision of a people free of the Invaders, the Sea-Peoples.

 

[Haplogroup]

• Something to come from Celtic traditions, preferably with some heavy Greek influences

Trisites
Type: Proselytizing philosophy, analogous to Buddhism.
Belief: Reincarnation is the natural order of the human soul, with rebirth upon death and transmigration into other human bodies. However, the soul can forget its self and fall into oblivion (or, poetically, the river Styx), becoming lost and wandering the world for unknowable eons before finding itself back in a new body.
Soteriology: Meditations upon the soul, the nature of the world, and similar subjects can help better to bind one's soul to this world, so that one does not become a lost soul in the hereafter. With the guidance of the holy texts, it becomes much easier, so better go tell all the nations of the world about this.
Moral Theory: This world is all there is and you're going to stick around, so pleasure is good and pain is bad, self-cultivation is important because you may carry on some fragments of what wisdom you gain, and being just to others is just good sense. Big part of it is in, "Who loves the hateful, who is merciful to the merciless?", combined with one's soul carrying on between lives, bad deeds will come back around on you sooner or later. The other big part of it is that the people you love and cared for in your past life might be your victims in this one, and on forever, so if you're vicious and cruel you might very well be being vicious and cruel to someone you once called brother and swore to never harm.

 

[balthasargettysburg]

Trisites
Type: Proselytizing philosophy, analogous to Buddhism.
Belief: Reincarnation is the natural order of the human soul, with rebirth upon death and transmigration into other human bodies. However, the soul can forget its self and fall into oblivion (or, poetically, the river Styx), becoming lost and wandering the world for unknowable eons before finding itself back in a new body.
Soteriology: Meditations upon the soul, the nature of the world, and similar subjects can help better to bind one's soul to this world, so that one does not become a lost soul in the hereafter. With the guidance of the holy texts, it becomes much easier, so better go tell all the nations of the world about this.
Moral Theory: This world is all there is and you're going to stick around, so pleasure is good and pain is bad, self-cultivation is important because you may carry on some fragments of what wisdom you gain, and being just to others is just good sense. Big part of it is in, "Who loves the hateful, who is merciful to the merciless?", combined with one's soul carrying on between lives, bad deeds will come back around on you sooner or later. The other big part of it is that the people you love and cared for in your past life might be your victims in this one, and on forever, so if you're vicious and cruel you might very well be being vicious and cruel to someone you once called brother and swore to never harm.

OMG. Upper crust Greeks and slaves in Greece would LOVE this system. Middle class Greeks and Greeks with military ambition would HATE this system.

 

[balthasargettysburg]

This stuff is really cool but the POD as an organizing principle matters. Sea People invasion followed by plagues? Drought? Key cities burned to the ground? A massive army moves inland destroying what? Where?

 

[Crying]

Hi.

What's the POD? I can't dance very well without a stage.

I'll give you two.

Berbers - Mother-of-the-Sea. Kind of a fundamentalist/Easter Island Moai type deal.

Egypt - The cult of Bes made into an emotionally important house-church cult that extends from the birthing bed to the cradle to a well of Messianic visionary folklore akin to Osiris born in fully human form as a Redeemer of the vision of a people free of the Invaders, the Sea-Peoples.

This stuff is really cool but the POD as an organizing principle matters. Sea People invasion followed by plagues? Drought? Key cities burned to the ground? A massive army moves inland destroying what? Where?

I haven't got a singular, stable POD yet, just a bunch of things going differently during the collapse. Since I'm not exactly working things out in a chronological order I figured I'd do what I can right now: hence the religion bit.

But I'll try to iron out all the details more for this soon. As for yoru suggestions; I'm not too sure about the "Berber Mami Wata" thing, but the idea of Bes worship becoming something akin to Judaism/Christianity in opposition to the Sea Peoples is interesting.

Sea People wank? The High King of the Sea Peoples in a TL alternate to yours approves of this. As long as a dashing young Hittite is not leading them to conquer Alashiya, the world, and the admiration of his billions of fans, and as his story is not told through EUIV maps I am all for it.

Anyway...

1.Pick polity that you want to have a new religion
2.Take major deity of region
3.Change name of said deity and try and eliminate a sin or two
4.Get people riled up
5.Profit off the fact that you are a prophet


Now as for what you specifically said
Iran- have Elamite religion thrive
India- make syncretized version of Hinduism with slight changes.
China- much less affected by the collapse than other states. I find it doubtful you could balkanize it that hard. And even if you did, if anything the religion would reunify it. Not sure there is potential for many to develop there in this period.
Celtic(-Greek?)- Butterflies galore. You could have Celts living hundreds of miles from where written records first show them... they had no written records then. Greeks could also be completely different. I cannot judge enough to offer advice.

Seems logical, but that requires me to have a more solid idea of what the TL will be like than I have right now, so I'll have to try that later.

Iran: That could work, but we really don't know very much about Elam or their mythology. Could be interesting, though.
India: I was hoping for something a bit more extreme than that.
China: Good points about the religion, though I will mention that China's collapse and balkanization would be happening later on in the TL, not at the beginning.
Celtic: Also good points.

If it's a bronze age collapse POD, the obvious choice of Massalia as an origin point for the Celt/Greek religion is out. Hmm. A sort of "Celtic Hinduism" with a stable, long standing polytheist pantheon could be interesting. Add some kind of hermetic tradition brought over by greeks via Egypt and mix it with druidism for maximum protoneopaganess.

Sounds like it could work, though I'd rather lean towards a native Greek philosophy than Hermeticism.

Trisites
Type: Proselytizing philosophy, analogous to Buddhism.
Belief: Reincarnation is the natural order of the human soul, with rebirth upon death and transmigration into other human bodies. However, the soul can forget its self and fall into oblivion (or, poetically, the river Styx), becoming lost and wandering the world for unknowable eons before finding itself back in a new body.
Soteriology: Meditations upon the soul, the nature of the world, and similar subjects can help better to bind one's soul to this world, so that one does not become a lost soul in the hereafter. With the guidance of the holy texts, it becomes much easier, so better go tell all the nations of the world about this.
Moral Theory: This world is all there is and you're going to stick around, so pleasure is good and pain is bad, self-cultivation is important because you may carry on some fragments of what wisdom you gain, and being just to others is just good sense. Big part of it is in, "Who loves the hateful, who is merciful to the merciless?", combined with one's soul carrying on between lives, bad deeds will come back around on you sooner or later. The other big part of it is that the people you love and cared for in your past life might be your victims in this one, and on forever, so if you're vicious and cruel you might very well be being vicious and cruel to someone you once called brother and swore to never harm.

The reference to the River Styx makes me think this was intended for Greece, though this probably could rise up just about anywhere. Anyway, this is pretty good and while I'm not sure that I'll end up using it, I'll definitely be thinking about it.

 

[Haplogroup]

The reference to the River Styx makes me think this was intended for Greece, though this probably could rise up just about anywhere. Anyway, this is pretty good and while I'm not sure that I'll end up using it, I'll definitely be thinking about it.

Well, you said Greek influence. Celts were big believers in reincarnation, which is where that angle - which is really the main one - comes from. They probably would have some Celtified name for Styx but I'm not a conlang person really.

 

[balthasargettysburg]

India. Ugh. What happens in India is entirely dependent on the nature of the transition from bronze age to iron age. In the Mediterranean, a more vicious or organized invasion of the Sea Peoples will have more obvious effects, or point to more obvious areas of stress or opportunity, the stuff that drives religious evolutions, schisms, or wars. A prophet never arises where the people have no need, because a prophet who arises unneeded is just an annoyance, and easily dismissed.

 

[Timaeus]

ATENISM!

 

[Jared]

I'd suggest having the Ajivikas come out on top in India. It's a school of religion which comes out of the same broad conceptual universe as other Indian religions, but has some fascinating consequences. While no analogy should be drawn too closely, it's almost as if Calvinism had emerged within the Indian traditions. (Though it is much older than Calvinism.)

 

[Crying]

I'd suggest having the Ajivikas come out on top in India. It's a school of religion which comes out of the same broad conceptual universe as other Indian religions, but has some fascinating consequences. While no analogy should be drawn too closely, it's almost as if Calvinism had emerged within the Indian traditions. (Though it is much older than Calvinism.)

Well, that's in the 5th Century BC, while my POD is in the 12th Century BC, so it's a bit late. I suppose I could have something analagous develop, though.

ATENISM!

This has the opposite problem of being a century or two too early for my POD, though I suppose theoretically Atenism could make a comeback. Somehow.

It's more likely that somebody would try the same thing with a different deity, IMO.

 

[Happers]

By Celtic, what do you mean? The Celts didn't appear until after the Bronze Age Collapse, some 400 years after.

 

[Thaiengle]

Look at chineese mythology, Steal their local gods

Example

https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...e-li-river-a-neolithic-china-tl.371348/page-2

 

[Crying]

By Celtic, what do you mean? The Celts didn't appear until after the Bronze Age Collapse, some 400 years after.

That religion would probably end up appearing later in the TL, but I suppose I could do something with the proto-Celts.

 

[Sian]

While it's probably some way down the road, it would be interesting to see some sort of Proto-Germanic religion going a similar route as Hinduism did.

By looking a bit around I would be interested to see Charvaka becoming a thing ... from reading about it, its basicly a belief system about Scientific method on steroids

 

[Balaur]

By Celtic, what do you mean? The Celts didn't appear until after the Bronze Age Collapse, some 400 years after.

The Urnfield culture is from this period. Perhaps crematory burial practises continue? An idea I had from another TL that could tie in with the reincarnation idea would be that bodies have to be burned, to release the trapped souls so they can travel into another body-otherwise the soul will end up trapped inside the corpse. That would lead to hauntings and undead, and we cant have that now, can we?

 

[Crying]

While it's probably some way down the road, it would be interesting to see some sort of Proto-Germanic religion going a similar route as Hinduism did.

By looking a bit around I would be interested to see Charvaka becoming a thing ... from reading about it, its basicly a belief system about Scientific method on steroids

I don't know what I'm gonna do with the Germanic tribes yet ITTL, but much like with the Ajivikas I could have something analogous to Charvaka develop.

The Urnfield culture is from this period. Perhaps crematory burial practises continue? An idea I had from another TL that could tie in with the reincarnation idea would be that bodies have to be burned, to release the trapped souls so they can travel into another body-otherwise the soul will end up trapped inside the corpse. That would lead to hauntings and undead, and we cant have that now, can we?

That's an interesting idea, actually. I might think about trying to incorporate it into whatever the *Celtic religion ends up being.

 

[Indicus]

I need at least one religion to come out of India/the Dharmic traditons, thought it'd be cool if there were a couple of different competing religions.

Does the Indus Valley Civilization come to an end, and do Indo-Europeans migrate into the subcontinent? We don't know anything about the IVC except that there's this god that may or may not be Shiva, but we do know about the Indo-Europeans, so I'll focus on them.

Early Vedic religion was, in fact, non-Dharmic, instead having the value of truth, or rita. It also didn't have any conception of reincarnation, and had a concept of heaven (as shown by the Mahabharata) and the concept of immortality through the eating of soma was highly important. The gods were also very different, with Indra, Varuna, Agni, and Mitra leading them, and Vishnu and Rudra (later known as Shiva) being minor deities. Indra was the lightning god, and a hedonist. Later, these hedonistic tendencies were exaggerated to the point that he raped people, but this exaggeration doesn't necessarily need to occur. Initially, at about the time of the migration, Varuna was the leader of the gods (though later superseded by Indra) and the lord of the sky, sharing much imagery with Ahura Mazda such as the sun being his "eye". His loss of stature and heavenly domain came later in Vedic times. Agni was the messenger of the gods, as well as the god of fire. Burning sacrifices, in the eyes of the Vedics, meant that those sacrifices went to the gods, and usually these sacrifices were of animals.

So, with there being butterflies that occur immediately after the Aryan migrations, you could have Varuna the sky god as the leader of the gods, and the most revered. Indra could play the role as his subordinate and Agni as his messenger. Dharma could possibly never emerge in the first place, instead with a Zoroastrian-esque value of truth, and immortality could be a much more desirable goal. Overall, this religion would be much more Indo-European than OTL Hinduism.