Question: I was reading through your Elohim PDF and saw that there were two war goddesses (Anat and Astarte) and I was wondering if there any other pantheons with two or more gods who covered the same 'area'.
Yeah. That would be... all of them.
While there are occasionally gods who are the only one doing a particular cosmic thing in their pantheon, I can't think of a single pantheon in Scion's geography that doesn't have people who overlap. Ancient cultures didn't put gods in strict boxes where they couldn't branch out, and as a result plenty of gods share associations with other gods in their same pantheon.
Seriously, overlaps are epidemic. The Dodekatheon also have two war gods, with both Ares and Athena rocking the battle-ravaged casbah all over town. The Pesedjet have nine kajillion jillion death-oriented gods, the Anunna can't get enough gods with thunder on their minds, there are literally more than double as many Tuatha gods of battle as there are non-war-aligned Irish deities, the Yazata are like some kind of plant-growing commune and half the Aesir are getting their rune-magic in everyone else's soup.
And all of that's okay, because having overlapping areas of influence doesn't necessarily mean that one god is redundant. Often, two gods may share the same conceptual space but represent different aspects of it, such as Ares representing bloodlust and strength on the battlefield while Athena represents tactical strategy. Both are war gods of the highest caliber, but they don't do the same things and they're not making each other any less relevant or important by existing. Susanoo being the god of ocean storms doesn't make Ryujin any less important as lord of the depths of the sea, and Tonatiuh being the ascendant and personified sun does not diminish Huitzilopochtli's importance as the defender and supporter of the fiery daystar. The fact that there's more than one god with the same associations actually tells you straight out that they do different things; no culture's religion randomly invents a god who has no purpose or doesn't in some important way represent an idea, so if the ancients thought there were two gods of the fertile earth sharing space, you can usually bet that they had different symbolism, purpose or personality.
Some kinds of gods are rarer and therefore more likely to be singular; few pantheons have more than one god of darkness, for example, or more than one love goddess. But some do, and there ain't nothing wrong with that. And for young Scions who are up and coming, the fact that there's room for more than one deity in a given area is very good news indeed.
I always found it a little weird in Scion: God how they made a point to stress that as a Scion you either had to be God of your own thing, or piss off the God who already does a thing you're trying to do. Trying to be King of the Gods might piss someone off, but being another Sky God? Or War God? Or Death God? (Unless you're trying to be Lord of the Underworld.) It just seems like the Gods would be more concerned about your political plans for your position over your affinity.
ReplyDeleteIt's a confusion over the difference between being a god who has a purview and a god who is god of the same thing, I think. It's easy to have the same purview as someone else; there are myriad ways to use a purview and reasons to have it that are unique and interesting. Having Sky doesn't necessarily mean you're competing with the resident sky god; it just means you have wind/lightning/rainbow powers, which you might use in your own way.
DeleteIt's when you become a clone of another god that you have a problem. Most likely Thor doesn't really care if you have Water, or even thinks it's cool because, well, he likes Water. But if you have Water AND Horse AND Earth, now you look a whole lot more like you're trying to horn in on his act instead of getting your own, and you're likely to get severely beatdown'd if he feels you need to be humbled.
Having the same purview as someone else doesn't mean you're god of the same thing; for example, there are a bunch of "gods of Death" among the Pesedjet, but they're all functionally and representationally gods of different things within that death idea. No one probably cares if you're god of your own thing and just have some of the same powers. But if you're trying to actually be god of what they do, that's where the problem occurs.
And when I said Thor there... I meant Poseidon. Damn it, me.
DeleteEasy enough to get them confuses both being blonds with no beard...
ReplyDeleteYou little troll, you. ;)
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