Drawing inspiration for Magic from Disparate Sources: Hinduism, Māori culture, and Japanese Buddhism
@marinerofthestars asked:
I’m working on a series of fantasy books set on nine different worlds mirroring the Nine Realms of Norse cosmology, which are broadly inspired in terms of magic systems and themes by the Elder Futhark (the world with the rune for “justice” has a magic system that require you to abide by certain guidelines, the world with the rune for “death” has a magic system that lets you interact with spirits and the afterlife, and so forth). However, in terms of how these broad themes are expressed in individual worlds, as well as the minutiae of how magic systems operate, I plan to draw inspiration from various non-European sources, such as Hinduism, Māori culture, and Japanese Buddhism.
I’m going to do extensive research on these cultures beforehand to avoid handling these topics in a way that could be offensive to real-world minority groups (while Japanese people technically don’t exist in this universe, there are people on one world with similar cultural elements and physical features to Japanese people, and I’ll make sure to avoid writing them as characters from this ethnic groups as stereotypes) and I’m going to strictly avoid using specific elements from closed cultures. For instance, although one of my magic systems revolves around a series of focal points for energy throughout your body, these points aren’t called chakras, and they don’t have the same symbolism as chakras do in Hinduism. The only similarity is that there’s a network of energy nexuses in your body, but would even this similarity be acceptable for me to use? Or is even the broad concept without any of the specific elements forbidden to outsiders?
Also, I know that having a fantasy world inspired by elements of different cultures (ex: Avatar the Last Airbender) that portrays them respectfully is fine, but is doing the same thing with cultures that aren’t from the same geographic region (ex: merging aspects of Norse and Hindu magic) acceptable? I read an ask from 12/13 where you said having a Sikh protagonist fight Greek gods would make the story inherently Eurocentric, but I’m unsure whether the same standard applies here since I’m writing an original world inspired by IRL religion and magic rather than our world with those actual religious and magical systems. (Note that in the few instances where I do have POC protagonists interacting with more specific European-inspired supernatural entities, I do want to explicitly acknowledge how race and culture factors into things. For instance, one of my planned books has a character from a nation inspired by Bihar culture and Hinduism fighting European-inspired faeries, which is meant to parallel India’s history with colonialism.)
Is AtLA a Useful World-building Reference?
I should inform you that AtLA does not enjoy the unanimous acclaim here at WWC as assumed by many non-Asian writers. This post explains why. For the purposes of world-building with disparate cultures, I believe many of the problems described in the linked post will help you determine what world-building assumptions to avoid. Personally, as an Asian Buddhist who has done martial arts, I thought AtLA succeeded in its presentation of Chinese martial arts, but I didn’t find its portrayal of Buddhist philosophy or coding of Asian Buddhist cultures to be especially compelling.
Christian Supremacy and Norse Mythology
I feel like it is very important to keep in mind that Norse mythology only exists in a Christianized form. We literally have no idea what pre-Christian Norse myths were, because it was only the Christians who wrote them down multiple hundreds of years after the Christianization of Scandinavia.
As a result, a lot of myths were almost certainly shoehorned into being Biblical allegories of some sort. When you strip them down to their bare bones, you get a lot of Jesus stories. For example:
The old gods were painted as terrible people
The result of Ragnarok was the cleansing the earth of such old evils and replacing them with good, new gods.
Loki and Baldur as Jesus figures: Loki as the cleanser and Baldur as the perfectly good new head god.
There was a political agenda to writing this down — to unify all Viking-settled places under a single king, while appealing to their old heritage and new religious beliefs.
One does not need an advanced degree to see the inherent bias of this situation.
I’d suggest looking at any video Overly Sarcastic Productions has made on Norse mythology where Red yells very loudly about how we’ll never know what Norse mythology was like before the Norse became Christian, unless someone invents a time machine, because all the old oral records around what the myths used to be are long, long gone*. She has done videos on Loki and The Poetic Edda, along with a handful of others. The two I linked are the loudest on how Christianized and politically-motivated Norse mythology’s original written records were.
You can’t separate out Christianity from the Norse myths like you can with a lot of other ancient religions, because unlike those ancient religions, none of the original pagan traditions left records. There’s nothing pre-Christian to go back to. Thus, even if the setting is using Norse gods, the way those beliefs are structured is inextricably and irrevocably Christian.
Indirect Christian Colonialism
I bring up the above for an important reason: Norse mythology’s Christianization and Christian parallels mean that forcing other, non-Christian religions into a framework of what is, and always has been since its writing down, only a Christianized framework, is pagan-rebranded Christian colonialism. By placing non-Christian beliefs within that framework, you reinforce Christian supremacy and recreate Christian colonialism.
This means the story doesn’t exactly play well with any culture that hasn’t been Christianized willingly. Which means it doesn’t play well with most cultures, especially religions that have experienced missionary trauma at the hands of Christians, like the Maori and most Indigenous peoples. You’re basically limited to Europe, some West African kingdoms like Ethiopia (so long as their historical Christianity isn’t too wildly different from European Christianity), as well as pockets of cultures dotted around the rest of the world with localized traditions that haven’t been soaked in blood in the past 200 years.
I would very strongly suggest reading the world-building tag as part of your research. Many concepts you’ve presented here are addressed in the pages of that tag, up to and including how far apart cultures have to be in order to safely influence each other (hint: it’s not very far, and is limited to direct trading partners/neighbours), and cautions against making Fae, an Indigenous-coded fantasy concept that comes from colonized cultures (Gaelic, primarily), as colonizers.
*There’s some etymology breadcrumbs for Loki in particular, but they aren’t enough crumbs to know what the loaf used to be, just that it was probably made of this stuff.
Further Issues with Fae versus Hinduism as a Colonialism Allegory
Echoing Lesya, I think the biggest issue with your proposed conflict between fae and Hindu supernatural figures as an allegory for colonization is it doesn’t fit with what happened historically.
Firstly, elements of Gaelic culture in Ireland, Scotland, Wales and other parts of Europe were either co-opted or quashed by Christian forces, much like how Muslim and Christian forces, respectively, tried to eliminate aspects of Hindu culture in South Asia from the Delhi Sultanate through the Mughal Empire through British and Portuguese colonization to Christian evangelical groups in the present day. I can sort of see the logic of West versus East as the basis for a colonization narrative, but given the above histories, it feels erroneous when neither mythology is based on a monotheist religion.
Secondly, as Jaya has pointed out before (see here), conceptions of morality and capacity for morality differ for Hindu supernatural entities and the fae. The former play by the same rules as humans. The latter don’t. Colonization is an economic choice often backed by maximalist beliefs of superiority. I have difficulty believing creatures from two mythologies that don’t even view humans the same way would have any reasons to compete over resources. To that effect, here is an old post by me and Mod Lydie (see here) where we discuss why colonization is not often necessary to depict conflict between opposing groups in fantasy settings.
Overall, like Lesya, I anticipate problems in trying to adapt Norse cosmology to sources that are removed from each other. See this post on blending mythos successfully. You are better off coming back to us after you have done your initial research and have a sense of which mythologies work together and which don’t. As I’ve iterated before, WWC is better consulted towards the end of the research process rather than at the start as there are multiple ways one could go with this. You are telling us much of what you plan to do. I’d much rather hear your ideas when you are in a position to tell us what you have already done, how you’ve done it and why you made the choices you did.
