Pantheism

Credit to Coamaker for the pantheistic symbol

New York Public Library for image of "saharan pantheon."

to NASA for image of "Elysium."

and Rojem Cajan for image of Zeus.

There are temples in your town. Great towering buildings of marble carved into ornate patterns with statues of long forgotten deities who once held great domain over this world. That was before the war. Now the world has been torn apart again and again and still these monuments to ethereal beings still stand. They cannot help you. The gods who tried are dead.

Pantheism refers to the worship of various pantheons of Elysium, groups of gods that at the time held sway over mortal politics and events. This was the most common form of religion on Terra during the pre-magic era and wasn't unjustified. The most common pantheons will be famous to anyone who lives in a Deitic cosmos or reality, Odin, Freyja and Jörmungandr and others forming a northern pantheon with dominion over Scandinavia. Ra, Osiris, Set etc. forming a desert-based dominion. And Zeus, Hestia, Kronos and the rest of the Olympians forming a pantheon with dominion over the Mediterranean. To be clear: in this world, these are very real gods which each control a demi-plane of Elysium, they had very real dominion over the world, and the only reason they no longer have dominion is refusal to participate in the Deitic war.

Structure

Leadership and hierarchy

Generally these religions were organized in smaller sectional worship, being lead by a local holy person. There are of course exceptions, such as in the case of the saharan pantheon, where the leaders had a hand in politics directly in the form of being the rulers of several nations in the local area.

A depiction of the saharan pantheon

These leaders, regardless of power or size of influence often lead religous rights for speciffic gods at speciffic times. These rights were beleived to apease certain gods for specific blessings such as good harvest. The gods didn't actually need this worship to give blessings, for them it was a form of entertainment.

Assets

These religions often did not acquire assets as many other and more modern religions do, with most rituals not involving anyone giving the church fiscal assests. As such the main power of these religions came from divine fear, and respect of the word of holy ones.

History

Origins

Pantheism as a whole largely began with the Mesopotamian pantheon, who were the first to come to earth during the earliest years of humanity, and one of the first to leave. These gods were worshiped almost exclusively for a very long time, until Mesopotamia fell, and more gods were able to step in. Various pantheons would spread across the world inspiring their respective religions.

An image of Elysium, with certain magic techniques used to view the demi planes, see the three black and one blue dots, the gods as always have refused comment and blocked any attempts to view pat the Elysium barrier.

Disbandment

During the Deitic war many of these deities retreated into their respective demi planes, this resulted in the worship of these gods falling out of favor, due to them being seen as cowards or as having abandoned humanity.

Religion

Mythology

The mythos of these religions varied drastically, but there were some key traits that were shared across all. These stories usually began with some now dead sect of deity creating the universe, this is believed to refer to the primordials, which was then taken over by the current pantheon. These religions often have a set of a few key deities that are featured throughout the mythos, and many minor gods. The religions often feature a ruler deity deity of deathdeity of death and a deity of the sun as two of these key deities.

Cosmology

One interesting feature of several of these religions is that they often prescribe the planes to one of their key deities. They did have a level of planetary understanding from religious officials that many at the time did not possess, illustrated by their naming of the infinite sea as neptune, which it is often refered to as in the modern day. This is also partially due to the fact that the god Neptune was quite involved in the plane's history and remains as such, but I digress.

Worship

Tenants of faith

Tenants of faith are often communicated via oral storytelling, whether that be stories originally told by the gods themselves, or stories made up by practitioners of these religions of dubious truth. Regardless, these stories often feature the gods making some form of mistake and are designed to teach listeners not to repeat those mistakes.

These stories often feature themes such as lying, cheating, defying the gods. Additionally there is on average one cheating scandal per tale, but this is due to Zeus, who is an outlier.

Said outlier, I feel it important to note my sigh

Priesthood

The preisthood of these religions would often take on the form of storytellers, those who had memorized the tales of the gods and could recite them. These were often the people who would make up stories to serve a moral.

The symbol that generally repersents all pantheistic religions as a whole, usually placed on a shield or crest to denote Pantheism alongside symbols of the specific

Type: Religion type (disbanded).

Founded: Roughly 20000BM

Disolved: Most sects disolved by 100 ME

Alternative names: Religions, Polytheism, many-gods, and Pantheons.

Demonym: Pantheist