#i wish i had a better tag for my growing collection of vaguely anthro bug idea posts

[flame-shadow]

What sorts of religions/beliefs/deities do you think bugs might have if they had minds more like ours?

I think transformation/transfiguration and death/rebirth would be significant for many cultures, especially ones that include species with complete metamorphosis.

Gods of regeneration. Gods of fertility. Gods of protection. Gods of family.

Spirits that can be called upon to assist in mating rituals or for luck on hunts. Spirits which haunt the giants that killed them. Spirits that whisper ethereal warnings with the faintest of pheromones.

A deity for centipedes that is of infinite length with legs more numerous than the stars or grains of sand. With its length and legs, it curls around and holds the world, keeping it close like a mother with her eggs.

A moth deity with as many wings as there are species and morphs. All are represented that they might find comfort.

A mantis deity whose camouflage and speed are such that no images dare be made of it. Wherever one thinks it is, there it might very well already be.

The firefly deity is a protector of knowledge with a focus in language. Its symbol is commonly associated with libraries.

A collection of sibling spiders who act as muses for creatives and artists of all types. Whether a single thread or an entire web, nothing is made in isolation; all is connected, and that is to be celebrated.

I imagine there would be many different interpretations of death and the afterlife too. Cockroaches never truly die - some are blessed to join their ancestors at the Great Feast while others are cursed to wander eternally the Scorched Plain. Webspinners have specific funerary rituals that must be followed, or a loved one's spirit might slip through the wrappings and be lost. Ants are reincarnated into a rival colony. Termites' souls seep into their surroundings, ideally to strengthen the home they worked on and to protect their colony further.

Perhaps there are curses too. You are marked if you survived a stare-down with a predator; surely, it knows you now and will hunt you later. Or you commit an atrocity and now carry the scent of death with you, no matter how many times you bathe or groom. May your antennae be forever fouled if you lead your sisters astray. May you lose a leg for every day you withhold a vital truth. May your spiracles feel clogged like those whom you climbed over to save yourself when they were not yet lost themselves.

Fun stuff to think about. Feel free to add on if you'd like!