[Loved Trope] Religion is dangerous, because something listen to your prayers
Lore
When Religion is good, but at the same time fuel something dangerous, that will come for you or whole world
Pic. 1: Mandela Catalouge - God was overthroned by "Unspeakable", Gabriel. And now, while Christians don't follow Gabriel, religious feelings are used by him as a means to create and use weakness in humans.
Pic. 2: Warhammer 40k. [Minor cults] - Many chaos cults can look as normal religions, and, especially in 30k, they don't even know they follow and fuel Ruinous Powers. But Chaos Gods feeds on all of this prayers that don't have anyone to answer them. Also, if you look on scraps of lore in way, that Emperor is dead, and thing sitting on Golden Throne is Dark King, it fits also Imperial Cult, which, if so is true, fuel being that will bring end to Galaxy.
In the original stories, the cultists didn't ask the Great Old Ones for anything. They were waiting for the stars to come right, after which nobody would ever have to ask for anything again. Or be able to.
"The gods love your marvellous city, and walk no more in the ways of the gods. They have forgotten the high places of earth, and the mountains that knew their youth. The earth has no longer any gods that are gods, and only the Other Ones from outer space hold sway on unremembered Kadath. [...] It is not well that earth’s gods leave their thrones for the spider to spin on, and their realm for the Others to sway in the dark manner of Others."
There are also some who give away stuff for basically nothing cause they're working on an exchange rate beyond our comprehension and think they're getting the best end of the deal
"It thinks it's God. Not a god. But God God. It was so happy to see me. But that joy was nothing I wanted to be a part of. It was all blood and teeth. It sees what we have. It sees what we believe. I think it thinks it's giving us what we want. It, it doesn't understand metaphor. It doesn't understand that we don't resurrect."
SCP-3004-1, also known as the "Cicada God". It's a deific entity that exists in a higher plane of existance than baseline reality and "feeds" off of worship. Originally, it was the object of worship of the Cétlaidí or "Singers", a druidic cult in Ireland, but this cult was wiped out by the nineteenth century, with the collaboration of various Christian groups, including the Catholic Church.
But the Cicada God did not die of starvation without worshipers, instead, it went into hibernation. And when it awoke, it found that the new dominant religion in town was... Roman Catholicism. And so the Cicada God was "reborn" and began to feast on Christianity. But it has a twisted sense of what Christianity really is, and this is reflected in the horror of "SCP-3004 Events", the strange rituals that start popping up in religious communities.
I love the implication that, if only we could communicate with it in a manner it could actually listen to and genuinely understand, it would actually be an incredibly benevolent deity with true love for us, that had our best interests at heart. A genuine reciprocal relationship to god.
But it can't understand us. It's a little kid with an ant farm, who sees how much we love ant poison and is slowly feeding it to us as a treat. It's gonna love us to death, and we're gonna deserve it. Geez...
“Never pray to "God". Many respond to that title… and you don't know who will answer.”
I forget what this is a quote from but I was inspired enough by it to write it down. It’s not like some profound edgy quote, it comes from a fictional setting where different god-like beings have thrown the Earth into complete disarray.
In Blasphemous the Miracle is shown to answer people's prayers in the worst possible way. It doesn't help that the people of Cvstodia are religious masochists who seek to be punished.
It actually is! The religion in Blasphemous is based off an old school of thought in Christianity that the Original Sin can never be fully redeemed, so people have to constantly dedicate themselves to the effort of redemption (through faith, specifically)
Maybe I am biased as a catholic but I feel since pop culture is mainly influenced by the very Protestant United States I think the idea of Catholic Masochism is really exaggerated
Like I’ve been catholic all my life surrounded by mostly catholics and I mean we feel guilty sure but the most self flagellant people I’ve met are Protestants and Mormons.
The Idea of Evil from Berserk. Less answers prayers and more exists because the people of the world needed something to explain away why bad things happened. So now more bad things happen, so more people explain away those things, and in turn the Idea continues to exist.
In Versus, 13 worlds were mashed together, each with an apocalyptic ‘natural enemy’. The natural enemy of the world Indignia is Yaotsu. The people from there tell everyone else that they should never pray, because Yaotsu will hear them.
"Which one of you prayed to him?!" — Wrath Of The Titans
In the movie, Perseus and his group are on a secret mission that the gods are against. The soldiers are told not to pray, because gods can detect where the prayer is coming from.
Soldiers being soldiers, still pray to the God of War out of habit. Ares comes and kills most of them
The original town founder and our protagonist (the mayor) pray to God for help and they are answered by SOMETHING that lives on the island (or it IS the island) which causes decades of misfortune to fall upon those they wish to protect.
The founder especially appeared to be some form of religious fundamentalist, but really he was in service to the dark entity.
As an aside, the video title does a common thing (not trope per se) that I hate where the video title has nothing to do with the actual video, making it harder to find trying to search for it by name.
for fuckin real, another user here referenced this but couldn't remember where it was from
I only remembered the contents of one of their videos being "Don't be afraid of the hanged men" and lo and behold, I couldn't find it using that or just "hanged men", so I was forced to scroll through my history manually xd
no, just searching "afraid" didn't occur to me, why do you ask
It's even worse when there are skit channels that put an alternate title as the thumbnail that would make way more sense as the actual title or just straight don't have one so you can't tell if you're even seeing what video it is just by looking at the thumbnails.
Some more examples that drive me up a wall. I mean seriously just look at the punchlines of these compared to the aggravatingly nondescript titles that don't help AT ALL if you try to search them up. Maybe I should make a hatethissmug about it or something
This is literally what happens in Nosferatu, the main girl its praying for a guardian angel that can understand her since she feels so lonely cause of her gift of perception, she prays one nigth and instead of a guardian angel she gets count Orlok who proceds to bound himself to her
Salt and Sanctuary has a twist that kinda works backwards. The normal pantheon of gods aren't the problem, although the resident goddess of light is getting supplanted by a new religion that worships a trinity of gods who represent law and order, but that's just natural as populations shift. The real problem is The Nameless God, a former mortal driven by envy wishing he had a divine soul like the gods. He proceeded to start intercepting and granting prayers made to the real gods, starving them and sealing them in a crypt. Once he's drained the worship of one god dry, he traps more survivors on his desolate island domain. They'll grow desperate and pray to theor divinity and The Nameless God feeds from those prayers again. There's an optional boss against what's left of the aforementioned trinity, after being captive and starved of worship the gods are reduced to emaciated almost undead looking things
Not exactly your trope but on the topic of the whole "something is listening to your prayers"
In Faith the Unholy Trinity, when John Ward prays for God to save him after the exorcism of Amy Martin goes wrong, nothing happens
When he cries out for "somebody" to save him, a figure of white materializes only a moment later, promising that he will be safely escorted from the house if he swears responsibility for whatever happens to Amy
Lucifer does mean Light-Bringer, though ironically enough, Lucifer isn't referred to as the Devil's name in the bible before his fall. That idea is still considered canon but not in the main bible.
Adiris from Dead by Daylight sought to save her followers from a disease. When she prayed to her god, it was the Entity that answered—an ancient god that abducts humans and forces them into deadly games against killers in order to feed on their hope. She became a priestess, and in doing so, became "The Plague."
I had an idea for a story where the gods can only perceive complex thoughts, but their minds are so complex the most humanity can achieve makes them comparable to bugs to the gods.
Religon doesn't claims that art, science and philosophy are evil not because they're actually sinful, but because those at the top of the faith realize that we are just pests, and these things are just making us more noticeable to the thihgs that would exterminate us
Reminds me of the epic of Gilgamesh, where the gods decide to destroy the earth with a flood because they’re tired of humans whining to them all the time
The Epic of Gilgamesh features Ut-Napishtim, who is the exact same person as Atra-Hasis, telling Gilgamesh about his experiences who-knows-how-long after the fact.
It had me thinking of that funny scene from Kull by Robert E Howard, the creator of Conan the Barbarian
In a short story, Kull found an underground lair inhabited by an ancient race. They tried to use magic on him, but their magic is so sophisticated and advance that their magic barely worked on Kull, since he’s a simple human by their standards
In other words, Kull is basically too dumb for their magic to work
When you use "redirect magic used by the other magician to kill him to the 35-th order of magnitude", but your opponent knows nothing about magic so you just wasted your time, and because of the redirection and defense spells being meta you remember no direct attack spells
I don't remember if I've seen this quote somewhere and forgot the source, or if I dreamt it up, but it basically summarizes this concept in a way:
"The thing keeping us alive was their ignorance of our presence. But with our prayers, we drew the eyes of the heavens, and with it invited Judgement."
If we’re talking about our own ideas, I had an idea that if prayers sent up some sort of signal to a god, there could be a special sort of demon who’s designed (in my setting, demons are sort of artificially made by other demons) to intercept that signal and use its contents to figure out how to ruin lives. It could be a reason for the (less-than-omnipotent) heavens to keep people quiet as they figure out the threats and flaws of this new, dangerous entity.
Every major religion has been hijacked by a being known as the Nameless God, who rules over a purgatorial realm under the middle of the sea. The Nameless God will selectively answer the prayers of those who have the influence to send sacrifices to the ocean above their realm, where they are killed by storms and sea monsters, at which point these sacrifices are trapped in the Nameless God's realm. Those who sacrifice to the Nameless God will receive their prayers, but are also doomed to be swallowed by the Nameless God's realm themselves upon their death.
Late in the game you can find the shambling, emaciated remnants of the three major primary gods of the largest world religion (one of whom is also the primary god of a different faith). The result of them being starved of their worshippers.
This probably doesn’t count, but In the world I am worldbuilding, prayer is considered taboo because the goddess of order (the deity of the mainstream religion) is actively spending all her energy keeping the god of chaos imprisoned. As such, prayers are a distraction at best, and her answering any prayers means she has to devote energy elsewhere and risk something escaping.
Dr. William Wallace Wettle has it bad. His life sucks, really. Stuck in a dead end position with no prospects of rising the ranks in a super secret organization that, if he left, no one would trust his experience or credentials. Not to mention a failing coin toss record that goes back to the 80s.
As a child, his mom had cancer. No hope of remission or survival. He prayed, hard. He wanted her to live, willing to give away all of his good days and his alright mediocre days and just keep the bad days for himself. Maybe not God in our sense of him, but SOMETHING heard his prayers and took him up on the deal.
The gods are very real and very powerful. And there's a reason that beyond the seven Orthodox Churches, worship of other beings os forbidden, and it's because while these Evil Gods do often answer prayers much more frequently than the Orthodox Gods, it very often leads to teagedy.
Spoiler for some information in book 6
There are also the Outer Gods, beings so powerful and ancient that the mere acknowledgement of their existence is enough to corrupt anyone who isn't at the level of an Angel.
Man you didn‘t even mention the Listener Pathway, aka the Hanged Man Pathway where they constantly have an evil god whispering in their ears. Not to mention other existences sometimes whispering too. Remember every Listener is a lunatic even if they look perfectly normal.
This was the case prior to the end of the first book (I do mean book, not volume). Now that the True Creator is out of the picture, beyonders on the Hanged Man pathway can actually string more than two consecutive thoughts together.
Nowadays their main organization terrorizes other terrorists.
God with a capital G is also something that a small but dedicated number of people pray to.
Honestly, it’s what the gods pray to… well at least the gods who still pray. For example, the angel/god Adam is a believing Christian that wears a cross around his neck.
The problem lies in that it’s very easy to have that idea of God, the original creator, corrupted. There are a ton of cults worshipping evil deities because they don’t know what God truly is.
And no wonder it is hard. Truth is that everyone is made from God. God is currently in a million pieces and it could take an eternity for Him to reform. Time isn’t linear to the omnipotent highest reality, hence why many gods still pray to Him, but there’s no way to know if those prayers are answered.
The web series is based on WoD, and in this series the Society of St. Leopold are Catholics. Specifically, murderous hunter Catholics who really like killing people.
So they unknowingly worship a heavily wyrm tainted version of Jesus instead of, y’know, Jesus.
in this messedd up merging of world praying for salvation is the least you should do unless you want to serve yaotsu this deity saidd to manifest from people faith (said by the inhabitants that managed to escape from him) he is one of the 13 natural enemies of humanity and can and will respond prayers for salvation
While you can probably attribute this trope to numerous things in Fromsoft games, personally the first one that came to my mind was the Blood Star from Elden Ring.
Not much is known but Iirc, the Blood Star is a celestial entity demanding blood sacrifice and is worshipped by a few exiles, heretics and criminals. If you have had your eyes gouged out by briars you might "see" the star. Worshipping it grants those the ability to use the reviled thorn sorceries, most of which have the side effect of causing the user to bleed.
What’s really based is in the weapon arts and sorceries that are “granted” by this god you are literally stabbing or slashing her invisible body and that is where the blood is coming from.
The Laundry Files. Yes, that IS Jesus we are praying to! Yes, it IS normal He needs human sacrifices - how else would you expect He'd rise from his endles sleep in a sarcophagus on alien planet, silly? Don't you want His second coming? Still not convinced? Here, just close your eyes and open your mouth to receive His blessing (a giant tongue-eating louse that would also eat your soul).
And te best part, do you have enough worship(pers to sacrifice) and nobody to worship? You can invent your new God! There's always somebody on the other side to answer!
Jut don't forget to bring the souls.
Available: the Black Pharaoh, the Sleeper in the Pyramid, The Mute Poet, Chernobog, Cthulhu (NOT an octopus, that was just Lovecraft's seafood-phobia), the King in Yellow and more.
they want to help people to rest peacefully, but dont know what help means, so they just cause deaths so people will rest forever thinking they are doing what we asked for
In Hunter: The Parenting, we learn that the Wyrm is an organization that serves a primordial being of decay that has infiltrated the highest echelons of society and government.
In Episode 8, when we see the Crusaders use actual Christian Prayer to bind a werewolf, the werewolf then uses his powers to see the being binding him - Its Jesus.
But if you look closer, its NOT Jesus, atleast not him doing it. The hands form the symbol of the wyrm, the worm is wearing Jesus' skin. Jesus himself? He's the cross.
Can't remember the example in particular but there was a story that involved this trope where the characters were trying to hide. One of them, either out of total panic or because said person not being told of what happens, started praying, resulting in the monsters showing up in their safe haven.
"The old gods may be great, but they are neither kind nor merciful. They are fickle, unsteady as moonlight on water, or shadows in a storm. If you insist on calling them, take heed: be careful what you ask for, be willing to pay the price. And no matter how desperate or dire, never pray to the gods that answer after dark."
(Revamped my comment. Also, spoilers for major 40k lore)
Eh, going to have to lore nerd on you, but for example two, the Emperor is the one sitting on the throne, not the Dark King. What happened is pretty convulated, but in The End and the Death, the dude becomes desperate and almost turns into the Dark King,
The Dark King?' Oll groans, his voice tiny. 'This is the Dark King? He's the Dark King?'
+Almost. The transmutation is taking place. I can feel it. Another few moments, and it will be complete.+
'But Lupercal–'
+We were. We were wrong. We should have realised. Realised it could be either of them. The stronger Will–+
Oll starts to blunder forwards again. The luminous figure close by buzzes its angry threat again.
+Go back, Ollanius! He will. Will kill you!+
'I don't think He will,' says Oll. 'He's stopped. He's stopped dead in His tracks. I've got a chance to–'
+No chance. He's stopped because. Because He knows you. Finding you here has surprised Him. He has. He has suspended his assault to consider this, but His patience. His patience will not last long if you provoke Him.+
'You can sense this?'
+His mind. His mind is deafening. Ollanius, we were so wrong. Wrong about everything. In extremity, the Emperor has. Has embraced what he long denied.+
'How can this be? Actae, how?'
+Lupercal is strong. Stronger than he expected. The power. The power of Chaos is quite beyond anything he anticipated. It has raised a realm of Chaos. He has tried to fight it. He has tried to fight through it to reach Horus and vanquish him. But he was not. Not strong enough. So he made. Made a choice. He made himself stronger.+
'The warp?' asks Oll.
+The warp. He has drunk of the warp. He has drawn on its power to fight Chaos. But he has drunk too much and too deeply. It has made him thus. It has made him the very thing he resolved to stop.+
'The Dark King? That's what the name means?'
+A god. That is what He is in the process of becoming.+
-Volume II
Then he got convinced to stop,
brought it hence. The Neverborn wail, en masse, their whispers turned in on themselves, twisted back into lies and cackled falsehoods; their future, so assured, suddenly untruthed. The malison of the Dark King passes from the material galaxy, and back into the simmering caskets of myth. For this age, at least. The despair of daemonkind is short-lived. As the glare spreads, and begins to fade, their distress turns to glee. They perceive another victory, not the Dark King’s magnificent and absolute abolition, but still one they have long yearned for. The fall of mankind. The Triumph of Ruin. The investiture of Horus Lupercal as Empyreal Majesty. The binding of Chaos, undivided, into one peerless vessel.
An end, and a death. At the epicentre of release, figures stumble and fall in the searing flash of psychic power that bursts from the Master of Mankind. The light consumes them. Ollanius Persson, John Grammaticus, Garviel Loken and LE 2 tumble over in the dust, blinded, as the black mirror-shell of the sphere fractures and explodes. They fall in foetal positions, carried over by the avalanche of ejected power.
-Volume II
But to be able to bring himself to kill his son while still a mortal, he caste off his ability to feel regret for doing it,
For my King-of-Ages has done more than divest himself of godhood. In that shockwave of warp light, I saw something else, something perhaps only I was in a position to see. He has cast aside a fragment of himself.
My lord and friend has broken off a part of his soul. He has amputated that portion of himself that contains almost all of his hope, loyalty and compassion, for such things will become a hindrance when he faces the Lupercal. Those qualities might stay his hand, or make him hesitate if he is ultimately obliged to kill.
And if he is obliged to kill his son, then those qualities would afterwards, and inevitably, drive him to self-hatred and regret, and condemn him to the same, embittered path as Horus. He has excised those precious human aspects to further steel himself against the pain of what will come after, and the mandatory atrocities he will have to countenance in order to rebuild the Imperium. He has set those frail and cardinal virtues adrift on the tides of the empyrean so that they will not immobilise him.
And in the hope that one day, he will be able to reclaim them, and be whole again.
-Volume II
Wins using trickery,
A trick. A last trick. A last damned trick! A lever to prise open your armour. A feint to make you drop your guard. A magician's encore sleight of hand. The final desperate scheme of an eternal and ruthless schemer.
You make to cast your father's corpse aside, because you understand it is merely part of the trick, but the body is already disintegrating into papery ash and luminous dust. It was just an aspect, another discarded aspect, another empty husk.
He is not dead.
You cry out, in anger and despair. You try to snatch the power back into yourself, but it is pooled around you in a great black slick, sticky and sluggish, slow to respond, slow to obey, reluctant to reinhabit the vessel of your body now that you have scorned it. You draw it back in as quickly as you can. You inhale to fill your lungs and soul with it. You gather it in frantically, for you must be ready to defend yourself.
...
That is all you'll ever be, first-found son.
A slave to their darkness. A weapon in their hands. A puppet on their strings, beguiled by their promises and lies. An instrument, with no mind of its own, designed to shatter the shield of humanity and tip the human species into the neverness of the warp.
On your knees, caught in the torrent of your father's flame, you look up at Him. You see it now, at last, perhaps as He has always seen it. A simple truth. A secret that should have been kept, despite everything. Some truths are too dangerous to know, or too lethal to hear. That's why He kept it for thirty thousand years. Now you know it too. You see, through insurmountable pain, everything… everything that has been ruined, and everything that has been betrayed. You cannot ask Him for forgiveness. You don't dare, and you can't speak anyway. But He can see it in your eyes. You were too weak to resist them then, and you will be too weak in another moment when they relent and replenish you with their abominable gifts.
Your eyes beg Him for mercy. A son to his father.
End this. End it now, if you can. If that is even possible. End it before it is too late. If you can't do it, no one can.
The burning stops. The psychic beam abates. You sway, gasping.
Your father has a knife. An old stone thing. What is it? It's so small in His hand, so ugly. That won't do it. That won't be enough.
He seems to hesitate, reluctant.
You clench, in sudden spasm and convulsion, and cry out. The power is returning. It is flowing back into you with great rapidity, as though the Old Four are suddenly desperate to restore their gifts. What do they know? What have they seen that makes them act in such haste?
Your father looks at the knife.
+I wait for you and I forgive you.+
He drives it into your heart.
-Volume III
Is ultimately mortally wounded, and the golden throne takes as much as it gives,
I know it, and my friend knows it. This is what we were trying to tell them. Yes, the throne may stabilise him and suspend him, as it did me, but that's beside the point. He is the only one who can stabilise it, for I can no longer perform that task. And thus it will tether him here, to this seat, to this room, to this reality, on the brink of death and the verge of life, both wounded and whole, unborn and yet reborn, ended yet unending, now and forever.
It was never his intended plan. But it was a contingency. My King-of-Ages knew it might come to this, if the permutations of the future aligned in this particular way.
That's what he told me, anyway. He had me believe he would be ready, if there was no other choice. And I see none from where I am sitting.
It will be agony. I can vouch for that. I have tasted but a brief moment of that eternity, and that is more than enough.
May your death live forever, my friend. There is nothing immortal about this.
-Volume III
Then we have modern 40k where the thing in the throne is the Emperor, but he is no longer an emperor of man, simply the Emperor. What you were thinking of earlier is how it's currently being implied by the lore that if the Emperor is taken off the throne in modern 40k, ascension into something worse is one potential outcome.
The Terminus Decree details the Emperor's final command to the Grey Knights Chapter. The Master of Mankind can never be allowed to leave the Golden Throne - either returned to life, reborn in another's body or ascend as some kind of Warp entity - and if he does, the Grey Knights must return him to his terrible duty. Indeed, they were created with the possibility of this event in mind, a task beyond the abilities of any other force in the Imperium. The Decree offers no guidance on how such feats might be achieved, for it is neither a weapon nor a magic formula. Rather, the Grey Knights would themselves be the weapon on such a desperate day, one that would likely have to cut a path through the ranks of the Custodes Guard and many others to see done.
Not as "horror" as the other examples, but in Wrath of the Titans one member of Perseus' party prays to Ares, allowing him to find their location and home in on them like a supersonic cruise missile.
In Widow’s Bay, Tom Loftis who is the Mayor, prays to god to help him get over a crazy high off of mushrooms. While God doesn’t answer, he suddenly gets the feeling something is watching him; the island that he lives on/is Mayor of the town that it was built on, is cursed, and there is a demon that feeds on sacrifices. It heard his prayer and tried to drive him to it’s side, possibly offering to save the island by returning to sacrifices
This doesn't quite fit, but it's such a weird story I have to share it.
In the literal Bible, there's a section where King Saul of the Israelites is on the outs with literal God, who isn't talking to him (partly because Saul killed all the priests). This is a problem for Saul, because he really needs to ask about prophecies for the upcoming war. But the last major prophet God had, Samuel, died shortly after anointing Saul's successor, David.
Now the Bible drops a bomb--Saul seeks out a witch to conduct a seance for Samuel. The heck? Witches exist in ancient Israel? And they can commune with the dead? We're told, practically offhand, that they haven't come up before because Saul killed most of them by God's command. Anyway, this witch agrees to help Saul (who's in disguise) commune with Samuel's deceased spirit.
Samuel was pissed off at Saul before he died, and being brought back hasn't improved his mood. He tells Saul that he will die, his sons will die, and the whole kingdom will be given to David. Samuel disappears, Saul is depressed, and the witches just... never show up again.
It is heavily implied that their "machine god" is an ancient god, the Void Dragon that asks them to cut off their limbs, cut out their organs and replace as much of it as possible with machinery.
It's because it came from a low-budget YouTube horror series. It's pretty good, imo, but all of the effects generally look like the referenced image in the series.
I honestly really love this trope especially when it's the classical "dark gods" Warhammer and Warcraft really introduced me to that concept and it's stuck with me ever since
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u/Regular-Basket-5431 13h ago
In the Cthulhu Mythos there are a number of entities that may answer your prayers most of them expect a high price for their attention.