mumble mumble were new gods formed or did they pre-exist only quietly.

@starkatt As someone who's worked with some of those 'new gods', now in a couple different settings, I am a STRONG option-B, though I like to add a bit of elaboration: "pre-existed /in human recorded history/ only quietly." Mindspace is big, and much of it is not written down. :)

@starkatt I’d agree. The universe is full of new concepts, concepts going away, and concepts changing. Gods are very much conceptual so I feel gods can arise from gestalt the same way that can change or abandon gods.

@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.

@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.

@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.

@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

@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. ;)

@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

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

@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.

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

@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.

@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

@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/.

@indi @starkatt *enthusiastic nodding*

@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.

@howlingalice I certainly don't mind that perspective but absolutely have the obvious followup questions.

@starkatt Go right ahead, I've got at least some of the answers, Im sure :P

@howlingalice Heh. How do you experience being a deity? Do you mean as an avatar, or something else?

@starkatt In all honesty I'm not entirely sure. I don't feel like a "part" of a deity, or a shard, or any thing of that sort. I feel like the whole deity, just kinda....I don't all fit into the body so a lot of me floats around it or something?

I connect to some part of myself that's much larger and has specific influence and force and manifestation, I suppose? It's just more like I've got my hand shoved in a puppet and I'm controlling it from wherever the rest of me is.