The General Religion, Mythology, and Theology Thread

And also grabbing a charging bull by the horns and somersaulting over it.

The source of the Cortes myth is Cortes, which should tell you everything about how reliable it is (not at all.)

The latter part is also untrue. Tezcatlipoca was revered as the highest god among the non-Creator Couple, or at least the one closest to the Creator Couple in character. ^note To the point where the four children of the Creator Couple are called the "Four Tezcatlipocas While humanity was Quetzalcoatl's special little kids, that also meant he refused any measures that led to human suffering, like sacrifices.

Which subsequently starved the world of energy to the point where Tezcatlipoca had to overthrow him because the entire machinery of the cosmos was about to stop working.

So the god that actively opposed human sacrifices was seen as a threat to be overthrown in the Aztec mythos? Why were animal or other forms of sacrifices not considered suitable substitutes to human sacrifices?

It's been awhile since I last saw vids about Aztec beliefs but IIRC, the short answer is that they thought only humans (not animals) contained the special kind of energy that feeds the gods that makes the world run.

edit: Found it!

Edited by nightwyrm_zero on Feb 25th 2024 at 9:03:51 AM

Talk about Humans Are Special.

Other kinds of sacrifice were also performed, but there was also a general belief that humans are not exempt from the laws of the cosmos, and if the law of the cosmos is the act of reciprocal sacrifice ^note the god Xipe Totec ritualistically flayed himself for the purposes of ensuring the maize harvest each year, for example then exempting humans from that cycle was seen as arrogant.

plus being sacrifices guaranteed your entry to a decent afterlife didn't it?

Depending on what god you were sacrificed in the name of, but at the very least it guaranteed your afterlife wouldn't be boring. You might get drafted into the Forever War against the sun-eating star demons, you might become part of a god's essence, whatever you ended up doing shit was going to be interesting.

Edited by math792d on Feb 25th 2024 at 10:05:09 AM

Is the protagonist of the Odyssey more often called Odysseus or Ulysses in modern pop culture?

I've always known him as Odysseus.

Yeah, I think Odysseus is more common because 1) a vague sorta push to use the actual Greek names for Greek stories, but also because 2) there's a different Ulysses who is pretty damn prominent in American history.

also Ulysses sounds weird to say

(then again the Greeks did butcher quite a few names themselves)

Edited by alekos23 on Feb 25th 2024 at 12:40:21 PM

Put simply, it was the name used in The Oddessy and therefore it is likely to be the name used for depicting the semi-eponymous sojourner.

Kinda the opposite of Hercules, whose Latin name is more used despite also being a Greek hero. Was that Disney's fault by any chance?

That's probably because Herk's remained relatively remembered in Western Europe compared to the Epic Cycle that was mostly forgotten in favour of Trojan stories. Till they got the Epic Cycle back and the Trojan stories got somewhat forgotten as well.

Either that or Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.

And now that I say it, God, I miss that show. :(

Edited by Demetrios on Feb 25th 2024 at 6:08:27 AM

I suspect it's also a holdover from the 19th-century habit of exclusively using the Latin names.

Also odysseus of the odyssey just kidna roll the tounge

Though given how Kevin Sorbo turned out, it's hard for me to rewatch it.

We also use "Achilles", "Ajax" and "Teucer" instead of "Akhilleus", "Aias" and "Teukros".

That's why you watch Xena instead.

Xena is cooler and she flies!

Xena can't fly. That's all Lucy Lawless.

Odysseus' Greek name had a LOT of variations outside of Homer. Odyseus, Oudysseus, Oulysses, Oulyt(t)eus, Oulixes, etc. are all found on different vase inscriptions, depending on the dialect. Nobody's positive why that is, but it does make sense that any of those variants had an equal chance of getting taken up & adapted by a neighboring civilization like the Etruscans (Uthuze) or Romans (Ulixes).

People being really bad with their deltas and making them into lambdas.

(Λ is basically a bottomless Δ in modern at least, though ancient lambda tended to look more like a really rushed gamma instead)

That's a lotta yeusses.

Edited by Angelspawndragon on Feb 26th 2024 at 6:18:40 AM