The Matoran Pantheon

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Somebody else did a post about matoran religion, so I decided to expand on it. Things with an * are servants of the above god without an *.

The Matoran Pantheon

The Three Great Gods, Ekimu, Makuta, and Mata Nui(names in progress).

These gods have created the world and each represent one of the three virtues.

Ekimu, God of Unity and Kindness. Matoran worship him in hope of peace, good moral fiber, and to help improve themselves.

  • Artakha, God of Heaven as well as actual heaven

Makuta, God of Duty and Justice. Matoran do not really worship Makuta except shopkeepers and bosses who want hard workers. He is said to incur harsh retribution on those who do not perform their jobs. Shopkeepers and managers often keep idols of Makuta in their places of work to make sure nobody steals from them or fails to do their job. He is also the patron god of judges and their are often stone statues of him in front of courts. He is also said to reward those who do their jobs with splendor if he is prayed to. His likeness is often used by shopkeepers to get them to work harder by promising that ā€œMakuta will reward you for your hard workā€. Makuta is also said to give advice to Artakha on who he should let in.

  • Karzahni, God of Hell as well as actual hell. Karzahni is the patron god of the dead. He guides them to his realm and makes sure they rest well. Most Matoran will go to Karzahni if they havenā€™t worked hard enough.

Mata Nui, God of Destiny and Prophecy. Matoran worship Mata Nui in hope of good fortune. It is the patron god of fortune tellers and prophets, they often have statues of it. Mata Nui is said to be a massive stone that protrudes from the top of the highest mountain on Okoto. It is said that this stone has the destinies of every single being written somewhere on it. Many attempt to make journeys to the top of this mountain but never make it.

  • The Mythical Toa

The Elemental Gods, Personifications of different elements and landscapes in Okoto.

Ikir, the fire spirit. Said to be a great phoenix, Ikir resides in the sky with his helper Solis Magna during the day and goes down to the Volcanoes with his helper Mangaia during the night.

  • Mangaia, the volcano spirit
  • Solis Magna, the sun spirit

Terak, the spirit of the earth. Terak is a massive wise creature said to guard the gates of Karzahni deep beneath the earth. He also grants gifts of gems and rubies to those fortunate enough to meet him by digging far enough. He is the patron of miners.

  • Ketar, the sand spirit. He is said to reside in the massive sand storm in Po-Wahi and supposedly invented the sport of Kolhii. Legend has it that Ketar and Terak played a massive game of Kolhii over who should be the ruler of Po-Wahi. Ketar won. He is also said to grant good fortune to desert goers. He is the patron of desert travellers and Kolhii.
  • Bota Magna, the plant spirit.

Melum, spirit of the cold. Melum is the great god of winter and cold who guards the giant stone that is Mata Nui atop Mount Ihu. From there he blows massive gusts of snowflakes and chilling wind. His helpers Uxar and Niila fly all around the island of Okoto to bring wind and storms to the regions.

  • Uxar, spirit of the winds
  • Niila, spirit of the storm(lightning)

Akida, spirit of water. She is the kind but quiet spirit of the water which guards Okoto from offshore invaders and washes treasures onto the beaches. Her helper, Aqua Magna, gives safe passage to fishers and traders. Umarak is the messenger between the gods and goes through the swamps to send powerful swamp gas(a natural occurance) to tell the gods what Akida has seen out in the waves. As such, many matoran Sibils have taken up the job of reading the swamp gas to prophecize different happenings on Okoto.

  • Aqua Magna, the spirit of the sea
  • Umarak, Spirit of the swamps

Egil and Tanil, light and shadow. Two brothers who fight among the skies, causing the shifts of night and day as well as cause auroras in the Okotoan sky from their battles. Kept in check by the great gods.

Thatā€™s all I have so far.

Also:

Throughout the island of Okoto, there are various religious organizations devoted to the many gods and spirits of Okoto.

The Crafters of Artakha: The crafters of Artakha are a group of skilled craftsmen from all over the island to believe the path to the land in the skies, Artakha, is through crafting great works. They are known for their mask creations as well as many others. They worship a number of gods, mainly Artakha, Ekimu, and sometimes Makuta. They have stopped worshiping Makuta for the most part due to the bad image the brotherhood gives him.

The Brotherhood of Makuta: The Brotherhood of Makuta is an extremist militant cult devoted to Makuta. They believe that he created the rahi as the intended inhabitants of Okoto and that they are better than matoran themselves. As a result, many of them have performed experiments on themselves to fuse with rahi, becoming known as Rahkshi. They have also summoned various evil spirits from the realm of Karzahni(the kraata powers) and used them to become Rahkshi as well. They eventually plan on releasing the Bohrok, a race of condemned matoran that live in Karzahni, upon the world so that they can cleanse the island of matoran so the rahi and rahkshi can live in peace. Due to their spread of fear, they have caused many other religious organizations to revile Makuta so as not to be associated with the brotherhood.

The Kohlii League: Who would have thought Kohlii would be a religious organization? Well guess what, it is. Ketar, the patron god of Kohlii and spirit of stone is worshiped by Kohlii players in hope of doing better. Idols of him are made at Kohlii stadiums and ritual feasts are done before Kohlii matches in order to thank Ketar. If these feasts are not done, it is said to incur the wrath of Ketar.

The Sibils of Umarak: Umarak, the swamp spirit, is said to be a messenger between Akida and the mainland gods of Okoto. He is said to bring messages through swamp gas, a highly toxic and volatile natural occurrence that causes hallucinations and plays with light. The sibils of Umarak are a group of (extremely) eccentric matoran(primarily Onu-Matoran) that breathe in the swamp gas in an attempt to read the messages and learn about the future of Okoto. This causes them to speak gibberish and run around in circles. These frantic movements are translated by other matoran who contrive from them the future of Okoto. The predictions are either spot on or completely off. Very desperate matoran come to the sibils but barely anybody else does. In a recent prophecy, a matoran contrived that the island of Okoto would be cleansed by Bohrok, ā– ā– ā– ā– ā– ā–  matoran from Karzahni, and anyone who helped would be rewarded. As such they have begun to work with the Brotherhood of Makuta in unleashing the Bohrok. Because of this, Umarakā€™s already foul name(heā€™s the spirit of ogre infested disease holes/swamps) has become even more foul.

Toaism: Toaism is the dedication, study, and worship of one of the mythical Toa in clandestine monasteries across Okoto.

The Book of Virtues: The Book of Virtues is a staple to most religious groups and isnā€™t actually a book most of the time. It is usually told orally by a Turaga scholar. It has three books within it. The books arenā€™t really in chronological order and are really just the compiling of several different religious texts.

The Book of Unity: The Book of Unity describes the creation of the world and mainly details the life of Ekimu, Harambe of Kindness and Unity. It also talks in detail of the land of Artakha.

The Book of Duty: The Book of Duty lays down many laws on how matoran should work and treat each other. It talks of the land of Karzahni where bad matoran are sent and how the matoran become Bohrok, beings designed to cleanse the island of Okoto the moment it was deemed un-pure. That particular section is where most of the stuff the Brotherhood uses comes from. It also talks about Makuta, Harambe of Duty and Justice.

The Book of Destiny: The Book of Destiny details the history of the matoran and various predictions that will happen in the night sky. It also talks of Mata Nui, Harambe of Destiny and Prophecy.

Auxiliary Books:

The Book of Elements: A compiling of the different stories about the different elemental gods.

The Book of Toa: The same thing but with Toa. Each Toa gets his/her own chapter. Toa are said to be mythical warriors who climbed Okotoā€™s highest mountain and were deemed worthy by Mata Nui to protect Okoto. There are thousands of different Toa worshiped by different Toaist Monasteries.

EDIT: Added backstories to the elemental gods

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Itā€™s an interesting idea, and I think it could work pretty well.

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While Iā€™m not sure exactly what canocity this would fit into. Itā€™s pretty interesting stuff so far.

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I have a few issues with this:

First, I feel an established ā€œpantheonā€ goes against the established tribal aesthetic. Most tribal societies donā€™t so much have gods as they believe in animal or elemental spirits that exist in the world. Your take on the Okotian creatures arenā€™t far off, although I donā€™t agree with putting some of them beneith others.

Secondly, in most tribal more, the above mentioned spirits are largely ambivalent toward the people of the tribe. It is usually necessary to entreat the spirits to your aid or just try and stay out of their way so you donā€™t want to anger them.

Finally, this:

This makes no sense. Makutaā€™s character shows that he holds duty having little to no value, and the description of the the virtue that you have given in an attempt to justify it distorts the virtue against what it stands for. To illustrate what I mean, think about Jaller in G1, his entire life was based around duty. In the world you have described, he would either be a devout follower of Makuta, or a coward who feared Makuta to the point where his job as his life, neither of which make any sense.

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You forgot the one true god himself.

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I knew either him or Solek would pop up eventually.

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Eh Iā€™m not too high on including G2 elements in G1.

If itā€™s G3 then maybe, but probably not.

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Thatā€™sā€¦not really true. Most religions create stories around the deities that they worship, and those are standardized into what you would call a pantheon. The Maori, which inspired the Bionicle mythology, have a pantheon and family tree.

You could make a great argument that Makuta values duty above all, and it is what this duty specifically is that comes into doubt. He was created with the duty to inhabit a giant robot, and he made that happen, even when his creators didnā€™t give him the means to.

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looks up official definition of pantheon

Ok, so I was thinking of the word pantheon in a much narrower sense that it is actually defined, however, allow me to redefine my point with better terminology.

I was mainly basing my post off of Native American tribbal more as that is what I am familiar with, that being said, after looking into the Maori pantheon you so kindly linked, my point still stands. That point being (what I meant to convey in my original post) was that tribal deities are largely nature based, in Native American culture they are representative of animals and elements, in the case of the Maori it seems to be more broad such as earthquakes and volcanos or weather and storms, but they are still undoubtedly nature based. What they definitely arenā€™t are conceptually based (with the exception of death because pretty much every pantheon has a God of death) they donā€™t have gods for virtues, things like Unity, Duty, and Destiny. Those deities are more often found in Greek/Roman mythologies with a few cropping up in Norse and Egyptian as well, but they are generally not found in tribal mythos.

He was created with the duty to populate the GSR with Rahi, that was the duty given him by the Great Brings, he foresook that duty in favor of conquest. You could argue that he saw it as his duty to conquer the matoran universe, but a much better argument could be made for him believing it was his destiny.

I just wanted to reiterate this, I feel it gets the point across rather well.

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But this is not G1. This is a totally different story created for G3, where, if we so desired, a pantheon would work, and Makuta could be the god of Duty.

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Duty is defined as a moral obligation, in what way does doing your job to avoid punishment qualify as a ā€œmoral obligation.ā€

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Well, in their pitch, Makuta has a ā€˜Dutyā€™ to cleanse the island of Mata Nui, which works with the idea.

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Thatā€™s exactly what I was going to reply to both of those.

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And where does this moral obligation come from? And if it truly is his devine duty to cleanse the island, does that not make the Toa evil for going against the natural order? And in what way does Makuta having a duty to cleanse the island justify him being the ā€œGod of Duty?ā€ And once again, how does the above described relationship between Makuta and the matoran represent the virtue of duty?

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Makuta has a duty to the rahi he created and believes that the matoran inhibit the rahi, which they actually do. The matoran use up too many resources that would be usually necessary for the rahi to survive by clearing forests, hunting rahi, domesticating and sometimes abusing rahi, etc.

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Thank you, Squidzo.

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Thatā€™s a great argument for him being the God of Rahi, not of Duty. Every deity has a duty to whatever they represent, but there is nothing here that shows Makuta actually being representative of the virtue of Duty.

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In effect, Rahi are the epitomes of duty; they are made for a specific purpose, and they fill it out to the letter. It is their Duty. It wouldnā€™t be a stretch to say the Matoran would draw from the Rahi and don Makuta with the banner of Duty because of them.

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That could make sense, especially from a tribal standpoint, what doesnā€™t make sense is the fear and punishment described above. If youā€™re arguing for both than we still have a problem, if youā€™re proposing this instead of that, than it actually makes some sort of sense.

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Thank you!