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The Deities Or: No God, Deep Web
Calamity Jane
That Wrong LoveRegistered User regular
That Wrong LoveRegistered User regular
throughout the years i've often spoke on religion with some of you, whether it be through threads about morality, faith or making fun the dresden codak guy. often times, and especially in the days of the SE++ facebook group having functioning group chat, i got a lot of questions about the afterlife.
which we could go on about for years. whats always interested me in both faith and mythology is the similarities in structure/parallels and complementary gods and myths that often times seem like sides of the same coin.
that said, an old favorite of mine that we see in literature, film and classic art is good ol'e greek mythology. id welcome discussion on any of the gods, be they nordic, whatever the fuck alan moore believes in, and any abrhamics you might bring to the table. here is my interpretation of the greek stuff
GAEA: gaea fucked herself and made her son, URANUS. gaea is the earth goddess. after fucking her son, she birthed the titans. this earth mother was pretty popular until hellenistic culture/civilization replaced her
URANUS: this guy fucked his mother a whole lot and she birthed so many, so god damn many titans. he was the creator of patriarchy, in that he was first High Male. he rode this wave for a while until his son ripped his balls off. presumed dead or missing
CRONUS: cronus was a fucking nutcase. aside from being convinced to rip off his dad's balls to ascend to his place of power, he had a wife rhea who he fucked a whole lot. he didnt like his seat of power and quite possibly the future harm to his balls to happen at the hands of their numerous children so he just started eating them. those that survived were olympians, and rhea choked him out with a rock, ensuring their survival
ZEUS: was a man after his father's heart. i dont know if he ripped off cronus' balls, as is the way of things? the olympian brothers he shared (poseidon/hades right now) all took straws and zeus got sky lord. didn't cheat into that at all, nope.
husband of hera. in a very loose sense of the word. as all deity/incest/rape scenarios seem to end in tears. after appearing to her as a bird, he raped her and they married so she could retain honor. zeus was an asshole like that, and he was really fond of turning into animals and fucking people for whatever goddamn reason
OCEANUS: oceanus was a lot of water. he created nymphs and raised hera alongside wife Tethys
HERA: wife of zeus and sister of zeus because of whatever weird fucking "free love" bullshit happening in the skies above greece was happening in the sixties. anyway, hera is most noted for having both the shittiest husband, and for being hung by gold chains after understandably trying to drug and kill her asshole husband. a great deal of the time, she fucked with his plans after vowing to never rebel. she also did fucked up shit to anybody zeus fucked as barnyard and sky creatures
ATHENA: god of smart people, athena was born by way of the proto-fan fiction that literally sprang from zeus' skull. motherless, and born wearing a suit of armor, she predates adventure time's fiona in terms of scope and implication. she was the goddess of cities, progress and invention, and would defend her cities/states in combat. zeus, for being a weird piece of shit, was kindest to her. he let her use his weaponry, and duel wield his lightning bolts. she has never fucked anybody, and is the namesake for athens.
which we could go on about for years. whats always interested me in both faith and mythology is the similarities in structure/parallels and complementary gods and myths that often times seem like sides of the same coin.
that said, an old favorite of mine that we see in literature, film and classic art is good ol'e greek mythology. id welcome discussion on any of the gods, be they nordic, whatever the fuck alan moore believes in, and any abrhamics you might bring to the table. here is my interpretation of the greek stuff
GAEA: gaea fucked herself and made her son, URANUS. gaea is the earth goddess. after fucking her son, she birthed the titans. this earth mother was pretty popular until hellenistic culture/civilization replaced her
URANUS: this guy fucked his mother a whole lot and she birthed so many, so god damn many titans. he was the creator of patriarchy, in that he was first High Male. he rode this wave for a while until his son ripped his balls off. presumed dead or missing
CRONUS: cronus was a fucking nutcase. aside from being convinced to rip off his dad's balls to ascend to his place of power, he had a wife rhea who he fucked a whole lot. he didnt like his seat of power and quite possibly the future harm to his balls to happen at the hands of their numerous children so he just started eating them. those that survived were olympians, and rhea choked him out with a rock, ensuring their survival
ZEUS: was a man after his father's heart. i dont know if he ripped off cronus' balls, as is the way of things? the olympian brothers he shared (poseidon/hades right now) all took straws and zeus got sky lord. didn't cheat into that at all, nope.
husband of hera. in a very loose sense of the word. as all deity/incest/rape scenarios seem to end in tears. after appearing to her as a bird, he raped her and they married so she could retain honor. zeus was an asshole like that, and he was really fond of turning into animals and fucking people for whatever goddamn reason
OCEANUS: oceanus was a lot of water. he created nymphs and raised hera alongside wife Tethys
HERA: wife of zeus and sister of zeus because of whatever weird fucking "free love" bullshit happening in the skies above greece was happening in the sixties. anyway, hera is most noted for having both the shittiest husband, and for being hung by gold chains after understandably trying to drug and kill her asshole husband. a great deal of the time, she fucked with his plans after vowing to never rebel. she also did fucked up shit to anybody zeus fucked as barnyard and sky creatures
ATHENA: god of smart people, athena was born by way of the proto-fan fiction that literally sprang from zeus' skull. motherless, and born wearing a suit of armor, she predates adventure time's fiona in terms of scope and implication. she was the goddess of cities, progress and invention, and would defend her cities/states in combat. zeus, for being a weird piece of shit, was kindest to her. he let her use his weaponry, and duel wield his lightning bolts. she has never fucked anybody, and is the namesake for athens.
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i used to have this book as a kid, and i would read it all the time.
didn't realize it until later, but those myths were really fucked up.
steam | Dokkan: 868846562
The newest magic the gathering set, Theros.
Based, of course, on Greek mythology.
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/261c
It's backed up by various bits of evidence including similarities in the mythic culture of places across vast distance. For example, the concept of a Sky God battling some sort of serpentine creature representing the sea or deep earth is very common from Scandinavia to Greece to Persia to India.
In modern religions, faith is highly significant. Religious acts of worship committed without faith are hollow and meaningless.
However, in many ancient religions, this is not the case. Zeus demands sacrifice, not actual faith. Worship in ancient religions was more of a pact between mortal and divine, the Gods are masters of their parts of the universe, to enact rituals in their name is a wise thing to do. Otherwise you might earn their ire and you do not want the Gods to dislike you one bit.
So you could be a "pious" Roman and have absolutely no faith in the Gods whatsoever, as long as you followed the correct religious functions.
unless it was to appease your neighbors.
Nobody likes the government but you pay taxes anyway because if you don't then there's some chance that it'll rain for forty days and forty nights and you'll get genital warts
Also maybe a swan will try to bang you
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
The idea that faith means to believe in the existence of the divine
To many, in fact most, people of ancient cultures, there was no distinction between the natural and the supernatural (there are some exceptions to this but they are relatively few and far betwen). The world worked the way it did and Gods were an integral part of that. You'd sacrifice something to a God in order to get their good favour because that's the way the world works. You didn't have to like them or care about them or have any kind of faith in them, you just needed to go through the motions because going through the motions is what is significant.
People tend to think that the Romans persecuted Christians because they considered the Christian faith to be wrong or heretical or whatever. That's not really true, the Romans didn't actually give a shit, but it was Roman custom to worship the Gods of your father, because if you didn't, the Gods would shit on you and everyone around you. So they didn't like Christians very much because a) they didn't worship the Gods of their forefathers, which is just fucking weird man, and b) because the Gods might get pissed at that, should probably show them that we don't intend to go the same way.
Gods were really big, powerful things that sat somewhere and occasionally fucked with your shit. Liking them wasn't the point, you might as well dislike the fact that the tide comes in. But, just like how you plan for the tide, you plan for Gods. They are assholes, but they are powerful assholes. So show the proper respect and avoid getting noticed.
Really fascinating stuff.
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
Specifically, lets talk about Nyx and her kids.
Nyx was the ancient goddess of Night, born of Chaos and Eros-Phanes, god of procreation (not to be confused with his grandson Eros, god of getting it on).
Nyx hooked up with her brother Erebus, the Primordial God of Darkness, and possibly also her uncle Khronos, Primordial God of Time. From Erebus she birthed Eros (the sexytimes one), Hemera (Day), Aither (The Sky), and according to the Orphics she was also the mother of Uranus, but no one really takes the Orphics seriously. Hesiod or bust.
Nyx's kids with Erebus aren't the interesting ones anyway. The cool kids are the ones she had all by herself. Called the "Offspring Daimones" they include the Personifications (which include most of Gaiman's Endless, plus even more messed up ones he should have used but probably couldn't find an E name for), the Fates, and the Furies.
"And Nyx (Night) bare hateful Moros (Doom) and black Ker (Violent Death) and Thanatos (Death), and she bare Hypnos (Sleep) and the tribe of Oneiroi (Dreams). And again the goddess murky Nyx, though she lay with none, bare Momos and painful Oizys (Misery), and the Hesperides . . . Also she bare the Moirai (Fates) and the ruthless avenging Keres (Death-Fates) . . . Also deadly Nyx bare Nemesis (Envy) to afflict mortal men, and after her, Apate (Deceit) and Philotes (Friendship) and hateful Geras (Old Age) and hard-hearted Eris (Strife)."
I'm not sure what I love more about that - that there's a goddess with the specific niche of violent death, separate from her brother, Vanilla Death, or that Philotes must have felt really really out of place with the rest of her siblings.
Momus though, Momus was basically just the shitty troll of the gods. He mocked everyone and everything constantly until Zeus got sick of his shit and banished him from Olympus.
basically, these norsemen (think 6-7th century) are sailing around the Baltic when they're shipwrecked. So they realize they're in a pickle, and decide to entreat with the gods to get them out of it. They start off praying to their Norse gods, offering up sacrifices of whatever they have on the tiny piece of rock they've washed up on, and then for good measures they run through the foreign gods they know as well (there are quite a few, since they're traders who've been all over)
eventually, cue this conversation:
1. alright, anybody know any other gods?
2. what about this guy Jesus?
1. sure, why not
(blank stares)
all: oh, Jesus, thou who art ... some kind of god ... help?
long story short, they get picked up and attribute it to Jesus' intervention. They eventually land in Estonia and ask around for anyone who knows anything about Jesus, so they can pay him back. Eventually they find into another trader who's been further south and knows a thing or two:
-hey, you know Jesus? the Roman god?
- ... sure?
- what does he like?
the trader tells them he doesn't know, but he thinks fasts are part of it. So the norsemen all fast very diligently for I think ten days, at which point they consider Jesus to be fully reimbursed and go back to their lives
concludes the missionary: "So the power of Christ reaches even beyond the Empire"
We all know who is the best.
Also they were written by people who drank wine out of lead cups.
To be fair its alot harder to be more of a dick than the Greek Gods.
That's not a myth!
man, early christian mythology is messed up
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
when I went godless, one of the priests at the temple here in San Antonio pointed out that Hinduism could include people who believed that divinity had neither form nor attribute
which I took as an attempt to include atheists in the whole cultural continuum
itself an attempt at holding them to a moral framework? which they felt atheists couldn't have without that cultural community or the concept of an absolute moral authority?
idunno
job was jewish
Nobody's perfect.
Shiva slices off his Ganesha's head
Parvati, his wife, gets real mad about this
So what does he do?
Tells Brahma to go out and get the head of the first creature he comes across of course!
And slaps that long-nosed tusky sucker on his dead kid's neck
There are plenty of atheists who wouldn't be included in that because they reject the very concept of divinity
but more about Gods!
The Gods of Babylon were Gods of mud, you know
they loved mud, the Babylonians
My favourite story is when Shiva, I think? Is banging his missus for, like
A million years
And the force of this passion is so intense that it threatens to destroy the universe
So they send someone to interrupt it and say, hey, maybe you need to snuggle now
And Shiva is so angered by this interruption that he utterly obliterates the guy they send to stop him
Hahahaha
A fair few
Standard operating procedure when you're converting new peoples, you make sure to villify their old deities and be like, man are you guys lucky we came along when we did and got you to quit worshiping those demons and false gods before you got in real trouble
He also spent most of his life destroying temples and shrines to Artemis all across Greece and Asia Minor, to keep the locals from backsliding, and she was always throwing spirits and monsters at him to get him to stop
Christmas!
Beelzebub specifically is a corruption of the god Baal to make it The Lord of shit because he was sometimes portrayed as a fly.