Divinity

As in the real world, different cultures and faiths on Thoti have their own views on divinity and how it does (or does not) work. This article, however, will be primarily concerned with how divinity works on a meta level.

Divine Magic

There is no functional difference between divine magic and other forms of magic. A layperson who knows how to pull off whatever is required to summon "divine power" is just as capable of doing so as the most devout devotee. All magic is just simply magic. By that same token, magic that is not related to or derived from a religion is just as powerful as any type of divine magic.

A lot of magic systems are derived from a culture's associated religions, and as such studying that particular magic system often requires some study of the associated religious philosophy to understand how and why it works the way it does. This can be especially important for clashing cultural notions and ideas, such as say, one magic system that holds that magic is directly derived from one's connection to the gods

Gods and Godhood

While gods do exist in the world, not every god is actually a physical being. Many "gods" are simply personifications of how a culture conceptualizes a certain concept, the same way the Grim Reaper often appears in fiction as a conceptualization of death.

When talking about actual physical gods, there is no functional difference between a "god," a "really powerful entity (that may or may not be an object of worship)," and "an individual who has attained immense power and/or some form of immortality." Godhood is not something granted by an outside force (not exclusively, anyway). This also means that there can be "false gods," powerful beings that might or might not meet the criteria for being a god, but do offer false promises to their worshipers/followers. All gods can potentially be killed, or at the very least they are capable of "falling" from their positions as supposedly divine beings.

This also means that gods do not predate the world or life. Some gods may claim they do, but that is always false. Not all religions worship a physical entity, and not all religions that do worship an actual physical being. This, of course, leads to questions in-world about the nature of divinity and whether gods or divine beings even exist.

Criteria for Godhood

This is less of a hard and fast set of criteria and more of a general set of criteria that most or all gods may fulfill. Some cultures may require all of these traits to count something as a deity, others may have entirely different sets of criteria that only vaguely overlap with this. But generally speaking, these are what are considered necessary across the board for something to be a "god."

Immortality or Very Long Life

In order for a living thing to be considered a god, it must live for an unusually long amount of time. This particular criterion has lead to some considering especially long-lived creatures like elves or dragons deities in their own right, and shorter-lived creatures considering creatures that merely live longer than them such as bennu, gerabura, or even humans to be some form of deity.

The beings in question do not always have to still be alive to this day, it can be enough that they simply lived to a ridiculously old age.

Incredible Feats or Miracles

A would-be deity must be capable of or perform feats beyond the normal capabilities of mortals, such as creating life from nothing, imbuing a non-living object with life, or, as in the case of The First Angel, They of a Thousand Faces, granting their people the gift of prophecy.

Something like the feats of Hercules from real-world mythology would also be considered sufficient to qualify.

Granting of Powers

A third criterion for gods is the ability to grant power to others, whether that's in the form of raw magic power or access to specific spells or abilities. The First Angel granting the power of prophecy to angelkind is arguably a very well-known example of this. Disagreement often comes from the fact that The First Angel does not continue to actively provide this power to angelkind, and if they were to one day disappear, angelkind would still have the power. As such, there is debate as to whether a deity must act as the source for the powers granted, or if simply being able to grant these powers is enough to count.

The idea of granting a spell can also be taken to mean simply performing the intended action themself, rather than granting the petitioner the ability to cast the spell. Isochan magic tends to take the former interpretation, for instance.

Other Criteria

Indestructibility is sometimes considered a prerequisite, but as mentioned under immortality, a being does not necessarily need to still be alive to be considered some form of deity.

The idea of a god having divine domains, aspects of reality that they rule over, is not a hard and fast requirement. Often this is because a lot of deities develop associated domains as a side effect of how and what they are worshiped for, as opposed to being tailor-made to be "the god of such and such." For instance, The First Angel being associated with the "domain" of fate is simply the result of them having brought the gift of prophecy to angelkind, rather than them being "designed" to be a god of fate.

Omnipotence and omniscience are not requirements, especially as very few gods are consistently thought to be either of those. Gods can be just as fallible as mortals.

Religions and "Truth"

All religions in this world have their basis in people trying to make sense of the world around them. As such, they all have some measure of "truth" to them, as they are based on observations people made and the explanations they came up with to try and explain those observations. That doesn't mean that any one religion or faith has all the answers or that all of them are secretly based on one singular Truth at the heart of the world. It just means that a polytheistic faith that worships a few dozen gods is just as valid and real as a monotheistic faith that refuses to acknowledge the existence of gods other than the one they worship. All of their respective gods may exist in a physical way, or none of them, or maybe only some of them. Not every faith requires the existence or nonexistence of gods in order to exist, or to justify its existence. Individual faiths may well look down on other faiths for lacking or having an aspect they don't, of course, but that does not make either of them "better" than the other.

Likewise, a dangerous cult that worships their leader as a god might be dangerous simply because it's a cult, or it might be dangerous because it's a cult and its leader actually does have godlike powers.