Religion cleared the path for us, and most schemes can be traced back to it. The priests tried a long time ago to say to their productive neighbor:'obey me'. That didn't work, since the neighbor asked:"why, what makes us different?". He then most likely proceeded with something like "Obey me because of this magical stone". That might have worked until the neighbor found a similar stone and found it non magic. The priest realized that nothing in reality would ever work as a reason for the obedience of his neighbor, so he proceeded with "obey me because of this logical contradictory concept I call 'God'". He was assured that the neighbor would never find the source of his power and dismantle it, because it did not exist. To prevent the negation of his concept by reason and evidence, he made God all powerful, all knowing (an all knowing being is powerless to change anything, as it can just watch it's predictions play out). He also had his concept God issue the command not to kill and proceeded with killing almost all people in a giant flood. This radiated enough fear to the subjects to stop them from thinking rationally.

God issued rules for his subjects, but he did not have to stick to the rules himself. Since God did not exist, his representative in reality (the priest) would do the ruling for him and also did not need to stick to his own rules. 

Religion evolved into government, the concept of government is also invisible (you can not do any experiment to objectively determine the borders of it's territory or find objective criteria to do so) and you can not directly ask what the state wants from its subjects. This makes it an ideal concept to refer to as ruler and give you super powers. Fear of punishment should be used to prevent rational thinking to dismantle your concept.

Christianity is based on the morality of it begin good to sacrifice oneself for others. Crucifiction as a moral ideal.

You as a ruler also preach self sacrifice. Every subject is evil if he does not dedicate a significant portion of his life to others. You deal with the practicalities of who sacrifices what and to whom. Of course these rules do not apply to you, although it is not a bad idea to visibly put a portion of your loot into the treasury as well, to show you do your part. People know you just dropped money in your own wallet, but they will not protest.

So what can we learn from religion's success in capturing the minds of so many subjects?

A contradictory basis of power, which can not be found in reality

God for religious rulers, the state for us

A holy book with contradictory rules, so the subject is always guilty

The bible for christianity, the book of law for us

A holy trinity, joined, but separated to resolve all disputes

God, Jesus and the holy spirit for religion, the trias politica for us

Society will collapse in chaos

For religion, without the 10 commandments everyone starts killing each other, for us without our book of law everyone would start killing each other

Promises

For religion the subjects toil in their jobs on earth guilty about their pasts, their kingdom waiting after death, for us the subject toils, guilty about everything, but maybe one day he will get a state pension

Miscellaneous

• The concept, although all powerful, is always in need of the subject's money
• The concept cares for the poor but only with the subject's money 
• The concept loves you but if you don't love it back, bad things will happen
• The concept tells the subjects not to care for gold and not to lust for money, but instead give it to the concept's representatives on earth
• The concept preaches a lot about peace, but their representatives have a lot of blood on their hands
• The concepts needs to 'educate' the young to make them believe it
• The concept says you are bad and it's representative can 'fix' you

Needless to say a lot can be learned from religion. They understood that the control of the moral narrative is crucial as subjects tend to do what they believe is the good.