Children are worshipped and adored as living gods until the age of 6

>children are worshipped and adored as living gods until the age of 6

What could cause this custom?

Eating a lot of paint?

Did you happen to be browsing /pol/ earlier, by any chance?

Inherent magical energies
Have you ever seen a toddler sorcerer?
Shirts fucking scary yo

Consuming glue?

infertility a la "children of men".It might not explain the up until age 6 but it's a start OP.

They believe maybe fetuses are made by god and for a while they still have a bit of the god's energies in them. Dunno.

I once read through a friend's attemptic comic, and he had a setting where children have all the magic power that's worth anything, and it gradually tapers off into uselessness.

Granted, he did it more that magical abilities tend to erupt at around four and are usually trivial (they never entirely disappear) by 15 or so, but I can see a society like that worshipping the magically touched child, and you can adjust the ages as necessary.

I don't know, but it wouldn't last long as they would all grow up entitled as fuck.

Children actually being living gods until age 6

>wizards, no sense of right and wrong
>children, no concept of right and wrong
spooky

It's a real custom, though?

Something about newborn life being uncorrupted by sin and therefore still technically a small piece of the divine.

Not sure they keep it going for six whole years though.

>mfw

>What could cause this custom?

Their parents were Millennials.

In southern Ghana it was believed that children have no souls until age 7. So they weren't held accountable for much. That's how we explained the bizarre and often cruel behavior of children.

The world is super hostile. Babies and small children are obviously vulnerable are are often targeted by the more cunning creatures that prey on humans because of this. Also as many humans are hunted and killed children are important to keep populations up and the different tribes and whatnot can't afford to lose a single child, even to illness.
With this is mind society has developed to worship children so they are afforded as much protection as possible, both from predators and bacteria/disease until they are old enough to start learning to fend for themselves or take of jobs, even minor ones to help maintain the tribes or village or however the humans are grouped.

*children have no souls

FTFY

Several currently known deities awoke around that age, and wreaked havoc over their mistreatment when they were 'mortal', so people Revere all young children out of fear of the next awakening

Pedophilia?

Jesus.

Very VERY high infant mortality rate. All that survives is treasured. Survival markedly increases past the 6 year point in this universe.

It is prophesied that God will be born in human form, but it takes until age 6 to administer a religious test. Thus every child is treated as God, so as not to accidentally offend said God by mistreating it, thinking it is a normal child.

So what?

Superpower that go away after the age of 6.

Maybe they feel bad about throwing them into the furnace when they turn 6

at the age of six the children determined to be least useful are offered to the god machine that runs the train which keeps us all from freezing to death in the eternal winter outside. Their tiny bodies are perfect for maintaining and running the machine which keeps us all alive, why shouldn't they be treated as gods?

now imagine a CHILD WIZARD

Snowpiercer was garbage

Y-You're garbage!

A wizard did it.

I think it would have to be informed by other stuff, though.

Let's say it's a reincarnation type of world. This soul has just been through the throes of death and has been touched by divinity personally on its way back down into the world, and in addition to the highly symbolic act of birth itself, they have experienced in a cosmically-speaking short span of time, the most spiritual events a person can undergo. It takes 6 years before the soul properly grows into its new body and becomes wholly mundane once again.

In another, non-reincarnation world, you could say they are 'fresh out of God's oven' and it takes 6 years for them to cool off and begin to accumulate sins of marks of the world. For those 6 years, they are as close to divinity as some on their deathbed glimpsing the light, but in reverse,and have room to grow with that divinity in them, hopefully.

These are interesting to me.

It had some good parts..... Like captain america eating babies. Boy did i laugh my ass off at that

Society recognizes that forcing a sentient creature into existence without it's knowledge or ability to consent into a generally random and cruel world is perhaps the greatest immoral action. But are forced to do so to perpetuate the existence of the species, so they chose to pay reparations in order to absolve this perceived injustice.

High mortality coupled with a belief that our souls flow to/through whatever deity they worship on death. A child is a temporary ambassador of the deity; it's worshiped in the hopes of gaining favor.

When they get to the age where it's likely they're going to live long enough to reproduce. They have a ritual of becoming where the child becomes fully human, and of the earth rather than of the divine.

Maybe backed with a myth like: The Gods made themselves mortal for a lark. Built a world for themselves as a playground, created all kinds of things to amuse themselves with. Had lots of kids along the way. Eventually got bored, shed their mortal bodies returned to heaven. Realized that something of themselves remained on earth, trapped in this form. The gods at first wanted to just grab everything back, but (preserver/protector diety) intervened on behalf of humanity, allowing that fragments of the Gods would always circulate to earth and back.

Mediocre birthrate paired with high infant mortality rate, so every child is precious and important.
Once they pass 6, they're basically out of the high rate of death ages.

Reincarnation. Baby worship is a form of ancestor worship until they adjust into their 'new' life as the age of reason.

So if you want to be a wizard you'll have to establish a source of infants to serve as magical batteries.

This gets darks pretty fast when you start considering implications.

Well, no, you can't really do that, as no adult would have the kind of power necessary to tap into these "batteries".

But it's plenty dark as it is, as you have some places where they just kill children en masse at the slightest hint of magical ability, and others where they get those magically talented six year olds to set each other on fire and turn each other inside out in the army, and still other places which aren't really there anymore because some magically powered child threw a temper tantrum and killed a few dozen thousand people.

They know that some of them actually do turn out to be gods, but they don't know which ones until they start losing teeth or don't, and in the meantime they want to make sure they ingratitude themselves and don't mistreat or offend a God when it's young, because of what it can do, for them or against them, once grown, so they just treat any child they don't know about yet as gods to be safe.

If a kid hasn't lost a single tooth by age six, the chances are very, very high he's actually a God.
The moment he ever does though, it's back to the dregs of society with the rest of us, because God don't lose teeth, their teeth just grow with them.