Writer Wander 014 - Axial Age Fantasy

Your Fantasy World is either Christian or Pagan. If that makes zero sense to you, then tune in to this Writer Wander to learn all about the Axial Age!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Rider Wander fourteen. Is your fantasy world Christian or pagan? Now, for those of you who might have just tuned in, this might seem like a very odd question to be asking about a fantasy world, if it's Christian or pagan. These are categories that have been invented, uh, sorry, not invented, that they're part of the real world, and if we apply them to a fantasy world, they obviously wouldn't make sense, right? You know, if you just transplanted Christianity into the fantasy world, it'll be kind of weird because you have like this real world historical element transplanted into a fantasy setting. Now, that has worked sometimes. I think that the the De Veri novels by Catherine Kurtz are a very good example of uh plain old Christianity just being slapped onto a fantasy setting, but in defense of that setting, it is a deeply despite be taking place in a fantasy land, it has a lot of historical realism with regards to how the society itself functions, right? But why would I even propose the idea of a Christian versus pagan dichotomy in your fantasy world building when most fantasy worlds are not like this at all? In most fantasy worlds, you might have religions that are inspired from real-world religions, however, these religions um at the end of the day, they're their own thing, they have gods and that are of their own making, they have doctrines that are corresponding to that particular setting, that for all their inspiration and real life analogues, they end up being fantasy. So, in what sense can we refer to fantasy religions as Christian or Pagan? Well, technically speaking, the way that I'm looking at this, right, is that I sort of use the terms Christian and pagan as a hook, but the proper term would be axial age religions versus pre-axial age religions. And what am I talking about? An axial age religion, um, I haven't read anything about this aside from like a few, just a few articles on the internet and you know, some some videos, because the concept seems interesting to me, and you know, I don't know how well-founded it is historically, but I think that intuitively this concept makes enough sense to me that it's worth sharing on here, and um, you know, it it's a cool thing to think about, it's a cool category that allows me to organize that I see in the real world. So I think if if even if even if just for that, it's completely useful. And so the this idea of an axial age religion, it's this idea that like I think around like the the you know the 300s BC, something around around that time, a series of religions started cropping up that had a focus on universal salvation. They often um they were often religions that had a much more rigorous theological system attached to them, and they might have had a uh a more clear hierarchy behind the functioning and the organization of that religion. So when I say Christianity, what I really mean to say in the context of this conversation is axial, right? And by pre-axial or pagan, what I'm referring to is the religions that have been around with humans since prehistory. We're talking about tribal religions that were by their nature very decentralized, they often did not have a focus on universal salvation, but they were often the local myths of a particular culture or a particular group of people that often use these religions as a way to explore their own local context as opposed to the axe religion, which explores more existential questions that are universal to the broader human experience, right? So, how does this manifest in fantasy world? And because I think that what I've noticed after reading a lot of fantasy fiction and after writing a lot of fantasy fiction is that oftentimes there is a division between fantasy settings that not a lot of people talk about, which is the axial versus non-axial distinction or the Christian versus non-pagan descrip the the distinction, right? So, what I mean by this, I feel that there are some fantasy settings in which the pre-axial age religions uh are more prominent than the axial age religions, and vice versa, and this has deep effects on the kind of setting that we're looking at, actually, for all things considered, right? So, and it's very interesting, right? Because what's very interesting about this is that even when the settings religion is not really a huge factor to um to the plot lines, uh this dynamic of axial versus non-axial has a huge impact on the kind of story that's being told. But it's worth it to look into some examples of what I'm talking about, right? So I think that good examples of pre-axial religion stories or preaxial religion fantasy settings are are, for example, Conan the Barbarian. A lot of sword and sorcery, and you can also put an Elric uh into this, a lot of sword and sorcery, in a very real sense, is very axial, uh preaxial, my apologies, in how how its settings work, right? So if you look at Conan, it's a very Iron Age-coded setting in which you have multiple cults that flourish across a variety of realms and a variety of kingdoms, and these cults often um don't have a particular focus on a meta-narrative for human history. There's not this strong focus on achieving salvation, oftentimes it's just focusing on ancestral rights to appease some dark deity or some or some local god, right? So, more often than not, the god is a reflection of the local values of the culture in which it originated from. And I feel that part of the utility in this is that, you know, for those of you that have read Conan stories, you know that Conan is a series of short stories, and Howard likes to hop along a bunch of settings, and very rarely does he maintain a you know a given plot over the course of multiple uh of a long-form stories. In fact, I only think he really wrote one long-form story, quote unquote, and that's Hour of the Dragon. And I say quote unquote because it, you know, despite it technically being a novel, it's only like 50,000 words long, with this very short. And what's very interesting about Conan, right, is that because it is in this pre-axial setting, Conan's setting, you can feel that it is deeply decentralized, right? There are very few, if any, institutions that span across multiple realms. It sort of feels like every culture is kind of like doing its own thing, like it's stuck in its own, its own little bubble, right? And there's a lot of these insular systems that are often having like frictions with one another. Um, these social institutions are very primitive typically in Conan compared to most fantasy settings, which gives it its own sense of of gritty, of gritty flavor, and often pre-axial settings feel a lot more a lot more superstitious than post-axial age fantasy settings, right? Because you have all these cults flourishing about, and it's very rare for you to see um anything similar to uh to logic or reasoning developed because yes, there are a lot of cults around, but it's not like medieval Christianity that was developing these rigorous systems of theology that could um uh that would eventually transition into our modern systems of thought, and rather you just have like these very superstitious, very localist tendencies, and that is a very particular form of flavor. And I think that there's a reason why sword and sorcery as a genre tends to gravitate to that kind of religion because it really lends itself to the kinds of stories that you tell in Sword and Sorcery. Sword and Sorcery very rarely tells like these world-spanning stories about you know um saving entire nations or societies, it's often relatively low stakes compared to your typical fantasy fair, and as a result, it makes sense for you to have like these more these more localist religions. Though don't get me wrong, right? There is no very rarely do you see a setting that is fully axial or fully pre-axial, right? In Conan, for example, you have the cult of Mitras, right? And the cult of Mitras is the call that is the closest thing to an organized religion in the setting of Conan that is on its way to become an axial setting, right? So it's a there's a bit of a there's a bit of a hodgepodge there, and you know that's a quick a quick tip to any aspiring author, right? Oftentimes a setting is very interesting when rather than just having a particular flavor of a given thing, you sort of mix and match it with something else, right? So you might have a world that is predominantly pre-axial, but along in the along with these preaxial vibes, you include an axial religion to give this sense of progression, right? That you know the world is moving in a certain direction, and you can see this in Conan. The kingdoms that have a strong worship of Mitras, for example, uh tend to be much more developed feudal monarchies that are much more centralized compared to the average uh kingdom that you would find in the in Conan's realm. And obviously, the cult of Mitras is uh the closest thing to an international organization within the setting of Conan the Barbarian. Now, what's an example of post-axial age fantasy settings? I think that what I'm reading right now, which is um Austin Ard from The Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy by Tad Williams, is a perfect example of a post-axial age setting in which you have a setting in which there is a strong analog of Christianity called the Church of Aedon, right? And Aedon is obviously um the stand-in for Jesus Christ or or God in this setting, and you know it's a setting with its own rigorous priesthood. Um, and these priests uh have become a very international organization. This church spans multiple nations and is in the process of converting multiple nations that up until recently were pagan, right? And again, what's very interesting about this is that you can see how this kind of religion fits the setting of Austin Art, because Austin Art as a setting is undergoing very epic world-ending stakes, in which you have a Dark Lord scenario, and it's very appropriate to have an axial age religion there because you can see how the the church in that world, which spans across the entire world, has diverse reactions to this threat that is occurring, and you can see how it is coordinated, you can see how the religious leaders are um dealing with the with the different political rulers that are present in this setting, and that also reflects on the political institutions of this setting. Austin art is defined as a setting because it is a setting in which you have a you have a you have a high kingdom that basically spans the entire the entire landmass that you're that you're looking at, and under that high kingdom there are several sub kingdoms that pay fealty to the high king, and what is quite interesting about that is that you know obviously part of the story is about the corruption of that high kingdom by an uns by an unseen evil occult force that is infiltrating it from within, right? So, obviously, like I said, an axial religion really fits that because the the world uh the universalist and the highly developed structures of an axial religion are befitting of a civilization like the High Kingdom of Austin Ard, right? And what another interesting dynamic in Austin Art is similar to how I mentioned that Conan had a dynamic in which there was the cult of Mitras, which was on its way to become sort of like an axial well, it was it is an axial religion on its way to become a uh it to grow on a scale similar to Christianity, but in Austin Art, you have the opposite situation where you have the the Church of Aedon, which has gained a sort of religious preponderance over the rest of the realm, and in the background of it all, you still have all of these ancient pagan beliefs that are sort of rising up and are sort of like doing a last stand against the normalization or the axialization of the world, right? Because that's another thing, usually in axial age religions in axial age settings, it is more common for you to see this idea of a world in which the magic is fading, right? A world in which the magic is fading, and in which a lot of the supernatural things of the world are still present, but they're slowly fading in the background, and that sort of mirrors what happened with Christianity because with Christianity, right, even though Christianity is a religion that has a very strong notion of the spiritual world, it is a religion that, unlike other religions, uh from a purely theological standpoint, it does recognize the difference between divinity and nature, and it also recognizes the difference between um divinity and government power and secular authority, right? So it does recognize a secular world and it grants a certain degree of legitimacy to the secular world, and the effect that this has on the development of science is unprecedented because it allow it leads to a system in which people are now able to mentally separate the natural world and the the political or or um just the normal world from the divine, even though there's always a connection, they're able to separate it um as a mental category, and as a result, there it unlocks a different mode of thinking for them. They're capable of looking at the world in a in a more scientific way. It's not scientific, it's just more scientific, right? Because again, we're still talking about you know worlds that are deeply filtered from a religious lens. I'm not saying that from a negative standpoint, right? I'm you know, I'm a practicing Catholic, uh, but you know, it it is not the scientific worldview uh that emerges in the 18th century, but it is on its way to become that, it opens the possibilities for reason, and that's why in a setting like Austin Ard, you can see how in this setting where there are these large institutional religions with institutional priesthoods, the concepts of magic are sort of fading into the into the background. They're they're becoming, you know, they're still there, and they're still like ancestral myths and legends, especially among the pagan people, of that magic, but it is fading as this more complex civilizational system is emerging, which sort of echoes the you know the meta-narrative of our own civilization, right? And something similar can also be said of my own the own book that I'm working on during this Wanda Writer podcast, which is the you know the Echoes of Heroes setting, because in this setting, uh after the heroes win, there is a new religion that is founded that surrounds the worship of one of the companions who sacrificed her life and put herself into a perpetual slumber to hold back the forces of evil from taking over the world once again. And this cult uh or the the faith of Aldamiria um it is sort of it is sort of syncretized with a prior belief in a sun goddess called Aldameria or a goddess of light better said called Aldameria, it's sort of syncretized with Al uh uh with this former companion was treated as an avatar of Aldamiria, but in its function, this new cult uh is is quite different from the original cult because the original the original cult of this goddess of light Aldameria were uh the way you know I still haven't sat down to think it through the entirely, but it was it was much more localistic relative to um to what it is becoming now. But with the triumph of the heroes and with the heroes establishing this uh institutional system in which they govern through a large council uh all the realms that they control in Synthony, then uh it's only fitting that the religion of Aldamiria starts spreading equally and it starts becoming an international institution, right? And one of the interesting things, right, is that I have an interesting time applying this categorization to Tolkien's work, right? Because I think that Tolkien is an interesting case, right? When you read the Lord of the Rings, when you read the novels in the Lord of the Rings sequence, uh I would say that these novels feel very pre-axial age in how they are, or these stories feel very pre-axial age in how they are written, right? A lot of people think that the Lord of the Rings resembles the Middle Ages, and there's obviously some of that, right? But to me, the Lord of the Rings doesn't so much resemble the Middle Ages, rather it resembles the the the mythic settings of the Norse sagas or of other mythological um cycles that existed in the medieval world rather than the medieval world itself, right? Because you have um, you know, you don't have a lot in the way of how society being structured around a uh a rigid feudal system, uh, nor do you have this idea of a you do have an idea of a monotheistic religion, but in this monotheistic religion, there are multiple sub-deities that might as well be gods with a lower with a lower G, and these gods, uh the way that you look at them, well the culture around them is is you know it's very preaxial in its approach, right? And there is no priesthood in the Lord of the Rings, right? There's this idea that the the magic of the world is so apparent in just about everything that there is no need for a priesthood because there's I guess there's this idea that the purpose of a priesthood is to remind the of a consecrated priesthood like you have in Catholicism, is to remind the world, or if having clergy is to remind the world of a sacred world of a sacred reality that is fading, but in Middle Earth, even though the third age and the fourth age, in a sense, is a time of fading because the elves are going away, there's still this implicit understanding of uh of a profound magic and a profound divinity and grace that that runs through everything in the setting, right? So that that's also quite interesting. However, on the other hand, when you read the Silmarillion, in a sense, you see those axial elements because obviously, the Lord of the Rings, the setting of the Lord of the Rings, it is it is not separate from our own world. And Tolkien was a staunch, fervent Catholic, and obviously he uh the the Eru Iluvatar, which is the creator god in the Lord of the Rings, is quite literal, he is the God of the Bible, it's one and the same, but you you can see that in his own in his own letters, um and in the Silmarillion, even though uh there there is that that that mythic sense still, I think the Silmarillion reads a lot more like the Old Testament and the uh the than uh than the Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit, which they read more those well the Hobbit is uh less, but uh the Lord of the Rings definitely it reads like a saga, more in a myth cycle, uh more than the old testament, whereas the Silmarillion is like 50% Old Testament and 50% uh mid cycle, or maybe 40% old testament, right? Um, but you can you can definitely see much clearer the Christian worldview uh in the Silmarillion, uh because you can see the hand of Eru Iluvatar working through all the things, this idea of overarching fate uh fate and this uh universal this idea of a story of universal salvation, right? So that all of that's super super interesting, and I guess I have a hard time seeing where we're Ardo. Falls into all of this, right? Or Lord, uh, you know, Middle Earth, right? But uh, those are my musings, and these are just interesting concepts that I think are worth thinking about when you're just if you're thinking about designing a fantasy setting, you know, questions worth asking yourself. Is my setting mostly composed of axial religions, or is my setting pre-axial? And what what about that? And what about that makes it so that my setting is different, or what are things that I can do in a an axial or a preaxial reality that I wouldn't be able to do in the contrary? And these are all things worth considering, and also um, to what extent is the contrary emerging or present in this world? So those are all interesting things that can serve to um create cool conflicts, right? But writer wander out.