The Chaos gods were formed from and are empowered/fed by emotions AND ideas/beliefs: A survey of the lore

TLDR: A survey of tonnes of quotes to showcase that the lore has often stated that the Chaos gods are composed of and empowered by both emotions and thoughts/beliefs, but that the nature of such thoughts and beliefs may be more subconscious rather than the result of conscious, rational thinking.

I thought it would be useful to survey some lore about how the Chaos gods formed and are empowered, to showcase that this involved thoughts, not just emotions. This should hopefully be interesting, but also useful, as there is a lot of widespread misunderstanding about the metaphysics of how this works.

Many believe that the Chaos gods are manifestations of fundamental forces of nature/reality, basically cosmic laws or principles. And this idea does have a basis in the lore, as we will see. Yet the Chaos gods are explicitly explained to have formed from, and grow in power due to, psychic energies produced by mortal beings with a Warp presence. And this is by far the most common explanation, and has been true from the very early lore. That doesn’t rule out the former still being true though, even if the latter explains their creation and growth, due to the infinite and atemporal nature of the Warp. and because metaphor, symbolism and concepts have power within the Warp and can “shape” it.

Many others believe that the Chaos gods “feed” and grow solely from belief. But that isn’t the case. They do get empowered by having believers, but it is mainly because those believers behave in ways which produce the relevant psychic energies, seek to spread the conditions which feed their god, and work to breakdown the veil between the Warp and reality and thus let them intrude upon realspace.

Others claim that the Chaos gods are made from and empowered purely by emotions. But that isn’t actually quite correct either: the lore has frequently stated that the Chaos gods are fed by emotions as well as a range of other inter-related terms: beliefs, thoughts, feelings, intellectual activity, nightmares/dreams.

Yet, this is where things get interesting, as how those terms are being conceptualized and applied isn’t necessarily clear cut. These “thoughts” and “beliefs” are perhaps not on the level of rational thought, but more on the level of the subconscious – those the conscious and the subconscious are nevertheless linked, anyway. But we will return to that point at the end.

So, in this post let’s look over the lore, then in a follow up I will finish with some final thoughts from one of the original architects of how the Warp and Chaos were conceptualized, Rick Priestley to aid some discussion of the concepts at play.

As you will see, sometimes solely emotions are mentioned in these quotes. But many times, over the whole life of 40k, beliefs and thoughts, nightmares and dreams, and similar terms, are mentioned too. Sometimes the very same sources switch between each framing of the issue, in different passages.

I will also chart relevant passages from not just 40k, but Fantasy and AoS as well, given the gods are ultimately the same in each setting, even if they might be perceived by and can interact with each reality a bit differently. The way they are formed and empowered is pretty consistent across the settings, though.

The key parts are in bold.

Let’s start from the very beginning, where lore behind the Warp and Chaos was first developed for both 40k and Fantasy, in the Realm of Chaos books:

The warp Powers drink the emotions and thoughts of Mankind, growing bloated with power in the process. Over the millennia each has fed on an aspect of Man: its rage, lust, corruption, and inconstancy. As they have absorbed this power the Chaos Powers have gained human aspects: Khorne has become a being of bloody rage; Slaanesh has grown to be the Lord of Pleasure; foul Nurgle welcomes all that is decay; and Tzeentch revels in change and metamorphosis. Corrupted and moulded by the thoughts and feelings of reality, the warp Powers nurture more hatred or depravity in the hearts of Mankind. And so a circle is established - Man's follies feed the warp Powers, and the Powers encourage Man to further follies.

Realm of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness (1988), p. 213.

This passage, meanwhile, perhaps suggests that the Chaos gods take some of the “thoughts” and “purposes” of which they are composed, and bind them together to form daemons:

Daemons are beings of a completely different order to their masters, and are the most numerous creatures in the warp. A Daemon is ‘born’ when a Chaos Power gives up a little of its accumulated power to create a separate being. This power binds a collection of senses, thoughts and purposes together, giving a personality and consciousness that moves within the warp.

Realm of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness (1988), p. 213.

Next, an interesting internal, unpublished document by Rick Priestley, which provides a very interesting conceptualization of souls and the Warp, which I covered in more detail here: https://madministratum.blogspot.com/2026/08/souls-dont-enter-warp-after-death-they.html

The Drifting Soul

Other souls once deprived of their anchoring body remain substantial although still without consciousness. They retain an essence of the most deeply held emotions or thoughts that characterized them in life. Upon death the soul drifts freely until it meets and coalesces with other similarly inclined souls. Thus by an accumulation of drifting souls, greater wholes are created: coalescences of energy held together by common emotions and belief. In this way the emotions and beliefs of men affect Chaos itself. These accumulations of energy gain personality and individual character as they gain strength, eventually becoming fully aware entities. Such are the Powers of Chaos. The Star Child is a Power that has yet to be born, having not yet achieved full consciousness.

Priestley, ‘CHAOS: Guide to the fictional background of Chaos in GW games’ (1989), p. 1.

These ideas were then reflected in the second Realm of Chaos book. It is useful to note that the lore has perhaps changed in an important aspect over time, though, as it seems that mortal beings can empower the Chaos gods continually while alive due to their emotions, thoughts and actions, rather than upon death (though this perhaps deserves its own future analysis). The term “shadow-selves” also largely fell out of usage, though the concept did appear in later lore, so keep an eye out for it!

The Realm of Chaos is like an endless sea, and like a sea it is neither empty nor still. It is populated by the shadow-selves of both the living and the dead for the death of the material body does not destroy the shadow-self. Severed from its psychic link to the material body, the shadow-self drifts in the Realm of Chaos. As it does so, some of its energies are dispersed into the general flow, but the strongest and most distinctive mental traits remain. The countless shadow-selves of the dead flow together because they are mutually attracted by their common traits. Thus the shadow-selves of deceased warriors retain their most warlike traits, and flow together into a huge co-joined entity. This movement causes eddies and tides within the warp, and leads to the creations of vortices or whirlpools formed almost entirely of common traits. In the Realm of Chaos these whirlpools are called the Chaos Powers.

…

The four Great Powers of Chaos represent the four largest and most powerful of these many co-joined entities. They are so large that they have achieved a coherent consciousness and will, a mind formed from the collective emotions and beliefs of the countless myriads of shadow-selves that comprise it.

Realm of Chaos: The Lost and the Damned (1990), p. 7.

And:

Each of these whirlpools of energy represents а particular aspect of humanity or of those other sentient races whose thoughts and feelings have contributed towards them. Thus the largest or most extensive are those associated with the most common or deep rooted emotions and beliefs. These are the four great Chaos Powers as we understand them: Nurgle, Tzeentch, Slaanesh and Khome.

…

Nascent powers may also create daemons. These daemons are given birth during moments of relative coherence, or sometimes as an off-shoot of the dreaming mind of the unborn power. The daemons have energy only whilst their power is coherent or active, although they are not destroyed as their master slumbers, rather they become inactive until he wakes once more. Such daemons may interrupt in the lives of mortals just as other daemons do, furthering the interests of their patron and promoting the very traits, emotions, and beliefs that feed him.

Realm of Chaos: The Lost and the Damned (1990), p. 86.

And:

The warp is an alternate universe composed entirely of psychic energy generated by the thoughts, emotions and intellectual activity of living beings. To a degree it is also generated by the life-force of even the simplest of living creatures, such as plants and small animals. The warp is the spiritual reflection of the life of the entire universe, and for this reason it is sometimes called the Sea of Souls. The warp, the Sea of Souls, and the Realm of Chaos are one and the same thing. This alternate reality is also known by many other names in countless cosmologies.

Originally the warp was filled with the natural psychic forces of animals and plants, so that its energies flowed harmoniously and fluidly, creating a unifying force that moved psychically through all living creatures. When the first intelligent races developed, their individual and extremely potent minds filled the warp with new and very powerful energies.

However, while the natural energy of the warp was harmonious, the souls of men were often troubled, obsessive, guilt ridden, or otherwise imperfect. These negative energies congregated together in the warp, drawn to each other by mutual attraction, until they formed troublesome spots of disharmony, rather like a canker on a living tree or a tumour in an animal. These disharmonious forces eventually became the Chaos Powers, psychic entities created from the fears, repressions and inadequacies of humans and other intelligent species.

Realm of Chaos: The Lost and the Damned (1990), p. 174.

And:

As human numbers increased and human civilisation grew away from its natural roots the particular warp energies created by humans began to dominate the warp. Where the energies of nature were harmonious and benign, those of man were often disharmonious and dangerous. Power, ambition, greed, lust and a thousand other human feelings took root in the warp and began tо grow. As the thoughts and emotions of men became stronger, the natural rhythms of the warp were disrupted and became less accessible to the shamans. Inevitably, the process of civilisation severed mankind's links with the natural forces of the warp, and created new ones based upon his own character. In time these disharmonious forces were to grow into the Chaos Powers.

Realm of Chaos: The Lost and the Damned (1990), pp. 174-75.

And:

The Eldar were already an ancient race when the Emperor was born. Just as the thoughts and emotions of humans tainted the energies their lives generate in the warp, so the character of the Elda created its own unique disharmonies.

Realm of Chaos: The Lost and the Damned (1990), p. 176.

We will now jump across lore from 40k and Fantasy/AoS to take us up to the present, to trace the continuity of the idea emotions and beliefs/thoughts empower the Chaos gods. I won’t linger much on each passage, but rather put the relevant parts in bold.

The Old Ones travelled by means of inter- dimensional gateway spanning the vast distances between stars in a matter of moments. On the other side of their gateways was another world, an unimaginably vast alternate realm that connected all points in the material It was and still is a world purely of psychic energy, generated by the emotions and thoughts of the creatures of the real universe. This parallel dimension is not an empty void but is inhabited by entities of cosmic power. These are the Daemons and gods of Chaos, and they would prove to be the undoing of the Old Ones.

Realm of Chaos (1997), p. 8.

And:

The nature of Chaos is neither good nor evil, it simply mirrors the survivalist emotions of the intelligent beings in the real universe. Thus, the predatory entities of Chaos, be they gods or Daemons, exist because living things generate these emotions. So when the human mind turns to petty and evil thoughts the powers of the Chaos gods grow and coalesce into hideous forms shaped by human lust, greed, anger and fear.

Realm of Chaos (1997), p. 9.

We also have this, though presented from an in-universe perspective:

North from the borders of Kislev, past the rugged Troll Country, lies the hellish Realm of Chaos where the daemons roam, servants of Entropy and the Long Night. These creatures consist of thoughts alone, and these thoughts are terrible.

Warhammer Fantasy Core Rulebook 6th ed. (2000), p. 126.

And another in-universe perspective, from an Empire scholar who had visions of the 40k galaxy (more on this here: https://madministratum.blogspot.com/2025/06/liber-chaotica-and-its-links-between.html):

As has been suggested time and again throughout this discourse, the great powers of Chaos (being Khorne, Tzeentch, Nurgle and Slaanesh) are Aethyric projections of certain thoughts. To be more precise, they are the personified manifestations of common beliefs and emotions associated with particular states of mind and dictated by the vagaries of life in general.

…

Many of the heretic scholars that I have studied insist that only the most deeply rooted and profound ideas and emotional states survive this fragmentation and dissipation, and those that remain are not a true reflection of the personality that they originally came from. This might help explain why the great gods and daemons that plague our world seem to be ones of such acute emotions or concepts as love and hate, anger and ecstasy or justice and vengeance (to name but a few), because only powerful notions and feelings such as these retain any coherence within the Aethyr. The Aethyric entities that are formed from memories and experiences of such persistent though mundane activities such as housework or farming tend to be very minor spirits in our folklore — creatures that barely have the power and sentience to do more than ensure a good fire in a hearth, or help with the curdling of milk.

Yet regardless of a Chaos entity’s size, each and every one of them is created by the same process of coalescence. A workable (though naturally limited) analogy for this process would be to describe it as the formation and maintenance within the Aethyr of whirlpools of related emotion and thought. Each of these “whirlpools” represents a particular aspect of those mortal races whose thoughts and feelings have contributed towards them. The largest and most extensive of these whirlpools are those associated with those concepts and emotions that have the greatest effect on, and are found most commonly within, intelligent mortals. Yet even so, there are undoubtedly smaller whirlpools within the Aethyr, lesser vortices that spin around the fringes of the greater powers, growing, converging, dividing and eternally moving like the waters of a deep and turbulent river.

Liber Chaotica: Complete Edition (2006), pp. 366-339.

And:

When the gate collapsed, the world was immersed in magical energy and Chaos was born. As the skies burned and the earth quaked, all the primal fears and dreams of the Warhammer races came to the fore, and dark gods were born in the magical conflagration. Given life by the emotions of mortals, the Chaos gods became aware of the realm of Elves, Men and Dwarfs and they came to covet it.

Warhammer Fantasy Core Rulebook 7th ed. (2006), p. 126.

And:

Daemons are beings of pure psychic energy, warped embodiments of emotion given ghastly purpose. They are every mortal nightmare given terrible form, a tide of destruction that has shattered civilisations and annihilated proud armies beyond counting.

Daemons of Chaos Army Book 7th ed. (2008), p. 5.

And:

The Chaos Gods and their dominions are one; both are formed of the same Warp energy. As a Chaos God gathers energy it expands, its corresponding influence on the Warp around it broadens and its territory in the Realm of Chaos grows. No two visions of these realms are ever the same, but all are founded upon the same basic themes and feelings. As extensions of the gods, the appearances of these domains are formed upon the same emotions that created their masters

Codex: Chaos Daemons 4th ed. (2008), p. 6.

And:

A Daemon is 'born' when a Chaos God gives up a little of its power to create a separate being. This power binds a collection of senses, thoughts and purposes together, giving a personality and consciousness that moves within the Warp.

…

As with the Chaos Gods and their realms, these forms come to reflect the emotions a Daemon is based upon and have been shaped by centuries of feeding on belief.

Codex: Chaos Daemons 4th ed. (2008), pp. 6-7.

And:

To understand these dangers it is necessary to realise two important facts about the nature of the Warp. Firstly, Warp space is composed entirely of emotion and psychic energy.

Warhammer 40k Core Rulebook 5th ed. (2008), p. 104.

And:

The warp is a realm of swirling emotions, of thought made manifest, and of the purest chaos. Deep in the darkest corners of the immaterium, vast, unknowable intelligences move like sharks beneath the surface of the ocean. They speak to mankind, offering power at a price.

Black Crusade Core Rulebook (2011), p. 8.

And:

Every Chaos power embodies the hopes, fears and other strong emotions generated by mortal beings.

Black Crusade Core Rulebook (2011), p. 12.

And:

These monstrous gods reside in an ever-changing realm of pure Warp energy, where time, distance, and scale have no meaning. It is a place where the whims of gods along with the dreams and nightmares of mortals run together and bring form to the formless.

Black Crusade: Tome of Excess (2013), p. 6.

And:

In the Warp, similar thoughts and emotions gather together like rivulets of water running down a cliff face. They form streams and eddies of anguish and desire, pools of hatred and torrents of pride. Since the dawn of time, these tides and waves have flowed unceasingly through the mirror-realm of the Warp, and such is their power that they formed creatures made of the very stuff of unreality.

Eventually, these instinctual, formless beings gained a rudimentary consciousness. The Chaos Gods were born - vast psychic presences made of the fantasies and horrors of mortals. These are the Ruinous Powers, and each is a reflection of the mortal passions that formed them.

…

As the races of the galaxy prospered and grew, so too did their hopes and dreams, their rage and wars, their love and hatred. This burgeoning flood of raw emotion fed the Chaos Gods and nurtured their power. Eventually, the gods reached back, into and through the dreams of mortals, eternally working to influence the physical realm and its myriad races.

…

Through the dreams and nightmares of mortals, the changing tides of the Warp are moulded into a fantastical landscape and populated with legendary beings.

…

The Chaos Gods and their dominions are one, for both are formed of the same Warp energy. As a Chaos God gathers energy, it expands in power, its corresponding influence upon the Warp around it broadens and its territory in the Realm of Chaos grows. No two visions of these realms are ever the same, but all are founded upon the same fundamental themes and feelings. As extensions of the gods, the appearances of their domains are formed upon the same emotions that created their masters:

Codex: Chaos Daemons 6th ed. (2013), p. 6.

And:

The Realm of Chaos is made of thoughts and dreams and reacts to the conflicts and emotions of those who pass through it.

Black Crusade: Tome of Decay (2014), p. 10.

And:

The warp, or the immaterium, is an abstraction made manifest by the roiling emotions of mortals. Unbound by the laws of time and space, it is a random, unstructured panorama of pure energy and unfocused consciousness, eternally shifting though endless in its potential. It is a place where ancient beings of boundless power and cruelty hold domain, and wage a constant war over the raw stuff of creation that birthed them. In this unknowable realm, titanic hosts clash, locked together in a conflict that is as old as the universe and can never be won. It is Chaos in its truest sense, unfettered by the limits of physics and undirected by intelligent purpose.

Codex: Chaos Daemons 8th ed. (2018), p. 6.

And:

The Immaterium. The Sea of Souls. The Empyrean. The Realm of Chaos. All these names and more describe a single, unknowable dimension beyond the boundaries of what most of humanity considers to be reality. In this strange space, time is fluid, thoughts and dreams are real, and nightmares take flesh.

…

The ultimate powers of the Warp are the four immortal beings known collectively as the Dark Gods or the Ruinous Powers. They are ill-understood by humanity, often perceived as Daemonic entities of vast scope among those who know of them at all. The truth of their existence is much more complicated and difficult to distill. In some ways, this perception of the Chaos Gods can be said to be true, with each possessing a malign intelligence and will in accordance with its immutable goals. But in other ways, they are more akin to cosmic laws and principles, as much a constant within the Warp as the gravitic and electromagnetic tides of the material universe. With the Warp as a realm of thought made manifest, the Ruinous Powers exist as expressions of primal desires within all sentient life—anger, pleasure, hope, and despair.

Wrath & Glory Core Rulebook (2018), pp. 26-27.

And:

What mankind calls Daemons are the native denizens of the Immaterium, given shape and flesh by the fears and nightmares of the mortals whose lives they assault.

Wrath & Glory Core Rulebook (2018), p. 28.

And:

The Realm of Chaos is not truly a Mortal Realm at all, but a vile and nightmarish reality only tangentially linked to the rest of creation. It is the home of the Dark Gods and the legions of hellspawn that are formed from their power, each cursed daemon – from the most spiteful imp to the fiercest monster – created from dark emotion.

The Chaos Gods and their dominions are one, for they are formed of the same aetheric energy. As a Chaos God’s influence over other worlds and realities expands in power, its corresponding influence upon the Realm of Chaos broadens, and its territory grows. As extensions of the gods, the appearances of these domains are shaped by the same emotions that created their masters.

…

Every dream and nightmare, every lunatic vision and deranged fancy, finds its home somewhere in the Realm of Chaos, but those of the Dark Gods are the most powerful and abiding of all.

Age of Sigmar Corebook 2nd ed. (2018), p. 116.

And:

In the warp, similar thoughts and emotions gather like rivulets of water. They form streams and eddies of anguish and desire, pools of hatred and torrents of pride. Since the dawn of time, these tides have flowed through the warp. Such is their power that they formed creatures made of the very stuff of dreams and nightmares. Eventually these instinctual, formless beings gained a rudimentary consciousness. The Chaos Gods were born - vast psychic presences made from the fantasies and horrors of mortals. As the races of the galaxy prospered and grew, so too did their hopes and dreams, their rage and wars, their love and hatred. This burgeoning flood of raw emotion fed the nascent Chaos Gods and nurtured their unholy power.

…

Those who worship such a Dark God and behave in a way that feeds it are rewarded with strange gifts, extraordinary power and, potentially, immortality.

Warhammer 40k Core Rulebook 9th ed. (2020), p. 94.

And:

No foe of the Imperium is more malignant, nor more terrible, than the daemons of Chaos, the numberless foot soldiers of the Ruinous Powers. Spawned in the depths of the warp and fashioned from the very essence of the empyrean, they take the form of monsters from mortals' darkest nightmares and cruellest desires, and they will stop at nothing to see reality itself torn apart.

Warhammer 40k Core Rulebook 9th ed. (2020), p. 134.

And:

Daemons are spawned within the roiling extradimensional realm of the Immaterium, forged from the raw warp energies coloured by the rippling emotions of living creatures. Their forms are incorporeal and unnatural, defying the laws of both physics and nature by their very existence. When they rip their way into the material universe, reality itself trembles, screaming in protest. They are the darkest of nightmares and unspoken desires made manifest, spilling into reality to hunt those of whom they are a dark mirror.

Imperium Maledictum Core Rulebook (2023), p. 340.

And:

Humankind is beset from every direction. Rampaging Orks overrun star systems, ancient Necrons rise from their tomb worlds to raze planets, Tyranids devour entire sectors, and unknowable Aeldari schemes doom billions to death. Yet the greatest threat to the Imperium, to the survival of Humanity, is its own emotions and ambitions, corrupted by the power of Chaos.

…

The Warp is not a placid realm. Like a churning sea, it has tides and waves, currents and eddies. The smallest disturbance, the flickering of a soul, may not change the course of these great flows but, over time, the mass of mortals and their base emotions have created raging torrents and unending storms.

For millions of years, the accumulation of mortal desires and fears have formed into pools of consciousness. These pools are impossibly vast and unknowable, and yet they are forged in the minds of mortals and connected to them through their souls. They are the Great Powers of the Warp and they hunger after the real universe, desiring dominion over it just as they desire superiority over one another.

Thorpe, Haley, Warhammer 40,000: The Ultimate Guide (2024).

And:

Daemons in Reality

The Warp possesses no physical dimensions as mortals understand. Within its surging energy, Daemons are nothing more than swirls of awareness inside the greater storm of their god. But when they break into the real world, they form corporeal bodies from raw Warpstuff, shaped by millennia of mortal superstition, myths, and nightmares. These forms can be destroyed, but the essence of the Daemon is merely banished back to the Warp, not slain.

Thorpe, Haley, Warhammer 40,000: The Ultimate Guide (2024).

Now, this range of quotes is by no means comprehensive (and no doubt there are lots more examples where only emotions are mentioned), but it serves the purpose of this post, which was to showcase that while sometimes solely emotions have been stated to “empower” or “feed” the Chaos gods, there are plenty of occasions where thoughts and beliefs, or dreams and nightmares, have been stated or implied to do so, too.

Some descriptions perhaps imply that thoughts/beliefs give form to and shape the gods, which may be taken as being different to empowering them and allowing them to grow. But others state or imply that thoughts/beliefs are directly involved in the gods forming and growing, too. And sometimes emotions are said to “shape” and give form to daemons, the gods and their realms.

Now, conscious thought does undoubtedly shape how the Warp is perceived by mortals. No two beings will see it the exact same way, as their mortal minds try to make sense of the incomprehensible. But that personal experience is a bit different to the process whereby myriad beliefs, thoughts, nightmares and dreams, and concepts “shape” the Chaos gods in general.

I think, to help make sense of all this, and why terms like “beliefs”, “thoughts” and “dreams/nightmares” have often been used in explanations of how the Chaos gods formed and are empowered and shaped, it is useful to hear from one of the original architects of how Chaos and the Warp were conceptualized (and the original creator of 40k itself), Rick Priestley, to think through how such terms might be being conceptualized and applied. But that will have to be in part 2, which is where things will get more interesting, so check that out if you are interested!