How to turn the Christianity into a practically polytheistic religion?

As has been said, Saints and Denominations. You know how many fucking denominations of Christianity there are? You know how many wars they've had with each other over it?

Have this handy chart. This is only the "major" branches. It goes on into dozens.

Putting an emphasis on Saint worship is probably the best way to go

PS: This isn't including various Christian 'Heresies" of which there are a shitload (including protestantism)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_heresies

of course if denomination divisions are too... divisive... have some fucking saints of which there are literally hundreds

Don't like saints? Kick it old school, and use THE MOTHERFUCKING APOSTLES, and say that in your mythos where magic and shit were really real, each of them represented a sort of strand or message of christianity (plus powers) that reso

Saints and Angels, bruh. There have been angelic cults and Saint reverence sects for millenia.

...

It would be cool if their manners of deaths each gave you unique powers.

Well, you would want ideally to do more research into each apostle and decide, based on their life and teachings, what bonuses they offer

but there's 13 of the fuckers (14 counting Judas) so..

PS: you totally need to add a secret Judas organization

ISCARIOT DOES NOT SHIRK WHEN THE ENEMY PRESENTS ITSELF

Here's a non-conclusive (because there are over 800) list of Saints and their Patronage

Let players pick 1 or 2 like cleric domains

cont

...

Good luck op, and happy 'vult
youtube.com/watch?v=Aw2GiQ8vsrs

You mean other than taking the Catholic route and having there be an army of saints and angels whom mortals devote most of their actual prayers to in order to gain specific blessings and boons? With Jesus and Mary just under the Trinity on the celestial hierarchy and each member of the Trinity handling specific powers?

Really, Catholicism is henotheism (polytheism but one god is considered the only god to formally worship and devote one's self to) lying to itself and claiming to be monotheism.

Just take a look at almost real world Catholic faith. Particularly in South and Central America.

>I want to give Christian players just as much freedom as pagan players.
What?

Saints? If you look at voodoo roots the reason they have so much stuff based on the saints is because slaves on the island plantations would find a saint with similar iconic traits to one of their gods from some random west african religion and worship that in their place.

Catholicism itself even has so much focus on the saints that people pray to individual ones. Hail Mary is a prayer to Jesus' mother. You don't even have to find a way to turn it into one, you just need to focus on the parts that are already there.

Saints,
Different order : fra,csicans, jesuits, jansenists...
with different aspects prioritized.
Or even different Cristianism but who stay together rather than fighting.
Exemple Orthodox isn't Catholic and isn't protestants.
Orthodox put Jesus as God first (Pancreator) while Catholics put his human side first (without being aryan)

>catholicism
>Jesus under the trinity

Already works as one, the holy Trinity can easily be turned into 3 diferents school of thought, also saints, apóstols, angels, the virgin mary, you have a lot where to choose, for a "monoteistic" religion It sure have a lot of "deities"

Wow, cool. Not OP, but Thanks user.

Don't try to make Christianity the "same" as paganism.
Make new systems for Christians that give more freedom, like following certain saints as and said. Christian characters pick a patron saint, and that determines what they do/how they act/e tc

Christianity has been divided up into sects and cults from the beginning.

They might be nominally worshipping the same god, and their quibbles might have been over seemingly minor interpretations of scripture, but that was apparently enough to cause very different world views and trigger massive, bloody schisms.

>I want to give Christian players just as much freedom as pagan players.
>Medieval Europe
This makes no sense. The vast majority of nobility would be Christian, the majority of city folk would be Christian, with barbarians and farmers being mostly Pagan. Hell, just have your Christian players call crusades on the Pagans and kill anyone who doesn't convert, and they'll be happy. Better yet, have some of the Christian characters be from heretical branches so their characters can have crusades called on them.

Just have the archangels get some role. Many pantheons have a top god anyway.

>farmers being mostly Pagan
That's a big area and a long time to say that even true most of the time with any confidence.

Make the Trinity more literal, adjacency them be Three distinct entities, rather than just one with three faces. That way you can get an Almsivi deal going

You've got a point, but I still don't understand why OP made this thread. The Christian god is suppose to be all powerful and would have any power that the multiple Pagan gods would have. Why would OP want Christianity to be polytheistic like the Pagans? It doesn't make any sense to me. Also, the only way you're going to get the Pagan and Christian characters to work together is if you made something so horrible that they need to work together (similar to Poland and Lithuania working together the against Teutonic Knights). Personally, the Pagan characters would have to act Christian or they're going to be forced to convert or die, because I don't see a group of Christian knights and priests being nice to Pagans.

This. Just jack up the saint veneration to crazy levels

In the same way that Christianity took on holidays and traditions of other faiths, have it take on those gods as well.

BUT, importantly, they are all lesser gods, only about on the level of angels maybe. You can have no other gods before God, so as long as you live to God's code and show him primary belief and support, then you can do some pagan practices and afford a little worship to say, Apollo for example.

Basically God sits up on high, and the other gods mingle around by the foot of his throne. As a god of mercy, he didn't just destroy them.

>As a god of mercy, he didn't just destroy them.
This is the funniest thing I've seen on Veeky Forums today. Thank you good sir, have a (You).

I mean, didn't a lot of pagan gods end up being canonized as Saints anyway?

New Testament God, when he's all about the love.

So like in an area where they like Freya maybe, you've got the Christian cathedral, and within it to the side is a little shrine to Freya, or maybe one in the garden outside.

In this case though they are still distinctly "gods", they're just not the supreme being.

Some. The vast majority were called demons or any followers were killed for being "heretics" that consorted with Satan/Lucifer/Whatever they wanted to call the "Devil" at the time.

They usually ended up as demons. The saints merely took over the holidays, because people didn't really give a fuck in whose name they were boozing their heads off, but try to stop them from the boozing and you'll get pitchfork stuck up where naught but the light of salvation shines.

Pagan deities are Gods rebellious kids. With the pagan gods being real it would be quick to get the 3 miracles required for sainthood.

>Don't try to make Christianity the "same" as paganism.
We don't. It did that on its own.

Read 'The Germanization of Medieval Christianity'

I'd suggest this to the OP too

Basically, the Protestant charge of Catholic Trinity and Saint worship as being Pagan has a lot to do with the Church making concessions to the German pagans that converted to it en masse in large waves.

The strange Santa Meurte stuff in South America is an unofficial version of this, basically the natives worshiping left-over Aztec voodoo in the form of the Grim Reaper as a Saint of Death.

Saint and Trinity worship also has a lot to do with adapting Mediterranean folkways as well

There are plenty of people who view current Christianity as polytheistic

The concept of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost is something you can work off of easily, making three big Gods with Saints and holy figures as minor deities or demi-gods

And let's not forget all those angels and Mary. There's even forgotten gods in the Grigori and nephilim and forbidden gods in the fallen angels, demons and devils. OP can even keep the whole No-other-God-but-me thing by re-fluffing it as being a very jealous pantheon. You'd have your over-deities with the warlike yet protective Father, the kind-hearted Son and the enlightening, inspiring Holy-Spirit.

Old Hebraic interpretation of the commandments was actually that. "Have no other god before me" didn't mean YHVH is the only god, but that he is the supreme god, and ought be revered foremost by his chosen people.

Literally the Seven from ASOIAF

Like people have said, the saints are a good idea.
However i would like to ad different ideologys Like say, protestant, cahtolic, and orthodox.

Apostles are alreay saints

Nah, turning them into saints is way more common than demonizing them. It's just that the demon gets to keep the name, the santified god gets renamed to fit the christian lore but keeps the main traits. Like the andine god Tunupa who was (is) identified with several saints including Santiago, Saint Bartholomew and Saint Thomas but basically is still the same with some token atributes of the saint.

This. Egyptians were doing pic related with different figures and costumes thousands of years BC.

Fucking every European fantasy story has Christianity with the serial # filed off, but inexplicably a pantheon of pagan deities to worship

You aren't breaking any ground here

Yeah, but now it's more like, have no other god but us(Trinity) and these ones (Mary, angels, saints)

Why are Christcucks so pathetic?

Nigga Jesus is part of the trinity
Who the fuck do you think the "son" is?

Syncretism. Have it merge with local cults.
Something that can easily happen if there is no centralized organization.

So you can have for example zalmoxian-christians who think that christ is the second big prophet after Zalmoxis and a mithrandatic-christian who thinks that christ is totally Mithra reborn. But beware of the Solar-christians, total cunts. they think christ was Sol Invictus walking the earth.
They are all wrong obviously, according the platonic teachings of Antiochos of tyre christ was obviously an enlightend being the shield us from the demiruge. Well unless you happen to be platonic-muslim in that case you think that Christ was imperfect and Mohammed did a better job.
You're discussing that still.

Don't get me started on those wonky Mazdean-christians...

>Only one of them died a natural death

I like the idea of saints. Adds flavor without adding polytheism.

>Don't get me started on those wonky Mazdean-christians...
You want wonky? One of Mexico's non-canonical saints (Jesus Malverde) is a drugrunner. Unsurprisingly he's the patron saint of drugrunners.

>mazdean christians

Isn't that just Manicheism?

Have the various different cults and denominations have a different 'understanding' of the One True God and that their power of worship cause multiple Abrahamic Gods to appear in relation to whatever culture spawned by them. Like Allah, Yahweh, Jehovah or the King of Kings or whatever you make up.

It would make more sense if the rest of the divinities gets the right to be called god negated by the actual God being an uncomparable superior being. Like with Ahura Mazda and the yazatas. Or Eru and the gods of Tolkien.

I just took some religions from the Crusader Kings 2 mod "Lux invicta".

>You want wonky? One of Mexico's non-canonical saints (Jesus Malverde) is a drugrunner. Unsurprisingly he's the patron saint of drugrunners.
Works for them. Most of the "warrior saints" were gods of war before, so why not a saint of drug runners.

A hill ornament.

Depends whom you ask. Manichaeism is more into the light vs dark thing. Christianity in the west was quite influenced by it.

What I wanted to show is that the imgae of christ somehow merged with the existing stuff. A zalmoxian-christ would maybe believe that christ came to tell his people that they were doing a good job and should keep the messengers (human sacrifices) coming. Thanking his believers for the steady flow of informations.

According a platonic-christ he was a paragon of reason, banishing the darkness of ignorance. Founding a shitload of schools.

Maybe some Frankish lord would found a branch around the sang real which would make him a descedant of christ, thus partly god.

Sycretism is fun as fuck.

>Maybe some Frankish lord would found a branch around the sang real which would make him a descedant of christ, thus partly god.
>Frankish
Nah.

It would actually be detrimental to *not* call the minor deities angels and saints in my opinion. Worshipers of different pantheons would simply see it as a quirk of those kooky Abrahamists/Christians and simply inform others that 'saint' and 'angel' simply translates as 'minor deity', which they are but with specific names and titles. Also, instead of 'God', there'd be the Father, the Son and the Holy-Spirit. Three overdeities, countless minor-gods and demi-gods with people saying 'Father bless you' or '[insert Saint/angel] bless you' instead of 'God bless you', etc.

That is because what they call God now is just the only member of his pantheon to survive.

I mean, people have already brought up saint worship, but God is already three in Christianity, and several interpretations of Christianity (Arianism being the most notable) have interpreted them as separate beings.

Have God not be Jesus who isn't the Holy Ghost.

>Worship God, his prophets, the saints, and some of the old biblical heroes (Samson and the like)
>Believe all other gods are real, but are the wrong ones to worship
He says not to worship other gods-- He doesn't say they're nonexistent

>literally hundreds
There are almost 11 thousand canonized saints.

>no one has Judas' corpse

If you want to hew very close to normal Catholicism, make the Trinity all separate, discrete entities, not part of the whole as they currently are.

Orthodox are actually even crazier when it comes to saints

I feel angels should be in there, as well. Like, angels and saints are on par powerlevel wise, but have different origins and a different approach to how they execute their domain.

Saints are like Jesus in that they are a manifestation of god's power coming into a human shape, being born as near-omnipotent beings that ascend to heaven once they shed their mortal coil. Much like angels, they return to earth to walk among humans and help execute His grand design or generally just doing their job as patron saints and guardians wherever they can. Prayers spoken in their name will reverberate within their being and thus allow them to let their miracles be cast on that prayer's location, if it is strong enough and the saint deems it worthwhile to answer the prayer.

Christianity, or at the very least Catholocism, is already in practice a polytheistic religion what with practicioners praying to and invoking different saints and angels depending on the what their current situation requires.

That's a great exagerration. And the orthodox are the same plus the idoles.
The saints and angels are only intermediary to God.

>The saints and angels are only intermediary to God.
As has already been explained to me a thousand times over every time I've talked to christians about it, and it's then repeated when I ask what the practical difference between praying to an intermediary and praying to a lesser diety is.

You ask the lesser divinity for something which is her domain, even if she isn't the bigboss because he don't do it.

You ask the saint to report your message to God because you're not worthy to ask such things directly.
You don't venere the saint but you venere the lesser divinity.

Well, there's already the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, so why not the Second Cousin, the Sacred Wraith, the Stepmother and so on?

But if that was the case there would be no need to pray to different saints or angels, or to pray to them at all as you could just pray directly to the big G, as they just pass the message along. Yet christians take great care to invoke the Archangel Michael is certain situations but not others, for example, and the Lady Magdalene in some but not others.

Not the mention the Holy Gardener, Pablo.

>the Holy Gardener, Pablo.
>not Jesus de Maria

What else would you expect from mystics?

>change

>I want to give Christian players just as much freedom as pagan players.

Why?

If they've chosen to play Christian characters then surely they want to play these characters adhering to one god. Why would you need to create unnecessary variations?

Santeria or something similar?
What did we do more than catholics, again?
Fun fact:
Among neo-pagan revivalistic zamolxians, there are those who worship God the Lord(we call God some fused together word that at origin means The Lord our God, basically Adonai Elohim) and Jesus in their festivities.
So you have a branch of zamolxians that erect a cross to pray to, in their little area of the meeting grounds.

Oh yeah, that's the symbol of zamolxianism.
Of course, like any neo-pagan movement, you get all sorts of people, from nationalistic /pol/tards to sjws that want their weird polyamorous fantasies and other weird new age projected onto the ancestor's faith.

Take all the major players in the faith usually and make them full-gods in their own right.

>The Father
A distant Creator Deity, possibly an Eldritch Abomination that "likes" mortals.

>The Son
Somehow begotten from the Father, far more "Human", far more personal. Actually loves and understands humanity on a fundamental level, champions them.

>The Spirit
A sort of cosmic Force, personified. Possibly simply a representation of The Light, definitely brought in from an older panetheon or representing very old beliefs in-setting.

>The Mother
Original High Priestess for Father's religion, ascended to join him eventually.

>The Twelve
Eternally reincarnating demigods loyal to the Father and Son (thus explaining the constant 12 motifs in Judeochristianity).

>The Thousandfold
Small Gods.

Oy. As a Frank I feel offended xD

If Saints become minor deities, you could become a god, which would be cool as fuck and not without precedent in other (pagan) religions.
Also, in the Middle Ages, the church explained their "ability" to sell absolution with them being able to use the good deeds of the Saints to "outweigh" your sins. If that isn't an offering to a specific "deity", I don't know what is...

I actually did this in a D&D game back in high school. Clerics chose a patron saint for extra ethos and specialty spells. All prayers were addressed to God via the intercession of a Saint. I went to Catholic High School and had access to a lot of research material for the game and the nun that was the Head Librarian also ran the Games Club helped a lot with the research. Sr Jean Margaret was great.

Well, the existence of deities can still be ambiguous in a setting with magic.
A Crusader *claims* he saw a vision of angels, and his flaming sword *can* cut through anything, but the Priestess of Freya can talk to animals, shape-shift and seems to be able to see the future. Both of them might claim that their god definitely exists, and the other is a bunch of baloney or a trick by some demon/spirit, but neither can be 100% sure.
Meta-wise there might be a definitive answer, but that shouldn't affect people's in-setting behavior.

I like Saint January, who fought the lion that killed him with his barehands.
Saint Laurent is "funny" too. He is basically the patron saint of "barbecue" because he died on one.

>their god definitely exists, and the other is a bunch of baloney or a trick by some demon/spirit
I can't really see this happening in-universe. Of course the Priestess of Freya's gods exist and are giving her powers, they're all just clearly inferior to *my* gods and the gifts and miracles they can produce. I can see one claiming that the other is being duped by tricksters or is receiving their abilities from questionable sources, but denying the existence of all others is as stupid as a schoolyard kid yelling that only *his* dad is real and everyone else's aren't.

This. I mean, there's more variation in being able to choose to play a polytheist *or* a monotheist than there is in being able to playtwo different varieties of polytheists.

That said, if you really wanted to go the route you have choosen, play up the praying to and invoking of saints and angels.