Wanted to offer my thoughts on the point from temporaryreality about the Orphic hymns. You'll find a lot of references within the hymns (I use the Athanassakis translation) where the gods are seemingly conflated (Apollon is equated with both Bacchus and Pan, whereas Artemis is acclaimed as Titanic).
Alternately, you have Aphrodite depicted in some hymns as the daughter of Zeus and Dione, whereas alternately she emerges from the sea after the castration of Ouranos. So which is it?
Reading it with Neoplatonic ideas in mind, and considering that each god is, in effect, absolute unto itself, we can conjecture that: 1) each of the gods contains the cosmos, along with all other gods, in a sense, therefore we see "bleed over" of certain functions that are commonly ascribed to this or that god (to each god, then, the cosmos seems obviously a monotheism--some, as we know, take serious umbrage at this, whereas to others it is acceptable to fit into pantheons); 2) the gods have a plenitude of aspects, some of them apparently (and only apparently) contradictory, and different myths reveal different aspects of the gods.
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Date: 2021-11-16 08:44 pm (UTC)Alternately, you have Aphrodite depicted in some hymns as the daughter of Zeus and Dione, whereas alternately she emerges from the sea after the castration of Ouranos. So which is it?
Reading it with Neoplatonic ideas in mind, and considering that each god is, in effect, absolute unto itself, we can conjecture that: 1) each of the gods contains the cosmos, along with all other gods, in a sense, therefore we see "bleed over" of certain functions that are commonly ascribed to this or that god (to each god, then, the cosmos seems obviously a monotheism--some, as we know, take serious umbrage at this, whereas to others it is acceptable to fit into pantheons); 2) the gods have a plenitude of aspects, some of them apparently (and only apparently) contradictory, and different myths reveal different aspects of the gods.
Axé