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What are their religious beliefs? I understand they worship the E as a god, etc etc, but what about the other aspects of religion?
Is there a "heaven"?
Is there a "hell"?
Is there a Jesus-esque figure?

I have seen written that loyal servants of the Emperor "sit at his right hand" when they die in service to him, so I guess that like heaven for them. And I would assume Hell is having your soul munched on by daemons.

They believe that the warp is where emp sends the evil to suffer for all enternity. The irony is that its the enemies of the emp who have the best shot at having anything close to an afterlife as opposed to being demon fodder.

Religious beliefs are a patchwork in the Imperium. Due to the Ecclesiarchy's strategy of not simply replacing native religions on reclaimed human worlds but rather expanding on them, you have some worlds where the Emperor is known only as the Sky God or the Sun God or even the Eternal Deer or whatever. I assume that any ideas concerning a heaven and a hell will be equally varied.

However, a "heaven" being at the Emperor's side and "hell" being one's soul cast into the warp are recurring themes, so I presume that one could see this as some sort of standard. Granted, one might assume that hell = warp might not work so well given that the Imperium regularly traverses it with their ships, but if we look past Christian beliefs we have a number of real world religions where people had no problem with the concept of travelling in and out of their version of hell, the Greek legend of Heracles being just one example.

The differences in Imperial beliefs did make me wonder what would happen if you have a regiment from a world where people believe that heaven / being allowed to sit at the Emperor's side is a good thing, that operates next to a regiment from a world where people believe that the Emperor is a vengeful God and service to Him is the only way to escape his notice. So that when one trooper proclaims "tonight we will dine at the Emperor's side" another goes "are you mad? I don't wanna!"
Then again, maybe the Munitorum/Ecclesiarchy does take precautions to prevent such things from happening. The Clerics attached to the Imperium's fighting forces occupy a rather influential position, and are probably taught to expect and work to avert such conflicts.

I've always thought that the Imperial Creed rejects the idea of an afterlife, at least in the traditional sense of an actual place where disembodied souls go after death. After all, in the 40k universe there is such a place... only it's not exactly a nice one.

The Imperial version of the afterlife seems to have more to do with the chivalrous idea of being forever remembered for your deeds rather than some mystical state of the soul.

However, as Lynata said, the Imperium is a huge place. There are as many interpretations of the Imperial Creed as there are worlds.

Think Lynata hit the nail on the head.

The Arbite/Shira Calpurniaseries is a goog one for this, she is transferred to a new system where their method of worship is some what different. The subject of her adjusting comes up a lot in the books.

I know the usual line is to talk about how all these million worlds of the Imperium have their own special snowflake take on the Emperor but that's not very well supported in the fluff or art. It looks to me that the Ecclesiarchy has done a pretty good job of uniformly disseminating the general outline of the faith:

(1) The Emperor is God;
(2) The Emperor laid down his life for Mankind;
(3) The Emperor protects Mankind from all kinds of bad stuff;
(4) It is the duty of Mankind to worship the Emperor; and
(5) Worship is primarily a matter of obedience to Imperial authorities.

The more specific doctrinal business (such as the question as to whether the Emperor was a mortal man at some point) probably differ between sects or even between theologians of the same sect. But I think the idea of a God-Emperor mounted on a Golden Throne as a symbol of absolute authority is pretty well established everywhere. Yeah, there are probably some cavemen on Feral Planet #23816 who think of the Emperor as Lynata's "Eternal Deer" or somesuch but who cares what cavemen think?

Now that doesn't answer your question about the after life. I doubt the Cult itself posits much about the afterlife, one way or the other. Maybe there is no afterlife. We tend to assume that the Warp is "Hell" and that whatever energy in humans that affects the Warp is a "soul." But those are pretty huge assumptions. Once a biological life is snuffed out, for example, what reason do we have to believe that the Warp-affecting energy (emotion, or whatever) continues to exist? So the baseline teaching of the Imperial Cult could very well be: "when you die, you're dead." And again, I can imagine all sorts of other ideas (like, "you become one with the Emperor's will" etc) that the higher ups among the Ecclesiarchy don't really care about one way or the other, until there's an uprising or something.

Agree the basic tenants of the faith are the same across the imperium but those tennants (your point 1,3,4 & 5) are pretty similar in all religions you honour you god and his representatives, he is awesome. This stuff is probably already there it's just about turning up and convincing the savages that the great deer is the god emperor or vice versa. Dying and resurrection appear a lot in religions but I can see this (your point 2) being left out as the emperor is not dead.

The "Great Deer" is an extreme example, but just look how how much diversity there is within christianinty alone (not even starting the argument about the Torah, Koran and bible being similar books). The way the emperor is represented and worshipped from world to world with in a system maybe similar but when you start coming system to system huge difference would start appearing.

I watched a intersting documentarty about the origins of myths and legends (not saying religion is either) it dealt mainly with the origins of the Greek myths/Roman and their origins but in later episodess they talked about the begining of christainity. A large part of it seemed to be just super imposing the new relgion onto existing an existing frame work. Churches built on previously holy sites, festivals held to match the existing pagan festivals (Christmas in December), it makes no sense to tear down and start again when you can just rewrite a couple of the details. Zeitgeist (the fiilm) even goes as far to claim all the religions are the same the current bible shows numerous similarities to ancient religion including the Egyptians.

sorry rant over

Originally all "faith" was anthema to the emperor and everybody. Then in crept back in as humanity couldn't get rid of it and the emperor is half-dead.

SpankHammer III wrote:I watched a intersting documentarty about the origins of myths and legends (not saying religion is either) it dealt mainly with the origins of the Greek myths/Roman and their origins but in later episodess they talked about the begining of christainity. A large part of it seemed to be just super imposing the new relgion onto existing an existing frame work.

Yep, it's where I think GW got the idea for the Ecclesiarchy from - well, at least this aspect of the Ecclesiarchy.

Few people know that the Christian St. Valentine's Day is derived from the Roman Lupercalia, where men dressed as goats would parade the cities, lightly whipping young girls as they went - an act that was believed to provide purification from infertility, curses and bad luck. The festival was held in honour of the half-goat god Faunus, to the Greek known as Pan. Pope Gelasius made it into Valentine's Day in 496 AD.
Ironically, the Lupercalia was in itself just a change of the original pre-Roman Februa, a spring cleansing ritual of Sabine origin and what gave the month February its name.
And who knows what came before that.

Damn copycats!

I did not know that about valentines, thanks for the info most informative.

I find it intersting that a lot of the "old" religions symbols end up becoming negative in the new religion.

Pan and horned gods, as far as I understand it, were quite popular within the pagan mythos, can you think of a horned goat legged fellow in christainity. I can and he's not one of the good guys, also looking at it Lupercali is a little close name wise.

Friend of mine also pointed out that a lot of older religions worshipped motherhood and the idea's of woman hood priestests and Holy virgins, mother eath etc and Christanity again shifts the balance.

Must be complicated usurping a belief system, how do you choose what to keep and what to vilify. All kinds of points to people being willing to worship anything as long as they don't have to go somewhere new and don't have to learn any new dates.

SpankHammer III wrote:Dying and resurrection appear a lot in religions but I can see this (your point 2) being left out as the emperor is not dead.

My point 2 is really just about the Emperor making sacrifices for the sake of mankind. Whether or not he is dead or "entombed" or on life-support is not really the issue (i.e., knowing how the Golden Throne works is not important). Rather, what is important is that it was the Emperor who did something to save mankind at great expense to himself.

And as I said, that really has no bearing on what the afterlife is or even whether it exists. So when the Ecclesiarchy's missionaries get to Fedual Planet #23875, the culture there might believe that the spirits of the dead get to ride on the back of the Eternal Deer for all time. The Ecclesiarchy is fine with that. The Ecclesiarchy is even fine with the Eternal Deer being something other than the Emperor. The Ecclesiarchy, however, insists on the people believing points 1 - 5 above.

The key tenets of the Imperial Creed as defined by the Dark Heresy books:

-That the Emperor once walked among men and that he is and always has been a god.
-That the Emperor is the one true god, regardless of what past faiths any human may have worshiped.
-To purge the heretic, beware the psyker and mutant, and abhor the alien.
-Every human being has a place within the Emperor's divine order.
-To unquestionably obey the authority of the Imperial government and superiors.

Sorry didn't mean to come across like I diagreed with you, was actually supporting what you said. Was just trying to suggest that point 2 would probably be the most flexible of the 5, i'm not an expert and if I'm honest not sure how strong the theme of sacrafice is within religions other than christanity. Weren't a lot of the Greek gods actually quite selfish?

I've heard that in earlier religions the concept of heaven hell didn't exist there was purley the afterlife/land of the dead. The idea of heaven and hell was introduced as an incentive system for people to behave.

There's really no need to talk about IRL religions. The point of "the Emperor made sacrifices" in the Imperial Cult is to show that all Mankind must sacrifice and that this is "good."

The Sumerian goddess Inanna was killed, spent 3 days in "Hell" and then was resurrected by a Golden Pomegranate, and ascended to "Heaven" to take her rightful place amongst the gods. Sound a bit familiar?

There's nothing new under the sun when it comes to religion.

I've heard that in earlier religions the concept of heaven hell didn't exist there was purley the afterlife/land of the dead. The idea of heaven and hell was introduced as an incentive system for people to behave.

Kinda sorta. Depends on which ancient religion you're specifically talking about, as not even the various flavors of Judaeo-Christianity agree on what Heaven and Hell are.

If they can shoehorn the Emperor into a position of dominance in the religious hierarchy (which they are good at) then they can incorporate that belief. If not then it's heresy. And it's quite likely that Imperial 'dogma' varies from region to region and planet to planet depending on the beliefs, who is in power, and who can enforce what better than the others. Which probably makes for some lively church socials. Like if you invite the Red Redemption.

Somebody called?

Psienesis wrote:The Sumerian goddess Inanna was killed, spent 3 days in "Hell" and then was resurrected by a Golden Pomegranate, and ascended to "Heaven" to take her rightful place amongst the gods. Sound a bit familiar?

There's nothing new under the sun when it comes to religion.

I've heard that in earlier religions the concept of heaven hell didn't exist there was purley the afterlife/land of the dead. The idea of heaven and hell was introduced as an incentive system for people to behave.

Kinda sorta. Depends on which ancient religion you're specifically talking about, as not even the various flavors of Judaeo-Christianity agree on what Heaven and Hell are.

There is also too much focus here on the Abrahamic religions.

Taoism, certain schools of Buddhism and certain sects of Hinduism (Vedanta) have no real concept of heaven and hell (not in the way portrayed in Judaism, Islam and Christianity anyway) and are based on practical philosophies, psychology: Causes of suffering, transient cycles and change, duality etc. Some schools and sects within these religions are actually agnostic or atheist, while some are pantheist/panentheist (God nature is inseparable from nature, or part of yet beyond the confines of nature), monotheist or a mix of some or all of these!

Honestly the 40k universe is full of a mish-mash of IRL religions and spiritual ideas (Slaanesh = Ganesh!? The evil version!), the Eldar mythology and pantheon as well as the Chaos pantheon share similarities with the more Eastern spiritualities described above and Greek/Egyptian paganism (Thousand Sons, Eye of Horus = Eye of Providence etc).
The Imperium is more Abrahamic in nature (Christian) and you can see similarities between the ecclesiarchy and the ecclesiastical court IRL middle-ages. The Dark Angels are based loosely on Knights Templar mythology and so forth.

I think we ought to be careful when we ascribe to any historical phenomenon a likeness to anything in 40k, even if we might intend to do the opposite. At best, the images in 40k are reflections of certain other, often extremely negative images. For example, the 40k Inquisition is pretty well based on the English popular myth known as the Black Legend rather than the actual Spanish Inquisition. Similarly, the grim darkness is based on a prejudicial attitude toward the Early Middle Ages that was especially current among Enlightenment thinkers. Calling out something as "Abrahamic" is a bit untoward. Warhammer 40k is pretty much a parody of some parodies and stands very far removed from anything actual.

For that matter, the powers of the Warp and Chaos gods are skilled at coopting and corrupting beliefs to their own purposes. If they can manipulate Imperial worshippers, they probably could do it to any faith. Thus any superficial similiartiies may simply be a reflection of Chaos' attempt to ensnare the unwilling, rather than any genuine similarities that may exist. Chaos is devious like that.

Aplogies if I made to closer comparsions to real world religions, it was not my intention to cause offense, I took it as a given that people would understand that the GW uses the very worst/unrepresentative aspects of the relgions in question to create the Grim Dark effect they are after. Which may have been a mistake on my part.

I only used real life example as I was unaare of any fluff answers to how the imperial dogma is spread and was hoping for an adult and informed discussion about this element of 40k as it is an area that intrigued me since reading about the interators (sp) in the Great Crusade. The concept of faith/belief is something that interests me.

@ yarrick - I didn't go into eastern religions becasue I know nothing about them if I'm honest and feel on shakey ground discussing westerns religions as I only have a limited understanding of them as is.

@ Manchu - thanks for the links to the black legend, it is something I have heard of in passing (again if i'm honest it the result of the legend rather than the legend itself) found it an intersting read.

It is pretty firmly established in the fluff that the Ecclesiarchy likes to co-opt local religions wherever possible, leading to the variations that Lynata mentioned.

It seems pretty clear that there is a more or less consistent version that the majority of the heart worlds of the Imperium follow. That version talks about the warp as a form of hell, but also has a multitude of others intended for those who have committed specific sins.
I think one of the Ultramarines novels details a few, as does the Grey Knights.
The Imperium also has a crapton of saints, rather in the style of the Catholic church of today, with a formalized process for sainthood as well as the saints usually being associated with specific virtues or areas of responsibility.

Basically though I think it is rather like everything else in 40K, the universe is so large and loosely defined that a writer can pretty much do whatever he wants with the religion as long as the Emperor stays on top.

Since we're on the subject, I'm going to take the opportunity to tie this into a thing I'm working on in Dakka Fiction....

I'm developing a world for my next DH campaign, which is set on an Imperial World trapped within a Warp Storm and, roughly a thousand years ago, suffered an apocalyptic nuclear war, which destroyed its great Hives and left the surviving population in the Wastelands to fend for themselves. In that time, the Imperial Creed (in fact, all of the standard Imperial factions) have splintered and gone off in their own directions, jealously guarding their technology, secrets and power-bases.

As far as the Ecclesiarchy is concerned, tenets of the Creed can vary wildly from village to village, as the following examples show:

In one region, the tale is told that the God-Emperor throws the sinful into his Great Brazier, a burning fire so bright it can rival the sun. In honor of this, the faithful in this region burn their dead, and sentence criminals to death by burning at the stake. They also keep a fire burning in the center of town at all times, to remind the village of Man's many sins.

Another region preaches that the God-Emperor consumes the wicked utterly, and draws from them their power. Thus, once a year, the village brings forth captured witches, sorcerers, mutants and those with the lazy-eye (a true sign of corruption if there ever was one) and engages in the ritual killing and consumption of these heretics.

In yet another region, it is said that the God-Emperor had a rivalry with his brother, a Machine-God, and thus punished this world for its wickedness in building the great iron towers that lie in smoldering, radioactive ruin. The people of this region are simple and fearful, and will destroy any salvaged tech they discover, and will burn at the stake anyone professing to serve factions of the surviving Adeptus Mechanicus, or anyone carrying such heresy as a vox-bead.

So, given what we know of the Creed, what do you think are some of the more "out there" variants that may pass as "proper worship" in the Imperium?

I can imagine a group that distantly recalls the Great Crusade and goes around attacking all the other groups in the name of the Truth. They even have a symbol of the Truth, a double-headed eagle. They denounce every practice not sanctioned under this sign of Truth (basically whatever their leader says is okay) as "religious superstition" or a "corruption of Truth." In the face of such "irrationality" they apply violence with extreme prejudice.

In case you're interested in feedback:

Psienesis wrote:Another region preaches that the God-Emperor consumes the wicked utterly, and draws from them their power. Thus, once a year, the village brings forth captured witches, sorcerers, mutants and those with the lazy-eye (a true sign of corruption if there ever was one) and engages in the ritual killing and consumption of these heretics.

This sounds like it could spread any mutations or taint (or would at least be believed to have this effect), and it might be argued that by eating these guys themselves they'd "steal" from the Emperor's platter. Not necessarily, of course, given that religion does not have to make sense - but you could grimdark this up by the villagers forcing one of the prisoners to eat the others ... then they ritually kill him/her, believing that the Emperor would now get the whole package.

Maybe they have a toxic lake nearby where they could throw people in and they quickly (like, super-sci-fi-quick, matter of seconds) dissolve in the industrial acid, making people believe that this lake is actually a gateway to the Emperor's realm. And every so often some fanatical fool decides to go in there on his own. Might be an interesting myth/riddle or "trap" for your players to solve, too. When first hearing about it they'd prolly believe it was a teleporter or webway gate.

Manchu wrote:I can imagine a group that distantly recalls the Great Crusade and goes around attacking all the other groups in the name of the Truth. They even have a symbol of the Truth, a double-headed eagle. They denounce every practice not sanctioned under this sign of Truth (basically whatever their leader says is okay) as "religious superstition" or a "corruption of Truth." In the face of such "irrationality" they apply violence with extreme prejudice.

This reminds me ...

On the hive world of Lastrati, a sect known as the Divine Army gained control. Their rigid code of behaviour was ruthlessly enforced. Any person suspected of even the slightest disgression would be hideously tortured and then executed. Whole swathes of the population were eradicated by genetically-attuned viruses which picked out particular traits which did not conform to the Divine Army's image of a human being.

Millions were enslaved and worked with no food or water until they died, running huge factories and mining ore from the depths of Lastrati. So many died that later gangs of slaves, hundreds of thousands strong, were used to dispose of the bodies before their own rotting carcasses were added to the funeral pyres that blackened the sky. The flames weren't restricted to the dead, either, and the burning of heretics in one hive reached such terrible proportions that it is claimed the highest dune outside its walls is made entirely from human ashes. It is known locally as the Hill of Heretics.

The pilgrim who visits Lastrati can also see such sights as the Plain of Purity: 2.500 square miles packed four feet deep with polished bones, each individually inscribed with the Litanies of Faith in tiny letters. These are not heretics but the bodies of the faithful, who were laid out in massed open graves so that the Emperor could see those who had been loyal.

Then there is the Path of Damnation. Stretching for 5.300 miles, this road is lines on both sides with gibbets every pace. Hung from these are the bodies of blasphemers who spoke out against the tortures and burnings.

Such was the carnage wrought by the Divine Army that when contact with the Imperium was re-established, there were only two and a half million inhabitants left on a world that had originally boasted a population of 14 billion.
-- from 2E C:SoB

*shiver*

@Lynata: That kind of violence is a bit too ritualistic for what I had in mind; it shows a bit too much transcendent glee in the act of "purification" via murder. The kind of killers I'm imaging are ones that work with an external emphasis on systematic process and efficiency. In a sense, they would have a very accurate picture of the Great Crusade. To its uncritical proponents, the expeditions of Great Crusade were simply scalpels cutting into the patient. The destruction of Monarchia by the Ultramarines is a good example.

This sounds like it could spread any mutations or taint (or would at least be believed to have this effect), and it might be argued that by eating these guys themselves they'd "steal" from the Emperor's platter. Not necessarily, of course, given that religion does not have to make sense - but you could grimdark this up by the villagers forcing one of the prisoners to eat the others ... then they ritually kill him/her, believing that the Emperor would now get the whole package.

Oh, it quite possibly could. Then again, there's no central authority telling these people that "tentacles on your face is a bad thing". The only surviving, intact copy of the Imperial Creed is kept in a distant monastery that was once home to a small convent of the Sororitas, prior to the nuclear Armageddon that consumed the world. Whether this place still stands is unknown, though legends have given it the name "New Canaan"...

My players refer to this setting as "Planet Fallout".


... though I like the lake-of-acid thing. I'm definitely going to have to work that in, somehow... maybe give it to the Children of the Atom, a splinter of the Adeptus Mechanicus who have gone way off the deep end into tech-mysticism, being lead by the Sacred Vox and the Divine Oracle. The Sacred Vox being your fairly-typical mechanoid monstrosity that is high-ranking Mechanicus, but the Divine Oracle.... well, she's a piece of work, being hard-wired into a surviving mountaintop observatory that stares endlessly into the Warp Storms that enshroud the planetary system.

Psienesis wrote:... though I like the lake-of-acid thing. I'm definitely going to have to work that in, somehow... maybe give it to the Children of the Atom, a splinter of the Adeptus Mechanicus who have gone way off the deep end into tech-mysticism, being lead by the Sacred Vox and the Divine Oracle. The Sacred Vox being your fairly-typical mechanoid monstrosity that is high-ranking Mechanicus, but the Divine Oracle.... well, she's a piece of work, being hard-wired into a surviving mountaintop observatory that stares endlessly into the Warp Storms that enshroud the planetary system.

Hardcore. You make it sound like some wicked mixture of "Planet of the Apes meets Fallout".

It's meant to be a very, very dangerous setting. I'm basically re-building Dark Heresy from the ground up, with new Origins packages, new skills and starting packages, expanded/altered rules on Medicae, and new descriptions and fluff for most of the Classes. Also added in a new stat, Rads, which tracks a character's exposure to radiation, and the horrible, terrible, nasty things that happen to him from mundane radiation poisoning. I'm thinking, later in the game, of having irradiated pools of liquid Warp-stone or something, so that players can have the opportunity of having both kinds of mutations at the same time.

One of my players is hell-bent on playing a Tech-Priest who is also, somehow, an Untouchable. I'd planned on there being a pair of NPCs, a Witch-hunter (Cleric/Inquisitor) and his witch-slave (Psyker/Interrogator) who would be responsible for keeping people alive through psychic means.... but a gut-shot Untouchable days across the Wasteland from the nearest hope of a doctor is just going to have to bleed to death, I suppose.