Pantheons: A Deeper Dive
In this article, I'm going to talk about a few more advanced or complicated tips and techniques to be used in pantheon creation: Making a pantheon suit a specific culture *without* using direct pastiches or even the real world versions of the real world gods associated with it.
If you haven’t yet, go read my Gods: Filing off the Serial Numbers, or watch the video. https://www.ofgodsandgamemasters.com/worldbuilding-series/gods-filing-off-the-serial-numbers and https://youtu.be/5QFLavLVJ6U
So, what if you want to build a pantheon for a setting, and you have a very specific culture in mind to emulate? You want to make a culture that looks and feels like the Aztecs, for instance, while maybe making the names more easily pronounceable by European tongues, and also you don't want them to have the real world baggage associated, because you wouldn't want to get something wrong and offend someone of that heritage.
This article is all about that.
Step One: Research. Learn all you can about that pantheon, those people, their beliefs. Make sure you have a good idea what those gods meant to those people. Wikipedia and google are still your friends, but you might need help from specialist sites like https://www.sacred-texts.com/. Or me. I offer consult services.
Step Two: Decide which bits of that culture, that religion, are really important to you. Focus on those gods in your research.
Step Three: Once again, it's time to remix and scratch off serial numbers. Once you've established what the critical parts are of the religion, you should know which god archetypes you want to focus on to give that feel. So pick out those gods. Write them down. Then separate out all the things they are god of, leaving a list of the gods and their major attributes.
Step Four: Pick a primary attribute for each new god from those lists, like, God of the Sun, or God of Sacrifice. Assign lesser attributes from the list as makes sense to you, regardless of which god they originally came from. This could make for strange sounding combinations, but remember we have the real world combination of sun and disease in Nergal and Apollo and thus in our Regan Sun God, Solis, who holds domain over both Light and Death. And the Aztec pantheon, referenced above, has Tezcatlipoca as a god of shadows, darkness, the sun, the moon, riches, disease...quite complicated. Once you've done that...
Step Five: Find a thematic, Aztec (or whatever culture you chose) feeling name, first in English or your native tongue, then look for its translation. For example, I might make a god with some of Tezcatlipoca's attributes, a war god, a god of darkness, but not of disease, a god of jaguars and the moon but not of the sun...His domains might be Twilight, War, Nature.... Maybe I'd name him “Grey Jaguar Warrior”, which in Aztec would be, Nextic Ocelotl. Could be trimmed to something like Nextocelot or even Nocelot or Nocelotl if you can pronounce it, for a name that suggests Nahuatl without actually being Nahuatl. And then you make sure, if you publish, that people know you aren't using the actual language in your fictional world.
From that point, design the gods based on the themes and names you already have, coloring them with authentic seeming rituals and tales from the culture you're basing it on. It can be a lot more rewarding than just taking the actual gods and running with them.
