Last updated 22/3/2023
Deities
My clan has three primary deities whose true names I still haven't found. I refer to them as the Matriarch, the Patriarch, and the Crooked Horn.
The Matriarch's primary domain is consumption. She takes life and she gives life. The Patriarch's primary domain is growth. He encourages life to live. The Crooked Horn's primary domain is everything that doesn't go to plan. It shakes up our lives.
The Matriarch and the Patriarch are dependant on each other's existence. They're like two strings entertwined, forming one strand of DNA - if you remove one, the whole thing unravels. They are simultaneous yet distinct. His seeds fall to the ground, her waters nourish it, he makes it take root, she feeds it. Though she will devour many of his sprouts, some will persist and grow by his hand, as she digests the many and returns them to the soil to once more feed him.
The Matriarch's attributes, symbols, and offerings are: fire, blood, flesh, teeth, horns, milk, water, caves, burrows, holes, manure, food preparation, and the sun. She is everything that devours and gets devoured. The following images capture the Matriarch:
The Matriarch has a minor aspect I call Lake Mother, whose domains are birth, bodies of water, and food sources (particularly fish). The following images capture Lake Mother:
The Patriarch's attributes, symbols, and offerings are: fruits, seeds, eggs, spores, sperm, fungi, decay, roots, saplings, shoots, molts/exuviae, flowers, colonies, and the moon. He is everything that grows and proliferates. The following images capture the Patriarch:
The Patriarch has a minor aspect I call Moon Father, whose domains are teachers, guides, and lights in the dark. The following images capture Moon Father:
The Crooked Horn's attributes, symbols, and offerings are: injuries, congenital defects, mutations, lightning strikes, dust, mess, broken things, forest fires, eclipses, ruins, unlucky events, and happy accidents. The following images capture the Crooked Horn:
Death
Gnolls believe that everyone has two deaths: The death of the body and the death of the spirit. When the body dies, all of it is eaten by the clan, including bones, fur, and claws. Only the head is left uneaten - instead, the head is mummified and carefully wrapped in cloth. It is then cared for and protected by the deceased's nearest bonded person (be that a mate, child, friend, guardian, or any other type of bond) until the second death occurs. The death of the spirit happens when no one alive remembers what the deceased was like - when no one is able to contact their spirit/have a conversation with their remains anymore. At this point, the head is burned until only ashes remain, and the ashes are eaten by the clan.
Gnolls do not believe in an afterlife or reincarnation. Once a person has died twice, they're gone forever - they will never live again and they can never be contacted again. Gnolls also do not believe in souls, the same way humans tend to do. All gnolls have a life force or essence, but it is not a strictly individual essence. That is, your essence is not inherently your essence - it is simply 'yours' to use while you are alive. The deceased's remains, and thus their essence, is consumed by the clan at the end of the funeral, and it can then strengthen the living and give life to new gnolls. I think Avatar (2009) put it best: "All energy is only borrowed, and one day you have to give it back."
And this is not just true of gnolls. Everything has an essence, sentient and non-sentient, living or dead. An essence can be transferred through consumption - every time you eat something, its essence is transferred to you. Some of it is expelled again, through the body's natural functions (and the expelled essence can then be fed to the land, which itself is alive, burned, or consumed again - gnolls are unfortunately no strangers to coprophagia), but a bit of it remains with you until you, yourself, are finally eaten.
The land has an essence of its own.
Devourment is central to the gnollish worldview. Or language has specific words for 'things that devour' and 'things that are devoured'. Not predator or prey, because the prey also devours, and the predator is devoured in its final days, but words to describe a specific instance of eating/being eaten. All gnollish beliefs harken back to this central idea.