What is your favorite mythological figure (of ancient religions only)?
Prometheus
It might seem like a subjective question, but the answer is objectively Prometheus and his replacements in other cultures.
Someone that went against God(s) to give humans knowledge that at the time was considered magical
Like, we talk about how much tech changes stuff today, but fucking fire?
Imagine being alive when your group of humans mastered fire. That shit would have been fucking mind breaking.
He is the one that have humans fire and was chained to the rock for all time while having his guts eaten by a bird each day which healed each night?
Yep.
The OG Light Bringer sentenced to eternal damnation for providing knowledge to humans.
And yes, I’m still salty Christians made him the bad guy.
Being alive in the time fire was invented - well it’s hard to say since it was Homo Erectus who did so, some millions of years ago. Modern humans are very different from good ole’ Erectus, and we think differently, so… the tale of Prometheus is a good one for sure, but it’s also much younger than the actual history of human control over fire.
Source: https://study.com/academy/lesson/how-did-stone-age-man-make-fire-discovery-importance-facts.html
Odin is cool af.
Any trickster god.
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.
I like the various mythologies for psychopomps; Anubis, Charon, grim reapers, Azrael, Vanth, valkyries, etc.
psychopomps?
“Psychopomps (from the Greek word ψυχοπομπός, psychopompós, literally meaning the ‘guide of souls’)[1] are creatures, spirits, angels, demons, or deities in many religions whose responsibility is to escort newly deceased souls from Earth to the afterlife.[2]”
cool, thanks.
If you like psychopomps, you should play Spiritfarer, you get to be a psychopomp. and it’s comforting.
