Hey, you've got two out of three there. And, as I believe some bard once said, two out of three ain't bad.
Godly politics are fun! Let's take them one at a time.
The Pesedjet: Horus is definitely in charge. He is the King with a capital K; in fact, most of his myths have to do with him fighting with Set over who got to be king, and, thanks to sneakery and his mother's help, he eventually won that battle. He's the patron of the pharaohs, the great god of Egypt and the grand high muckety-muck that everyone has to listen to.
It's important to note, however, that Horus is relatively young among the Pesedjet and he has the uncomfortable honor of coexisting with a bunch of previous kings who probably aren't shy about telling him what they think he should do. Ra, the original king of the gods and creator of everything, is an ever-looming presence over his shoulder, and while the old god may not be technically running the show anymore, it's still probably true that when Ra wants something to get done, it's going to suddenly become everybody's top priority. His son Shu is now a Titan and hopefully out of everyone's hair for the time being, but his grandson, Geb, is certainly still around and probably bitter that his own stint on the throne ended so quickly and unceremoniously. And, of course, Horus' father, Osiris, is now the king of the underworld and still very much a force in his own right. Every pantheon's king usually has to deal with the fact that the god in charge of the Underworld is his own authority, and Horus has it twice as hard because that guy is also his dad. And, of course, Isis, his mother, is still around, and she has a long history of manipulating the pantheon's leaders into doing what she wants.
So Horus is in charge. He is the king. But it's not the most enjoyable kingship in the world, I imagine.
The Loa: Shango is, indeed, the king... except when he's not. The Loa suffer from a lack of hierarchical structure; because they're really cobbled together from a bunch of different African religions that got dumped on top of each other in the New World, they don't come with a carefully-ordered line of succession like some of the European pantheons do. Shango is certainly a king, and in his area of Africa there's nobody more important; however, there are also places where Loa-worship is strong, particularly in the area of Trinidad and Tobago, where his brother Ogoun is considered the king instead. Scion's decision to use Shango as the pantheon's figurehead is a good one, as he's probably the most popular and has the most myths concerning his regal control of his lands, but you could play with the rivalry between the brothers if you wanted to. I've also read myths in which the other Loa begged Ogoun to take over as king, hoping he would be less crazy than Shango, and he refused.
Either way, though, those two are the only ones with any real claim to royalty among the Loa.
The Aztlanti: This is the one where you're wrong, but don't sweat it - it's a very common mistake. People often assume that Tezcatlipoca is in charge of the pantheon for a few reasons: he's one of the most popular and well-known of the Aztec gods, he's the patron of nobility and royalty, and he tends to always be in the thick of whatever's going on with the pantheon that day. But despite his pretty epic fanciness, Tezcatlipoca is not actually the head honcho of the Aztlanti; Huitzilopochtli is.
Huitzilopochtli lives in a weird limbo, as far as popular knowledge goes. He doesn't get nearly as much press as more popular gods like Tezcatlipoca or Quetzalcoatl, and nobody seems to bring his name up when conversation turns to Aztec myth. This is mostly due to historical recording practices; Huitzilopochtli, famous for his enormous sacrificial rituals and bloodthirsty nature, was not popular with the early Europeans who recorded stories about the Aztec religion, because he was simply too scary and savage. He ended up relegated to footnotes and sensationalist mentions, and actually became used in Europe as a perfect example of the horribleness of foreign, non-Christian religions. In fact, they practically rewrote him into a crazy, batshit insane-looking conglomerate of everything they didn't like in the "savage" religions. Take a look:
With all this ridiculousness flying about, you can see that he was not exactly getting a particularly fair shake in scholarly circles for quite a while.
But, at the height of the Aztec civilization and the time of their conquest, Huitzilopochtli was the supreme god and second to none. He was the god of the sun, keeping the world from plunging into darkness (and being in charge of the sun is basically the most important job any Aztec god can ever be doing). He was the god of Tenochtitlan, the central hub of the empire. Most importantly, he was the patron god of the Mexica, the ethnic group who had risen from being homeless vagabonds to gaining unprecedented power and influence and uniting the area into a loosely-connected empire with their sheer determination and skills at warfare. In other words, he was a super fucking big deal.
This is not to say that everybody, everywhere was all about Huitzilopochtli. The Aztec empire was really several ethnic groups united by conquest and pragmatism, and some of them kept their own totem gods instead of adopting the Mexica's; for example, nearby Culhuacan preferred to continue considering Mixcoatl, their patron, the most important among gods. Who's the biggest deal varies from area to area, but at the core of the empire, in the major cities and the religion as it's mostly known to us today, Huitzilopochtli is the king. If you're looking for your Zeus/Odin/Amaterasu analogue, he's your boy.
However, if you want to take a different approach, you can also view the Aztecs as having a more cooperative leadership situation. Some splinter creation myths have Huitzilopochtli creating the world in tandem with the other three Tezcatlipocas - Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca and Xipe Totec - which suggests that they might be on a similar level of power. You could view the four of them as a sort of ruling council, much like the Trimurti are the ruling council of the Devas; two of the other three have previously been in charge of the sun and all of them are very major gods. The other three Tezcatlipocas have never been kings in the same way as Huitzilopochtli, per se, but they might be very strong advisors or councillors nevertheless.
Personally, I love the dynamic of Huitzilopochtli as king with Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl, both career tricksters, agitators and ruiners-of-everything, constantly making his life hard. It's like watching an Odin saddled with two Lokis. It's hilarious.
It may be slightly obvious that Aztecs are one of my favorite areas of study.
Following on the same line of questioning: Is Nuada still the High King of the Tuatha?
ReplyDeleteKind of....nuada is dead. If we go with them all being alive again, and he has his hand, then yes.
DeleteI would consider him such, yeah. John's right; the Tuatha are pretty much all technically dead, but if we decide to make them playable for Scion, Nuada should be king. You could also run with Lugh in charge, since Nuada has been known to hand over the reins during wartime, but even so I doubt anyone's going to ignore Nuada's wishes.
DeleteIt makes sense. being such a wwarlike people it makes alot of sense to have a war god like Huitzilopochtli as king who leads the other gods to war as the shining sun that burns away the pantheons enemies. However I see Tezcat as the tricksters, but quetzal as an advisor and helper. I thought of all of the pantheons, quetzal was the most "good".
ReplyDeleteNo, thats some BS scion made up. He blows up the entire planet one time cause he was jealous tezcat was controlling the sun.
DeleteIt depends on your definition of "good". In that he prefers animal sacrifices over human ones, yes, he's more "good". In that he blew up the world and killed everyone in it because he was mad that Tezcatlipoca was in charge instead of him... in that one, not so much. Western scholars have always been very fond of Quetzal, so he gets a lot of good press, but he's ultimately a trickster on par with Tezcatlipoca.
DeleteA lot of what we hear about quetzl being the "good one" is many westerners like to synchronize him with jesus. This was especially prevalent during the 15th and 16th centuries when they were trying to appeal to the natives and convert them all .
DeleteBut is he still the "teacher" the giver of knowledge? or was that a western invention as well? I can understand him blowing up the world. That's the kind of shitty tantrums godly siblings pull on each other, but what I meant was that in the orginal myths, is he still the light and positive creation as a counterpoint to tezcats darkness and negative creation, or was that christinazation as well? quetzal can be a bastard, just as much as any Atzlanti and more so than many other gods, but is he orginally less of a bastard than most of his fellows or was he really just cleaned up and is no better than anyone else in his family?
ReplyDeleteHe certainly is a culture-god; he helps recreate the current crop of humanity (by stealing them from the Underworld) and gets them set up by teaching them to eat and so forth. He also appears in many stories as a leader of various tribes of Aztecs, though in most cases he ends up losing his kingdom to invaders (generally as part of a metaphor regarding Huitzilopochtli's conquering of the area and Tezcatlipoca's foreknowledge of the event). Certainly he's not a light counterpoint to Tezcatlipoca; he's much more of a wind and sky god than anything else. His only real light connotations come from association with the morning star, but that's more because the Aztecs associated that star with victory and war than because he's all about light.
DeleteHe's not really meant to be an opposite of Tezcatlipoca; that's a sort of dualism that isn't really present in Aztec culture. It's more that he's a different kind of trickster. Quetzalcoatl tends to be more concerned with humans and what happens to them, whether it's bringing them to life or abandoning them to oncoming armies. Tezcatlipoca, on the other hand, does most of his shenanigans in the godly realm, meddling in the affairs of Titans and his fellow gods.
I'd probably put him on an equal level with most of the rest of his pantheon. From an Aztec perspective, Quetzalcoatl is great for providing things like the alphabet, but then Xipe Totec is great for providing food and Huitzilopochtli is great for providing protection, and so on and so forth. He's a very important god, but he's not inherently more "good" than the others.
So is Shango really bat-shit crazy with nasty anger management issues? From the way he treats his wives he seems to rather tyrannical.
ReplyDeleteWell... when a guy chases his wives around with axes, he probably has some anger issues, not to mention inter-personal problems. He might be better with actually ruling his subjects - in general, he seems to be respected as king in most of his stories, at least, and in the tale where Obatala is wrongfully imprisoned in his dungeon, he makes immediate amends - but then again, he also does things like pitting his sons against each other in no-win scenarios to make sure they get murdered instead of upstaging him.
DeleteHe's pretty famously temperamental; in some parts of Brazil, Ogoun's forge is referred to as "the place where once can hide from Shango", on the theory that only Ogoun is strong enough to deal with a rampaging Shango if push comes to shove.
Which isn't that weird, I guess - thunder gods are almost always considered pretty hot-tempered and likely to pull out the smitings.
thunder AND fire god, making Shango doubly hot tempered.
ReplyDelete