40k and religion... a literary question

[Marshal Rohr]

There is also the underlying universal constant that all religious worship by any creature with a connection to the warp feeds the warp. So even if your religion is peaceful and you don’t sacrifice anyone, and you help sick people, and feed the homeless. You’re creating evil demonic warp entities. There’s also the constant that prayer, ritual, and sacrifice work. You can banish demons or live longer or get pregnant, etc by doing those rituals. That’s an empirically provable cause and effect that would really eliminate anti-religious movements or beliefs. I imagine that’s why even if chaos really sucks to live under, people can’t deny it works. Imagine if you could improve your health by sacrificing a few lazy bums at work? Or feed your family by sacrificing a neighbor. The societal implications are immense and no one really capitalized on it in any book I’ve seen.

[Beta galactosidase]

The number one book with literary substance from GW is Riders of the Dead, which really does a lot of the work for you with a pretty rigorous structure of two fantasy lancers taking parallel paths where similar material conditions manifest in slightly different superstructures.

 

If you were going to do it yourself it should be pretty easy to look at religion in 40k. You can take any text by Baudrillard or Althusser about non-state media functioning as state propaganda and apply it pretty directly to the different stories of apocalypse in 40k’s factions. Definitely the second edition Adepta Sororitas codex’s story about Sebastian Thor would take it pretty well.

 

It’s pretty confusing to recommend religious texts eg the Quran. The advantage of 40k is that it gives descriptions of both the events of a time and their interaction with the beliefs about them. With real world religions you’d have to know the truth texts, and also the archaeological record about both the time of writing of the text and the times of the events it describes, as well as how the texts about those events are applied by adherents at different historical periods.

 

For example there’s suggestion in the literature that descriptions of a culture invading and conquering a city were a mythologized version of actually a resident underclass in that city revolting and then establishing themselves as a separate culture from their previous rulers. Then you’d have to relate that to the way 1500 years later people used those themes for their own purposes. This is all before you get to 40k.

 

Obviously I know nothing about history or any of the relevant disciplines and this is why I question going to real world religions. It’s much more straightforward to take a couple of theorists and whack them right onto a 40k topic. You’d have to tell me but Saussure should map pretty directly onto Isha, Nurgle, and the resurrection or afterlife of eldar before and after the fall.

[Leif Bearclaw]

Also, does anyone have an opinion on how Garro features in this debate?

 

I kept reading and re-reading his soul searching and his interactions with Euphrati Keeler - knowing, as we all do, that the series endorses atheism (at least I thougth the writers did). So I was waiting to see some self-deception, some evidence his sense of spiritual purpose is just a self-fulfilling prophecy. But despite the way religion is abused after the Horus Heresy, what Garro experiences cannot be so easily dismissed.

 

Does the series endorse atheism though (not saying anything about the writers' beliefs or intentions)? It's hard to ascribe too close a parallel when the fictitious/fantastical elements of fiction confound the issue in question. In this case it's hard to view the HH series as endorsing atheism when a central component to the 30/40k mythos and setting is that gods are real. The Imperial Truth was a lie. A lie with a specific purpose (ultimately, deicide), but a lie nevertheless.

 

 

 

Technically, the same goes for Keeler. How does she do what she does? How do any of the saints do what they do? The Emperor is not a god and yet these two characters from 30k resist easy explanation. Unless, as Antodeniel stays, faith simply becomes another form of magic in this universe. In which case, I am not sure how much there is to analyse.

But the Emperor kinda is a god. He wasn't always, but became one. That's one of those core things about 40k. Ultimately, god's are made by belief. Once enough people started following the Lectitio Divinitatus then Empy kinda reached Godhood, and faith in 40k provides power. Keeler's antics are just some of the first manifestations of the variety of miracles etc. that do occur throughout the 40k setting. From consecrated/blessed weapons banishing Daemons to the Legion of the Damned. It's even baked into the SoB crunch with the shield of faith and Acts of Faith. Faith is power. 

[Sonoftherubric21]

I don't think the series "endorses" any one way of thought.  My academic background is one in both Psychology and Religious studies/theology (though focusing on east-asian and Buddhist philosophy) and I have thought about this a fair bit myself! 

 

Given the backdrop of The Warhammer 40k Universe as a whole (including 30k) it shows the juxtaposition of both Theism and Atheism having strengths and weaknesses as well as some philosophical dilemmas in many novels (Chaos, Loyalist, Eldar, or otherwise). Is the Emperor lying about deities a way of endorsing "atheism is right!"? Is a realization that humanity will always cling to reason for meaning thus leading to empowered gods and endorsement of religion? 

 

I don't particularly think its meant to "take a stance" beyond character portrayals. I think that it could be viewed as a commentary, certainly. Given that the Imperium during the time of the Emperor was built upon lies and deception regarding the subject matter, especially when looking at the reactions of his own sons (Most notably Lorgar, Magnus, and Dorn) when seeing "belief" or "faith" in something, let alone a GOD as a potential reality and the effect it had on those that figured it out. 

 

Note the rather important scene from "Black Legion":

 

During the time Khayon and Telemachon and the others from the Black Legion that accompanied him to get Moriana they find the Black Templars and see just how devout they are. That along with hearing the words "The God Emperor of Mankind" for the first time in Chaos history flooring absolutely all of them in terms of its ridiculousness. Yet they are at the whims of other things that.... for all intents and purposes are 1) known to exist and 2) Basically in all respects are gods. (lowercase G in this case, as they are not a God in the Abrahamic sense of existence/creation) 

 

Later events expound that issue and they see what has become of the "atheist" Imperium and just how religion took root in the heart of the Imperium.

[MegaVolt87]

Honestly, the Emperor probably had a freak out when Lorgar created a religion based around him when the Emperor knew of the chaos gods were evil, maybe he didn't trust himself to be not become the thing he set out to not make exist. In death, on the throne, he probably accepted that either humans would worship him or the chaos gods. I have no doubts he feels most guilty with how he treated Lorgar most of all out of all the primarchs. Overall, 40k religion, Imperial Truth etc to me shows some need to believe in something just like IRL. I think thats the main take away, not that religion is better than athiesem etc. 

[Azekai]

There is also the underlying universal constant that all religious worship by any creature with a connection to the warp feeds the warp. So even if your religion is peaceful and you don’t sacrifice anyone, and you help sick people, and feed the homeless. You’re creating evil demonic warp entities. There’s also the constant that prayer, ritual, and sacrifice work. You can banish demons or live longer or get pregnant, etc by doing those rituals. That’s an empirically provable cause and effect that would really eliminate anti-religious movements or beliefs. I imagine that’s why even if chaos really sucks to live under, people can’t deny it works. Imagine if you could improve your health by sacrificing a few lazy bums at work? Or feed your family by sacrificing a neighbor. The societal implications are immense and no one really capitalized on it in any book I’ve seen.

Eh, by the same token, things like 'martial pride' or 'becoming jaded and doing lots and *lots* of drugs' also feed the entities of the Warp. It doesn't necessarily need to be couched in ritual or dogma, does it?

 

Look at it this way: 'religion' in a modern day sense doesn't have much to do with 40k Chaos worship other than some surface level trappings. As you noted, the fact that Chaos is 'real' and works, after a fashion, is vastly different as to how many people approach real-world faith.

 

People worship the gods of Chaos because they are just big ol' gestalt versions of the desires lurking within all of us... and those desires are so real, they birthed thirsting gods.

 

The very idea of faith vs. rationality breaks down when there is no ambiguity as to the objects of the faith being real. Chaos worship doesn't really require faith in any real-world sense. When you get down to brass tacks, it's basically bargaining with really big powerful versions of the human Id and hoping for the best.

 

[Welcheren]

Just so you all know - I am taking notes.

[b1soul]

If you want in-depth, thought-provoking explorations of religion in sci-fi, please read the Dune series

[Eddie Orlock]

I think, with the perspective of years, that the nature and presentation of religion and theology in the setting has changed over the years. My gut feeling is that this can probably be sliced and diced into a handful of eras that likely correspond to who was in the studio and when and how they were driving the canon of the canon. There may be some thing analyzable in how later authors differentially embraced and overturned the works of their predecessors.

 

I recall that some very early works, particularly the realms of chaos books touched on this kind of thing and went into some detail of the metaphysics of the setting in ways largely glossed over by the stuff that followed in the next few editions of the game. Admittedly, this RT era stuff was in some regards there to inspire the player to come up with cogent ideas for their own warp powers for DIY factions so it had a definitely practical bent to it.

 

——————

 

Have you considered getting in contact with GW to request access to their internal archives? I’m given to understand from various things implied in interviews and seminars over the years that there’s a considerable body of writing and art that’s used to inform the setting to new studio staff that’s never directly made available to the general audience. Failing that, I’d consider trying to track down any former creative staff to see what they have for unpublished notes.

[StraightSilver]

I have lots to add to this, but it's Sunday night so will come back and add more later.

40K in it's inception as Rogue Trader didn't start out being overtly influenced by religion, but as the background writers began to flesh out the setting and try to differentiate it from works such as Dune they started to introduce religious elements to it.

Believe it or not, one of the biggest influences on 40K, or specifically the Horus Heresy, was the film 1995 "The Prophecy" starring Christopher Walken

It wasn't so much the film but one of it's underlying themes - the War in Heaven.

This essentially became the over-aching theme of 30K, with Horus being the Emperor's favourite son who fell from grace and began the War in Heaven.

GW then fleshed out the Astartes even further, essentially basing them on Angels of the Old Testament.

I've mentioned this in previous topics related to "Why are there no female Space Marines". I don't think we should go down that route here but the reason is because in the Old Testament there were no female Angels either.

Article here: https://www.christianity.com/wiki/angels-and-demons/are-angels-male-or-female.html

Once the Horus Heresy background started more and more Christian references were introduced. For example the Council of Nikaea in 30K is the Council of Nicea, the first council of the Christian Church to address all believers.

However, as the series has developed it has introduced more and more background from other religions, notably in 30K Egyptian mythology, Norse Mythology to name but a few.

The entire setting as it stands now is very heavily influenced by religion and there are nods and Easter eggs scattered throughout the novels, Codices etc.

Pretty much every Dark Angels character has the name of an Old Testament Angel.

In terms of published scholarly works though, I'm not aware of any.

[Welcheren]

Brothers and sisters,

 

Thank you for your contributions.

 

I am currenlty immersing myself in literary methods of research. If my labours in the librarius produces any published works on 40K, I will doubtlessly announce it in another thread.

[gideon stargreave]

The Horus Heresy is enormously influenced by the first part of Paradise list by Milton, even down to the changing characterisation of Satan /Horus from prince to Leviathan

[mc warhammer]

i’ve seen essays in the humanities departments on 40k (and sometimes 40k alongside comic books and other pop culture) of varying quality

 

not sure if this was posted already (i’m inbetween flights) but there might be something of interest here on this social networking site:

http://www.academia.edu/Documents/in/Warhammer_40000