Religion and Mythology

Since there was a question on religion/mythology on the cabin message board I thought why not make a topic here on the subject. Here we can share ideas, informations, give guidance and feedback about religions in general, how we can portray religion in our works, religious institutions, etc.

Personally I have been wanting to implement religion in my story, but I haven't quite thought out what kind of religion I want and what kind of religious institutions I want. I am torn between a polytheistic religion or something similar to Catholicism. I have fairy like people in my world, they are hidden and illusive so they make great material for myths, legends and folk believe. Magic is also prohibited in the kingdom the story takes place and in some of the surrounding kingdoms due to a mage uprising that took place little over 100 years ago. So this may come into play as well. But I don't want to have too much differences in religions in adjacent area's. I think that would be illogical unless there is some other religion trying to invade the area, but I don't think I want to deal with such matters as well at the moment.

Yeah it would be interesting to have a war of religion, or a mention of it but once you do something like that it becomes its own major plotline. Because magic is forbidden in my kingdom I went with a more Catholic influenced religion; in fact it's basically a mirror image except with different names. Although many people don't actively practice it, they often invoke the name of God although there are a few zealots.

I'm not sure exactly what religion would work best for your kingdom. When I thought about it for my story, my main concern was the personality of my king, since it's usually the monarchy which decides what religion is acceptable for the kingdom.

I decided to settle for a polytheistic religion based on some Greek (and sometimes norse) gods. There are seven male and seven female gods and each has their own role. I think an advantage of having multiple gods is that people can have a preference for a certain god and the king for example can actually ban the worshipping of a god, in this case, the magic related god. I suppose this could also lead to some friction and minor conflict among the population. (And now I realise the amount of work I still have to do, but at least I have some direction now)

In the kingdom my story takes place in, there's mainly one religion, but there is some variance here and there. The main religion is a remnant of a large Greece/Rome-inspired kingdom that fell around two centuries ago. The church is respected, but most people only pay lip service to the gods, and put more trust in magic. Of particular note is that the royalty erased the name of the god of magic as thoroughly as possible. Not because of disdain for magic, but rather to distance themselves and their main source of power from the church.