What is your favorite mythological figure (of ancient religions only)?
inb4: the God of the Abrahamic religions hurr durr
There are numerous names and in fact, there are sources which I cannot recall, that said his full name was like 24 letters long or something like that. Not surprising since he’s a hodgepodge of lots of prior mythos and was probably written of and modified over hundreds of years.
Ah now that’s a trick question, because the Abrahamic god is in fact an amalgam of both, which is why he’s so derangedly bipolar in the Old Testament!
Yeah. I think historically it is interesting, because the Hebrew Elohim of Genesis is in the plural, and there is evidence that followers of El believed him to be one deity in a pantheon. In that sense, Elohim and the associated creation myths have their roots in a polytheistic religion.
Yhwh was more likely a figure from a belief system of a different region which ended up co-opting the earlier stories. I know your comment was tongue-in-cheek, but I think it is actually plausible that things like the Catholic Holy Trinity have roots in El and Yhwh technically being different figures.
Mainly, Lilit(h). Not mythological for me, although both Sumerian and Jewish Kabbalah are generally said as “mythological” by historical references.
I believe in a Goddess that extends beyond a single archetype, while I try to blend archetypes and concepts from various religions and “myths” in order to materialize my own understanding of existence and cosmos.
For me, She is Lilith/Lilit (the fearsome Sumerian Goddess of Winds as well as the Demoness and First Woman not banished from Eden as She fled on Her Will), She is Kali (the fearsome Hindu Goddess and Demoness of destruction and transformation), She is the Yin (the receptive Darkness complementing whilst opposing the Yang light) and the Tao (the wholeness and oneness), She is Al-Lat / Allatu (the Pre-Islam Arabic Goddess of War and Fertility), She is Isis and Bastet and Naunet (Egyptian Goddesses) She is Asherah (Hebrew Goddess consort/sister of Yahweh), She is Ereshkigal and Inanna (Sumerian Goddesses), She is Nuit and She is the Scarlet Woman (Thelemite Goddesses), She is Hekate (the Greek Goddess of Magic and Moon) and Aphrodite (the Greek Goddess of Love) and Athena (the Greek Goddess of Wisdom and Warfare) and Gaia (Goddess of Earth), She is Morana (Slavic personification of Death) and a feminine counterpart of Thanatos (Greek personification of Death as well), and so on, but mainly, Lilith Herself, as beautifully multifaceted as She is, both motherly nurturing and darkly reaping, neither good nor evil, just… Her nature.
I believe in a Sacred and Dark Feminine energy that’s inside and outside everywhere, reaching scientific and philosophical concepts such as the entropy, the fields (as in electromagnetic field), the primordial soup from the beginning of earthly life, the quantum fluctuations, the apeiron, the Nietzschean Abyss. She’s the shining Darkness, infinite nothingness, omnipresent wholeness and the cosmic Oneness.
In summary, the Dark Mother Goddess, often manifesting to me by Her Lilith’s archetype.
I think Odyssey is a pretty cool guy. Eh trojans hores and doesnt afraid of anything.
Anubis and Thoth weighing the heart of the dead to see if it is as light as a feather before letting them into the afterlife.
I love the idea that there’s no “do this, do that”, or a concrete set of rules or commandments. But the idea that if you can look back on your life, and if your heart isn’t weighed down with the burden of all of the things that you did that know we’re just wrong…then you can go on to the afterlife.
It’s just no much more of a reasonable, adult approach to morality.
So, the guy who kicked a kitten at age three and still broods about it goes to hell, and the war criminal who feels justified for bombing civilians gets off scot free?
Actually…yes. At least for the “war criminal”. I think the point is that you can’t hide your inner feelings from the feather. So if you genuinely, in the deepest depths of your heart, have no qualms about bombing civilians then you’re fine.
I think this points out the fundamental relativistic nature of morality and how the feather copes with it. Everyone has some sort of moral compass, and the feather measures how true you were to it. And really, what more can you ask of anyone? Decide, for yourself, what is right and what is wrong and stick to it.
Putting aside the fact that a toddler probably lacks the intellectual or emotional development to have a truely personal morality, I cannot imagine that someone who “broods” all their life over kicking a kitten when they were three is anything other than the nicest most moral person you’ll ever meet. I don’t think that have any trouble with Anubis and Thoth.
Perun. Kinda like Thor, but without whoring for Marvel.
