polytheistic theology 

So it's a common trope that beliefs give gods power, but I don't actually think that's how it works. In significant part, "power" doesn't seem like a useful way to phrase what gods do in the first place.

What I do think is that belief helps give gods *form*. How a particular god manifests and expresses themself is due in part to what folks expect of them. It's bidirectional, since a god does tell followers some about who they are. The manifestation is negotiated.

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polytheistic theology 

@starkatt And yeah in general, I cannot overestimate how spot-on this is, in my experience. I would like to re-post a very resonant quote that I found of, in all things, a tabletop RPG book:

"The Gods don’t need humans, but they do need humanity — not to exist, not to maintain their power, but as a mirror. Human worship is the way by which the Gods know themselves."

polytheistic theology 

@indi @starkatt as much as I like the story American Gods, I think it's wrong about the life cycle of deities. I think that it's *very* difficult and rare for a god to "die." they change, they adapt, but their core is built around one or another fundamental aspect of human nature, and unless/until *that* aspect in all of humans disappears, the god will still be with us--even if we don't know its name, or see it as a personified force.

polytheistic theology 

@indi @starkatt also, I think that gods can merge, like the populations that worship them do; and new gods bud off from older ones, as a new group finds that it has new needs that aren't being met by the previous iteration. Catholicism and its ongoing plethora of saints and Madonnas is a good example. there are a *lot* of Catholics whose worship of "God" as understood by the Vatican is entirely secondary to continued veneration of their local deity in different robes.

polytheistic theology 

@green @starkatt 💯 yeah. American Gods has some bits that are very insightful and helpful, like the notion of culturally-bound and -influenced multiples of the Gods, but the core conceit, while useful for dramatic tension, isn't very good theology.

That sorta "Gods eat belief" thing that's been portrayed so strongly by Gaiman and Pratchett and Molyneux really gets in the way of actual practice sometimes IMO.

polytheistic theology 

@indi @starkatt according to my personal cosmology, it's more that they... require attention to... hmm. interact with the material world? if they get less attention, they "fade away" from our perceptions; but if we resume paying attention to them, it gets their attention in return and they interact with us more. but they don't stop existing; they go exist somewhere else. XD

polytheistic theology 

@green Yeah, that's exactly my take on it! Part of gods-being-gods to me is that they have their own agency and existence, and that means /they have other stuff to do/. Some may crave Earth-company, and thus prefer attention/belief here so that they can sorta 'come nearer', but thinking of them as sitting around waiting for human attention to poof back into existence; that's painfully human-centric. ;)

polytheistic theology 

@indi yessssss. a mountain-god lives as long as a mountain, and has as much regard for humans as a mountain. if you worship it, you might get some of its attention in the form of helpful assistance, yay! but if you don't worship it... it's still going to be *there*, it's just not going to be paying attention to you. XD

polytheistic theology 

@indi @green ... honestly, that's staggeringly close to my own beliefs on the matter. n.n;

polytheistic theology 

@indi @starkatt Which in turn, also explains why most deities themselves look like humans, notable exceptions (much of the Egyptian, Aztec and some of the Hindu pantheon, among others) aside.

polytheistic theology 

@Thaminga @indi @starkatt and even when they don't *look* human, they certainly *act* human! XD

polytheistic theology 

@Thaminga @starkatt See, funny thing about that, they don't look human to me. The only attested God I've worked with heavily is Lugh, who was always in my head as a big imposing golden-glowing wolf anthro. Theriomorphy is so much a part of my internal symbolset that of course it's going to play a part in how a deity looks to me.

polytheistic theology 

@indi @Thaminga @starkatt I think people see immaterial things through personal filters; for a long time, I saw everything through dragon-filters, so everything looked like dragons to me. a lot of things that looked like dragons to me *weren't* actually dragons; but that's how I was able to perceive/understand them. I think human-shaped is the default human perception standard, for obvious reasons. XD

polytheistic theology 

@green Yeah yeah yeah, I think this gets back a bit to some of @starkatt's original point; the act of working with gods is on some level a /co-creation/. Someone divine is in my head, they're a conceptual/astral collection of concept and power, and they and I sorta collaborate (all below the level of (my) awareness (usually)) on how that manifests /to me/.

polytheistic theology 

@indi @starkatt Of course; I was talking about mainstream depictions, myself. Then again, it'd only make sense for a being whose appearance is fluid to begin with to present themselves differently from person to person, even when there are general defining trends/rules that define a possible appearance as theirs.

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