DiscussionDeities DiscussionHello Class!
Let us examine our reading this week and the relationship between people & deities.
For your initial post
What are the characteristics of a human being based on your readings (current and past)? Explain.
How like or unlike other myths is reality portrayed in the Wanadi myth?
What generation of mortals is our own based on the Ages of Man? What does this myth foretell about our race? Do you agree?
Why do you believe people look to religion for guidance and what do you believe people hope to find? In either or both myths from your reading this week, do you see any similarities with your personal life; religious or not?
Reading:The Supernatural
Let us begin by looking at the Merriam-Webster definition of supernatural:Definition of supernatural
1: of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe
especially: of or relating to God or a god, demigod, spirit, or devil
2 a: departing from what is usual or normal, especially so as to appear to transcend the laws of nature
b: attributed to an invisible agent (such as a ghost or spirit)So what does this mean in terms of World Mythology?This week, we are exploring Merriam-Websters first part of the Supernatural, Gods. Next week, ghosts & spirits. When thinking of World Mythology and Gods, the two go hand in hand really. As we have learned, the myths that have been created allow us to answer questions that we may have. So let us take into thought what the supernatural is first, the explanation of something beyond our existence, invisible to us. We cannot see, hear, or touch Gods, yet so much of the human population relies on Gods and religion. Ancient myths provide the basis for many modern-day religions. When thinking of Gods and/or religion, think about what humans gain from having faith and a relationship with their God/Goddesses. What answers are we looking for?
Deity Concept
René Magrittes Le faux miroir, or The False Mirror, may show a common characteristic of a culturally imagined deity; that it both reflects humanity and is interested in our existence. The stare of the all-seeing eye causes the viewer to feel at once uncomfortable and significant.
Deities are metaphors for -cultural dreams of- our ultimate progenitors, and psychology has taught us how important mental depictions and memories of our parents are to any real understanding of our own identities. Humans have needed divinity to make sense of where we came from and who we are and what we are. As both a species and as a distinct culture, it is difficult for us to conceive of mere chance existence. The concept of divinity has apparently always been at the center of human consciousness and human life. We have indications of the concept at least as early as the cave paintings, rock carvings, and other artifacts of the Paleolithic period. Over time, divinity has taken many forms and names. There have been sky gods, mother goddesses, fertility figures, tricksters, storm weather gods, creators, and warrior gods. Figures such as Devi, Vishnu, and Shiva have dominated the temples and landscapes of India. Hera and Zeus ruled the heavens in Greece before they were displaced by the Christian God. Spider-Woman and the Great Mystery still exist in the sweat lodges, kivas, and mountains of native North America. Nigerian Binis have their separated Mother Earth and Father Sky. The Japanes
e have their sun goddess Amaterasu, the ancestor of emperors. There are gods who become incarnated as humans, Jesus as the Christ or the Messiah; Lord Krishna and the other avatars of the great God Vishnu; and, some would say, the Buddha, not to mention the Pharaohs of Egypt and the emperors of Rome and Japan.
There are, of course, many explanations for the concept of deity. A significant proportion of the human race argues that divinity first revealed itself to humanity in the form of personal beings such as those just mentioned, who have been or still are in direct communication with the world. This is the divinity type of many of todays organized religions, particularly those that worship the Abrahamic god, Yahweh-God-Allah. Others have seen deities as metaphorical expressions, symbols of the mysteries of the universe, reflections of our sense of the numinous, our sense of a realm of existence that is beyond the physical, beyond our understanding. For some, Gods, being immortals, are the embodiment of our instinctive drive to establish a permanent order in the universe, of which we, as the allies or offspring of deities, can be a part if we act properly.
For many, gods are as good an explanation as we have of where we and our world came from. In this light, Mircea Eliade calls gods fecundators of the universe, embodiments of the mysterious force that, in creating, struggles against the natural tendency towards disintegration. If there is a universal theme reflected in the archetype that becomes our many versions of divinity, it would be our need to feel that we are meaningful inhabitants of a meaningful universe. In this sense, Divinity is almost always fashioned in our image and is a metaphor for the furthest extension of which the human mind is capable at any given time. Deities, therefore, change with the times, taking even new forms, even as the central archetype remains constant, veiled in its eternal mystery.
A generally accepted truth of psychology, the source of one of the dominant myth systems of the modern era, is that what and who we are is the product not only of our genes but also of our background experience, an important part of which our parenting. Creation myths are collective stories of parenting. In these myths, our worlds, our cultures, and we are selves were created by the original parents, our deities. When we are asked about these parents, there will inevitably be limitations on our actual knowledge but also, as the myth of psychology teaches, on what we are able to face. And, of course, our parents -actual and cosmic- are themselves the products of a past. The study of deities, like the memory and evaluation of parents, involves a complex process of delving into the past and overcoming strong forces of what contemporary psychology would call denial. It often means seeing our parents limitations and the inadequacies of our visions of them as well as their positive traits.
Leeming, David. Oxford Companion to World Mythology. Oxford University Press, 2009.
Please watch the following video of Stephen Prothero explaining his text, God is not One. Watch only from 14:40 to 20:50. Protheros main goal of the text is to show how people use religion to make sense of the world and also how religion influences our everyday habits and practices. Religion is not all the same and helps navigate life for its constituents.