Gods and Religion in the witcher universe

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Gods and Religion in the witcher universe

Hi people I a newcomer in the series,and I have some doubts :

I curious,the gods exist in the series(Lebioda,Melitele) ? what is the religion of the Elfs ? what is the God from the sacret flame ?

The witcher is a bit vague in this aspects compared to The Elder Scrools,or The Silmarillion as a example...
 
Hi people I a newcomer in the series,and I have some doubts :

I curious,the gods exist in the series(Lebioda,Melitele) ? what is the religion of the Elfs ? what is the God from the sacret flame ?

The witcher is a bit vague in this aspects compared to The Elder Scrools,or The Silmarillion as a example...

In my opinion, The main theme throughout the games is that magic creatures love to disguise magic as religion. As far as I understand there are no actual gods prancing around the world. Again, I only touched on Sapkowski's saga so there might be more there,
 
The witcher is a bit vague in this aspects

That's probably the best you can get.

There are several cults like the Melitele one, which is really popular among women, as she embodies fertility among other things, they also have polytheism and it is normal that you worship more than one deity. several, one or none deities.

There isn't also really religions as we understand them in our society today, as there are more ancient customs with nature spirits/deities. I would compare them with the pagan gods we had in europe before the Christianity took over.

The same goes for elves, they might have gods, but again they live with nature and have a much different stance towards it and their spirits. Also there are some really really old elves, which almost behave like gods themselves, so they have a lot of confidence and pride/arrogance.

The World of the Witcher - book has also some pages about religion, "The Magic and Religions of the Continent, beginning at pg77, ending at 110. For example it mentions a cult almost exclusively to Nilfgaard, the cult of the Great Sun (The sun is the symbol of Nilfgaard).

I don't want to repeat everything the book explains or even summarize it, but it is worth buying and reading it, as it goes much more in detail as the books ever did and it summarizes/analyze what you can extract from the books. But that makes them also a bit questionable, since the World of the Witcher book isn't made by Sapkowski, but by a cooperation of Dark Horse and CDPR. They probably tried to be as accurate as possible, but in the end if Sapkowski didn't signed it, it can have flaws or errors, but it doesn't have to.
 
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Hi people I a newcomer in the series,and I have some doubts :

I curious,the gods exist in the series(Lebioda,Melitele) ? what is the religion of the Elfs ? what is the God from the sacret flame ?

The witcher is a bit vague in this aspects compared to The Elder Scrools,or The Silmarillion as a example...

The Witcher is kind of an homage to the old Sword and Sorcery, pre-High Fantasy era stories like Fritz Leiber and Moorcock.

As such, there are many gods and cults but they are portrayed with a very cynical eye.

Gods may exist but they're usually either physical spirits (as we see in "The Edge of the World") or as mysterious as the ones in the real world with some flat out not existing.
 
In the North most people worship a pantheon of gods (similar to the greek, norse and slavic gods) and in isolated rural areas, like Velen, local nature spirits are often also worshipped... Melitele/Mother Creatrix or a similar female fertility deity is worshipped by both humans, dwarves and elves as the theme is so universal. Melitele seems to be the most popular deity and is sometimes worshipped exclusively.

The Church of the Etarnal Fire is a new evangelical religion that is thriving in the larger cities. It seems to be influenced by the authoritarian organization of the Catholic Church, mixed with the fire worship of Zoroastrianism and the zealotry modern Evangelicanism - an explosive mix that fuels the fires of hate, as well as the actual pyres...
 
In the North most people worship a pantheon of gods (similar to the greek, norse and slavic gods) and in isolated rural areas, like Velen, local nature spirits are often also worshipped... Melitele/Mother Creatrix or a similar female fertility deity is worshipped by both humans, dwarves and elves as the theme is so universal. Melitele seems to be the most popular deity and is sometimes worshipped exclusively.

The Church of the Etarnal Fire is a new evangelical religion that is thriving in the larger cities. It seems to be influenced by the authoritarian organization of the Catholic Church, mixed with the fire worship of Zoroastrianism and the zealotry modern Evangelicanism - an explosive mix that fuels the fires of hate, as well as the actual pyres...

I could be wrong about this, but I've always suspected that, in game lore as opposed to book lore, Jacques de Aldersberg may have created the Church of the Eternal Fire, as well as the Order of the Flaming Rose? I don't think that the Church is referenced much in the books, except (according to the wiki) in one short story.

If so, it was presumably part of his master plan.
 
...otry of modern...*
Hmm, could be... Or he raised it from a grassroots movement and made it big? We don´t know for sure, though a "quest" in TW3, in the library in Novigrad, confirms that Jaques started off as a preacher x) PS:*TINY SPOILER* think CDPR finally confirmed that Jaques is "you know who" by signing the letter left by him "A" :p
 
IThe Church of the Etarnal Fire is a new evangelical religion that is thriving in the larger cities. It seems to be influenced by the authoritarian organization of the Catholic Church, mixed with the fire worship of Zoroastrianism and the zealotry modern Evangelicanism - an explosive mix that fuels the fires of hate, as well as the actual pyres...

I don't think that's correct. It is out rightly stated in the game that the Eternal Fire's witch hunt is effectively started and funded by Radovid, and without official support it quickly dies. This is historically accurate: the Catholic Church, and official religious organizations in general, strongly opposed witch hunts the mass majority of the time (the Catholic Church made it a crime punishable by death to kill a witch in the 8th or 9th century). Indeed, even at the height of religious fervor during the reformation the book that is sometimes credited with starting the Witch Hunting Craze (The Malleus Maleficarum) was banned by the Pope and its creators officially censored.

The real witch hunting phrase began when Protestant Church came under the thumb of secular rulers, like in Denmark after the reformation, or by James VI of Scotland.

More to the topic, I have heard from multiple people that Freya does exist and is indeed a corporal, though not omni-potent, goddess.
 
I know, said the organization is similar to the Catholic church, but I also mentioned some other ones :) I was partly referring to early Protestantism when I said "zealotry modern Evangelicanism". The Catholic church has always been conservative, but not as actively zealous as early Protestantism and modern Evangelic Prot.

There is even a hypothesis that claims the witch hunts were an attemt by the royals to slow population growth - "Witches" and "Wise Women" were very often the ones who brought children into the world... also they acted as pre-modern apothecaries with varying degrees of success, but hundreds of years of blnd trial and error can lead to results :p
 
Jacques de Aldersberg may have created the Church of the Eternal Fire, as well as the Order of the Flaming Rose?

In TW1 theres a log entry from a book on the Order that says Jacques took over the existing organisation with a mixture of righteous fervour, floral pyrotechnics, and Machiavellian scapegoating. To me the Church always seemed like an adjunct, a proselytising mission to the peasants in the locales of the Orders Barracks at best, they might be there to stoke tensions or just provide a non-militaristic front to the Order occasionally, but perhaps its all just a convenient cover for more nefarious business.

I just view the Order as a variant of any historical Military Order - those with a crusading nature anyway - and such things have manifested, and could manifest, around any belief system. I think its fair to say that ALL such historical entities would tend to be internally more authoritarian than their attached religion, and they all had a special focus that would be easily mistaken for zealotry by the uninitiated. The Templars themselves seem the obvious source, especially since their last Grand Master was called Jacques de Molay.

Concerning the Malleus Maleficarum and the phenomenon of the Witchhunts, consider the words of Irish folklorist Douglas Hyde:

"In most countries, for instance, the Devil is the great outstanding anthropomorphic conception added to the folk-lore of Europe by the introduction of Christianity; and later the belief in Witches, who trafficked directly or indirectly with the Evil One, became extraordinary prevalent and powerful. Now the most striking fact about the Irish collection is that the Devil personified rarely appears in it at all, and Witches never. The belief in Witches, and in Witches' Sabbaths, with which other nations were positively obsessed, and which gave rise to such hecatombs of unhappy victims in almost all the Protestant and in some of the Catholic countries in Europe, as well as in America, never found its way into native Ireland at all, or disturbed Gaelic sanity, although a few isolated instances occurred amongst the English settlers."​

Btw: my gut feeling was that the Aen Seidhe don't have a religion as such, with named deities, services, and observances... every encounter with them says they are one with nature and therefore do not need structured religion. They seem to have a thing about Prophecy though, and historically it isn't required for Futurists to have a Pantheon.

And no goddess in her right mind would want worshipped by Dwarfs. ;)
 
I know, said the organization is similar to the Catholic church, but I also mentioned some other ones :) I was partly referring to early Protestantism when I said "zealotry modern Evangelicanism". The Catholic church has always been conservative, but not as actively zealous as early Protestantism and modern Evangelic Prot.

There is even a hypothesis that claims the witch hunts were an attemt by the royals to slow population growth - "Witches" and "Wise Women" were very often the ones who brought children into the world... also they acted as pre-modern apothecaries with varying degrees of success, but hundreds of years of blnd trial and error can lead to results :p

Evangelicalism is trans-denominational: an Orthodox Christian can also be an Evangelical, for example (I have known a few). And being zealous (as opposed to being a zealot) is not necessarily a bad thing, but I digress.

I haven't heard this hypothesis before- it seems rather silly to me. :)
 
I haven't heard this hypothesis before- it seems rather silly to me. :)

It's an interesting topic, and I haven't investigated it closely myself, but on the face of it it looks like the Witchhunts arose out of a perfect storm of political, social & religious upheaval, new media (printing-presses), and perhaps even the newly budded pan-European cross-cultural milieu.

Science was in its infancy, rational thought was isolated, paranoia & suspicion of your neighbours was rife. It is usually very much under-played just how much internal strife - to the granularity of families - newly Protestant-by-dictat countries like England endured, and while the mainland continent came to terms with its religious divisions within a generation, for the most part, the Islands & outskirts decided to go a different way, or something (and at this point you may find guilty Aristocracy fecking it up for the rest of us, I guess.)
 
It's an interesting topic, and I haven't investigated it closely myself, but on the face of it it looks like the Witchhunts arose out of a perfect storm of political, social & religious upheaval, new media (printing-presses), and perhaps even the newly budded pan-European cross-cultural milieu.

Science was in its infancy, rational thought was isolated, paranoia & suspicion of your neighbours was rife. It is usually very much under-played just how much internal strife - to the granularity of families - newly Protestant-by-dictat countries like England endured, and while the mainland continent came to terms with its religious divisions within a generation, for the most part, the Islands & outskirts decided to go a different way, or something (and at this point you may find guilty Aristocracy fecking it up for the rest of us, I guess.)

The worst of the witch hunts occurred in the boundaries of the Protestant part of the Holy Roman Empire. The British Isle had around one to two thousand causalities over a period of around three, four hundred years, which was similar to other non-Germanic areas (Eastern Europe, including the, for a while, very strong sect of Reformation in Hungry had around two thousand casualties, all of southern Europe- Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal- had around one thousand, etc).

I'd also disagree with the idea that science was in its infancy, or that rational thought was isolated, but I'd need to see your evidence on the topic and what you meant exactly before I could actually disagree with you.
 
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I'd also disagree with the idea that science was in its infancy, or that rational thought was isolated, but I'd need to see your evidence on the topic and what you meant exactly before I could actually disagree with you.

I don't mean age-based infancy obviously, but rather in the undeveloped sense, that scientific method, knowledge dissemination (including shared foundations / international standards), and as a by-product generalised rational thought & discourse were very minor forces in the everyday lives of people & nations. Even where there were thinkers like Bruno, Kepler & Copernicus, they were isolated, geographically distant and communication was fraught with difficulties.
 
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