sdi: Oil painting of the Heliconian Muse whispering inspiration to Hesiod. (0)
sdi ([personal profile] sdi) wrote 2021-11-16 06:34 pm (UTC)

Yeah, I think you're right: the Olympians are more of a "primary vibrations", while all of the other (subsidiary?) gods are various "harmonics" or "chords" formed of the above (hence all the mythic incest and so on).

Regarding the various pantheons: Apuleius seems to make the point (or maybe I am reading this into him) that the true gods are constant (or, perhaps, that different pantheons "tune in" to different subsets of them), but the beings worshipped and interacted with aren't actually the true gods at all, but various groups of intermediary beings (dæmons in his terminology) that act on behalf or in conjunction with the true gods. As you say, not only do individual deities but also entire pantheons seem to have personalities: the Greek deities seem to be pretty serene, Roman deities formal, Egyptian deities sympathetic, Norse deities boisterous, and so on. He points out that the true gods wouldn't have personalities, since they're constant and not moved by interactions with us, so these pantheons must be lower than them.

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