One Sun. Many Sun Gods

[assault]

Something that has long bothered me: if the Sun is a Chariot, Boat or Beetle Pushing a Giant Flaming Ball of Dung, why are there so many Sun Gods?

[Scott Ruggels]

Because even the ancients realized the sun was the engine of growth and of time. Very powerful stuff.  The ancients we’re grateful for the warmth, and the effects it had on the crops. The moon in contrast is just time, and often the unseen because the night is full of mystery and fear. 

[Lord Liaden]

I'm not sure I understand the question. Every religion that reveres the Sun has its own conception of a god of the Sun. For those who believe in one of those religions, their conception is the truth, and everyone else is mistaken. Why shouldn't there be many Sun gods?

 

Unless you're asking if they could all be "true" for a specific fantasy world, and if so, then how? I guess there are a few ways to look at that. Each religion could have its own realm of the gods -- Olympus, Asgard, Heliopolis -- in which the Sun functions as that faith depicts it, which is different and separate from the mortal world (the "real" world, as it were). Or, a given fantasy world could actually be a patchwork of god-realms stitched together, and a mortal could physically travel from one in which the sun is one way, to another in which it's different. E.g. in an analogue to Greece the Sun is drawn by a chariot, in the Egypt analogue it's carried on a boat, in Norse lands it's chased by a wolf, etc. Or, only one of those conceptions is real for that world, and the other gods are spreading false propaganda to elevate their own religions. Or, none of them are real, and the gods are either lying as above, or themselves deceived as to the true nature of the world. That last is most suitable to worlds in which gods are created out of the belief of their worshippers, rather than having created the world and their worshippers themselves.

Edited April 26, 2023 by Lord Liaden

[DShomshak]

The Egyptians had multiple sun gods. Some of this was a function of time: Over 3,000 years, different gods rose and fell in status, and one way you asserted the status of your god was to associate him (the sun was always male) with the sun. Also, each city had its own pantheon, with some overlap in membership, and while whatever city became Egypt's capital asserted the primacy of its version of the gods, then Egyptians never insisted on a singular truth about the gods. (Except Pharoah Akhenaten, and his attempt to reframe religion didn't take.) And just to make it even more confusing, aspects of gods could be hypstasized into other gods, or gods could be combined into new gods, e.g. Serapis. And hymns sometimes described the power and glory of a god by identifying parts of him/her with other gods, e.g. "Your right eye is the eye of Horus! Your left eye is the eye of Thoth! Your strength is anhur! Your majesty is the glory of Ra! Etc.

 

It's just a very different way of viewing divinity than the Abrahamic concern with "getting it right." If you could ask an ancient Egyptian priest to reconcile all the different, conflicting versions of the gods, I suspect he'd say the Egyptian version of "Wut?" and give you a blank look.

 

Dean Shomshak

[L. Marcus]

It's like on the Discworld -- there are about 37 different thunder gods, and Blind Io is all of them. He accomplishes this by several different hammers and a collection of false noses.

[Lord Liaden]

1 hour ago, DShomshak said:

 

 

It's just a very different way of viewing divinity than the Abrahamic concern with "getting it right." If you could ask an ancient Egyptian priest to reconcile all the different, conflicting versions of the gods, I suspect he'd say the Egyptian version of "Wut?" and give you a blank look.

 

Dean Shomshak

 

When the Romans conquered a new territory, they usually made of point of making appropriate sacrifices to the gods worshipped locally, to avoid causing offence that might come back to bite them.  Theological consistency never seemed to be an issue to them.

[DShomshak]

3 hours ago, DShomshak said:

It's just a very different way of viewing divinity than the Abrahamic concern with "getting it right." 

 

Or a naturalistic, quasi-scientific view that gods exist as discrete entities in the same way that humans do. Myths tend to portray gods that way, because that made good stories, but that doesn't necessarily reflect actual religious belief and practice.

 

For that matter, Christian doctrine has it that God simultaneously existed as the physical, incarnate Jesus, the heavenly Father, and the Holy Spirit which descended on Jesus on, I think, Pentecost -- God, sent by God, to God, transcending human categories of existence.

 

Dean Shomshak

1 hour ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

When the Romans conquered a new territory, they usually made of point of making appropriate sacrifices to the gods worshipped locally, to avoid causing offence that might come back to bite them.  Theological consistency never seemed to be an issue to them.

I seem to recall hearing a quote from, I think, Seneca? "The common folk think the gods are true. The philosophers think the gods are false. The rulers think the gods are useful."

 

[EDIT: Googled it and, yep, Seneca. Though the version I found used "religion" instead of "the gods."]

 

Whatever the Roman conquerors believed, I suspect they knew good P. R.

 

Dean Shomshak

Edited April 26, 2023 by DShomshak

[LoneWolf]

Most important subjects tend to have multiple gods for that subject.  There seems to be more gods of war than the sun.  Greek mythology has at least 2 gods of war.  One may be a goddess, but the point is there are more than one. 

[assault]

9 hours ago, DShomshak said:

If you could ask an ancient Egyptian priest to reconcile all the different, conflicting versions of the gods, I suspect he'd say the Egyptian version of "Wut?" and give you a blank look.

 

So, Wut is the true sun god?

 

15 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

Unless you're asking if they could all be "true" for a specific fantasy world, and if so, then how?

 

Yes, this is what I meant.

 

Edited April 27, 2023 by assault

[Old Man]

I use a sort of multiverse concept, in which each pantheon is its own reality that only tangentially affects the mortal realm.  It's why you generally don't see them wandering around, and why they don't usually have more direct effects.  It's also why there are so many hells.  On occasion, there have been conflicts between gods of different pantheons when dealing with prominent people that embody the aspects of those gods--i.e., does this mighty warrior belong to Ares, or Thor?  It can get real awkward for the warrior...

[DShomshak]

15 hours ago, assault said:

So, Wut is the true sun god?

 

For the Egyptian priest, they all are. The barque of Ra, the dung-ball of Khepri, the eye of Horus and the golden disk of Aten are symbols, each revealing an aspect of the sun without forbidding any others.

 

But that's all within one pantheon and mythic model of the world. I guess the question is: In a Fantasy world with multiple pantheons, how does one reconcile each pantheon having a god for a particular domain? EG, how does one reconcile Ra with Surya and Shamash?

 

The first way is to not have the problem by deciding there's just one set of gods that can be known by different names. The Greeks did this by, for instance, identifying Hermes with Thoth and (IIRC) Hera with Hathor, etc. The Turakian Age setting does this.

 

Another way is to forbid the question by placing the gods beyond mortal reach. It doesn't matter if the sun is "really" the chariot of Apollo or the dung ball of Khepri if mortals cannot physically reach the sun to find out. Gods send visions and work miracles, sure, but deity is a black box.

 

Other posters have mentioned sectional worlds.

 

My "Magozoic" setting sort of takes the second approach, except mortals have opened the black box. Theologians know perfectly well that the actual sun is a ball of white-hot gas very far away and that portrayals of it as the chariot of Jeduthon, the lotus of Suzeratos or the lamp of Harmozey are symbolic. The gods themselves are likewise symbols: true, in that they manifest in various ways (notably, granting power to clerics), but false in that they are merely aspects or projections of a greater reality. True Godhead lies with the ten Archons. The Archons have propensities, but no wills: for instance, the Archon of Mars promotes conflict but does not care which wars happen. If mortals perceive Gruumsh of the orcs battling Maglubiyet of the goblns, that's real enough from their perspective -- but from a higher perspective it's no more real than fight between two hand puppets held by the same puppeteer, and it happens because the orc and goblin worshipers think it should. For better or worse, the Archons manifest as the gods mortals believe in. When prophets convince people of new gods, or new expectations of gods, the gods change to fit. Or at least they alter their behavior when dealing with that new group of believers.

 

Some philosophers try to worship the Archons themselves. It doesn't work. They just end up creating a new set of images for the Archons to assume, while the Archons themselves remain inscrutable.

 

There's more, but that's enough for here, I think.

 

Dean Shomshak

[assault]

What happened to the Zeus that would turn into a cow & pick up chicks?

Edited April 28, 2023 by assault

[L. Marcus]

Hera finally caught him in flagrante delictam and did a Chronos on him. He hasn't been able to glance at girls or guys since, or even walk straight.

[Lawnmower Boy]

On 4/27/2023 at 9:19 PM, assault said:

What happened to the Zeus that would turn into a cow & pick up chicks?

#Metoo