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This is probably more of a 40k theology question more than anything.

Each of the 4 major gods has their own source of power, Khorne with hate and rage, Nurgle with despair and fear of death, Slaanesh with lust and hedonism, and Tzeentch with ambition and change. I've also found older topics on Dakka that each of the big 4 also have good qualities, Khorne with martial strength and honor, Tzeentch with hope, Nurgle with... life?, Slaanesh with love? (the last two are a little open ended)

First question is: do the Imperial authorities understand how this works?

Second question is how does the Imperial Cult fit into this. Imperial society more or less induces despair in those prosecuted by it (Nurgle). If it's mandated that all Imperials should worship and love the Big E (Slaanesh's domain), while simultaneously turning around and hating psykers and mutants (Khorne).... doesn't that pretty much feed Chaos? Is this a matter of not knowing, not caring, or a necessary drawback to having a unifying human leader?

A discovery I recently made through reading the Lexicanum is that the big 4 aren't the only chaos gods, and there are other minor gods who, presumably, feed off other emotions. I mean, there's an awful lot of other emotions out there. Acceptance, contentment, benevolence, pity, happiness, guilt, disgust, trust, friendship, shame, patience etc. Is it possible to have Chaos Gods that aren't what we would consider to be "evil"?

I am confused.

The Chaos Gods are evil because most people in 40k are evil, and they encourage other people to become evil, making them more evil. It's a vicious cycle of evil.

But if everyone was nice, they'd be too pacifistic and be overrun by Xenos.

Put it this way: what happens when someone who is a Chaos worshiper dies?

When anyone dies, their souls disconnect from their bodies and are torn apart by the warp. Chaos worshipers are described as having lost their souls to chaos already, and if they do not achieve daemonhood they often turn into spawn or are otherwise punished with eternal torment. There is sort of this choice between being destroyed by warp forces generally, or being consumed by a single power, depending on how someone lives.

That means chaos worship is all about what you can get done while alive, because those souls are already promised to chaos. There is a reason it is called a Path to Glory. Chaos is all about winning the game of life. Horus is the paragon of chaos, and he was the most successful person alive. Chaos generally, like the chaos warriors of fantasy inspired by Death Dealer, is about individuals and sometimes groups tearing down society and their competitors so that they themselves can take first place. The different gods are just different, less comprehensive metrics for winning - winning the most confrontations, being the strongest/most powerful, hanging on for the longest time, or getting the most rewards.

The result is that chaos is all about doing stuff while alive and not caring about death. Imperial faith, by contrast, is all about death. There are skulls everywhere because everyone is always giving their lives for the Emperor, and the Emperor gives his life for everyone else, and guardsmen have to leave their homes forever and march to certain death, and space marine neophytes give up their old lives completely to be dominated by their new genetic destiny. People are just dying all the time for some selfless purpose, whether voluntarily or not, and that makes them martyrs.

Anyway, the imperial authorities do not understand the stuff you describe because it is irrelevant. In this cosmology, "martial honor" means more killing, hope is waiting for something to come along and magically deliver you without doing any work, "life" or fertility perpetuates suffering in the sense that longer life means more illness and more children mean more mouths for the same food, and the good parts of slaanesh are indulgences also connected to reward centers, just like drugs/sex/music. The only "good" is selflessness.

That assumes that Imperial religion isn't correct-- which specifies that those who serve the Emperor well go to His side in the afterlife.

Which, given the power of the Astronomican and His power in life which directly threatened the Chaos gods (to the point that they instigated the Horus Heresy out of fear), is very likely.

And, of course, the Eldar and Orks have their own devices on what happens to them after death due to their own histories and cultures, and the Tau probably just sort of litter the warp with their insignificant souls.

All those theories of how Chaos works comes from Liber Chaotica.

Those books are in the fantasy setting and cross over into 40k which GW claims isn't supposed to happen.

Hospy wrote:
This is probably more of a 40k theology question more than anything.

Each of the 4 major gods has their own source of power, Khorne with hate and rage, Nurgle with despair and fear of death, Slaanesh with lust and hedonism, and Tzeentch with ambition and change. I've also found older topics on Dakka that each of the big 4 also have good qualities, Khorne with martial strength and honor, Tzeentch with hope, Nurgle with... life?, Slaanesh with love? (the last two are a little open ended)

First question is: do the Imperial authorities understand how this works?

Second question is how does the Imperial Cult fit into this. Imperial society more or less induces despair in those prosecuted by it (Nurgle). If it's mandated that all Imperials should worship and love the Big E (Slaanesh's domain), while simultaneously turning around and hating psykers and mutants (Khorne).... doesn't that pretty much feed Chaos? Is this a matter of not knowing, not caring, or a necessary drawback to having a unifying human leader?

A discovery I recently made through reading the Lexicanum is that the big 4 aren't the only chaos gods, and there are other minor gods who, presumably, feed off other emotions. I mean, there's an awful lot of other emotions out there. Acceptance, contentment, benevolence, pity, happiness, guilt, disgust, trust, friendship, shame, patience etc. Is it possible to have Chaos Gods that aren't what we would consider to be "evil"?

I am confused.

You're confused because your argument starts out from a flawed perspective. One, Slaanesh is not the God of Love. S/He is the God of Excess. Khorne is not the God of Hate. He is the God of Warfare, Carnage and Bloodshed. Nurgle is not the God of Life, but the God of Plague, Pestilence and Disease. While they may have "slightly less evil" aspects to their portfolios, none of them are "good". Tzeentch may be the God of Hope, but his "hope" is the hope of burning a society to the ground to remake something new from its ashes, only to burn that one down in turn, and so on. In the current era of 40K, positive Chaos Gods are not possible, though such things are theoretically possible (the ancient Eldar gods would be good examples).

The Imperial Cult teaches that there is no god but the God-Emperor. To profess otherwise is heresy.

And, yes, while the Ruinous Powers do leach some of the energy devoted towards the God-Emperor from the actions of mortals, the bulk of it *may* be making its way to the guy on the big chair on Terra, *or* it may be coalescing in the Warp in a newly-created god-figure, referred to as the God-Emperor, which is purely a construct of the Warp, based on 10,000+ years of human worship.

The old Chaos Daemons codex (don't know if this has changed) specifically said that the Emperor was the only thing stopping Chaos from overtaking humanity, so obviously regardless of whether it's the Emperor upon the Golden Throne, or a "God-Emperor" presence in the warp, it definitely is an extremely powerful being.

Indeed. Also making it an interesting little event, time does not exist as we know it in the Warp, so the Ruinous Powers may have been speaking of the thing that they were about to have a direct hand in creating.

Wouldn't *that* be ironic?

Its a simple fact that negative emotions are stronger reactions than positive ones. No one ever tried world domination because they wanted to be friends. No genocide was ever commited because the guy justed watched "Its a Wonderful Life" and was in the mood.

So the same thing applies to the warp. Hatred being the strongest emotion availible, is much more potent and commonplace than matial honour, due to more people prefering to bash someone's head in with a rock than fight man to man if it means two more days of pathetic life.

Therefore, Khorne feeds off more negative hatred "energy" than positive matial honour "energy" and so becomes a bad guy.

As mentioned, the Imperium doesn't help.

Tzeetch is fueled by hope, but more so by scheming and ambition. Everyone in the Imperium has massive ambition. Whether its the Grey Knight seeking to destroy Chaos once and for all or the hiveganger scumbag dreaming and plotting on how to move into the slightly bigger hole above him without Arbites knocking at his door.

Nurgle is despair, which is prevalent among humans in 40k times. If I was 20 years old at 40k era I would blow my own head off. Too old for Space Marine at this point and too young to be worth throwing into the meat grinder. Plus, disease must run riot in those overcroweded hives.

Slaanesh, is well, pleasure. And really, cold pea soup must be a luxury in the Imperial Guard so no problems there. Plus, the Imperium has an unlimited supply of human resource. Which requires a little act that fuels Slaanesh big time.

Finally, Khorne, of war, Blood and hatred.

What is it the Imperium always say? Hate the Mutant, Heretic, Traitor and Xenos?
What is spilled by the ocean's worth every second?
And finally, the reason Khorne always reigns supreme.
In the dark days of the 41st Millenium, there is only war!

What we refer to as negative emotions are stronger for most humans, at least. Not necessarily the case for all sentient life.