Chaos as an Ancient Religon?

Is it possible for a religion like Chaos from Warhammer Fantasy to exist in Earth from 500 BC-1500 AD, if so, what would be its fate?
 

karikon

Banned
I am conflicted, on one hand this is a insanely epic idea but on the other hand it´s improbable to the extreme.

Anyway we are talking about religion that revolves around aspects that are repelling to overwhelming majority of people so there is no way in hell that it´s going to gain a mass following.
 
So a polytheistic religion with henotheistic cults practicing human sacrifice? Sounds pretty par for the course across the ancient world - the Celts and the Aztecs seem closest in terms of practice.

The more abstracted Chaos-worship you see in the fluff ("Let Chaos reign!" rather than "Blood for the blood god!") is a much harder sell as organised religion in the ancient world was tied to social organisation and structure and usually justified its most heinous acts by arguing that it was necessary to maintain order and the fabric of society (maintaining Ma'at, helping the Sun fend off the Tzitzimimeh through human sacrifice, wiping out rival religions to appease your own God who would otherwise strike you with plague, etc.).

The notion of an insane god or gods who will smite you whatever you do is compatible with notions of chance and physical laws and could lead to a secular code of ethics and morality earlier - however it would be highly unpopular compared to religions that suggested individuals could curry divine favour,and so control their environment, via home altars, and states that adopted it would be less stable than ones that deified the kingly line or suggested the monarch rules through divine right.

Looking at the specific Chaos gods, Khorne is a bit more single-minded than most gods of war but not totally outside the pale. He could easily exist in a polytheistic context and would have good appeal to soldiers, albeit the most hardcore followers (the berserkers) would probably be seen as nut-cases.

Slaanesh is an exaggerated form of Dionysius/Adonis-Tammuz - orgiastic cults of this sort could easily exist, though their followers taking to war is less plausible.

Tzeentch only really makes sense in a world where the Chaos gods are real and he can really grant occult knowledge of secrets, though there are similarities to Gnostic rites and the highest god who knows secrets transmitted through his followers that allow one to transcend the physical universe.

Nurgle is a pretty tough sell and I can't think off-hand of any OTL gods who were presented similarly. Baal-zebub, the Canaanite 'Lord of the Flies', was not actually a god of disease but of healing; he was supposed to be able to expel the flies that caused sickness, and was not depicted as grotesque or rotting (depiction). Grotesque gods are not totally implausible - Egypt's Bes is a good example and Nurgle is presented as having a similar jolly personality, albeit one that capraciously inflicts plague and mutation. However, his association with disease is even likely to lose him the demon-cult status afforded to, say, Kali.
 
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Cyan

Banned
I dont know, you could have this blood cult start from the middle east and eradicate all the religions in 2/3rds of the planets surface and end up killing billions in countless meaningless wars over the next 2000-3000 years as the religion mutates into a constantly new form where nothing changes but the most important names of the religious leaders. Combined with a near total retardation of science and progress for most of its existence.

Failing that, you could have some form of hedonistic religion but those tend to be peaceful and not bloodcults as no one likes to eat the flesh and the blood of other sentients(food from lower creatures in general doesnt count) except for bloodcults.

But to be serious for a moment.

If you want a real chaos like religion, you need an unimaginable level of stupidity that I dont think even this planet could pull off.

Sooner or later someone will turn the 4 gods into chaos undivided and from that into monotheism and from that into something resembling modern day monotheism.

So, OTL? :)
 
Yeah, I don't think you could have the gods of Chaos entirely as they appear in the Warhammer universes. People don't want gods of death and destruction alone-they want gods that look after all aspects of their life.

I guess you could have a pantheon headed by modified versions of the gods, however.

Slaanesh-God of pleasure and desire-kind of like Aphrodite, but a hermaphrodite (there are worshipped gods with hermaphroditic aspects IOTL, so it works).

Khorne-God of War. Not pure bloodletting, which probably wouldn't appeal to everyone, but war in all it's aspects, including honor.

Nurgle-Gods can hold contradictory impulses, so Nurgle could be a god of healing as well as a god of disease. His avuncular nature could make him a patron god of children and families too.

Tzeentch-The most difficult to work into a realistic religion, as people rarely really want change. That said, many pantheons have a trickster god, like Loki and Coyote who like to mess with things.
 
But reducing Tzeentch (For example) to a mere trickster God is completely not Tzeentch.

Or Khorne into "all aspects of war".

That's like saying you want a ham sandwhich, except for the ham. And the bread.
 
But reducing Tzeentch (For example) to a mere trickster God is completely not Tzeentch.

Or Khorne into "all aspects of war".

That's like saying you want a ham sandwhich, except for the ham. And the bread.

But definately the headcheese.
I tend to agree, Tzeentch is a schemer, but the kind of schemer who has literaly every aspect planned out to the last minutiae. The Guy isn't a trickster deity in the sense of Loki, he is a full fledged master plotter who is probably responsible for arranging the entirety of human history. And really Khorne is basically a more brutal Ares so its not hard for someone like him to appear. Although I think his Nurgle is worst, because that really isn't Nurgle at all. Although I think if you include Nurgles kidnap victim/lover as the goddess of healing he could exist as he is but not be popular.

Although it should be mentioned that we are talking about Chaos Undivided when in Warhammer and in real polytheistic religions there where groups that favoured one god much more than the others.
 
That's like saying you want a ham sandwhich, except for the ham. And the bread.

I prefer to think of it as "I want the vodka, but not so much that I pass out and drown in my own vomit".

While the Warhammer setting requires a certain level of nihilistic grimdark from the Chaos gods, at some point this gets boring and stupid and needs to be toned down. You could never make a religion out of worshipping such capricious and destructive deities-violent deities from the religions in OTL did some constructive things for their followers if no-one else. Mars defended the Trojans and later the Romans, and the god of the Bible lead his people out of bondage to a land of milk and honey.

Compare that to "I like you, so I'm going to fill you with a blind rage so you kill everything in your sight and oh! Now your a quivering mass of mutant flesh were once you were a person!" And that's what you get for pleasing this god. What the hell's the point?
 
I prefer to think of it as "I want the vodka, but not so much that I pass out and drown in my own vomit".

While the Warhammer setting requires a certain level of nihilistic grimdark from the Chaos gods, at some point this gets boring and stupid and needs to be toned down. You could never make a religion out of worshipping such capricious and destructive deities-violent deities from the religions in OTL did some constructive things for their followers if no-one else. Mars defended the Trojans and later the Romans, and the god of the Bible lead his people out of bondage to a land of milk and honey.

Compare that to "I like you, so I'm going to fill you with a blind rage so you kill everything in your sight and oh! Now your a quivering mass of mutant flesh were once you were a person!" And that's what you get for pleasing this god. What the hell's the point?

Honestly I disagree, without them being real then stuff like that isn't too important. Its easy to see it as simple rewards for good service and following their ways. Stuff like blood sacrifice, orgiastic rituals, and arcane strange rituals no one really gets, are all things you could find in real religions. The real problem I see is that the gods of Chaos are all diametrically opposed to each other and encourage division among their followers. I mean its to the point where Nurgle is the god of the exact opposite things Tzeentch is opposed to, and Slaanesh and Khorne don't like each other much either.
 

whitecrow

Banned
Nurgle is a pretty tough sell and I can't think off-hand of any OTL gods who were presented similarly. Baal-zebub, the Canaanite 'Lord of the Flies', was not actually a god of disease but of healing; he was supposed to be able to expel the flies that caused sickness, and was not depicted as grotesque or rotting (depiction). Grotesque gods are not totally implausible - Egypt's Bes is a good example and Nurgle is presented as having a similar jolly personality, albeit one that capraciously inflicts plague and mutation. However, his association with disease is even likely to lose him the demon-cult status afforded to, say, Kali.
IIRC Nurgle is at least in part inspired by Nergal, a Babylonian deity.
 

scholar

Banned
Making Dionysis more popular and adding in a more sinister tone to him could lead to what you're looking for.
 

whitecrow

Banned
But reducing Tzeentch (For example) to a mere trickster God is completely not Tzeentch.

Or Khorne into "all aspects of war".

That's like saying you want a ham sandwhich, except for the ham. And the bread.
I never played WH games, but from what I picked up through conversations on the internet, the Chaos Gods were more "realist" in earlier versions of the games (i.e.: Khorn also honor & courage, Nurgle was the god of healing & caring as well as plagues, etc.)
 
I never played WH games, but from what I picked up through conversations on the internet, the Chaos Gods were more "realist" in earlier versions of the games (i.e.: Khorn also honor & courage, Nurgle was the god of healing & caring as well as plagues, etc.)

Honestly they wheren't having read the fluff from then. They where just as ridiculous as they are now only because 40k started off a lot sillier than it became and it was mostly just a different tone that made them seem nicer.
 
But definately the headcheese.
I tend to agree, Tzeentch is a schemer, but the kind of schemer who has literaly every aspect planned out to the last minutiae. The Guy isn't a trickster deity in the sense of Loki, he is a full fledged master plotter who is probably responsible for arranging the entirety of human history. And really Khorne is basically a more brutal Ares so its not hard for someone like him to appear. Although I think his Nurgle is worst, because that really isn't Nurgle at all. Although I think if you include Nurgles kidnap victim/lover as the goddess of healing he could exist as he is but not be popular.

I think you'd have to go beyond even "more brutal Ares", but at least I could see that as a splinter sect sort of thing of an Ares-like god.

Nurgle as half of some duality with a goddess of healing would be interesting - I'm not sure how well it would work, but it would at least be something sane humans might look to.

Maybe.


And the whole point of the Chaos gods is that they are about suffocating on your own vomit level extremism.

This isn't "God of War", this is God of Slaughter. All gory, painful death is good to Khorne - and no one sane wants to worship a War God that thinks his followers being dead is just as good as his enemies.

Asking for a way to make Chaos a workable religion is missing that the only people who follow Chaos in setting are deluded maniacs - why would that be different in our world?
 
Hi
after seeing this thread I had to post people forget that in the original Slaves to Darkness and The Lost and the Damned books the chaos gods were less bat**** insane as they have become.

Let's start this with Khorne, in the aforementioned books he was only interested in honourable combat, innocents were to be spared and given quarter. I feel although he would be possibly the third god to emerge if Chaos were real appearing during WW1

Nurgle well he's still the happy go lucky guy he has all ways been helping the afflicted be ok by that. Now in the history that I've thought of he would appear during the Plague of Athens which is about about 590 bc he probably would be less oh my God lets infect friking everybody. And more like the lepper knights of the crusades as time progresses his followers would include scientists and germ technicians .

Tzeentch, people will hate or love this. He is probably the best god for knowledge. Now if magic doesn't exist or exists in a Hodge podge way. Mutation would be evolution and possibly even start during the " age of enlightenment " with Charles Darwin being the prophet, his followers would be big on Radiation and giving those who accept him this wonderful gift, he would also have the most diverse of followers.

Slaanesh, the 60's, free love, drugs, she/ he / it would be really basically the cult of scientology mixed with the Manson family's Helter Skelter, now my idea is to have Andy Warhol as the Pleasure Pontif and to have it like a cult of the self

Malal, everybody's favourite self hating chaos god. His followers would be anarchists living to " bring down order " a bit like a beatnik drum circle, as they are normally anti social as hell they would be loners who think drawing Khorne sucks! Served Malal well.


Anyway that's the basics and if the OP gives his blessing I could continue it.
 
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