On the subject of Religion and Garou

[AscentionTheMage]

Iylt seems to me that every Garou in the game worships either Gaia, the wyrm, or the weaver. Are there any Garou that just belives in a regular religion?

[CTPhipps]

Iylt seems to me that every Garou in the game worships either Gaia, the wyrm, or the weaver. Are there any Garou that just belives in a regular religion?

Honestly, no.

Or they would be Ronin.

Garou might equate Gaia and the religions of their mortal years like Buddha (Stargazers) or Christianity (Some Children of Gaia) or paganism (Get and Black Furies) but the Garou are in a unique position in the World of Darkness that they are fully capable of speaking with their gods as well as instinctively knowing their purpose in the universe.

They don't so much worship Gaia as know she exists and that she created them.

Changelings and Demons are similar in that they know their faiths are true.

[Heavy Arms]

There is a bit of discussion in some of the books over the years of (generally) Homid Garou that were raised in a non-Gaian religious setting and don't completely reject the faith of their upbringing upon joining the Garou Nation.

As noted, this generally involves some sort of syncretism, As long as they don't get preachy about it, or fail to adequately incorporate Gaia and Luna into their restructured belief system, it's generally tolerated (the Tribes have plenty of differences in how they view their religion as it is).

[No One of Consequence]

There is a bit of discussion in some of the books over the years of (generally) Homid Garou that were raised in a non-Gaian religious setting and don't completely reject the faith of their upbringing upon joining the Garou Nation.

Specifically, the Wise Guys camp of the Glass Walkers and the Order of Our Merciful Mother of the Black Furies skew Christian (specifically Catholic in the case of the former) in a syncretist mashup of it and the setting's objectively true Dark Animism.

Just personally, I have it be a long running thing of a sizable chunk of the Shadow Lords, especially the Spanish ones, believing that Grandfather Thunder is the true identity of the God of the Old Testament. And most of my homid shifters of the Middle East tend to have at least some degree of Sufi Islamic beliefs (at least the ones who aren't Jewish, Christian, etc.).

Most East Asian homid shifters probably don't see much conflict between their cosmology and that of Japanese Shinto, Korean Shindo/Muism, Mongolian Tengrism, and other similar belief systems.

[Lian]

Iylt seems to me that every Garou in the game worships either Gaia, the wyrm, or the weaver. Are there any Garou that just belives in a regular religion?

Yes.,, and no. There are those who who do see the gaian structure through other religious lenses I mean most notably there was a group of glasswalker mafiosa who syncretised Gaia with catholicism and even had gifts that worked off that logic. So while there is an objective truth of the spirit world, one's world views might effect how one sees that objective truth.

[heinrich]

For me, especially the Fianna come to mind, as I recall, there was some discussion in the 1st Tribebook on how they mix Christianity and the gaian faith.

[Nail Eater]

Iylt seems to me that every Garou in the game worships either Gaia, the wyrm, or the weaver. Are there any Garou that just belives in a regular religion?

For me (if any of my Garou was patient enough to sit in the church every sunday) it was always some kind of polytheism/other religions merger. I think that Gaia/Wyld/Weaver/etc. all have their places in the garou pantheon and that there's a place for Jehovah/Buddha/Allah or any other god (I believe that Gaia isn't jealous). In the official materials human religions were mentioned many times (Order of Our Merciful Mother as an Gaia/christianity combination or religious strife between Fianna in Ireland), some older human gods even ended as totems (like Jupiter in Fanum). On the other hand organized religion is a perfect tool to control the masses. In the early 90's in my hometown it was parson who elected the major (not literally of course, but he preached who should be elected naming the particular person). He has been seen at the city hall proceedings and could affect the results of the voting. So if a garou priest is charismatic enough he could lead his parishioners to attack on a hive/caern/Magadon factory. On the other hand I once run a story about a cub, who was raised by strict catholic parents and had a hard time accepting that major god is not the older guy with white robes and beard but a woman. Because of PCs and NPCs errors when they tried to educate him the caern was attacked by hunters (when he told his father about the sept so he gathered some of his buddies and tried to "instill some proper christian values to that f*&%@n bunch of pagan hippies"), then the Society of Leopold (he run to his priest after the death of his father) then ended as a BSD (Wyrm was the only one of major garou gods who he saw as a male, Gaia is a female, Wyld is too chaotic so the cub saw him as a deception, Weaver is too alien).

Of course there's still a human point of view which is also very important, especially if strenghtened by Pentex PR. Every Magadon/Endron/Tellus factory attacked by garou could be used. Imagine the news:

"Again pagan terrorist destroyed the Apophis pipeline, owned by Endron. The officials said that altough the damage are big, but there shouldn't be a problem cause Endron have enough fuel reserves to maintain the continous supply for their gas stations. No terrorist have been caught. Mr. Omar Al-Ahly, the witness said: "I was working in near the main valve when I heard a commotion. Then I've heard gunshots, but I don't know if it was our security or the terrorist who shot. Than I saw this big guy with machine gun and sucicide vest. He came out of nowhere. I drop to the floor and started prayng for my life. I knew that I don't have a chance. It was a miracle that none of the bullets he sprayed didn't hit me. I saw bodies, flames and oil everywhere. Then, when our security approached him, he screamed "For Gaia" and detonate the belt. Luckily by that time I was hidden under that big empty tank so none of the shrapnels hit me" Etc."

For many humans everyone who prays to Gaia will be a potential terrorist. To make matters worse some of the keywords like Gaia could end near the words bomb, explosives, device and nuclear in the inteligence databases.

[Erinys]

The Order of Our Merciful Mother gets a lot of crap from other Black Furies. Most Furies have a very negative opinion of Christianity, and I think it's very likely that most Garou do. Werewolves aren't exactly tolerant people, and religious extremism among humans is even worse and more widespread in the WoD than in the real world. So I think that a lot of Garou would try to educate and "correct" any cubs who hold on to a syncretic version of any human monotheistic religion.

Ironically, the Bastet (or at least, a lot of them; its unspecified how many) have no trouble with the Supreme Being in Hinduism and the African traditional religions. Unlike Garou, they see Gaia as being only the Earth Mother, a creation of the Triat, and separate from the Supreme Creator. Instead, they believe Ahu created the Trait. But like Brahma and many traditional African versions of the Supreme Creator, Ahu is very hands-off. The idea of Ahu bypassing Gaia and incarnating personally as a monotheistic male human, probably strikes them as pretty odd, at best. (And some of them might say humans don't deserve such Divine attention, given the way they had behaved and continue to behave!)