Do What You Do

Since we've gotten a bunch of these lately, here's a quick big-bang-style post with several questions about associations. Let's go at it!

Question: Why does Hera have Health associated?

Hera is strongly associated with childbirth and the health of children and pregnant women alike, which is covered by the Health purview. Not only is she one of the few gods to create children completely parthenogenically with no males involved (both Hephaestus and Typhon are said to be her children alone, although both also have alternative genealogies), but she was called upon to protect mothers and infants during pregnancy and birth and to prevent complications and diseases that might harm them, especially in her Roman guise as Juno. This is one of those places where an association comes more from cult associations than from a specific myth in which the association is demonstrated.

John would like to note that we're considering lately whether issues of childbirth and human fertility should contribute toward a Health association and how strongly, so if you have opinions, lay them on us.

Question: Does Epic Appearance really suit Tlaloc?

Have you seen him?

Tlaloc is famously crazy-looking, even among the Mexican gods, where curlicue-faces and bizarre giant clothing styles are a way of life. He combines parts of a bunch of animals related to his elements, especially the crocodile teeth and giant frog eyes, and is so visually striking that he's one of the few gods we can pick out across various different levels of Mesoamerican myth in different cultures and time periods. The Googly-Eyed Rain Monster - that's a real term, I didn't make it up! - is a mainstay of wacky Mesoamerican religious art, and Tlaloc, representative of both the devouring earth that must be fed blood to be appeased and the terrible storm that devastates the landscape and brings disease and damage, is pretty clearly intended to be terrifying in a way that many others among the Teotl are not.

Question: why does Hel have Epic Stamina associated?

We'll admit to this one being more of a stretch. Hel lives in an area that is famously inhospitable, so much so that even the gods avoid it - freezing cold and filled with debilitating disease - seemingly without any problems, and also survived being "cast" or "thrown" from Yggdrasil into Helheim by Odin (it went better for her than the similar fall did for Hephaestus, at least!). We were at the time trying to make sure all Legend 12 deities had at least four associations, which we later relaxed to three, so this one is by far her least solid.

Question: Why does Hermes have Magic associated?

Because, as Hermes Trismegistus ("thrice-great Hermes" or "thrice-wise Hermes"), he is the inventer of sorcery and patron of the Hermetic order of magaicians, who of course named their organization after him. Hilariously, Hermes T is probably a combination of Hermes and Thoth, but at this point they're almost inseparable in that role, so we found that it made more sense to extend the association to both of them than to try to split them into separate parts. It's likely that Hermes/Mercury's association with magic originally comes from his association with luck, a necessary part of his function as god of shenanigans, thievery and other things you need good fortune to pull off, but it eventually evolved into a full-blown magic association that survives to this day. Not every branch of Greek or Roman religion accepted Hermes T as being the same as Hermes, so you could set him up as a completely different god if you wanted to, but we figured in this case simplicity was better.

Question: Where do you guys get Animal (Swan) and Fertility for Aphrodite? I mean, I know it's hard to figure out powers that she might have other than "being really hot" but I can't recall a single myth of her doing anything with swans or plant life. I could see the Health Purview, since it has powers that affect sex and HUMAN fertility, not to mention Human Clay would be a useful power for the Goddess of Beauty (she can give you beauty or take it away) but Fertility and Animal don't make much sense.

Aphrodite is actually associated with the swan all the time! The bird represented light and beauty to the ancient Greeks, which made it an easy one to associate with her. Take a gander (ha!) at all these ancient images of Aphrodite hanging out with swans:

And many more. Some scholars think that these might be supposed to be geese instead of swans, in which case you could alternatively give her Animal (Goose), but we figured Swan fit with her aesthetic more. While we don't always give everyone an Animal association just because they appear with an animal in art a lot - sometimes the animal is just symbolic, or they have a myth that suggests it's not a good idea - Aphrodite is slim on associations like most Greek deities, and we figured she could use the help.

As for Fertility vs. Health, we're totally with you on the weirdness of that, but after doing as thorough a run through ancient Greek stories and descriptions of Aphrodite, that's where we ended up. Aphrodite is indeed associated with sex, but while Health does affect baby-making, it doesn't have a lot to do with the sex act itself beyond that, and so Aphrodite's strong connections to bangin' didn't really give her much of a connection there (although her Roman persona, Venus, is a little bit more linkable to Health as a concept). But the ancient Greeks connected human fertility and the fertility of the earth symbolically and even literally in many of their writings, so that Aphrodite is often praised as a bringer of earthly fertility despite not being a more classical plant-shaper. From Stasinus describing Aphrodite as eternally clothed in "crocus and hyacinth and flourishing violet and the rose's lovely bloom, so sweet and delicious, and heavenly buds, the flowers of the narcissus and lily; in such perfumed garments is Aphrodite clothed at all seasons," to the Homeric hymns stating that flowers spring up beneath her feet wherever she walks, plants turn up surprisingly frequently with Aphrodite. The reason is probably best summed up in Aeschylus' Danaides, in which Aphrodite herself describes the births of all the plants and trees and flowers of the world, and then claims, "Of all these things I am the cause," suggesting that because she is the motivator for sex which causes procreation, she is the root cause of all procreation of all life, even though she does not participate in the actual childbearing or mothering process.

Question: Shouldn't Hermes have Epic Dexterity and Illusion? Apologies if this has been answered already.

While Hermes certainly has decent amounts of both, neither was strong enough for us to want to give him the Ultimate expression of it. He does use Illusion occasionally, most notably in the tale where he makes himself a doppelgaenger of a man in order to drive him insane, but he doesn't do it all that often or all that impressively, so for the most part his trickery is probably the result of awesome Manipulation and Wits, and some low- to mid-level Illusion boons now and then. Dexterity doesn't really fit him, either; he does have the epithet "quick-footed", which helps, but for the most part the modern idea of him as super-fast comes from his role as messenger of the gods rather than any actual mythological association with speed of travel.

Question: Why does Njord have Fire associated?

Because of this passage in the Prose Edda:

The third among the Aesir is he that is called Njörd: he dwells in heaven, in the abode called Nóatún. He rules the course of the wind, and stills sea and fire; on him shall men call for voyages and for hunting.

Even more than Hel above, Njord suffers from the dearth of mythological information on the Aesir and Vanir. While his Water association as the god of the ocean is pretty solid, everything else tends to be like that - single statements that are clear, but don't have any other examples to back them up. Njord is supposed to be one of the most important and powerful of the Vanir, which is why he was traded to the Aesir in the first place, so we decided to give him Sky and Fire in spite of the lack of extra stories attached to them... but we feel like it's likely he may get demoted to a lot fewer associations in the future workup of lower-Legend gods. The Edda's very clear that he does those things, so we like them, but we also usually want more than one example, so thus is our quandary.

That's all our association questions for today - phew!