D: WHAT ELSE DO I NEED BESIDES BELIEFS?
 Sacred Literature, Social Structures, Cross-Fertilization

Of course, beliefs alone do not a religion make. You need myths and rituals, to flesh-out those beliefs; and social structures, to enforce your belief system; and cross-fertilization with other Human Games, to extend your control to the fullest.

Now, you might argue that the sacred literature is itself the main component of your belief system, but that's just not so. Such literature may embody or exemplify some of your beliefs, and/or may offer justifications and guidance for the beliefs, the structures, the control mechanisms of your Game. But you should not allow the literature to constrain the Game, and vice versa. Keep it all fluid, dynamic, complex, confusing. Fertilize thoroughly with bullshit for the greatest yields.

And it's vitally important that you include a full panoply of Rituals for your Players to focus upon. These may be derived from the literature, from the necessities of the social structures, or from the other Games that you cross-link with. Certain groups, such as the Eastern Orthodoxoi, may lead us to believe that there's no such thing as , but you may find that too many rituals may diminish your control of your adherents, at great risk to yourself. Be prudent. Test your ritual-load carefully. With the right mix, you can control and drain your followers almost indefinitely.

1: SACRED LITERATURE: Myths, Other Tales, Complexity

MYTHS - Religion does not live on abstract belief alone. Yes, you require creation myths, termination myths, morality myths, and other myths and narratives, histories and fables, proverbs and prophesies, promising and apocalyptic visions. These all serve to describe where you came from, where you're going, how you're gonna get there, what to do along the way, and what others have done. Embedded within each of those sets of myths or narratives, are rules on rituals to perform, of celebration of your creation: rules on behaviour and morality and thought, thought-control; rituals to perform to ensure maintenance of divine pleasure, of successful divine intervention in your affairs; and rituals to perform to ensure successful termination of your earthly existence.

1. CREATION MYTHS - Tell the tales of origins and namings. Creation ALWAYS involves naming - it is by naming something that we make it real, make it ours. Unnamed existence is no existence at all. Specify the names of people, places, things, ideas, and you both birth them and control them.
   
   
2. TERMINATION MYTHS - Tell the tales of death and defeat. Death is ALWAYS the defeat of life-forces, of organization - the triumph of chaos, of disorder. But termination can also be the beginning of another stage of existence - it's this promise that gives any religion its primary hold on human hope.
   
   
3. MORALITY MYTHS - Tell the tales of visions & spells, of events and consequences. These fables of right and wrong provide a road-map for the journey from birth to death, the implicit and/or explicit instruction manual for life as a human within a community of other humans. Morality is the lubrication of humanness.

Refer to TECHNICIANS OF THE SACRED and any other collections of myths from peoples around the world to provide lists of specific myths, myth-modules. And see the literature on the myths of history, of politics, of art, of sport.

OTHER TALES - Interwoven with your myth narratives, your rule and ritual prescriptions, should be: historical narratives; repeated exhortations of your core beliefs (but none too [not overly] consistently); songs of praise of your friends and your deities, and denunciations of your enemies and their deities; collections of "wisdom literature", which provide rules-of-thumb for human interaction with other humans, with their/[our] own thoughts, with the divine, with the world around them[/us], with any (sequence of) events that may occur; anecdotes of human and divine wisdom, folly, recklessness, sinfulness, joy and sorrow, ruthlessness and treachery. You should also include sections of prophesy, predictions of the future; prophesy, denunciations of current social trends / events and prescriptions on how they can be altered to provide the future you want; and numerous texts that seem to have no point at all.

COMPLEXITY - I must emphasize that in your sacred literature, you want to have as much as possible that is contradictory, vague, confused. You want parallel narratives that don't quite go in the same way. You want human and divine relationships that are not consistent; you want math and logic that don't quite compute. In all, you want to give your followers wide range for interpretation of the sacred writings, so that you can foster the inevitable sectarian conflicts and schisms that will ensue in the lifespan of any belief system.

2: SOCIAL STRUCTURES

A religion is also a social organization, and you MUST provide for the social components if your system is going to achieve anything like success. See BIRTH OF THE GODS here for various types of social structures that belief systems can exist within; see also CJ Date's books on DATABASES for the different kinds of database organizations - hierarchical, relational and network, and adapt all those as models of the belief systems' organization.

I'll write more on social structures in further updates of this paper. I promise.

3: CROSS-FERTILIZATION:
 Political/Legal, Economic/Financial, Artistic/Emotive, Athletic/Sportive

Your religious belief system can / should / MUST include components of other types of belief systems, Human Games. Again, the basic types of Games are 1) Religious, 2) Political, 3) Economic, 4) Artistic, and 5) Athletic / Sportive. The more components you can include from these other types of Games, the better.

POLITICAL / LEGAL - As is illustrated by Catholicism, Mormonism, Scientology, and Aum Shin Rikio, the political component is vital. You must provide for the establishment and/or infiltration and subtle control of political / legal institutions, secular power structures.

ECONOMIC / FINANCIAL - As is illustrated by Catholicism, Judaism, Mormonism, and others, the economic / financial component is also vital. You must provide mechanisms for establishing and/or infiltrating and controlling financial institutions... And many (tel)evangelistic entrepreneurs have shown the utility of wide-ranging investments in entertainment / corporate / financial conglomerates. One measure of the success of a religion is how profitable it is, how much money it can generate. Neglect this at your own peril.

ARTISTIC / EMOTIVE - As exemplified by Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism, the artistic component is key to success. You should generate / assimilate a rich trove of images & music; live, televised & cinematic drama & comedy; sculpture & architecture; all to convey your beliefs and messages. Properly used, such art may be very effective media for mind-control.

ATHLETIC / SPORTIVE - Finally, athletics / sports - from Zen archery to Shinto sumo wrestling, to Notre Dame football, to ancient Mayan ritual basketball, to the sacred long-distance footraces of Southwestern American Indians, and the holy naked Olympic competitions of the classical Greeks, athletics are a key part of any belief system. It's obvious that professional sports in the 20th and 21st centuries, besides being the display functions of the gambling industry, are religious institutions. Tap into these ritual displays and you can harness endless enthusiasm of sports fans - and not incidentally gain wealth and power in the process. Besides participating vicariously in the rites of sports, for those without athletic ability, other sorts of games / gaming can be utilized: bingo, lotteries, etc.

E: WHAT ASPECTS OF MORTALITY SHOULD MY RELIGION CONTROL?

Needs: Sex, Nutrition, Air, Other

As the Game Master, you need your Game Players, and they need you. You can and must cement your relationship by closely controlling the physical and psychological needs of your followers. Control what and where and when people eat and breathe and drink; control when and where they shit and fock and sleep; and you've got'em! Control their births, their deaths, their lives, and you've got'em unto the tenth or twentieth generation, no problem.

NEEDS: Your belief system should deal with all aspects of human existence, which are essentially biological - eating, sleeping, respiration, defecation, reproduction; and emotional: rationalization, fantasization, curiosity, lethargy, gluttony, hate, fear, love, greed, idealism, cynicism, work, play, et al. If you can provide controls over the biological necessities - food, air, water, sex, sleep - you can totally control your adherents.

SEX - Of these, SEX is a very useful component. "Get'em by the balls, and their hearts and minds will follow." Whether you're providing for temple prostitution, sacred orgies, celibacy, ritual mating, prescription or proscription of non-coital loveplay and/or certain sexual positions and behaviours, your Game can / should / MUST harness sexual energy of your members for your benefit.

NUTRITION - Similarly, control of, not so much air, but food and drink, can provide both social controls over your members, and can be extremely profitable if your organization is the sole supplier of certain of those foods and drinks. Thus, one nexus of your group may be around a chain of 'health-food' stores, food & beverage suppliers, and ritual processors and blessers of food & drink.

AIR? - I don't know if it's been done yet, but it'd be interesting to try to control air in a similar way. Specify the breathing of more-or-less amounts of certain gasses, particulates; varying degrees of hypoxia / anoxia / hyperoxia; whether just by mandating the wearing of mouth-and-nose masks and filters, or by actually supplying cylinders of compressed gasses; or ritual breathing of certain gasses like nitrous oxide. (This COULD be somewhat related to Brethatarianism, a Game of those who allegedly forego ingestion of food and water and exist only on air.) A clever Game entrepreneur could find this a rich area of exploitation.

OTHER - The other biological functions that can be controlled are sleep & elimination. Erhart's 'est' seminars demonstrated the utility of denial-of-urination as a tool for breaking-down personalities. And of course, deprivation of sleep and REM-states allows for the breakdown and reprogramming of human consciousness. Application / administration of drugs are NOT necessary for such reprogramming.

Other aspects of emotion- and mind-control are beyond the purview of this paper. But I should mention the enormous control effects of life-transition rituals, ceremonies that mark birth, growth, adulthood, marriage, divorce, senility, death. When you control the time of the rituals and the time of the events, you ultimately shape the lives of your Players.

RESOURCES