The Chaos gods were formed from and are empowered/fed by emotions AND ideas/beliefs: Monsters from the Id, Freud and Forbidden Planet

(For the full experience I suggest reading this post in the voice of Leslie Nielsen - the reason why will become apparent later on)

In part one (https://madministratum.blogspot.com/2026/08/the-chaos-gods-were-formed-from-and-are.html) we surveyed lots of quotes from lore sources to showcase that while emotions are said to be the reason the Chaos gods formed and are empowered, other terms such as “beliefs”, “thoughts” and “dreams/nightmares” have been often stated as being part of this process too, and such statements have appeared since the late ‘80s up until current lore. But the meaning of such terms is not necessarily straightforward, so it is worth having a think about how they might be being conceptualized and applied within the lore.

To do that, it is useful to hear from the original creator of 40k, and key contributor to the conceptualization of the Warp and Chaos in Warhammer, Rick Priestley:

My whole reworking of ‘chaos’ envisions a parallel astral realm – the realm of chaos – and you can see that idea expressed very well in Dennis Wheatley’s novel Strange Conflict; you also get elements of it within The Devil Rides Out. The idea of people having a spirit-self that can astral travel and meet other spirits or powers within the astral realm was pretty well-established hippy-nonsense. Carlos Castaneda and all that!  I just wove it all together, populating the astral realm with daemonic forms drawn from human desires, hopes and fears: composite entities with mobile, interflowing identities. Compare with Forbidden Planet and monsters from the id, for example.

https://awesomeliesblog.wordpress.com/2024/05/31/interview-with-rick-priestley-part-two/

And:

PRIESTLEY: The demons - well those are reflections in the warp of the emotions, hopes and dreams of people - so their motivations are based on dreamlike fears, hopes, desires, ambitions... they are not necessarily logical! There's a lot of this stuff in the two Real of Chaos hard back volumes - but that's the essence of chaos - its physic energy shaped by the human unconsciousness - it is not good/bad - but likewise it is not logical - it is Monsters from the Id in the same sense as in Forbidden Planet. Demons (in 40K) are the physic expression of humans - they can only exist because humans exit - their power relies upon the element of humanity that sustains them - so if they have interests it is in sustaining that element - but demons only have form because they are imagined to have form - their real existence is as flows of energy - I think all this is covered in the RoC books - I've certainly written about it often enough. Of course - what GW have done with the backstory since I stepped back from the development (late 90's) I couldn't say.

https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/9z42fy/qa_with_rick_priestley_part_2_the_lore_of/

Well, I’m going to have a crack at having a say about what GW did with the conceptualization of Chaos since!

First, it is important to acknowledge that old phrasing tend to persist in Warhammer lore because writers of newer material look back to older stuff and just copy and paste passages directly over, or add/rework them but with much of the same language remaining. So it doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone who has used such phrasing is conceptualizing the issues in the same manner. It does mean that ideas/beliefs have continued to be stated to be part of the process of the gods forming and growing, though.

But I think the older concepts, in this instance, have remained as part of the underlying conceptual framework which many lore creators continue to draw upon for inspiration, even if they exact way this is presented and explained has evolved, and has often become less comprehensively detailed. And even if not every author perhaps grasps the full underlying logic of the original conceptualization – they may be basing their understanding on material which was itself based on something which was based on the original ideas etc, so there is an underlying basis.

Now, it is worth explaining what Priestley is referring to when citing the “Id” and the movie Forbidden Planet.

In classic psychoanalytic theory, Freud conceptualized the human psyche as a structure with three components: the Id, the superego and the ego. The Id is composed of instinctual needs, impulses and desires, and is unconscious and uncoordinated. The superego is that part of us which has internalised cultural phenomena, such as social rules, norms, and traditions etc. The ego mediates between the Id and the superego as we experience the world, and is how we operate on a more conscious level. So, the Id contains the baser, primal, subconscious elements of our psyche.

Freud argued that we can gain insight into a person’s Id through two main approaches: by studying any neurotic symptoms they may exhibit, and through analysis of dreams. Which sounds pretty relevant to the Warp and Chaos, eh?

Now, this framework is largely defunct, at least as regards academic research into psychology and medical psychiatry, anyway. But similar ideas have a longer pedigree, and do continue to inform current psychological theories. For example, the eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher David Hume argued that, rather than as his contemporary thinkers during the Enlightenment might want to believe, we are not primarily driven by rational thought, but rather by our passions, i.e. our emotions, desires, and instincts. Our “conscious” thought processes, he argued, are really slaves to our passions. Those subconscious urges are what truly define and direct our behaviour, and we seek to rationalize and find justifications for them.

Which has an interesting resonance with this passage:

The connection flows both ways; for mortal passions feed the Warp, and from these concentrated storms of emotion came sentient creatures of horrid design. These are the Chaos Gods, manifestations of the worst excesses of living creatures.

Dark Heresy Core Rulebook 2nd ed. (2014), p. 17.

It is now widely accepted in many branches of disciplines such as social psychology, history, political science, sociology, anthropology, and behavioral economics that emotion cannot be divorced from our supposedly “rational” conscious thinking, and that many of our choices are driven by subconscious factors rather than “rational” and “deliberate” thinking (as extolled in the famous book by Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow). We are emotional of instinctual beings, and our conscious thought processes work in tandem with our subconscious emotions and internalized wants, desires, hopes, fears, entrenched beliefs and values, and so on.

So when we talk of thoughts and beliefs and dreams and nightmares, we cannot truly disentangle them from emotions and those drives that Freud labelled the Id. (Which is not to say that it isn’t worth trying to cultivate more dispassionate, rational thinking as much as possible, because that does have benefits).

But what of Forbidden Planet? 

Well, in that classic scifi movie (which is well worth a watch, despite how old it is – with the added bonus that it stars a young Leslie Nielsen in a serious, non-comedic role), the crew of a spaceship land on a planet where contact had been lost with a scientific research team two decades prior. They are warned by Morbius, who alongside his daughter are the only survivors from that earlier expedition, that some mysterious force killed all of the other people on the mission. Soon the equipment of the new arrivals is sabotaged by an unseen intruder, and eventually an incorporeal monster starts to periodically assault their camp and kill crewmembers.

It turns out, and spoilers ahead, that the monster is actually a manifestation of Morbius’ subconscious. He had found technology on the planet from a prior alien civilization, the Krell, that could both boost brainpower and turn thoughts into reality. Morbius had made use of the machinery, not realizing that it would lead to the deaths of his colleagues due to his subconscious drives being literally let lose. Indeed, the Krell had ultimately destroyed themselves, as the monsters of the Id had run amok . To quote the key dialogue (or here, if you want to watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2BYyeS-fIU):

Commander Adams: What is the Id?

Dr. Morbius: [frustrated] Id, id, id, id, id!

[calming down]

Dr. Morbius: It's a... It's an obsolete term. I'm afraid once used to describe the elementary basis of the subconscious mind.

Commander Adams: [to himself] Monsters from the id...

Dr. Morbius: Huh?

Commander Adams: Monsters from the subconscious. Of course. That's what Doc meant. Morbius. The big machine, 8,000 miles of klystron relays, enough power for a whole population of creative geniuses, operated by remote control. Morbius, operated by the electromagnetic impulses of individual Krell brains.

Dr. Morbius: To what purpose?

Commander Adams: In return, that ultimate machine would instantaneously project solid matter to any point on the planet, In any shape or color they might imagine. For *any* purpose, Morbius! Creation by mere thought.

Dr. Morbius: Why haven't I seen this all along?

Commander Adams: But like you, the Krell forgot one deadly danger - their own subconscious hate and lust for destruction.

Dr. Morbius: The beast. The mindless primitive! Even the Krell must have evolved from that beginning.

Commander Adams: And so those mindless beasts of the subconscious had access to a machine that could never be shut down. The secret devil of every soul on the planet all set free at once to loot and maim. And take revenge, Morbius, and kill!

Dr. Morbius: My poor Krell. After a million years of shining sanity, they could hardly have understood what power was destroying them.

Well, in Warhammer, there is no need for Krell machinery. The Warp itself has created monsters from the Id. Monsters that have grown to incomprehensibly vast sizes.

To go back to classic psychoanalytic theory for a second, I think Carl Jung’s notion of the collective unconscious – that there are shared symbols and archetypes innately shared and understood by all humans but which manifest in local forms, which explains why similar themes and concepts appear across different cultures, religions and mythologies – also resonates with the notion that the Chaos gods can both be the result of the emotions and thoughts countless individuals coalescing, but that they can also be eternal concepts/archetypes. That’s going off on a tangent, but here’s the man himself:

And the essential thing, psychologically, is that in dreams, fantasies, and other exceptional states of mind the most far-fetched mythological motifs and symbols can appear autochthonously at any time, often, apparently, as the result of particular influences, traditions, and excitations working on the individual, but more often without any sign of them. These "primordial images" or "archetypes," as I have called them, belong to the basic stock of the unconscious psyche and cannot be explained as personal acquisitions. Together they make up that psychic stratum which has been called the collective unconscious.

Jung, ‘The Significance of Constitution and Heredity in Psychology’ (1929), p. 112.

Now, to get a more modern perspective from the lore creators, let’s hear from one of the Horus Heresy authors, presumably reflecting ideas from discussions among the writing team, about the nature of Chaos, from the afterword to Slaves to Darkness:

What is Chaos?

This question is at the heart of the book you hold in your hands. On the face of it, the answer is quite simple. Chaos is the dark force that exists in the warp. This force is exemplified by the four Dark Gods of Chaos: Khorne, Tzeentch, Nurgle and Slaanesh. The gods want to crush reality and they offer power to those mortals who serve them. This power most often comes in the form of tentacles, supernatural abilities, and a sudden love of grisly trophies and eight-pointed stars. So far, so familiar, yes? And from a certain angle all of that is manifestly true, but it’s not the whole truth. The truth is far, far worse, and that truth is what I wanted to show in Slaves to Darkness.

Chaos is elemental. The forces of the warp are regarded as gods, their servants as daemons, and their powers as sorcery. That is how mortals who know of the warp talk about Chaos, but that is a rationalisation of something much bigger and more terrifying. The forces of Chaos are not gods, in that they are not like people. They have sentience, a strange nightmare sentience patched together from the emotions of mortal races, but they are closer in nature to a cyclone than they are to a person. They are forces of eternal nature; raw and lethal, and wildly destructive. This is not because they choose to be, or because they enjoy it, any more than a flood chooses to sweep away a town, or a tornado flips over cars for kicks. They do what they do because that is what they are. They can be no other way. These powers oppose and antagonise each other like the poles of magnets. Despair and rot claw at the desire for perfection and endless pleasure, war sweeps away subtle power, and so on.

…

Once Chaos has hold of a mortal it enables the emotions that drove it into its arms, and feeds them in turn, so that they grow all-consuming and circular. Resentment becomes rage, becomes violence. Pride becomes arrogance. Knowledge becomes blindness to truth. And even if the soul that has fallen fights their fate, they still fall. To fall to Chaos is not to bow to the Chaos Gods, in fact it does not require that you even know that the Dark Gods exist. To rephrase the words hissed by the daemon Samos in the first Horus Heresy novel, Horus Rising: ‘Chaos all around you… It is the person beside you… It is you…’ The elemental power of the Chaos gods comes from the emotions of all sentient beings. Khorne does not exist because people worship it as a god of blood and war; Khorne exists because sentient creatures feel anger and rage, and want to destroy and kill and see their enemies broken. It does not matter to Tzeentch if a mortal who plots for power or hungers for knowledge does so in its name. The emotion and thought is enough to keep the cyclone turning.

That is what Chaos is, it is every weakness given power and set loose against itself without beginning and without end. That is the path that Horus, Lorgar and the first heretics set themselves on when they embraced Chaos. That is, if you like, the point of this book – to show that Horus and those that led him and followed him into darkness have become slaves to forces that they cannot control, bound by the chains of their own natures.

French, Slaves to Darkness (2018), pp. 289-91.

You’ll notice the big focus on emotions, but also that “emotion and thought” is once again stated near the end. And somebody wanting to kill, or plotting and scheming, isn’t just emotion – such activities require thought. You will also notice that Chaos as an elemental force is also part of the conceptualization.

And lets see what Phil Kelly and Andy Clark, two games designers, had to say in a recent White Dwarf article about the place of Chaos within Warhammer:

The Dark Gods have a way of infiltrating the minds, dreams and realities of our protagonists, or more commonly our antagonists. Their stooges are usually pitched against the heroes of whatever story our writers are devising at the time. And you can see why; these colossal, unknowable, dare I say ‘eldritch’ entities are beyond time and space, their entire beings made from dark emotion, pure desperation and dizzying, obsessive desire.

…

The reason the Warp is so tremendously dangerous is that all that roiling emotional energy coalesces and gains sentience, becoming malevolent and monomaniacal entities known (at least to those few entrusted with the knowledge) as daemons. The greatest of these entities – so titanically powerful, in fact, that we only portray them in 40k through the perceptions and beliefs of mortals – are the Chaos Gods.

…

So how is Chaos at the heart of Warhammer? Well, it’s the uniting factor. Though they may not be overlapping, the various settings of Games Workshop’s games all adjacent to the same concepts, all only one step removed from a hellish dimension dying to break into reality itself.

White Dwarf 514 (2025), pp. 8-11.

Of interest here is that we see the Chaos gods seemingly being referred to as "concepts".

So, in conclusion, I’d say that it makes sense that the Chaos gods and daemons are formed from both emotions and thoughts/beliefs, but that the latter are largely at the level of the subconscious; of the Id.

It’s not like the memelore about Orks, where if enough people just try to think something really hard, their collective belief will manifest it. We are dealing with more hidden, uncontrollable, often darker aspects of the psyche. Thoughts and beliefs which are expressed in nightmares and dreams.

Anyway, hopefully you found this therapy session with the Chaos gods of interest! As always, please do add any thoughts or other relevant source/quotes I might have missed, and I'd love to hear more thoughts about the metaphysics of how exactly emotions and beliefs/ideas may interact or their roles in empowering and/or shaping Warp entities. How this works for the Eldar gods, the Emperor, and Gork and Mork is perhaps an interesting line of enquiry.