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I need help working this Q out ive being googling this all day and cant get an answer, so a single god system in monotheism, multi god polytheism but what about the type of god, is there a name to describe the ways gods in 40k/warhammer have power in relation to there followers numbers/actions instead of say like in real world religions where they all ways just exist and are omnipotent or not. Any help would be super appreachaited and ads to the general smarts of all passing traffic! look forward to some reply's finger crossed!

I've attempted google-fu and only found the following:

Henotheism (Greek ἑνας θεός henas theos "one god") is the belief in and worship of a single god while accepting the existence or possible existence of other deities that may also be served

from here

As in the case of people choosing to worship the Emperor over the Chaos Gods or where someone may Worship Tzeentch and not the other Chaos Gods but recognise they exist.

The closest I got to the amount of worship determining strength of the deity was this phrase ''ceremonial manifestations of God'' - suggesting that ceremony (prayer / sacrifice etc) give the God the ability to manifest

It's kind of paganish in the sense that each god is an embodiment of some form or concept of nature. In this case the chaos gods are an embodiment of aspects of the nature of sentient beings.

One could just call it polytheism.

Thank you both

The warp is really just the metaphysical plane of existence/nonexistence. When the metaphysical plane interacts with reality, the metaphysical forms that make up the plane become manifested.

In my opinion, the gods serve no more of a purpose, on a cosmological scale, than a guardsman. Each of their existences are merely necessitated, and brought about by the natural laws that form the collective universal planes.

In other words...... The unity of opposites

"If the opposites were completely balanced, the result would be stasis, but often it is implied that one of the pairs of opposites is larger, stronger or more powerful than the other, such that over time, one of the opposed conditions prevails over the other. Yet rather than 'stasis' the identity of opposites, there being unity within their duality, is taken to be the instance of their very manifestation, the unity between them being the essential principle of making any particular opposite in question extant as either opposing force. For example 'upward' cannot exist unless there is a 'downward', they are opposites but they co-substantiate one another, their unity is that either one exists because the opposite is necessary for the existence of the other, one manifests immediately with the other. Hot would not be hot without cold, due to there being no contrast by which to define it as 'hot' relative to any other condition, it would not and could not have identity whatsoever if not for its very opposite that makes the necessary prerequisite existence for the opposing condition to be. This is the oneness, unity, principle to the very existence of any opposite. Either one's identity is the contra-posing principle itself, necessitating the other. The criteria for what is opposite is therefore something a priori." - wikipedia, because it's easier to read.

There isn't really a word for it, and it's not uncommon that the power of a god came from the followers. In fact it's common enough that in most media that features any pagan god has that concept in it.

If anything our modern Judeo-Christian gods are the odd ones out as they don't actually draw power from their followers directly, but are rather powerful regardless of worship. In other words, they're a lot more "Don't ask what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." since they no longer care if you worship them or not... In theory.

Edit: As for some Chaos gods, I guess you could call them a collective unconsciousness since they're just the embodiment of the overall emotions of those who influence the Warp, including the Ork gods. Other gods are not quite like that in 40k.

 Tinkrr wrote:
There isn't really a word for it, and it's not uncommon that the power of a god came from the followers. In fact it's common enough that in most media that features any pagan god has that concept in it.

If anything our modern Judeo-Christian gods are the odd ones out as they don't actually draw power from their followers directly, but are rather powerful regardless of worship. In other words, they're a lot more "Don't ask what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." since they no longer care if you worship them or not... In theory.

Edit: As for some Chaos gods, I guess you could call them a collective unconsciousness since they're just the embodiment of the overall emotions of those who influence the Warp, including the Ork gods. Other gods are not quite like that in 40k.

In order for them to be a collective unconciousness, their existence cannot precede their cause. Do the gods not exist outside space and time? If so, then there can be no time wherein the gods were non existent, as they can manifest themselves whenever and wherever they please. Now this does contradict the awakening, or coming into being of the chaos gods, Slaneesh in particular. There is a way around it though and that is if the gods are all involved within a temporal causality loop.

A collective unconsciousness is not a good definition. While yes, the willpower and thoughts of mortal beings "created" the gods, the gods themselves are just an amalgamation of that which created them and sustains them. The gods themselves are distinct entities with a will of their own. This will of these gods would much more suitably be defined as emergent properties.

"An emergent behavior or emergent property can appear when a number of simple entities (agents) operate in an environment, forming more complex behaviors as a collective. If emergence happens over disparate size scales, then the reason is usually a causal relation across different scales. In other words there is often a form of top-down feedback in systems with emergent properties.[19] The processes from which emergent properties result may occur in either the observed or observing system, and can commonly be identified by their patterns of accumulating change, most generally called 'growth'. Emergent behaviours can occur because of intricate causal relations across different scales and feedback, known as interconnectivity. The emergent property itself may be either very predictable or unpredictable and unprecedented, and represent a new level of the system's evolution. The complex behaviour or properties are not a property of any single such entity, nor can they easily be predicted or deduced from behaviour in the lower-level entities, and might in fact be irreducible to such behavior. The shape and behaviour of a flock of birds [3] or school of fish are good examples of emergent properties."

 Sledgehammer wrote:

 Tinkrr wrote:
There isn't really a word for it, and it's not uncommon that the power of a god came from the followers. In fact it's common enough that in most media that features any pagan god has that concept in it.

If anything our modern Judeo-Christian gods are the odd ones out as they don't actually draw power from their followers directly, but are rather powerful regardless of worship. In other words, they're a lot more "Don't ask what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." since they no longer care if you worship them or not... In theory.

Edit: As for some Chaos gods, I guess you could call them a collective unconsciousness since they're just the embodiment of the overall emotions of those who influence the Warp, including the Ork gods. Other gods are not quite like that in 40k.

In order for them to be a collective unconciousness, their existence cannot precede their cause. Do the gods not exist outside space and time? If so, then there can be no time wherein the gods were non existent, as they can manifest themselves whenever and wherever they please. Now this does contradict the awakening, or coming into being of the chaos gods, Slaneesh in particular. There is a way around it though and that is if the gods are all involved within a temporal causality loop.

A collective unconsciousness is not a good definition. While yes, the willpower and thoughts of mortal beings "created" the gods, the gods themselves are just an amalgamation of that which created them and sustains them. The gods themselves are distinct entities with a will of their own. This will of these gods would much more suitably be defined as emergent properties.

"An emergent behavior or emergent property can appear when a number of simple entities (agents) operate in an environment, forming more complex behaviors as a collective. If emergence happens over disparate size scales, then the reason is usually a causal relation across different scales. In other words there is often a form of top-down feedback in systems with emergent properties.[19] The processes from which emergent properties result may occur in either the observed or observing system, and can commonly be identified by their patterns of accumulating change, most generally called 'growth'. Emergent behaviours can occur because of intricate causal relations across different scales and feedback, known as interconnectivity. The emergent property itself may be either very predictable or unpredictable and unprecedented, and represent a new level of the system's evolution. The complex behaviour or properties are not a property of any single such entity, nor can they easily be predicted or deduced from behaviour in the lower-level entities, and might in fact be irreducible to such behavior. The shape and behaviour of a flock of birds [3] or school of fish are good examples of emergent properties."

" The emergent property itself may be either very predictable or unpredictable and unprecedented, and represent a new level of the system's evolution."

Apply to Slaanesh.

Basically: "The tomes of the Black Library say that Slaanesh was born from the uncontrolled and excessive need for sensation that had come to preoccupy every moment of every day for nearly every Eldar."



Edit: And yes, of course Eldar would be the ones to make Slaanesh. Things like war, disease, and change are for those who live in unstable times, they mark those in suffering, so the other gods would obviously exist, and Nurgle is the oldest, since disease and illness would exist in our knowledge before the first combat or change in way of life. If anything the disease and illness would result in change, not the other way around.

The description of the birth of Slaanesh even mimics the psychological needs of a species, since survival from change, war, and disease/starvation, are all fundamental, and it's not until you get to the top of the pyramid that you worry about luxury, but for the Eldar who made the god of pleasure it was:

" they passed the days living in unimaginable luxury. They had no need to concern themselves with matters such as daily survival, manual labour, or warding off external threats. Nor did they feel bound by social constraints. They had no need to think of how their actions would affect others, not even within their own families, since there would never be a time when they needed anything from them. Everything was at all times theirs. "