Lady of the Brightest Star

Question: Are there any significant stories around about Astarte? My player is gonna be a Scion of hers, but I can't seem to find much of her doing anything besides being a cheerleader for Baal.

Ooh, one of the terrifying ladies of the Canaanite lands! There are indeed stories about her exploits, although not quite as many as someone like Baal who has an entire surviving myth cycle to his name.

Astarte is interesting because she is one of Baal's two wives along with Anat, and without a lot of material on the two of them, it sometimes seems like they're fairly identical or interchangeable, with Astarte the less well-defined of the two. Both are goddesses of love and sexuality, goddesses of war, and unflinchingly dedicated to the well-being of their husband Baal; but where Anat has separate stories of wading in the blood of her enemies, marching forth to defeat Mot and bearing Baal's child as a heifer, Astarte lacks these extra myths in the main body of Canaanite religion. We have to look a little harder to find stories of her actions, moving out to the wider world of Phoenician myth and her syncretizations with other cultures. We can start with Philo of Byblos, who in his description of Phoenician religion tells us that Baal and Astarte are the rulers of the universe; Anat may be the war-leader who destroys Baal's enemies, but Astarte is the queen who rules alongside him politically.

The most famous of Astarte's appearances are indeed in Baal's set of myths, which are overall the most well-known Canaanite myths we have. When Yam is declared king of the gods and Baal almost attacks the messenger in a fury, Astarte and Anat both restrain him, one on each arm, and remind him that murdering the messenger is not the wisest of all political moves. And when Baal defeats Yam, Astarte rebukes him for his unnecessary cruelty, telling him that Yam was already his prisoner and that killing him would be inappropriate, before moving on to declare before all the gods that since Baal has won, he should now be hailed as king of the gods without question. Different interpreters of the text have different ideas of what's going on here; Astarte may be telling Baal to back off of Yam because he's their sibling, or because since he was invested with power by El himself it would be politically foolish to outright kill him. But her call to the other gods to accept Baal is also a political power play, and a pretty ballsy one since El, who has previously been in charge of choosing who will rule after him, has not yet authorized that shift in power. Calling for Baal's rulership is in a way directly challenging El, who placed Yam above him, and calling the other gods to support Baal is something of a power coup away from the old father of the pantheon.

But these are pretty small mentions of Astarte, and clearly part of Baal's story rather than her own. However, the story of Astarte and Eshmun is all about her, with no whisper of Baal in sight. In that story - related by Photios, a Greek writer, who in usual Greek style uses Greek names for those involved and calls Eshmun "Asclepius of Beirut" since he is associated with healing like the Greek figure of that name - Astarte (here called Astronoe, "the heavenly" or "the starry", referring to her position as the morning star) falls in love with Eshmun, whose youthful beauty so impresses her that she begins purusing him relentlessly. Eshmun is afraid of her, since she is clearly a powerful and dangerous goddess (and possibly because he doesn't want to be on the receiving end of any jealous retribution from Baal) so he flees from her, and when he realizes he can't escape her completely, finally castrates himself so that she'll have no further interest in him. She catches up to him a moment too late, and he dies in her arms; full of grief, Astarte heals his wounds "with her body's warmth" and he becomes a god of healing, whose shrines were visited by those ill or injured. Eshmun does not appear in other myths besides this one, but is probably a Scion; Greek writers in the area claim he was the son of Apollo, which likely means the god Resheph, who is likewise a plague-associated archer who was often glossed as Apollo by Greek and Roman writers. In Syria, male cultists dedicated to her sometimes ritually castrated themselves in honor of her, echoing Eshmun's sacrifice.

The story of Astarte and Eshmun is more than a little bit similar to the story of Aphrodite and Adonis; in both cases, the love goddess falls in love with a beautiful young semi-mortal, who eventually dies because of her infatuation with him but becomes a resurrected divine figure in his own right. The ancient cults of Anat and Astarte (and Ishtar, over in Babylon) probably influenced Aphrodite and her stories considerably, and since Adonis is likewise a Canaanite import, it's very possible that the story of Aphrodite and Adonis was borrowed from this one about Astarte and Eshmun. Originally, anyway, although by the time Adonis' cult became important with its own mystery religion, they had become firmly separate figures.

The other place Astarte turns up in a major myth is, surprisingly, in Egypt. Thanks to being geographically close to one another, several figures from the Canaanite religion were imported into Egyptian cults in the northeast; gods with similar associations were often syncretized, so that some myths became attributed to Egyptian gods despite being originally of Canaanite origin. This led to the rise of a few areas in which Set and Baal were syncretized, since they were both temperamental storm gods with delusions of kingship, and in some of those areas the idea arose that Set was married to Anat and Astarte, who were given to him as consolation prizes when he lost the rulership of the gods to Horus. In those cults, it is Astarte who is the major figure in the myth of the sea falling in love with her and demanding her as tribute lest it overflow and flood the countryside, and it is for her sake that Set must go out and conquer the sea. It's an interesting syncretized myth, since the sea as the antagonist might have some roots in the Canaanite myth of Baal fighting Yam, with Set standing in for his fellow storm god. Further south in Egypt, Nephthys becomes the lady of the myth instead of Astarte since she is Set's traditional wife, but it's still a neat place to mess around with if you're looking for stuff to do with the Canaanite goddesses.

Astarte may not be the no-holds-barred bloodbath runner and war-monger that her conquering sister Anat is, but she's still an improtant goddess with a lot of neat stories and imagery. Good luck to that Scion of yours - they're about to head out into a the wonderful world of the few intrepid children of the war goddesses, and it's a dangerous place.

Tiny PSA

Hey, there, folks!

In case you love pronunciation guides and love the Elohim, the two are now together with hopefully mostly accurate pronunciation recordings on the House Rules page. Bust out that Hebrew chet sound in honor of Hanukkah.

I'm trying to slowly add the names of gods from the downloadable supplements when I have a few free minutes and a quiet house to record in, so hopefully we'll see some more of those in the not too distant future.

Until then, back to your Sunday, you guys. :)

Edit: Also, person who wrote in wondering why Uller wasn't on there... he is now. :)

Henolatrotheism

Question: The henotheistic Israelis likely saw their "King of Kings & Lord of Lords" as some sort of divine judiciary the region. If this were in fact mythically true, how would it affect the lives of the various pantheons of the fertile crescent (Moloch as a kind of divine criminal, Baal's right to rule, etc.)?

This is a really interesting question, because it involves a bunch of different concepts and religions interacting - henotheism versus polytheism, Justice as a purview and a concept, Virtues and so on. There's a whole lot to dive into!

To start with, the Israeli people definitely did think of Yahweh as a divine judiciary; his word, however humanity got it, was law, and his rulings on what was or was not morally okay absolute. You'll see this illustrated time and time again in the Old Testament, when those who deviate from the religiously mandated set of morals are usually brutally punished as an example to others. For the Israelites, obedience to the divine laws of Yahweh is neither negotiable nor questionable; it's as much a part of the foundation of the universe as gravity.

But, at the same time, this is a henotheistic religion, which means that the ancient Israelites acknowledged that there were not only other gods, but that they had powers and spheres of influence themselves. Yahweh was their god, but not everyone's god; he was with absolute and utter certainty in charge of them, but not necessarily of other groups of people who "belonged" to other gods, and probably not of those other gods at all. It can be tricky to talk about this, because Judaism is a continuum that started as henotheism and eventually made a transition to monolatrism, which is the point at which the Israelite banner god becomes considered by them preeminent over other gods as well as over humanity, and the Bible is usually not polite enough to tell you when that evolution is happening exactly.

For example, consider the story of the Golden Calf (incidentally, possibly a representation of Moloch, who is also associated with cattle and flame, or some other local Canaanite god), which the Israelites built and worshiped while the prophet Moses was off communing with the burning shrubbery in search of legal enlightenment. The problem that so upsets both Moses and Yahweh here is not that there's a foreign god stealing his thunder; it's that the traitorous Israelites are worshiping him, rather than adhering only to their totem god the way they're supposed to. The idol is destroyed and the people punished (like, seriously, via mass murder), and Yahweh goes back to being the top dog. Nobody conceives of him fighting with the other god or anything like that; it's a problem of the mortals misbehaving, and it's the mortals he has power over to correct the issue.

This is why, despite the fact that the Israelites eventually settle down in Canaan and incorporate many of the local beliefs into their own religion, we never consider Yahweh part of the Canaanite pantheon. He simply isn't; he never interacts with the Canaanite gods and is quite ferocious about being a pantheon of one, in fact. All the mentions in the Old Testament of Yahweh being a "jealous god", not to mention the first commandment that the people have no other gods before him, are not examples of the Israelites believing that Yahweh could dominate all other gods, at least not yet. They're just expressions of henotheism's basic tenet: yeah, there are other gods, and yeah, they can do powerful and cool stuff, but we only worship this one. Don't worship the other ones. Stop it.

So, in this religious and political climate, we're looking at a god who can (and will, and does, with extreme prejudice) punish the living shit out of humans who break his divine laws... but who doesn't actually have any interaction with other gods at all. Unless Baal shows up in person and steals the Ark of the Covenant or something - and he does not, nor do any other foreign gods actually make personal appearances in Israelite literature of the time - he's not the person "doing wrong" if people run off to go worship him instead. That's those peoples' fault. The closest you ever see to direct conflict is always through a human vessel, such as when Moses matches powers with the Egyptian sorcerers. Much later in the religion, the Jewish people will extrapolate on the idea of other gods never directly challenging Yahweh to claim that there are no other gods, becoming true monotheists.

So, at any rate, back to the Scion framework. Yahweh, if you play him as a god of equal Legend to the other pantheons rather than a Titan or some other weird thing, is most definitely a god with a giant serving of Justice powers, but he probably can't use them on the other gods much, if at all. Also really important to this discussion is the ancient Fertile Crescent's idea of city-states with a totem god and sovereign power over their own areas, which occurred all across Mesopotamia and the Levant as well as making forays west into Greece; each city, while recognizing that there were other gods that were powerful and worthy of worship, still had its own totem god, which was all-important within that city and the ultimate authority over a given set of people. The Israelites are wanderers without any city of their own, so while they have Yahweh as their totem god, they don't have an area in which they make the laws; they have to actually go out and start stealing other peoples' cities, at which point they fall under Yahweh's jurisdiction. Yahweh can't march into Ugarit and start smiting Baal with Justice for daring to rival him as king - because Ugarit belongs to Baal and there Baal is king and the highest authority, and Justice would simply not work.

It's the eternal conundrum of a Justice god: your Justice powers are absolute and irresistible, but they will never help you break the law yourself, so if you go somewhere the law isn't in your favor, you're completely SOL.

This is one of the reasons that the eternal battling of the Israelites to take the Promised Land of Canaan away from its native inhabitants is so incredibly important and all-encompassing during the Old Testament, stretching on for years and years and years of pitched battle. Gods in this region do everything through the proxies of their cities and people (which, not coincidentally, is what the Canaanite PSP of Malak is all about!), so before Yahweh can exercise any control over Jericho, Yarikh has to be ousted by the Israelites conquering the place, and before he can extend his religious law to apply to Rabbah, the worshipers of Moloch have to be toppled from power. It's a fundamental difference in how ancient middle eastern cultures conceived of their gods interacting with the world; the deities of Greece or Mexico or China were thought of as actually visiting the world and doing things in it by their own power, but the gods of the Crescent, although they could empower the people or cause natural disasters with their far-off heavenly doings, never did. Some of that is probably holdover from the original Mesopotamian religions, in which the gods were considered so incredibly powerful and unquestionably more important than mortals that the idea of them ever having any reason to descend down into the gutter where humans lived was laughable.

So, in most cases, Yahweh's prodigious command over the powers of judgment and law do not help him against the Elohim, who not only have several gods who can match him there pound for pound but who have their own claim and estates in the area as well. He'll never be using those powers to restrict or punish Baal and Moloch, because they're all using human proxies and it's unlikely that they'll ever actually personally do anything to one another that might break a rule, or indeed meet in person at all; and he also can't necessarily smite mortals who work for gods he doesn't approve of (i.e., everyone), unless they are subject to the laws of his land. Essentially, once the Israelites conquer a place, he can smite the shit out of it and usually does, but he generally won't just set cities aflame from a distance, and he certainly won't walk up to Dagon and send him to the Star Chamber for crimes against Judaism.

If you read the Bible, you can actually watch the change in the religion and therefore Yahweh's treatment as a giver of law and judgment as you go. Early in the Old Testament, the Hebrews are henotheists and Yahweh is their god and rules their lives, but they are also wanderers in the wilderness and have no power over other peoples or deities. Later in the Old Testament, they become monolatrists, and their rhetoric changes from "this is our peoples' god and therefore the most important to us" to "this is the most important god and other gods can't compete with him", which happens about when they've managed to conquer most of Canaan and are no longer nomadic herders but now the legal power in the region. And finally, in the New Testament, they become true monotheists and move to a model in which there are no other gods and everyone else is stupid and worshiping idols or (if something actually appears they can't explain) demons, which occurs about when they lose power again thanks to the incursions of Babylon and Rome, and have to find a new way to explain their god's power and importance outside the context of him granting victory to his people. As henotheists, they knew Yahweh as their god who protected and supported them if they followed his rules; as monolatrists, they knew him as the most potent god in the region who could conquer any other religion and bring them to supreme power; and as monotheists, they knew him as the only god in existence, whose powers and intentions were too far above them to be understood by the human mind.

This has been a very long post, which always seems to happen when monotheism comes up.

Dogpile

Question: I’m running a game that, rather than dealing with the Titans, involves a cold war between the Dodekatheon and everyone who hates them, and suddenly becomes violent due to the recent discovery of Metis’s son outside of the Dodekatheon’s sphere of influence. My problem is that I can only think of two pantheons that would be angry enough to go to war with them: the Nemetondevos and the Elohim. Are there any other pantheons that would be angry with them? Would they have any allies?

Oh, man, a Dodekatheon hate-fest? Invite us!

The biggest pantheon I can think of that should be involved here is the Pesedjet. The Egyptian gods are millennia-long frenemies with the Dodekatheon; sometimes they have positive commerce and even share myths, and sometimes they fight over territory and call each other racial slurs across the Mediterranean. There was a long history of argumentative interaction between the two even before Rome sailed across the water and imposed their own rulers in the Ptolemaic dynasties, and there're almost limitless possibilities for who wants to do what in this situation. Is Isis cool with the Greeks, who had temples to her in some of their own territories? What about Horus, who saw his rightful line of pharaohs replaced by invaders from the north? How does Bastet feel about Greco-Roman influence basically transforming her from a sun goddess into a lunar deity, and do the highly regimented death gods blame foreign burial practices for causing the erosion of their own process for the afterlife? Do Thoth and Hermes get together and laugh about the idea of Hermes Trismegistus, or is one or the other or both of them pissed off about the situation?

It's a total powderkeg of a pantheon when it comes to the Dodekatheon, and you can never tell if they'll be on their side as ancestral allies, undermining them as long-time enemies or split, with some of the gods going one way and others another (what a surprise, the Egyptian pantheon has disagreement among the ranks!). Any dogpile on the Dodekatheon has to include them in some way, and since they're also longtime allies of the Elohim, it's inevitable that they're going to get involved.

You might also want to investigate what the native Roman gods are doing and what side they come down on in this conflict. On the one hand, the Dodekatheon in their guise as the Dii Consentes brought massive glory to the empire and are some of the most recognizable members of Roman religion, but on the other hand, they seized control of the pantheon from the native Italian gods who might not have wanted their "generous" help in making their own way. Purely Roman gods like Janus might have an axe to grind, whether by openly siding against them or trying to sabotage them from within, but then again some might support Zeus and his rule and remain staunch defenders of their conglomerate pantheon. There's plenty of opportunity for internecine struggle, back-door dealings and zany avoidance comedy just within the Dodekatheon itself.

As for possible allies for the beleaguered Greeks, don't despair, they have a few. The Yazata might be a surprising source of help; the pantheons have traditionally cooperated fairly well, with Mithra even enjoying a robust Roman cult as Mithras, but they're also tricky thanks to some lingering bad feelings about invasion forces on both sides and the fact that the Dodekatheon have to be on their best behavior around their eastern allies or risk offending them into leaving (or worse, punishing them for their transgressions). They might also be able to call on the Bogovi for aid, who also had quite a bit of friendly overlap and fairly peaceful coexistence with them back in the day.

Maya-World Relations

Question: How do the K'uh get along with your 'homebrew' (I use the word sparingly because I don't believe it really is, given the amount of research put into it) pantheons?

The first of several Homebrew Pantheon Posts! Whoever you are, thank you for being so kind about the work we put into these - it's nice to know you guys like 'em. :)

Okay, round one: the K'uh and making nice with everybody else. Of the other downloadable pantheons, they probably have the most trouble interacting with the Elohim; these are two pantheons who really just don't get each other and probably never will. The K'uh think the Elohim are crazy and reactionary, psychotic and overly vengeful, too complacent in their city-states when things like cities never stand for long, and they would have no particular interest in fighting over who has the most layers of divine kingship. On the flip side, the utter changeability of the K'uh would drive the Elohim out of their minds trying to figure out what they were doing, and they would not only not understand the idea of the many-gods-in-one, they would be likely to think of the whole Harmony-obsessed pantheon as misty-eyed hippies with no ability to get anything done. There'd no doubt they could probably both impress one another in battle... but it's hard to bond over Courage alone. Mostly you just both get covered in entrails and then go home.

The Anunna are similarly foreign to the K'uh, though less volatile and therefore less worrisome. The Anunna are very old and very sure of their superiority, so they'd be likely to treat the K'uh as strange upstart children who have developed some very weird customs indeed, and conversely the K'uh probably wouldn't think the Anunna had a lot to offer that was relevant or useful to the modern world (especially since they're so rigidly rules-focused and unchanging). They wouldn't dislike each other, but there's not a lot of respect on either side.

But the Apu, there are some people the K'uh can relate to. Although their empires never met in antiquity (I'm serious, don't make me start yelling about the Inca and the Maya being nowhere near each other again), they share many common goals and ideals, including territorial expansion, human sacrifice, strong emphasis on noble lineage and the idea of the gods as awesome cosmic forces of nature, not just really powerful people who run around in heaven. Their most major difference is in the K'uh emphasis on the fluid nature of the divine, contrasted against the Apu as the unchanging forces of the elements themselves, but they would probably both allow that there's room for both interpretations.

The Alihah... well, they understand things that don't stay the same, and while the K'uh turning into various versions of themselves isn't quite the same as the Alihah embarking on their eternal travels, in the end there's a common philosophical idea of a journey that changes oneself that they could probably get together on. The K'uh, like many other pantheons, are probably a little disdainful of the Alihah, whose people never had any true military or imperial might and who were worshiped in a very disorganized and piecemeal manner by their standards, but the Alihah are chill enough that they probably don't care. In fact, the two pantheons find each other intriguing: each sees the other as a group of deities with an enticingly different way of changing and moving, and would probably be very interested in experiencing a little of that.

And, finally, the Bogovi, who are probably inclined to be best friends with the K'uh. Both pantheons are prone to changing their selves without losing the core of who they are - the K'uh through their different aspects, the Bogovi through their many faces and names - and they share a love of the proper natural balance and a drive to preserve and support it. The K'uh are not a very hands-on pantheon when it comes to their mortal worshipers, which never hurts when trying to make friends with the Bogovi, and the two probably have a great time trading war stories, planning escapades against the Titans and playing exotic sports.

Skillful and Wise

Question: I am currently preparing for an upcoming Scion campaign where I am the Storyteller. One of the players has chosen to play a Scion of Kothar. What can you tell me about him? What are his major myths?

Kothar is the best, guys! He is the most badass of crafter gods and I am way excited that someone is playing his Scion! If you didn't already see us recommending it in the comments, he should totally have the new Artistry purview associated, in addition to the things you see associated with him in the downloadable supplement.

Kothar (whose full name, Kothar-wa-Khasis, means "skillful and wise", commentary on his awesomeness) is the major crafting god of the Elohim, but he was also a major figure in Egypt in his time, where he had his own temples and was worshiped for his creative force, even occasionally being considered an alternative face (or rival!) of Ptah. His association with Egypt (where he was worshiped as the builder of temples for the other, less handy gods) was so strong that even the Canaanites considered him to actually live there, the only one of his pantheon not to make his home with the other sons of El. As a result, he represents foreign artistry and wonders from afar, probably because the ancient Canaanites were not as advanced in the crafts and sciences as some of their neighbors and consequently imported most of their technology and tools.

Kothar's most major myths revolve around his involvement in the battle between Baal and his brothers and the ascension of the storm god to the throne. Due to a lot of behind-the-scenes machinations by El and Asherah, Yam, the sea god, was crowned king of the Elohim and sent to fight Baal, whom he believed would try to overthrow him; their battle was cosmic, fierce and spanned across the fields of heaven, and Baal, despite all his thunderous might, found himself losing to the overwhelming power of the relentless sea. Although Kothar was in the middle of building Yam's royal palace, he secretly supported Baal (and had in fact earlier gone to Yam's undersea abode and threatened that he would be slain by a magical weapon if he didn't back off), so when he saw Baal losing he leapt into action and forged Baal's mighty magical clubs, Yagrush (Chaser) and Aymur (Driver). He swooped into battle, performed magical incantations over the clubs to make them especially potent, and handed them off to Baal, who with their power was able to overcome and defeat Yam once and for all. Kothar then proclaimed Baal's new lordship to the gods, presumably rather pleased with himself.

Later, after Baal has been established as king, he gets into a potentially lethal insult-war with his brother Mot, god of death, and as a result demands that Kothar, who is building Baal's new lordly palace, not put any windows into its walls. This is an echo of the ancient Canaanite concept of death (especially in one's sleep) entering via the window; presumably, Baal is trying to avoid leaving Mot anywhere to come in and get him. However, Kothar, being the magical wisdom dynamo that he is, also realizes that if the house had no windows, Baal's life-giving rain would not filter down to the world below, so he refuses and spends quite a few lines of poetry trying to convince Baal to change his mind. There's a lot of arguing, but when it comes down to it, Kothar will not build Baal a window-less palace, and he is eventually forced to accede lest he not get any of this sweet god-architecture to live in.

Kothar is, like Hephaestus, the source of most important relics and magical items in the Canaanite pantheon; in addition to Baal's clubs, he also crafted the gold-and-silver temple relics of Asherah (given to her by Baal as a peace offering) and the peerless bow of Aqhat, which was so perfect that the goddess Anat demanded it for herself and then destroyed the Scion who refused to hand it over to her.

Kothar is a little bit like what you would get if you crossed Ptah with Hephaestus but threw in liberal amounts of sassiness and mysterious magical ability. He's one of my personal favorites among the Elohim, and I can't wait to see what happens for those bringing him into their stories!

Sons of El

Question: Who is Baal's father, Dagon or El?

It's all a matter of translation and interpretation. And since Canaanite mythology is mostly preserved on piecemeal tablets in ritual poetic form, it's every man for himself when it comes to making a call.

In the Baal cycle, Baal is directly referred to as "son of Dagon", which is pretty plain. Setting the storm god as the son of the grain deity makes a lot of sense in the myth itself; it's no wonder that Yam and Mot, sons of the current king and greatest among gods, are mortally offended by an upstart pretender to the throne who both of them should by rights outrank and succeed before. On the other hand, it's also theorized that Baal's connection to Dagon may be a symbolic one, and that as the dying fertility god who renews the world after a drought, he might be called the "son" of the god of grain to illustrate their close concepts.

On the other hand, Baal is also referred to one of the "sons of El", which also seems pretty black and white. The equal powers of Baal as sky, Mot as death and Yam as sea seem to make sense as the forces of three equal brothers, especially when compared to Zeus, Hades and Poseidon (who many scholars believe were probably influenced by them). But, then again, "sons of El" - literally what the word elohim means - is a generic term that seems to be used to refer to all of the gods, highlighting that El is their original ancestor and creator, and may not be meant to mean that Baal is his actual direct issue.

We're inclined to play Baal as the son of Dagon, making him probably El's grandson rather than a direct heir, and to assume that the title of Elohim in his case just means "one of the brood of El" rather than anything too specific. It covers both possibilities and also allows for some interesting interplay between members of different family lines and loyalties within the pantheon.

This Town Ain't Big Enough

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.

Bulls on Parade

Question: Do you think that there is any way that Baal and Moloch, with all that they have in common, could be the same god, or are they just two separate gods that just happen to have a lot in common?

Well, no, I don't think they're the same god. They're pretty clearly distinct figures. But hey, we might as well talk about those things they have in common!

There are really only two things Baal and Moloch have in common: both have names that can be used as titles (usually translated as "lord" and "king", respectively), and both are associated with bulls.

The etymological similarity sounds like a connection in English, but that's specifically because it's in translation; in the original language (what we've reconstructed of it, anyway), the two words are clearly separate and have different connotations. Baal is more accurately transliterated from the symbols as b'l, although we're fairly certain of the vowels thanks to contextual evidence from Ras Shamra and Hebrew sources, and while it's most often translated as "lord", it's actually much closer to "owner" or even "husband". When used as a verb, it actually means "he marries", and the feminine form of the noun, Baalah, likewise refers not just to a lady in power but also to a mistress of a household and a wife. It's not surprising that Baal's epithet implies husbandliness along with control and ownership, because those are the trifecta of Baal's power. He's not only the king of his pantheon but also the very virile and potent husband of Anat and Astarte and the general master of the universe. The word suits him, and its plethora of associations also makes it an easy title to apply to other deities in the area, both because it allows them to embody some of those same qualities of control and also to borrow some of big Baal's glory.

Moloch, on the other hand, is properly named mlk, which is the proper noun meaning king or ruler. Debate rages on in the scholarly community over whether or not Moloch's name is actually the same as mlk, however, because unlike b'l we aren't a hundred percent sure what vowels are involved and whether or not they might change the meaning of the word. Traditionally, scholars have reconstructed the word "king" as melek and assumed that the Hebrew Bible replaced the vowel with an O in order to make a disrespectful pun out of the name by rhyming it with the word boseth, which means "shameful" (something the Hebrews had a keen interest in seeing that people thought of the Canaanite gods). But mlk is also used in other contexts, most notably burnt sacrifices, which has split scholars down the middle from believing that this proves the burning cult belongs to Moloch all the way to the other extreme of deciding that there was no such god as Moloch at all and all mentions of him must be referring to burnt sacrifices. Still others believe that there must have been totally different vowels for the god's proper name and that it wasn't the same as the word for "king" at all, which is just as unprovable as the rest. Poor Moloch has a lot less direct attestation that Baal since he isn't included in the Ras Shamra tablets, and as a result there's a lot more rampant confusion about his name and what exactly it, and he, mean.

So you can see that the etymological connection between their names really isn't much of one. In English, it would be like saying that a guy named Master of the House obviously had the same name as another guy named King, and there's a possibility that one or both of them aren't really named that in the first place. The similarities are superficial.

They do, however, both share a connection to the bull as a totem animal! That's totally legit! Or at least, as legit as we can get. Gods associated with bulls are traditional in the Middle East and Mediterranean, where the animal is associated with strength, virility and power, and the two of them are keeping company with the likes of Apis, Ashur, Dionysus, Gugalanna, Marduk, Mithra, Qos, Teshub and Zeus, all powerful figures associated with manliness (and those are by no means the only ones). It's not surprising that more than one god in the same area might be associated with the bull, especially in a culture like the Canaanites where different city states may celebrate their local patron gods with all the trappings of royalty regardless of what else they do.

In light of all that, I don't see much reason to assume that Baal and Moloch are the same guy. But that doesn't mean you can't play with their possible connection in a game; Moloch's kind of a pain in the ass, and when Baal's not looking it's totally possible he might have at some point (maybe even now!) tried to seize power or convince mortals that he was in fact Baal. Baal's notoriously jealous of his power and might always be looking for possible dissidents in his pantheon, including Moloch, and assume in his paranoia that the god might be plotting against him, or maybe one or both gods are playing a long game of Fatebonds, trying to dislodge the other.

My favorite wacky theory to connect the two is the idea that Moloch, who has no distinct genealogy in Canaanite myth, might be an ancient son of Baal. On the way to confronting Mot, Baal famously has sex with a heifer (depending on the translator, sometimes assumed to be Anat in animal form) and has a calf-like child, which he then offers up to death (and Mot) as a sacrifice before heading into the underworld. Moloch's bull and death connotations, not to mention his nasty temperament, could be a result of this origin story, which has no real mythological backing but is pretty entertaining anyway.

Chasing and Driving

Question: Do you have any cool Canaanite relic ideas that didn't make it into your Elohim PDF or your Reliquary?

Not really. I know some of you crazy kids out there just build relics for fun in your free time, but we really don't; if we build a relic, it's because we need it for a specific purpose, whether that's for a PC or NPC that's about to hit the streets or for inclusion in a supplement. We don't have extra homeless relics built and lying around, so pretty much all of the Canaanite toys we've ever built are already on display in the supplements.

Canaanite mythology is full of neat stuff, however, so the fact that we haven't put any more together shouldn't stop you from doing so! Weapons in the mold of Baal's famous clubs, Yagrush and Ayamur, are an excellent place to start, especially for Scions of Baal or Kothar, and chips of the crown of the gods that was passed around so ridiculously between the brothers and their father El might also have regal powers. A vial of Asherah's waters, cattle descended from Baal's and Anat's bovine tryst, skulls and chunks from the long-fallen walls of Jericho or the plague-spreading arrows of Resheph could all be repurposed for Scions' relics, or at least lend some of their material or imagery to new ones.

We don't have any ready-made toys for you, but the Canaanite myths have a wealth of options just waiting for you to get creative with!

The Seventy Sons

Question: Is there more information available about the 70 Sons of El and Asherah, other than the stories about their most famous members?

Specifically? No, not really, sad to say. We've lost a great deal of Canaanite myth, and we're lucky to know about the seventy sons at all. But there are a lot of things we can extrapolate from the things we do know!

For one thing, "seventy" may not be a literal number. Just as the Japanese refer to the "eight million" kami or the Aztecs refer to the "four hundred" stars in the sky, it may be intended as a symbolic number, meaning that El has a lot of sons and is the powerful progenitor of the universe and its gods rather than that he has literally exactly that number. You certainly can use it as a literal number if you want to, though, and it still gives you an impression of a pretty large number of gods fathered by the almighty creator.

On another level, "sons" may also be figurative; that is, all the gods are considered El's sons because he's the leader of the pantheon and the creator of the world, so they're referred to as his sons no matter what their actual geneaology is. Daughters aren't addressed at all, so where all these goddesses came from is anybody's guess; most likely they're also offspring of El, and unmentioned because daughters were far less important than sons in an ancient Canaanite mindset. Calling someone the father of a bunch of sons implies that he's strong, virile and commanding; calling him the father of a bunch of daughters only implies that he's going to have to find a lot of husbands for them if he wants his house to himself.

Of the sons of El, we only know the names of five of them specifically: Baal, Yam, Mot, Shalim and Shahar. There's also a little confusion because Baal is sometimes referred to as the son of Dagon instead of El, making Dagon the direct son of the big guy, and our lack of evidence has so far made it impossible for scholars to come to a consensus on that one. Past that point, you're in the realm of conjecture; it's reasonable to assume that the gods whose parents aren't directly named are also sons of El (because El's everybody's daddy, right?), so you can add Moloch, Kothar, Athtar, Melqart, Resheph, Chemosh, Marqod and Yarikh to the list (and possibly Eshmun if you want to assume his father Sydyk = Jupiter = El, but trying to figure out what Sanchuniathon was talking about will give you a migraine if you're not careful).

So that gives us thirteen to fifteen out of seventy, depending on interpretation. The other fifty-five gods remain a mystery, which leaves Storytellers plenty of room to play with who they might be, where they are now and what they're doing in the general landscape of the godly realms of the Canaanite deities. Our writeup on the pantheon suggests that they probably reside in Sedeq as servants of their Titanic father, but there are a lot of them and there's no reason you can't splinter some off to go do other things if you think it would make for a neat story. Some scholars even suggest that Yahweh might originally have been one of the sons of El, so those of you who are always on the lookout for ways to drag the monotheistic religions into things can sneak him in that way while being fully scholarly legit.

I wish I had more for you, but that's about all there is, unfortunately. Unless there's another happy farming accident in Syria or Lebanon, we probably won't know much more any time soon, so let your imagination run wild!

Also Because I Like Him

Question: About two months ago I finally had an opportunity to make a Scion from one of your pantheon supplements when I made a Scion of the Elohim for a new game. Because of that, I did some research into the pantheon and have found myself wondering a bit why you opted to make Yam a god instead of a Titan. Not that I disagree with or dislike the decision (he’s who I ended up using for the Divine Parent, after all) but he often seems to be referred to as a more primeval deity, definitely had a directly a...

Oops! Sorry, friend, it looks like the question box cut you off. It sometimes eats the ends of particularly long questions. I assume that A-phrase that got snipped was some variation on "antagonistic role", but please come correct me if I'm wrong!

I actually did consider making Yam a Titan back when I was first setting up the pantheon, and Mot as well. They're both old and serve as direct antagonists to Baal as the leader of the pantheon, and both have fairly major roles as cosmically powerful overseers of a facet of the universe. I finally decided against it based on strength of personality and their treatment in what Canaanite religion we can still unearth and study, but I can easily see where the question's coming from.

Yam is definitely a temperamental monster of a dude, but one of the reasons I think he fits better as a god than as a Titan is that a lot of his antagonistic rampageyness isn't of his own accord; it's because someone else is pulling his strings, and that someone is his father El. Yam didn't set out to usurp Baal's throne, but was rather told by his father that he was the rightful heir, and further told that Baal was going to try to usurp him. The ensuing epic battle between sky and sea isn't an example of Yam taking up arms against his pantheon; on the contrary, it's an example of him thinking that Baal is the bad guy here and going into defense mode. It's just his unfortunate blunder that Baal is not actually a bad guy and that El specifically told him all of this in the hopes that he'd kill his brother (because El is himself afraid that Baal might try to overthrow him, because, if you didn't know, who's king is about the most important concept anyone in the Canaanite pantheon can conceive of). The major aggressor in this myth is definitely El, not either of the sons he intentionally pits against one another.

Yam also has more of the human touch than most Titans, though of course some of that is subject to interpretation. He didn't enjoy the robustness of Baal's cult - not even close - but he still did have a major group of mortal worshipers who made sacrifices and prayers to him, especially once the Canaanites evolved into the Phoenician empire and started spending a large percentage of their time in boats. He also has direct ties to his pantheon that are not necessarily negative; his mother Asherah appears to support him (though she, like El, has ulterior motives) and their shared sister Astarte prevents Baal from killing him when he's defeated. The battle between the two of them could be construed as a combat between a god and a Titan, but to me it looks more like good old-fashioned god-on-god quarreling, and the fact that Baal turns around and does the same thing a minute later with his other brother Mot suggests that these guys just have a very, very bad case of sibling rivalry.

As for Yam's primeval power, he certainly has that... but so do Baal and Mot, and the three of them are a triumvirate that balances itself out pretty admirably between sky, sea and underworld. You guys of course know that I'm not a fan of comparative mythology where it isn't due, but it's worth noticing that we've seen that triumvirate setup before, and that it's very likely that Zeus, Poseidon and Hades, the same setup of three brothers with three equal kingdoms, owe something to their Levantine cousins across the Mediterranean. The Canaanite pantheon as a whole has a distinctly primeval flavor, which is not surprising considering that they're one of the oldest groups of gods in Scion's landscape, and Yam's mythology doesn't seem to indicate more of that out of him than out of his fellow gods.

Finally, one of the major tests of a Titan: Yam and Mot don't disappear. They get into big fat fights with their brother over who's in charge, but they both survive and continue to be members of the pantheon and figures of worship (or dread, in Mot's case) for their people. Most Titans don't do that, as the gods simply put them down, banish them forever or at the very least stop talking about them as members in good standing.

I could definitely see the appeal of Yam or Mot as Titans, and I wouldn't be surprised if some Storytellers somewhere use them as such; they're old, they're cranky, and they fight the king storm-god, which are all pretty classic signs of possible Titanhood. But I think they have enough connection to their people and pantheon to remain playable, if contentious, members of the official roster of gods, and they furthermore bring different powers and imagery with them that help enrich the pantheon as a whole and make it more interesting for Scion.

Lord of the Tophet

Question: Historically, how popular and wide-ranging was Moloch's worship?

Despite the nasty rap he tends to get in modern popular imagination, Moloch's cult was actually one of the most important ones for the ancient Canaanites and Phoenicians; it appears everywhere their civilization has a strong foothold, from the famous Valley of Hinnom (better known to most as Gehenna) in Canaan to as far away as southern Spain and northern Morocco where the seafaring Phoenicians set up their ports. It's hard to gauge "popularity" for a cult that died so long ago that we don't have much information remaining on it, but the fact that anything on it managed to survive this long despite Moloch not having any myths in the Ugaritic texts that popularized the other Canaanite gods is a testament to its strength.

Moloch's cult was certainly strong enough to heavily piss off the budding Jewish religion, which spends quite a bit of ink in the Bible yelling at wayward members of its own population who were misled or foolish enough to worship Moloch (or worship Yahweh in the style of Moloch, depending on your interpretation, but obviously either was a no-no). King Solomon even famously built a temple to Moloch - on the Mount of Olives, no less - to please his wife, a native Canaanite and devotee of the god. Since Baal was often used as a title for other gods as well as the name of the storm deity, there's also a large presence of scholars who think that the Baal of Carthage might actually have been Moloch, making him, along with Tanit/Anat, ruler of the most famous Phoenician center of human sacrifice.

Pinpointing cults of Moloch suffers from some of the same problems with pinpointing cults of Baal, actually; just as baal was sometimes used as a title meaning "lord", Moloch's name is very similar to malak or melek, a title that could be used to mean "king". This leads to some gods called by either name really being someone else, and other gods only called by those epithets possibly secretly being Moloch or Baal but without giving us much to go on to be able to tell either way. Reconstructed Canaanite language is a real bitch sometimes, and Moloch's name in particular was probably warped by the nearby Hebrews as well, who probably changed its vowels when they talked about him to more closely resemble those in the word boshet, meaning to them "shameful".

But, as far as how widespread Moloch's worship was, it's most reasonable to assume that it was probably about as popular as that of the other major Canaanite gods, spread throughout the Canaanite kingdoms and the later Phoenician empire. He doesn't have much in the way of stories (that have survived for us to survive, at least), but the archaeological and written evidence from the area suggests that that didn't prevent him from enjoying a robust cult presence.

Sky Versus Sea: Fight!

Question: Do you think the episode of Set, Nepthys and the sea could be played as a conflict between Set and Poseidon?

I think that if you have a fun plot you want to spin off of that, sure, go for it. Egyptian mythology really doesn't have a sea-god thanks to their focus being narrowed down mostly to the Nile and surrounding environs, so there's no easy Egyptian figure to attach to the myth and the personified sea is merely itself. There is also no hint of any Greek influence in that particular myth, but Poseidon is the Greek god of the Mediterranean, and if you wanted to play it as an ancient political grudge-match kind of thing, you probably could.

Interestingly, I've seen scholarly suggestion that that particular myth might be heavily influenced by Canaanite mythology; in an alternate version, Set is instead married to Astarte (who was given to him as a sort of consolation prize after he lost the throne to Horus) and it's her he's saving from the ocean, which therefore probably refers to Yam, the Canaanite sea-god who's always startin' shit. This is probably a result of the fact that Egyptian and Canaanite territories overlapped and that Set and Baal, being both bad-tempered storm gods, might have been slightly conflated or worshiped together by some Egyptians in that area. If you wanted to, you could probably consider it a purely Canaanite myth and decide that it's referring to Baal, not Set, when it talks about going out to fight the sea.

Either way, though, the sea, whoever he is, is going to take a serious pounding to the face if he keeps these shenanigans up.

Storytime!

Question: Your post "Old Man Winter" where you told the story of Stribog got me thinking - another reason why not having family trees for some of your Anne-created Pantheons on the site is an inconvenience is they don't come with a few myths and legends. Could you perhaps share a myth of the Elohim? Baal and Moloch appear as false Gods and nemeses to the Hebrew God in The Bible, but what about through the eyes of their own people?

I love storytime, so yes!

Unfortunately, Moloch doesn't have much going on; he's one of those gods with a ridiculously strong cult presence but very few myths of his actual exploits, similar to other strong-cult gods like Cernunnos. He was especially popular in the areas in close proximity to the Hebrews, which is why he turns up so often and with such censure in the Bible, and that probably contributed to the lack of remaining written record of him, as the Israelites were hardly about to preserve his filthy, filthy behavior for future generations.

Baal, on the other hand, has super fun tales, usually having to do with him electrocuting people he's related to. The most famous sets up the delicious continuing rivalry between him and his brothers, Yam and Mot, which scholars are often impressed by because they really want to relate the Baal-Mot-Yam triad to the Zeus-Hades-Poseidon one but then they realize that there is nowhere near this level of animosity among the gods of Olympus.

El led the Elohim, his innumerable children, for many millennia, but his son Baal was ambitious and chafed against his rule, wanting to seize power for himself. Worried that he might rise up against him and angry that anyone would dare defy him, El turned to one of his other sons, the sea-god Yam, and crowned him king of the Elohim, informing him that if he wanted to rule securely he would have to kill Baal, who was plotting treachery. Yam and Baal waged a massive battle that destroyed large parts of the local countryside, and Baal was beginning to lose badly when Kothar, the smith-god and an ally of Baal's, saw what was happening, crafted two incredibly powerful clubs, and ran into battle to help him. He passed the clubs on to Baal, and Baal was then able to finish the fight, defeating Yam (and, though his excitable sister Astarte called on him to kill him, he left him alive because he was pretty sure his mother would kick his ass if he didn't).

El, having been watching all this go down, immediately claimed that he had always liked Baal best and crowned him king of the Elohim; at the urging of his wife Asherah and Baal's sister/wife Anat, he allowed that Baal should build a new palace for himself and invite all the Elohim to a celebratory feast. Baal called on Kothar to build his palace, but insisted that it have no windows (the myth does not discuss why, but it was a common belief in Canaanite myth that death always enters via a window, and additionally it's implied that without windows Baal won't be able to let out the rain the world needs to survive); Kother in turn insisted that it had to have windows, and eventually Baal gave in rather than have Kothar not finish the project. The palace was excellent, the feast was splendid, and he invited everyone over.

Unfortunately, Baal does not know how to not be an insulting dick to people, so his invitation to his oldest brother Mot, the god of death, offended him by not providing appropriate food and drink. Mot sent a messenger back, refusing to attend and taunting Baal that even though he had defeated Yam, Mot would eventually defeat him as death defeats all living things. Baal, having a storm-god temper, immediately abandoned his feast and marched into the Underworld to fight his brother, where he was summarily murdered because it is a bad idea to fight death gods on their own turf (see also: Ishtar, Ereshkigal).

His wives, Astarte and Anat, mourned him, but Anat is an angry war goddess and swore vengeance, and in turn marched into Mot's realm while he was still weak from battle, killed him, and cut his body into little pieces in retaliation before going home. Mot did not remain permanently dead (it's his underworld, after all), but it took him seven years to recover, and due to his weakened power Baal was able to return to the gods, where he was hailed and beloved by everyone. Furious at this further insult and interference in the realm of death, Mot challenged Baal to fight, and the two were so evenly matched that their battle shook the world and they fought until they both collapsed. At that point, Shapshu, the sun-goddess and messenger of El, arrived and informed Mot that El was officially going to back Baal now, so fighting him would be fruitless. Mot conceded that Baal would be king with extraordinarily bad grace and went home.

The entire story is extremely fascinating from an interpretive point of view, because there's so much going on in it; there's the idea of Death as the final conqueror, Baal as a death/rebirth deity like Tammuz or Persephone (the seven-year time period is about the usual length of time between droughts in the area; lacking as much of a fixed seasonal change, the Canaanites needed their rebirth god to show up when they were having droughts, rather than every winter), the father-god playing his sons off each other, Sky, Water and Death as the preeminent triad of powers, a female war-goddess being the final conqueror rather than the male sky-god, possibly suggesting the female's ability to give birth to new life, the shenanigans with the window and Baal's reluctance to invite danger to himself so that he could nurture the world, the suggestion that Baal's death is a symbolic requirement because of his destruction of the natural order in harming/killing Yam, and so on and so forth.

Seriously, these guys are batshit insane, but they are one of my favorite pantheons ever. We've only had the one Scion of Baal show up in-game, as an NPC, but even that was enough to completely foxtrot what the PCs were trying to do thanks to unscheduled flame/lightning battles.

The Baal Cycle was found on tablets unearthed in the ruins of Ugarit in modern-day Syria, and there are a lot of good translations and annotated interpretations floating around out there. For a really simple and fun to read one, I'd recommend Michael Coogan's Stories from Ancient Canaan (which also includes the tale of Anat murdering some poor Scion over a relic, Asherah ruining some poor king because he failed to honor her properly, and other tales of godly misconduct).

The Sights, the Sounds, the Smells

Question: I love the write ups you've done so far but I was wondering, if a character used the Scent The Divine knack on a Scion of the Anunna, Elohim, or Bogovi, what scent or sound would you get? I ask because I read all three write ups and I couldn't find their scents listed.

You didn't miss it - the scents aren't in there. I originally didn't include them because I intended to just add them to the table for the Scent the Divine knack, but then didn't get them up on the website and somehow managed to forget all about it. Sorry!

The Anunna are the most elemental and ancient of gods; I would suggest the sound of a sudden crack of thunder accompanied by the scent of cedar wood.

The Elohim, on the other hand, demand harsher sacrifices and are more temperamental than their northern neighbors. For them, the scent is most likely the reek of cooling ash, and the brief sound of clashing weapons.

The less volatile Bogovi are much more connected to the natural cycles of the world and the rhythm of its harmonies, so I'd suggest something like a smell of rain and the sound of a turning wheel.