i'm writing a story about a world where pagan religions are the norm, and anyone who knows anything should tell things because it's a world without christianity, so many changes!
That's a bit too broad; are there any specifics that you're worried about? One thing to note is, contra (some versions of) Wicca and much other bad understanding, the very concept of what a God is changes from culture to culture. The very underpinnings of the belief, the structure of things, varies. There seems to be this idea that essentially every pagan religion's set of Gods are interchangeable, that there's generally an analogous God in Religion A for pretty much every God in Religion B. This actually is very not the case. It started off with conquerors such as the Romans, who subsumed conquered cultures' religions within theirs, sometimes stealing the good bits, but this was not a honest attempt but rather forced cultural assimilation.
More specifics Sorry o.o polytheistic religions like the Roman one or the Norse one or the Egyptian with large pantheon and large myths and many conflicting versions of things.
Well, I know a fair amount about the Norse stuff, and people I'm close to are knowledgable on the Irish one. I know a bit about Greek & Roman, but it has its holes, and I'm largely ignorant on Egyptian. It's worth remembering that our knowledge of all of these has huge holes in it, because Christianity and Islam tried pretty hard to wipe out the former religions in the parts of the world that they have held sway. On the other hand, once worship of the old traditions was largely dead, Christians in Iceland and Ireland and other places did write down what they could find out about the old myths, since they were no longer considered dangerous at that time, so most of what we know about the Norse and Irish religions are through Christian eyes. This also, inevitably, introduced bias.
Not trying to come off as all 'let me just google that for you', but if you spent some time trawling wikipedia, that might give you enough background that you could ask more specific questions we could help you with? Cause yeah, 'summarize every religion/pantheon/mythology in human history except christianity' is probably beyond the scope of a forum thread.
One general thing: it was rare in most pagan religions for there to be a source text which was considered authoritiative; there is no Bible, no Torah, no Qu'ran. Many, though not all, were oral-tradition religions, not written ones, but there were exceptions (e.g. there is much in the way of Egyptian religious writing, fortunately for otherwise we'd know very little about it).
You're probably right and I'm being bad at explaining again. Wikipedia isn't so great at the explaining worship part of things? Does that make any sense? I'm doing that too, plus researching. and clarification you don't have to explain everything everything and this forum (and I can rename it) can just be a Place To Info dump And Discuss.
Do you mean what their actual rituals consist of? Like 'instead of going to church on sundays, ancient egyptians did x to worship'? Or like, personal feelings, 'what did faith mean to people who worship zeus and not yhvh?' Or i guess 'how did people know who in a pantheon to worship?' Sorry, Im still not totally clear what you're looking for, and the topic is of interest to me, so.
@Lissiel I completely get it I'm failing hard at actually explaining myself here. i mean like, like, honestly i just need to know how to portray someone to whom it is an everyday part of life, not the mythos of centuries past. i'm tempted just to start a Polytheistic Religion Place, because that's one of the things I find fascinating (and religion to, in general, i want to be a theologian if the classics or the humanities don't work out)
Well, perhaps this will be of interest to you: I worship, among others, the roman god janus. I have a little painting a friend did up on my alter, and i light a little candle and some incense and always pray to him first as 'opening the way' before I talk to my other gods. I don't do it every day, esp now Im so busy, but at least once a week I try to go say hi and thank you. When we switched out the locks on our doors, or when we do our big cleaning I include a little prayer for him as the good of doorways and liminal spaces. When I was freaking out about probably being nb, I went and talked to him. When my baby was born, I took him to meet my gods and introduced him to janus first, asked him to look out for a little guy who was moving from not-existing to existing and to help him remember that things are never only one way or the other. On new years day I bake him a little salt-cake and leave it on the altar for a while before burning it. Does that help?
