- Holiness
- What is it?
'Holy' is one of these adjectives whose actual meaning is somewhat nebulous, and 'sacred' is no better. Oftentimes in descriptions of religions - even in depictions of real-world religions - these words are just plastered all over the place without much thought.
If we describe something as being 'holy' to some group of people, we haven't really said anything other than that it's 'special' to them. This is not helpful in describing the relation they have to it, and may even serve to delegitimize their relationship to it. Consider, for instance, a people who derive their livelihood from the ecosystem that exists around some particular river, and whose customs contain a lot of locally ecology-savvy behaviors. A casual observer might think some of these customs are but superstitions (because he is unaware of the origin and practical benefits of the behaviors). The people may well have a word that they apply to the river and this word may well become translated as holy. However, important, beneficial, central, primary, necessary, property, territory etc may be equally justified translations. By this act of translating - maybe even arguably correctly - we have served to paint them as superstitious and ignorant people who relate to the world in a backwards and ritualized fashion. (Which they might well also do, but their relationship to their environment clearly also includes aspects which have enabled their survival. Sometimes, holy is a synonym for important. Sometimes, it's a synonym for superstition.)
I would just generally advice against using the word 'holy' without afterthought. I will violate this piece of advice systematically here, but consider 'holy' a placeholder variable.
Looking at the etymologies of some words for holiness might help a bit, but might also just serve to muddy the waters.
holy: from the same root as whole and health
sacred: from a root that probably meant something like 'to make a pact, to make sacred, ritual'. Since one of the meanings already basically contains 'sacred', this sort of hints at it maybe being a "semantic prime". Latin sanctus has the same origin.
pyhä (Finnish) - cognates in other Finnic languages mean 'sin' (Erzya, Moksha), unholy/dirty/pagan (Udmurt, Komi). This probably simply means that it's somehow connected with 'transgression' - i.e. something that is holy is something that should not be transgressed.
qaddosh (Semitic) - some claim this comes from a root meaning 'set apart'
kutsal (Turkish) - fortune/luck + adjectivizer
naofa (Irish) - from PIE *neyb meaning blessed, holy, fortunate
սուրբ (Armenian, "surb") - from PIE *(s)ku-bʰ-ro- (?). Cognates mean 'beautiful, shining' and 'pure'.
𐍅𐌴𐌹𐌷𐍃 (Gothic, weihs) - from PIE *weyḱ-, 'house, village'.
𐌰𐌹𐍂𐌺𐌽𐍃 (Gothic, airkns) - from PGmc erknaz (pure, holy, genuine, precious), from a PIE root that might also be the root of a Tocharian stem meaning 'revere, venerate, honour'
tapu (Maori) - obvious cognate to 'taboo' (which we have borrowed from another polynesian language). Means both 'forbidden, restricted' as well as 'holy'. Apparently, there is also a verb ārai which can be used in related contexts, with secondary meanings 'to shield, to block out, to insulate'. The corresponding noun has meanings like 'obstacle, barricade, screen, barrier, veil, curtain'
𐕌𐕒𐕡𐕟𐕒𐕡𐕙 (Aghwan, muc̣'ur) - a word whose primary meaning is 'pure, clean, white'.
Of course, even then some of these are a bit unclear - what does blessed mean? What is a blessing?
- How is holiness imbued?
In some traditions, certain things or places are holy by their very nature; in others, holiness can be imbued onto something by some simple ritual. In other traditions, holiness is imbued by complex rituals or by very great effort; look up how Jewish Torah scrolls are made, or the effort that goes into making and maintaining tefillin. Painting a Christian icon is also a very painstaking effort, and some traditions have very specific instructions how churches are to be built.
In the the Finnish Lutheran Church, rooms in which communion is to be celebrated must have been inaugurated for that purpose by a bishop, which in some sense imbues that room with a special status (a type of holiness).
In several religious traditions, cemeteries are also 'exceptional' in some way that is akin to holiness: even to the extent that failure to be buried in one might be a cause for not reaching the afterlife.
- Is there more than one type of holiness?
An important idea that I've hinted at above is that the holy is "set apart" in some fashion. Let's then consider the category of 'muktzeh' in Jewish halakha. These are things that are "set apart" for the time of the shabbat. They are not to be used during shabbat. Are they holy? In some sense one could consider the category of 'muktzeh' as a type of holiness, but I find it likely that most observant Jews either would find this a weird use of the word 'holy' or a weird interpretation of the concept 'muktzeh'.
Another type of 'holiness' could be the purity concerns of Judaism; holy scrolls, for instance, are tumah. So are menstruating women and any group of men and women under certain conditions. These are, in some sense, 'set apart', yet I do find it likely that most would balk at a description of this as a type of holiness. ... Yet, you will actually find some who conceive of them as a variety of holiness - including e.g. modern, liberal Jewish feminist thinkers, who find this time of separation to be something worth practicing as a form of rest, and as something that reinvigorates the relationship in other ways than purely sexual.
- How is it dealt with?
Holiness as something to deal with might seem a weird turn of phrase, but consider: the holy is in some sense separate from the mundane. This might mean that it should be treated with respect. However, there are also religions that try to infuse the mundane with holiness, e.g. small acts of worship throughout the day. (C.f. the blessings that are uttered by orthodox Jews and by Muslims at a lot of different micro-events during the day; some Jewish works express the idea that it's good to utter at least a hundred blessings. These are maybe comparable to grace before meals - in fact, some of them are directly related to meals - but also whenever seeing anything remarkable, and a significant number of other events.)
This can have very important practical consequences for the religion: is the mundane supposed to be sacralized, or is the sacred supposed to be kept separate from the mundane?
Is it achieved by ritual washing? Is it something you have to wash off once the holiness has run its course? Are there other rituals related to holiness?
Are holy things stored in special ways? Are holy people expected to behave in special ways? (E.g. zoroastrian priests, having undergone certain ritual purifications, have restrictions on how their bodily waste can be gotten rid of. This makes it very hard for a zoroastrian priest to travel, as the purification is basically cancelled whenever they violate the restrictions.) (Nazirs in Judaism are supposed to abstain from wine and grapes altogether, and not to cut their hair; upon having fulfilled the time span for which they promised to be a nazir, they must perform certain sacrifices, which currently are impossible to perform. Thus, currently, a nazir must be a nazir for life.)
- Unholiness
Unholiness, in modern parlance, generally means "evil". However, we might also be interested in just something as simple as "the absence of holiness" - i.e. mundaneness.
- What is it?
- What causes it?
- Is it naturally ocurring? Even recurring?
- Is there more than one type and degree of it?
- How is it dealt with?
- Holy persons
- Saints?
- "holy fools"
- hermits
- Kings and chieftains
Is there a division of duties between a religious class and a political class? (Such a division is not universal.)
- Priestly families
- "Prophets"
- Temporary vows / Permanent vows
In many traditions, being a monk or a nun is a lifelong commitment. However, one could compare the Jewish "nazir" concept with a being a 'temporary' monk of some kind. However, naturally, what exactly being a monk or a nazir entails differs significantly.
- Status w.r.t society at large
In several cultures, monks and nuns are provided for by the laity. Clearly the stylites of early Christianity also were basically 'sponsored' by people on the ground.
- Holy places
- Natural places
What makes the place special? (This might even be forgotten!) How does the holiness affect actions? E.g. a holy river - is bathing in it considered a good or a bad thing to do? Does it restrict traffic along the river in some way?
- Sacrificial places
- Historical places
The way in which a place is "historical" need not be true; consider, for instance, that there have been tribes that believe some caves to have given birth to the tribe. These caves are holy to them for a quasi-historical reason. Sometimes, civic religion also contains myths like this - and political parties as well.
- Buildings
- Temples and 'churches'
The design of temples and churches comes down to many factors - function, aesthetics, architectural techniques known to the people, building materials, etc. Function is probably quite central, however. Beyond this, consider e.g. the "fortress synagogues" that exist in eastern Europe, which were built to be able to withstand minor sieges, even. Sometimes, religious buildings also contain rather community-function oriented spaces as well, e.g. rooms for meetings or eating together. The only synagogue building I have attended contains an apartment for visiting rabbis, cantors and other guests.
- Monasteries
- Open-air temples/churches
- Holy times
- Calendar!
- Delineating times
How do you determine when a calendar day begins? (This might be relevant with regards to e.g. when some ritual should occur, when some obligation begins or ends, etc.) Is it sunset or maybe sunrise? (Quite a natural point, since it's fairly easy to calculate and predict unless your conworld has wild astrophysics or orbits.) Is it astronomical midnight? Is it some kind of "legal midnight" based on time keeping devices? Is it some other legal point? Is it when the moon gets visible?
How about months? Back in antiquity, the Jewish calendar was based on observation of the moon, and to this day the islamic calendar is based on exactly that.
How about years and year lengths? Are intercalatory hours, days, weeks, months or even entire years necessary for some kind of consistency of the cycles?
Are there multiple years overlapping each other? This might sound weird - but even exists in western culture. We have school/academic years, some countries may have fiscal years that differ from calendar years, some churches have a liturgical year that begins at first advent, and so on.
Judaism has four such years overlapping each other, to delineate different things: a fiscal year for taxes of tree-related agriculture, a fiscal year for cattle taxation, one 'main' year for several purposes, and one for counting certain time spans, both in relation to the Israelite king and in relation to certain obligations.
Western culture in some sense actually also has independent month cycles: the calendar months, the lunar months and the signs of the zodiac. (We 'have' the lunar month in the sense that the moon actually affects how much light there is in nighttime in a rather unavoidable way; we 'have' the signs of the zodiac in that they're still a thing people sometimes talk about and think about.) In some work-places, time might also be counted in some kind of quasi-month (usually called "increment" or somesuch).
- Meaning of dates?
- Annual commemoration of historical events
These need not be accurate dates or even events that actually have happened; however, if they're ahistorical events that are purported to be historical, the way in which they have come to be associated with a particular date is of course of some interest.
- Numerologically derived cycles
E.g. more astrologically-aligned cultures seem to base some observations on numerical speculation. The seven day week cycle may have this at its root? However! Its use in Judaism may be a subversion of the astrological origin, i.e. Babylonians seem to have thought of the Saturday as a profoundly unlucky day, the Jews rejected this notion and made it a festive day of rest.
- Cycles of nature (agrarian events)
- Astronomical events
New moons, full moons, equinoxes and solstices are among those whose importance even can be seen in western culture, with e.g. Christmas and New Years eve (and Midsummer) being close to two of the solstices, and easter as well as Halloween being close to the equinoxes. However, the correspondences here are imperfect (due to several reasons, including the precession of the equinoxes).
- Other
Different cultures have different cycles; most of them are based on the natural seasonal cycles, but even then subcycles of a variety of natures exist: the 19 months of 19 days among the ba'hai (which add up to 361 days, and an additional 4.25... "non-month" days), the 354/355 day years of the islamic 12 lunar month calendar, the Jewish lunar month calendar with additional intercalatory months for an average of roughly 365.25 day years. All of these have celebrations fall on certain dates, and these dates naturally 'move about' in relation to the western calendar. The western calendar, likewise, attempts to ensure that the astronomical situation on each date should be similar from one year to the next (with regards to the fixed stars, that is). Other solar calendars can "move about" in relation to the western calendar as well - the western calendar is not the 'most objective' measurement of time.
The way in which both the Jewish and Christian calendars operate do use astronomy and agrarian life to imbue time with structure. Islam, however, does a very interesting thing by having the year 'rotate' with regards to the cycle of nature. IMHO, this could lead to interesting variation in the festive foods eaten from one year to another. I am not sure how muslims deal with this fact.
Finally, it would seem that the calendars of Mesoamerica had some clearly numerological things going for them with the 260-day calendar having purely numerological origins. However, they also had a solar year.
The seven day cycle of the week seems to be somewhat numerological, but the way the old Babylonians (or whoever) went about to come up with it is a bit interesting (and has lightly astrological concerns at the root of its design): 24 hours per day, 7 "planets" (in the sense of 'heavenly bodies that wander in relation to the fixed stars'): the sun, the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. (No more 'planets' were known, and naturally, this definition of planet is the "original" one which we have later altered to only cover fairly large, spherical bodies which conform to certain specific requirements). If every hour is assigned to a planet, and the planets are cycled through, every day will begin with a new planet.
This isn't a very "natural" way of arranging it, but still, the thinking behind it might be of interest. If the length of the hour was fixed, and the day actually was given a name by the hour in which the day begun - and the day begins at, say, dawn (or dusk), this could lead to interesting patterns where you sometimes skip a step in the cycle as the dawn (or dusk) comes earlier/later.
- Holidays
- Commemoration
Among the celebrations in Judaism, pesach, shavuot, hannukkah, purim, 9th of Av and
several minor holidays are based on commemoration of events. On the
other hand, Rosh Hashannah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot and some others are not
directly related to events that are supposed to have occurred on those
days. (However, of course, a variety of sources assign certain important events to those days.)
Many
Christian holy days are based on dates when things are supposed to have
happened in the life of Jesus - Christmas, Easter, the Ascension, and
so on. Some Catholic and Orthodox holy days are based on events in the
lives of saints. However ... candlemas day and all saints' day seem to
be rather disconnected from any particular historical events.
- Agricultural cycles
European Pre-American varities of Thanksgiving are clearly agrarian celebrations,
but in the American variety, it further celebrates a (relatively late!)
historical event.
Pesach and easter also have some agricultural relevance - e.g. how Pesach always must occur in springtime (in the northern hemisphere).
- Arbitrary dates
The two main islamic observations eid Al-Fitr and eid al-Adha do seem a bit arbitrary to me, but this might be because of my ignorance about deeper islamic lore. But e.g. candlemas, all saints' day, the feast of Chrst the king do not seem to have any particular reasons why they are on those specific dates.
Numerology and other related fields (gematria, etc) can also be causes for holy days: imagine that the phrase "fifth of january" in some language can have its syllables rearranged to spell out a name of God or something - in that case, this might be turned into a holiday for that very reason. Maybe the days or months spell out some significant number, etc.
- Multi-year cycles
There's no reason why a cycle necessarily would have to fit into the span of one year (or even be a multiple of whole years). Biblical Judaism had seven-year and fifty-year cycles for some particular commandments (and modern Judaism does maintain the seven year cycle). The Mexicas had 260-year cycles.
In modern Judaism, there is a seven years and five months cycle for those who participate in the Daf Yomi ('a page a day') program for studying the Talmud. There are some celebrations at the end of the cycle, which thus occur at non-integer intervals of years. This is not "integral" to the religion, however, so this might not be a 'proper' religious holy time.
- Unholy times
In many Christian folk beliefs, Holy Saturday often considered nights when evil is at its most powerful: Jesus is dead and buried, and until he resurrects, the devil, in the mistaken belief that he has won, is rampaging. (Alternatively, due to the harrowing of hell, the devil is acting up in the world as well.) In some sense, Holy Saturday, ironically, could be seen as the most unholy time in some Christian folk beliefs.
In traditional Judaism, idolatrous holidays of surrounding religious communities might be held to be 'bad' times for a variety of reasons. "Nittelnacht" - Christmas! - often had a variety of restrictions in eastern Europe, but in part this was in reaction to significant harassment from Christians during Christian holidays.
- Holy things
- Ritual things
Things that are made for ritual use may be considered holy or not; the difference between these two possibilities come up in how they are stored and regarded when not ritually used. How are they disposed of? How are they stored? What kind of respect are they shown?
Holiness may also be something that is temporarily "awarded" to things for a while, during which they are treated respectfully.
As for ritual things, consider the Islamic prayer mat, the rosary in Christianity, Christian icons and crosses, and any number of Jewish religious items. Are these holy? Most religious people would treat them with respect and not e.g. throw them on the floor or so, so in that sense they are at the very least functionally holy.
- Holy deeds
The word "sacrament" basically means 'sacred act'. However, this is a bit complicated - in catholicism, there is a list of important sacred acts (baptism, confirmation, communion, marriage, holy orders, penance, anointing of the sick). Various other Christian churches have fewer (or even none). A direct comparison to Judaism breaks down! Certainly, we could draw the following comparisons:
baptism ~ circumcision
confirmation ~ bar mitzvah
marriage ~ marriage
communion ~ participating in/hearing the Torah reading
holy orders ~ semikhah
penance ~ teshuvah
anointing of the sick ~ ?
holy orders ~ semikhah
penance ~ teshuvah
anointing of the sick ~ ?
However! This is problematic! By doing this, we first of all have ignored how relatively important these things are in Judaism vs. Catholicism, and we also ignore a variety of Jewish things that could deserve being on the same list, and implied similarities that might not actually exist.
E.g. - from an outsider point of view, I would think that acts like sitting shiva, the various observances for pesach and yom kippur, the work of the chevra kadisha, observing shabbat, ... all could be seen as important sacred acts. In fact, one could argue that Judaism in fact is full of sacred acts, to the extent that some varieties of Judaism basically is a project of filling the world and the day with holiness. Meanwhile, such a comparison also kind of reduces the importance of all kinds of other ethical acts in Christianity, so its an unbalanced comparison.
- Sacrifice
Sacrifice might be rather regulated or more of a free-for-all. Animal sacrifice, human sacrifice, fruit sacrifice, etc are all things that have existed in religions.
The reasoning behind sacrifice differs from religion to religion, and the reasoning may also be an afterthought, or even something that has been revised multiple times throughout history.
In Judaism, at some point, sacrifices were almost exclusively restricted to one single temple (that in Jerusalem). Disagreements over where the sacrifices were to be carried out even led to the Samaritan schism (or at least that was one contributing factor). Before the first temple in Jerusalem, multiple local sacrificial altars seem to have existed.
In Christianity, communion is a form of stand-in for the sacrifices of the Hebrew Scriptures, although the exact understanding of the relation between communion and scripture is not uniform, and will depend on multiple independent variables.
- Prayer
The general impression irreligious people have of prayer is that it's people asking their imaginary friend for stuff. This is far from a fair description (although, I will grant, some religious movements' prayer and e.g. some varieties of "manifesting" seem to be pretty much that - but with an even more nebulous notion of divinity involved).
Prayer comes in several forms, and it's best to consider its functions depending on the type.
- communal prayer
- group cohesion
- some research indicates that participation in group prayer leads to increased willingness to contribute to charity, so some kind of psychological effect might be present.
- prayer in really small groups
- prayer alone
- might provide some mental benefits?
In some religions, there's a preferred language for prayer. If this is the case, there's often also the case that the religion has a holy language. Religious people who also are anti-dialect grammar nazis essentially also are saying that only the official standard language is holy enough for God to hear.
In Christian traditions, prayer is sometimes considered to consist of the following parts:
- praise
- thanksgiving
- supplication
- for oneself
- for others
- confession / repentance / request for forgiveness
It is not unusual for christian writers to further subcategorize by what's being asked for, and so on. But a full subcategorization is not necessary and doesn't really tell us much - except that people ask / give thanks / praise / ... for a whole lot of different things, and we ultimately end up categorizing the things rather than the type of prayer.
However, not all prayer in all religions follow this typology! Not even Christianity!
- retelling key points of the belief system to emphasize them for oneself (or the community), i.e. a Christian explicitly mentioning the crucifixion in a prayer.
- reverential silence (not unusual in Christianity)
- in Judaism, study of Torah is considered a form of prayer; conversely, the liturgy contains sections that are study of Torah. Specifically, some of the laws of sacrifices are read in the daily liturgy - illustrating the idea that prayer is a substitute for sacrifices, currently.
In Judaism, the etymological connection between tefilah (prayer) and the root word meaning 'judge' (tefilah is reflexive, thus 'to judge oneself') is sometimes emphasized, indicating that while praying, one should consider one's deeds and judge oneself and decide to do better. Also, during weekdays, prayer should be accompanied by donating to charity (through the use of a tzedakah box).
- Sex
Irreligious people often assume religions are against sex itself. While there are genuine cases of this - and maybe even many - most religions in some sense consider sex something sacred - but much like you wouldn't use consecrated wine in a cocktail bar in order to get drunk, sex is restricted to the right contexts.
- Life events
- Early life
- baptism? circumcision?
- "first cutting of a lock" and similar
- sacrificing something for redeeming the child
- Coming of age
- confirmation, baptism in some Christian movements, Bar mitzvah
- Weddings
- Near death
- "extreme unction"
- Burials
- After death
- sitting shivah
- yahrtzeit
- days of remembering all the dead ('alla helgons dag')
- studying Talmud by someone's gravesite
- leaving flowers or stones at gravesites
- maintaining a grave
- prayer for the dead? prayer to the dead?
- Holy beings
- Supernatural ones?
- Ways of attracting them and getting their help
- ... or even enslaving them?
- Natural ones?
- Animals
- Humans
- Dynasties
- Malformed people, albinism, people of unusual stature
- Holy words
- "Prayer Punctuation", Mantras, ...
'Om' is held in high regard in some eastern religions, and is considered imbued with many mystical properties.
'Amen' in the Abrahamic traditions is used in several different ways - e.g. the most common liturgical use of it in Judaism is for a person to 'concur' with a benediction or prayer uttered by someone else. However, it is also in some prayers (and apparently in the sephardi tradition) used like in the Christian tradition - as a 'punctuation mark' for prayer.
- Names of holy beings
In mainstream Judaism, the holiest name of G-d is not used, as nearly any use of it would be considered a violation of the commandment not to take G-d's name in vain. This is further extended to other names of G-d's, and even to the extent that the word 'god', when used to refer to G-d, is written with a dash in place of the 'o' by some Jews. Another often used "nickname" for G-d is simply the Hebrew word "Hashem", i.e. 'the name', which also has, for some users, a similar dash-replacement.
On the other hand, some movements of Christianity hold the use of the tetragrammaton is very important, and use it regularly. (E.g. Je-ovah's witnesses. As I personally follow the Jewish taboo on using the tetragrammaton, I will not even write out the full name of that movement.)
Karaite Judaism - a form of Judaism that rejects the rabbinic tradition - does use the tetragrammaton in certain contexts, such as prayer.
In Judaism, names of God are not to be destroyed. For this reason, religious literature is not destroyed, but buried. This has had some interesting archaeological implications - see e.g. the Cairo geniza.
- Names of people
In some tradition, knowledge of names gives power over something. Therefore, a person may have a 'secret' name, which is, in some sense, held "holy".
- Holy Languages
Some religions have the concept that a certain language is holy in some sense.
- The language is the underlying language of the cosmos or the language of God/gods?
- In a Jewish tradition, angels don't understand aramaic.
- If a language is holy in this way, it means its words might carry "underlying truths" about the world; in such a view, puns suddenly are nearly magic.
- In ethnoreligious communities, often for ethnolinguistic reasons?
- In larger religions like Catholicism, Islam and Buddhism - but also Judaism, the scope of the historically important religious literature may make several languages somewhat functionally "holy" - in Catholicism, Latin is fairly holy, but Greek also has an important function (especially in eastern rite Catholicism), in Slavic orthodox churches Church Slavonic is functionally holy. In Islam, there is a significant amount of Persian literature, giving Persian a quasi-holy status. In Judaism, in addition to Hebrew, you have Aramaic which is important for scholarship (the Talmud is in large parts written in Aramaic, as is the Zohar). Yiddish, Ladino and other judeo-languages generally aren't held as holy, but in e.g. Yiddish-speaking chassidic communities, Yiddish now functions as "holy" in the sense of 'separating' the community from other communities.
- Unholy places, persons, times, things, actions and beings
- Types of unholiness
- "Regular" and "more extreme" forms
Unholy is often used as a term for some kind of 'evil', but literally, it just means 'not holy'. We could also see this as a term for anything that is separate - but not in a desireable state of holiness, but in an undesireable state. This is not necessarily an evil situation, but can be something 'natural' and even recurring.
In Christianity and in modern horror and such, 'unholy' often is used to denote something rather anti-holy - something evil.
- 'Hygienic' terms
In e.g. traditional Judaism, there's ritual uncleanliness - but this is part of a natural cycle of human life, where both men and women regularly become unclean, you go through a cleansing ritual, and you're clean again. The cleansing ritual itself is a mitzvah, a commandment, and thus being unclean enables the practitioner to perform a religious duty.
- Forbidden things
Is an animal you refuse to eat privileged or excessively hated? C.f. the dog vs. the pig. Most westerners wouldn't eat a dog, yet we generally love dogs. Most muslims wouldn't eat a pig, yet they generally don't love pigs.
- Evil
Does evil exist? If so, is it a thing unto itself, or is it just an absence? (Absences do exist, so evil being an absence does not mean 'evil does not exist' in much the same way you wouldn't deny that there's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza.)
- Cursing
- "Cussing"
- Demonology
- Exorcisms
- Behaviors and things designed to avoid attracting demons
In the Babylonian Talmud, it is taken for granted that pairs of things or actions attract demons; but ... the pesach seder requires four glasses of wine, which is a pair of pairs! Ways to alleviate this conundrum are presented.
The taboo on cussing in Christian culture does seem to be designed to avoid attracting evil.
- ... to evade or confuse demons
In mongolian culture, names such as 'worthless', 'noone', 'nothing', 'shit', etc have been used to make demons lose interest in children. This seems to have been especially common for the next child after a stillbirth or one that has died young.
- ... to scare off demons
Fat Tuesday / Mardi Gras / Carneval traditions in some places have been 'noisy' with the intention of annoying or scaring off demons and trolls.
The Jewish use of the shofar - a rams horn wind instrument - has also been associated with driving evil beings away.
- ... to trap or even control demons
In medieval European castles, you sometimes find labyrinths etched into the walls. These were apparently meant to trap demons, who would not be able to pass them without getting caught in them. This seems to have been a fairly mainstream practice, probably even sanctioned by the church.
Many medieval occult Islamic, Christian and Jewish magic manuals contain methods for trapping and controlling demons.
- Death
In ancient Norse religion, the nails of the dead had to be removed - a ship named Naglfar was being built from the nails left on dead people by the evil powers, and once this ship was ready, Ragnarrök - the end of the world - would occur.
Between death and burial, many religions have a variety of ideas about the status of the dead.
- The afterlife
Not all religions have notions of the afterlife, and among those that do, complexities exist: reincarnation - limited reincarnation? - directly to the afterlife or sleeping in the ground until the end of Days and then resurrection followed by the afterlife? Various stages of afterlifey existence? Some kind of important passage - maybe fighting some evil or doing some tricky thing or getting 'weighed' in some manner. Ideas about ghosts were formalized and taught by religious authorities in both Catholicism and early Protestantism. The Talmud also discussed ghosts.
- Intoxicants
Full ban? Ritual use? All kinds of possibilities exist. Judaism famously have a lot of traditions about alcohol, some examples:
- Purim famously is a holiday of drinking and revelry
- Shabbat should be started with a glass of wine
- If wine is not available, "the wine of the land" may be used - i.e. beer. (Whether mead or cider or fermented palm sap or such qualify is hard to find out.)
- The end of shabbat often is celebrated by a ceremony called havdalah, where wine or some other alcohol is also to be included (it is less regulated what type of drink it should be, i.e. even hard liquor can qualify afaict?)
- During passover, each person at the table should have four glasses of wine
- There's a historical controversy where it was unclear whether wine is permissible on pesach - the ban in the Bible on leaven could be argued to include anything fermented. Mainstream Judaism interprets it to be leavened grain products from certain specific types of grain. Some karaites include non-grain products in the ban, others don't.
- Due to the ban on leavened grain, drinks like beer, whiskey, vodka, gin etc are banned on passover (even owning them!); It seems in eastern Europe, passover acquired a tradition to drink mead - which was popular in general at the time; the reasoning seems to be 'any drink that is permissible is meant to be enjoyed, and mead is clearly permissible, so we should enjoy it'.
- Mysticism
- What is it even?
Mysticism is a rather eclectic collection of religious practices, often with the intention of experiencing altered states of mind and to find out 'hidden' things about the world. However, secondary mysticism, where one learns of what someone has experienced and through that gets to increase one's knowledge without oneself having experienced any such things is also a thing. Thus, mysticism is a lore that could be said to be 'experience-based' w.r.t. the supernatural, rather than based on rational thinking.
In western religion, mysticism often is associated with occultism as well. Not all mysticism has to be occultism, nor does all occultism have to be mysticism.
- What use does it have?
- Lore
- Doctrine
Doctrine, for the purpose of this essay, is any belief that is mandated by the faith community or its leaders.
- Narratives
- Books?
- Canon?
- Levels of canonicity?
- Competing canons
- "Apocrypha"
- Beyond canonicity
- Tradition
- Levels of canonicity?
- Regional variation
- Codification
Mainstream Judaism considers the written Bible incomplete - in the sense that understanding it requires an additional 'oral tradition'. Originally, it was not permitted to write down this oral tradition, but some time after the fall of the second temple, rabbis decided to write down a significant chunk of this oral tradition. This first resulted in the work called the Mishnah (and baraitas/toseftas). Later interpretation of the mishnah and baraitas developed into the Gemara, and together, these works are called the Talmud, which is something as "peculiar" as a written oral tradition. ... However. The nature of the writing still ensures that an oral oral tradition is necessary for the understanding of the written oral tradition.
A religion that originates in an illiterate community which turns literate might well go through a process of codifying oral traditions; this might be a challenge, with variant traditions in different places: but even for the literate Jewish culture this was a challenge. Both resolving and conserving variation might be intentions of the codifiers. (Resolving implies eradicating variation, either by adjudicating in favour of one option or by merging them into a single average form. The rabbis, after 70CE, seem to have utilized both approaches in different questions, with the intent of maintaining a coherent community: not too many groups that split off due to disagreement, but not too great a divergence of practices either. A difficult needle to thread.)
- Types of lore
- Historical Narratives
- "Mythological narratives"
In the Jewish aggadic literature, there are all kinds of rather wild stories; few Jews, even among the orthodox, take these stories at face value. As one rabbi expressed it ,"these stories are the ambience of Judaism". They are voices in the background that lend Judaism a certain atmosphere. They are stories worth keeping, and they may be stories that encode information that the sages did not want to be widely understood.
The parables of Jesus' can be seen to give a similar ambience to Christianity, even though their points often are reasonably clear (not always, though). Some of them are rather remarkably down-to-earth, with few miracles or anything and in that sense "within the realm of realism", yet clearly fictional. Very few Christians believe that the reason Jesus spoke of the prodigal son was that that exact narrative actually had happened, and that Jesus wanted us to know that exactly that had happened, and that believing that that had happened was important. I have, however, encountered at least one Christian who does seem to think exactly that.
- Instructions
- Magic vs. Miracles
Generally speaking, these terms merely distinguish whether a supernatural or unlikely event came about by religiously sanctioned or non-sanctioned practitioners or practices.
- "Scientific lore"
Sometimes, misunderstood or outdated science is conserved in a religion; the kosher rule on not combining fish and meat in a dish stems from medicinal science of late antiquity, where this was held to be unhealthy. Fish and meat are permitted at the same meal, just not in the same dish.
- Beliefs about the future
- End-times?
- Specific times?
- Is time linear or cyclic? Or something even weirder?
Read some topology, and you'll start getting weird ideas about how one could conceive of time as being structured (and of course, in a conworld, time might be really weird in the first place, but beliefs about time need not comport with the actual nature of time.)
- How are false prophecies dealt with?
- Is ... improving or declining?
"..." would of course
generally be 'the world', with things like ethics or nature or whatever
in focus. However, other things can also be held to have 'tendencies':
among orthodox Jews, there's an idea that the ability to understand how
to draw correct inferences about Jewish law is declining by every
generation, but the ability to understand kabbalah - the Jewish mystical
lore - is improving by every generation.
Although
it's commonly held among Christians that ethics is in decline,
ultimately Christianity has an "optimistic" view of the long run - evil
will be fully vanquished. Judaism and Islam hold a similar optimism -
and the Talmudic Rabbis even to the extent that they speculated that if
mankind gets its act together, the messiah will never 'go public' about
his mission. He'll just live and die, and then be the first man to be
resurrected on judgment day.
- The messiah
This is a concept that is somewhat overused in fiction, but given that western culture has 'grown up' with the concept, it might not be all that weird.
Not every religion has a messiah concept, and the ones that do have rather different ones: Christianity believes the messiah to be G-d incarnate. Jews and Muslims believe him merely to be a servant of G-d's. It's hard to find very concrete information on the Zoroastrian Sayoshant.
In Judaism, the idea of the messiah has many variations, and looking into, say, Shabbetai Zvi is well worth it.
- Rules
- Negotiation of rules
Sometimes, rules will be unclear or hard to extend into new situations. Systems for negotiating how to parse them in new situations may differ from one religion to another - c.f. rabbinic Judaism vs. karaite Judaism, or protestantism vs. catholicism, or conservative Judaism vs. orthodox Judaism.
- Arbiters of rules
- Ritual activities
Rituals can be split up in several ways, and some of these 'splits' can serve as inspiration for the conworlder: are rituals communal or private? Are they formalized or somewhat non-formalized? Do they require two or more people interacting or are they individual?
- Seasonal activities?
- Reasons?
- Prayer
- How is it carried out?
- Accompanying activities?
- Social prayer, solo prayer?
- What is the intention of the prayer?
- Meditation
- Death and the afterlife
- Rituals
- preceeding burial
- during burial
- after burial
- regularly recurring after that
- Afterlife
- Does proper burial have an effect on one's standing in the afterlife?
It is a common folk belief in Christianity that burial in hallowed ground is necessary for peace after death.
Not every religion concerns itself with the afterlife.
- Reincarnation?
- "Just a place" (sheol)
- Merger with something greater?
- Punishment?
- The dead affecting the living
- Ancestor worship
- Appeasement?
- Interactions?
- Ghosts
Ghosts were of sufficient concern to both Catholics and protestants that there exists theological literature about their existence and the theological implications thereof; among early protestants, belief in their existence was theologically orthodox.
- Symbols
- Functions?
- Sub-varieties
- Geographical varieties?
Most religious variation throughout history is regional, e.g. Catholics tend to live in some places, Orthodox Christians in other, protestants in some other places. However, religious variation along geographical lines need not entail splits: there are Catholics who adhere to Eastern Liturgy, and eastern Canon Law, and other eastern practices - largely in the geographic east. (And nowadays also western rite orthodox Christians!)
For a long time, one of the important internal divisions of the Jewish community has been regional: ashkenazi, sephardi, and a few smaller groups: iranian, teimani (yemenite), mizrahi, romaniote, italian, etc. Some authors conflate the various near middle eastern and mediterranean 'tribes' of Judaism under 'sephardi', and so reduce it to the two-way split of ashkenazi and sephardi. AFAICT, there's some truth to the notion that the other groups tend to align more closely with the sephardis in praxis, but I am far from an expert.
This split is not a "schism" - there are liturgical differences, there are differences in interpretation of halakha (Jewish law), and differences in customs, cuisine, music and so on. An Ashkenazi Jew will (generally) not view Sephardi praxis as offensive or wrong or mistaken, but will adhere to his own tradition.
In Islam, the major schools of sharia tend to be geographically distributed and seem to hold each other in similar regard as different traditional Jewish communities do.
- Schisms
- Divisions (that might not be schismatic!)
- to save someone's life
During WW2, in eastern Europe a question arose among the nazis: were Karaites Jews or not? They consulted with rabbis, who ruled that no, karaites are not Jews, thus saving their lives. (At least partially. In other communities where the karaites and Jews had closer ties, the nazis simply assumed the karaites to be Jewish.)
- over interpretation of doctrine
- over authority
In reality, the protestant reformation in northern Europe was over authority - namely that of local kings vs. the pope.
- over dynasty?
Ostensibly, the shia/sunni split was over dynasty. Some splits between minor chassidic movements are also over dynasty, but these splits are not "schismatic" in the usual sense.
- over succession in some other way?
The various antipopes should be obvious examples.
- over decisions on ethics or other behaviors
- over "meta-stances" on doctrine
- Food
- Jewish kosher rules, Muslim halal rules both serve to create a sort of dependency on the community: not everyone can shochet lambs at home.
- Back in the day, the chassidim separated strongly from other Jewish groups by making some rules stricter - thus making it hard to be sociable with other Jews
- Look into any Jewish religious magazine; half of it is recipes.
- Traditional foods on holidays seems to be a common thing - but sometimes traditions can be surprisingly recent, e.g. "julskinka" (Christmas ham) in Sweden and Finland is often thought to be since medieval times, but is really just about 150 years or less.
- The Jewish celebration of hannukah with foods fried in oil, of purim with hamentaschen, of pesach with its four bitter herbs, four glasses of wine, lamb, no fermented grain, the tu bishvat seder with dried fruits and nuts, the shabbat with challah, ...
- Separation of foods that aren't supposed to mix: in rabbinic Judaism, milk and meat famously are not eaten together.
- Finnish rye malt pudding with bitter orange rind on easter - mämmi, Russian tvarog-based pascha, eggs on easter through large segments of Christianity, some major meat on Christmas (turkey in the anglosphere nowadays, ham in Sweden and Finland, pinnekjøtt (lamb ribs) in Norway, ...), ...
- Agriculture & related things
- Hunting
- easily develops rituals
- The Arts
- Music
Music can easily get a variety of religious practices around it: from the mythical ban on the use of the tritone, to actual views of certain music styles or instruments as sinful (or even demonic), to stylistic guidelines (e.g. the catholic church demanding that polyphony not overshadow the lyrics too much), to the orthodox Jewish thought that ever since the temple was destroyed, every synagogue service is a mourning service - and therefore, no instrumental music is permitted in the service. (However, weddings - definitely!)
Throughout Christian history, supernatural powers have been ascribed to church bells, and there's ideas of it scaring away demons and the devil himself, and there are also a variety of stories of lost (or nearly ghostly) church bells in lakes or sunken ships.
In Islam, the adhan, the chant from the minaret, is generally not counted as a form of music (although it fulfills the formal requirements for being a type of music).
- Poetry
Poetry isn't just "words that are pretty", oftentimes, poetry makes writing more memorable. For this reason, having doctrines and instructions in a poetic form is beneficial for a religion, especially in times of low literacy.
This can also easily lead into superstitions about poetry, notions like "anything that rhymes is canon" or other ideas like that.
- Imagery and statues
- Fiction
Now, let's here consider as "fiction" any work which explicitly is presented as such, and is held to be such by believers - this puts the Bible, significant parts of which probably do not agree with historical reality, outside of the category of fiction.
One of the most significant books in the history of the English-speaking part of Christianity is John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come. This is a work of fiction, clearly stated to be such, yet its significance is rather high. It is rather conceivable that other religions may value explicitly fictional narratives to communicate theology and ethics.
- Theatre
Theatre has been an important aspect of Christianity for quite a while now, and I'd even posit that the Christmas nativity plays at schools is one of the most loved parts of Christianity by many Christians.
One can also find significantly larger productions, such as the Oberammergau Passion Play every tenth year, which can be considered a ritualistic religious theatre.
- Film
Christianity has several famous films, most famously maybe The Passion and Ben Hur. In addition to this, It's a wonderful life could be considered a Christian film. There's also more purely apologetically inclined films like God's not dead.
The gender segregation in orthodox Judaism has lead to there being a small film industry where female actors who don't want their movies to be seen by men get that promise. This is not a universal requirement in orthodox Judaism, but seems to be an accomodation specifically for women who want to live by that restriction?
- Architecture
This might apply to things beyond temple and church architecture.
Some Christian and Jewish works understand the description of the Temple in the Torah as expressing some kind of divine cosmology - i.e. the Temple is basically a preshadowing or a blueprint for the structure of reality.
Many temples and cathedrals have a variety of important symbolism in how they are built, down to numerological considerations for the number of pillars or whatever. However, meanwhile, many really ancient religious structures do seem to have astro(n|l)ogical aspects to their design - but keep in mind that being able to draw a line among a bunch of pillars and finding that at some point so-and-so long ago this line intersected that star's rise on this or that date does not necessarily mean that it's an accurate analysis. Christianity also has traditions about how churches should be oriented, etc.
Churches and synagogues also sometimes have functional details in their design, i.e. some eastern European synagogues basically being designed so as to be able to be used as fortresses in times of strife.
Sometimes, creative architecture is forced upon a group: many Christian and Muslim cities had rules that required the tallest synagogue to be lower than the lowest church or mosque, forcing many synagogues to go partially underground (it was especially common to build one very small church or mosque to ensure that the Jews would be forced to do this).
- Dance
- Circus artistry
- Blood sports
- Games
Consider the Jewish use of the dreidel, the search for hidden candy in many Christian traditions at easter, the Jewish tradition of hiding chametz (some baked risen dough) in the time leading up to passover, so that the children can search for it and get rid of it.
- Iconoclasm, "musicoclasm", "saltatoclasm", "architectoclasm"
The main rejection of a type of art that tends to be mentioned in circles like these are the various abrahamic iconoclasms - rejections of images of God (and sometimes even more), and especially the rejection of statues and images as representatives of the divine.
However, rejection of music can also be found (e.g. in some branches of Islam), similarly some branches of Christianity (and Islam) are pretty suspicious of dance, and some branches of protestantism reject the grand cathedral architecture, in favour of basically "house churches".
I am not aware of any religion that entirely rejects poetry, but I imagine some forms of extreme fundamentalist protestantism might reject all poetry except the poetry in the Bible and in their hymnals - which they may even fail to recognize as forms of poetry.
I am aware that a precious few protestants reject fiction altogether. I have no idea how they square this with the short, fictional episodes Jesus used to convey a variety of teachings. (Well, actually, I sort of do know - if the person I asked about this isn't a Poe, he actually holds that every parable that Jesus told is also an event that had actually happened. He also holds that there's no meaning to be gleaned from them, only that one must believe that they have happened, since otherwise Jesus would not have told these stories.)
- Clothing
- Clothing as
- ... a reminder of God(s) (or other)
- ... in-group signaling
- ... showing respect
- ... marking rank
- hats. Seriously.
- ... to ward off evil (e.g. repel demons, the evil eye, etc)
- ... to reduce temptation
- ... a way to enforce social control
- Special clothing for
- ... special events (weddings, funerals, other life events)
- for the groom and bride?
- for the deceased?
- for guests?
- for officiating clergy?
Catholic, Anglican and some Lutheran traditions have several different-coloured coats for the priest / minister depending on day and event; look up "liturgical colours".
- ... holidays
- ... specific times and actions:
- prayer (see e.g. tefillin and tallit, but also head coverings for Christian ladies, which the NT commands!)
- various activities that require special blessings
- Importance of ...
Not all religions rank their component parts equally, and some religions may entirely forget the presence of one or another aspect of itself. By this I mean that e.g. sermons, teachings, and literature might entirely forget to speak about 'the community', and focus 100% on beliefs - yet it turns out in practice, maybe the community is central to the survival of the religion. OTOH, sometimes you get teachers in a religion that reject some aspect, e.g. Christians who reject the Christian community and become devotional hermits, or who reject ritual in favour of faith, or reject faith in favour of community and ritual.
- ... community
Christianity is a very faith-centered religion, where one often is lead to think that doctrine is the primary fact of religion. However, for many religions, community is the primary facet of religion - not beliefs - and this aspect is not absent in Christianity either. This leads to westerners sometimes being very confused about, say, a buddhist or hindu who doesn't believe in buddhism or hinduism, or likewise, atheist Jews. Such people are part of the buddhist/hindu/jewish community, and as such are part of their religion.
But let's consider this w.r.t Christianity for a moment:
Not everyone who utters the apostle's creed actually believes in it. Sometimes, uttering a creed untruthfully is a way of fitting in. Some people don't even think about what the act of uttering a creed is, but rather think of it as, say, singing a song or participating in a play. They don't even lie, because they don't perceive the act as a normal kind of utterance.
With the rise of Christian nationalism in the west, we also see one kind of 'community'-centered view of Christianity - one that is at odds with several central tenets of Christianity - take root, and a community-centered view that has several problematic traits to it. This kind of tension within a theological system is entirely possible.
- relationships to other communities
Although religions sometimes take up antagonistic stances with regards to one another, this is not necessarily a universal situation. Consider these examples:
In traditional Judaism, during passover Jews must not have any leavened grain products in their home. They may not own leavened grain. This is traditionally done by selling any such products to a gentile neighbor, and buying it back after passover. In Morocco, this has developed into a festive event involving Jews and Muslims.
The relationship between reform Judaism and unitarian universalism in the US was at one point so close that the movements considered merging their organization (but continue as two communities).
In the Gulags of the Soviet Union and during wars, there have been examples of orthodox and catholic clergy ministering to the members of the other group, up to and including giving communion.
The classification of religions in India seems to be somewhat problematic: it assumed a very neat correspondence to western ideas of it. It seems hinduism consists of multiple rather separate faith communities, but the overlap towards jainism and buddhism and even sikhi may be somewhat unclear. Thus, the relationships between communities within the fold of hinduism might be very complex, and comparable to relationships between different religions.
- ... belief
- systematized belief systems or unsystematized ones?
- is the systematized belief even intellectually attainable by the regular member?
- if not, is this a feature or a bug?
- ... ritual
- is there a systemization going on here?
- ... ethics
- ... other parts of the religion
- ... mysticism?
Mysticism may be an important, openly practiced aspect, an absent or suppressed aspect, or a hidden - occult - aspect. Attitudes to it may also vary over time, see e.g. how many protestants nowadays are rather suspicious of medieval mystics, yet pentecostals openly practice an experiential mysticism - without necessarily even realizing that that's what it is, while many of the reformers were quite interested in various medieval mystics.
Mysticism has many forms, including inducing oneself (or others) into a trance, doing substances, just reading and speculating, using word-play to figure out how the world works, maybe even using dice or other random number generators to get answers; in some sense, flipping a bible open to a random page and finding the first verse one's eyes land on, and then deciding that this verse hints at the answer to the question at hand is a type of mysticism.
- Interfaces with
- State and government
Some religions clearly developed to be "state bearing", with legislative systems and ways of managing power - Judaism and Islam are two pretty clear examples. Judaism fairly soon had to deal with the loss of that power, yet kept a sort of autonomy in some areas for quite a while.
Christianity, on the other hand, does shed a lot of that "statecraftsmanship" baggage, and has very little in the New Testament for dealing with such power, as the early church expected the world to end any day now. As the church gained power and soon became state bearing, church fathers like Augustine soon formalized teachings on how to hack state-bearing responsibility.
However, at the time christianity spread in Europe, north Africa and the middle East, the role of the state was not quite the same as it is in the modern world; to some extent, the church has shaped the relation between the state and the people - but it also has shaped the relation between the church and the state.
Sikhism seems to have a strong idea of democracy - and support for the idea that the people (also outside of sikhism) should be governed democratically, I would be interested to hear how developed the theory of how a state is to ensure democracy is developed in sikhism.
Few newer religions seem to develop "statebearing" ideas - though e.g. Mormonism does seem to have begun such a project at one time. It is unclear to me whether e.g. Bahá'í retains the islamic state-bearing concepts or not.
Today, of course, the secular state has replaced the religious state in the west, in Japan and China, and in a few other places beside that. In other places, it seems the state didn't so much replace a religious state as impose a Christian, Islamic or secular state onto an area with other religions.
- Organized justice
In some cultures, organized religion is also the foundation of a court system. This holds in Judaism and Islam and to a lesser extent in the Christian west as well. However, at the very least Rabbinic Judaism leaves open a possibility for a secular court system maintained by the Jewish king. In the modern world, organized justice is often associated with the state, but this is not necessarily true for all states.
In the dhimmi system of Islam, minority religions can maintain a court system for community-internal enforcement. To some extent, even in the west, non-criminal law can be adjudicated by religious court systems, such as Islamic or Jewish courts.
- Educational system
Many cultures have had their first organized educational systems as a result of religion. However, many philosophical schools also arguably have been 'religious' in some sense of the word, although these philosophies often have clashed with the mainstream beliefs of the population.
- Other religions
Sometimes, religions may overlap: if two religions answer very different questions, and these answers do not conflict, a person might well believe in both. Consider, say, a believer in shintoism that also practices buddhism.
Or, for a more interestingly complex case, a believer in 18th century sailor lore who also is a Freemason?
- Beliefs
How do religious systems' beliefs "interact"? Different religions have different views on this, and these may be somewhat difficult to assess.
A religion may be old enough that concepts like 'the law of the excluded third' and such had not yet been developed; in such a religion, even contradictory religions may be held to be genuinely true. OTOH, more 'developed' notions of truth may include notions like "God doesn't mind that other religions are wrong" or "all religions have an incomplete set of puzzle pieces" or "contradictions with other religions are mere accidents of language".
- Bans
Sometimes, religions are banned, yet continue living in hiding. Cryptojudaism, cryptoislam, occult varieties of Christianity, paganism, etc.
- Occultism
In some religions, occultism is normal. The occult is simply "hidden teachings", only kept for an educated elite. In Judaism, kabbalah was occult, until kabbalists made it a project to spread kabbalah to as many Jews as possible in the wake of the expulsion from Spain. Arguably, the Druze system also is one of institutionalized occultism.
In some other religions, occultism is either rejected entirely, or held to be something suspect - or at the very least problematic.
Finally, there are religions that have multiple incompatible stances on, or even forms of occultism within them. Arguably, for instance, some forms of Christianity have occult traditions - others reject occultism entirely as something frivolous if not even satanic. Sometimes, a branch of a religion may practice something that very clearly is a form of occultism, while maintaining that occultism is wrong.
- Science
Today, there is some controversy between science and religion ... and in fact, we find similar controversies in antiquity as well (some of the church fathers were really anti-science, some were more nuanced in their views).
- "Religious Parasitism"*** A religion can be unable to sustain its community sufficiently through the 'usual' ways (e.g. biological reproduction followed by the offspring remaining in the fold). Causes for such an issue may include members leaving or even dying unusually quickly (due to refusal to care for health, or indifference to physical risks, or even risky behaviors that the religion brings on.) ***Such a religion may still survive for a while if it somehow manages to attract converts from different populations, whose population is not beset by the issues the religion causes. *** A less extreme case of "religious parasitism", where I am not fully convinced that the relationship can be described in exactly those terms, but at the very least some weakened form of it, is that of Je-ovah's witnesses to 'mainstream' Christianity - I have a hard time imagining that the movement would survive without mainstream Christianity. However, mainstream Christianity has a fairly large following, among whom some will take issue with certain 'complications' in Christian theology. The witnesses then offer solutions to these complications, and can thus "skim off" some regular Christians. *** The suggestion for a person describing a conreligion we can draw here is: if you want to have a somewhat problematic cult in your world, create "major minor" issues in the mainstream religions that the cults can use to market their teachings.
- Religion as a factor in life
- Coordinating habits
- Organizing society
- E.g. 'Chevra kadisha'-associations in Judaism arranging for the proper care of the bodies of the dead.
- Socializing people
- "A language"
Religion can in some sense be compared to language. Religion fleshes out multiple things to allude to, to illustrate emotions by, to connect emotions to, to inculcate strong emotions, etc. Knowing how to respond to things because there's (religious) traditions how to respond to them is a bit like knowing to say "how do you do" in response to "how do you do".
- Evolutionary conserving agent
Darwinian evolution doesn't only apply to biological entities, but also to memes, to societal organization, etc. A societal change is "a mutation" in some manner. Having some agent that strives backwards when change happens is not always bad - if the change turns out to be detrimental, a group that has refused to adopt it might contribute to undoing the change faster. Naturally, they will also counteract the adoption of beneficial changes, so there's a balance here that is hard to get right.
