Old Gods vs. New Gods

In fiction, there are The Old Gods, primordial entities that predate the universe, and the New Gods, the newer generation of almighty beings.

Which do you think is more interesting? And who would you prefer to be the most powerful?

I hate to be the one to tell you this, but American Gods has already been written.

There is the obvious comparison to American Gods, but how would you define godhood? Is it just things like the Internet and Television that attain godhood? How about corporate mascots? Celebrities?

To be honest I'd feel a lot more comfortable answering your question if I knew what exactly you needed the answer for, as in how you plan to use gods in the work you're writing (if you are).

I found the nature of the new gods in American Gods itself to be a bit of a letdown, to be honest.

Ironically, both the Norse and Greco-Roman pantheons, cononically, are New Gods.

A god is a creature or person that is worshiped.

A deity is a radiant creature or person of the sky.

So, "old gods" could be defined by their antiquity as beings, by the antiquity of the things they have dominion over, etc., while "new gods" could be defined by the novelty of the things they rule over. Which is precisely the setup in American Gods.

Although I must admit that Gaiman's presentation of it seemed a little shallow. The problem being that no one worships the internet, or even revers it particularly. It's a tool to be used, and that attitude always seemed incompatible with the rise of a new God.

Now, a God of individual liberty, a God of social justice, a God of Innovation, those things might qualify.

Santa Claus. Powered by Children's wishes.

Unless you mean the aesir are younger than the vanir I don't see your reasoning with the Norse gods, as the aesir are only a few seconds younger than the Jotnar.

Hellenistic religion was always strange to me in that way, though. The gods that created you and brought about your golden age were overthrown by rapists, manslaughter happy narcissists who seriously considered wiping you out because two men committed a crime and you worship them as positive forces?

Well, my take is that the "old" gods are older than humanity and the new gods are younger than humanity. Whose stronger? Well that depends on the nature of the story. Are the new gods children, descendants of the old ones? If so, I'd say the old ones are more powerful in the sense they are more experienced but the new ones will eventually catch up. If the new gods are born form an entirely different phenomenon than the old ones, well, I'd say the old gods are more powerful in some areas and less powerful than others, since they are effectively different species.

I occasionally scribble with a draft that uses both approaches, where the kemetic gods didn't stop having children just because humans stop paying attention to them, and there is an entirely group of "gods" that is none the less thousands of years old with their own "elders". The two are groups are only vaguely aware of each other, as even when members who have overlapping profiles it's entirely by coincidence, so whose more powerful isn't really important to the story I'm trying to tell, but the Kemetic gods aren't truly immortal, being and susceptible to age and death, requiring constant healthcare to maintain their life and resurrection should they die, but they also can also heal, resurrect and empower others life forms, even induct some into their own ranks should they choose, while the new gods are seemingly completely immortal but increasing their numbers, or even spheres of influence is a very long process. The new gods are always increasing in power, passively as the collective human body of knowledge, including knowledge lost to humanity itself, ever increases, while the Kemetic gods have to actively work for power through intense exercise, super science and spiritual rituals but can make much more rapid gains by fusing together or siphoning strength from compatible sources.

You can always use Gods Need Prayer Badly to determine power levels as well. A sun god might have had a lot of power back in the day, but after the adoption of the heliocentric model and the development of orbital mechanics and astrophysics, they'd probably get a lot less power than, say, a god of justice, who's purview has remained steady or even increased in the modern day, or a god of technology.

the way you put it, makes me think Kirby. In Jack Kirby's New Gods, The Old Gods were destroyed in some disaster (often believed to be Ragnarok), and out of the Ashes arose the New Gods.

I actually consider "gods of natural phenomena" and other Nature Spirit qualities to be MORE powerful than gods of, say, healing or abstract concepts. Or at least more stable in power fluctuations.

I mean, the sun doesn't stop shining just because we shift our views from "Helios drives the sun through the sky" into "our planet orbits around the sun."

edited 15th May '17 10:53:38 PM by Sharysa

That would be the case if you consider gods to just be separate metaphysical entities with power over their selective domain that just happen to be worshiped, rather than a Gods Need Prayer Badly type that is based on belief in a certain concept. In the former case, the god of the sun just controls the sun, its nuclear fusion and other such processes, regardless of what people believe it is, whereas in the latter case, once people stop believing that the sun is Helios' fiery chariot being pulled across the sky, he's not gonna have much mojo anymore.

Heck, you could even make it so that the old gods are the ones that were around before humans, and actually rule over their respective domains and don't particularly care about worship and their power remains constant, then the new gods that arise because of human belief and faith in certain things and actually gain or lose power as those beliefs fluctuate.

edited 17th May '17 9:24:31 AM by danime91

Ah yes, Gods Need Prayer Badly. Thanks for a reminder.

The line between "Nature Spirit" versus "Physical God" is notoriously thin in a lot of mythologies—part of why I don't like the Abrahamic idea of an omniscient/all-powerful deity, at least in terms of writing.

Aside from the Capital-G God being portrayed as alternately nice, vengeful, or just working In Mysterious Ways, there's really NO STORY to the Boring Invincible God besides "Hey God, I'm in trouble!" "Cool, here's a Deus ex Machina / Fuck you, solve it yourself / Kay, here's some indirect help." Meanwhile, the Physical God pantheons can genuinely have trouble with non-deities and actually have to WORK to solve problems.

edited 17th May '17 12:23:59 PM by Sharysa

That's why most stories that have Abrahamic God as a player either go the total edgy atheist route of making him evil/actually powerless/a gibbering moron, or they make him firmly non-interventionist while also going with All Myths Are True so that there are other lesser gods who actually can get involved.

In some stories that I've seen (Salem's Lot, for example) God only helps you to the extent that you believe in him. If your faith lags, then the vampires get you.

For me I think it depends on the setting and how well delivered the Old and New gods are. Personally I think any well built world should utilize both, because it help makes the world dynamic and subject to change. Plus most pantheons acknowledge the existence of both, or at very least have deities that were once central to worship but ended up marginalized (like Indra or Tyr).

For one of my stories, religions are tied to the land, but a lot of people in-story mistake "land" for "NATION." I eventually figured out that while Irish Christianity has SOME baseline power in my Irish setting like all religions do, it's not actually Hijacked by Jesus since The Fair Folk point out that many of its CURRENT practitioners don't have any idea about how Christianity was forced upon the Celts through English conquest several thousand years ago, or if they do, they try not to talk about it and focus on the nice parts of Christianity. Syncretism is one thing, but a lot of people have the sanitized view that "Christians and pagans shared stuff and everyone was converted nicely" as opposed to the reality of "Christians slaughtered a lot of pagans and destroyed their places of worship to Make an Example of Them."

The Wild Hunt's current leader straight-up refuses to acknowledge Christianity because as the Folk Can Not Tell A Lie, he thinks Irish Christianity is chock-full of "children taking candy without realizing you have to pay for it. And their parents aren't even bothering to teach them."

Of course, he is the antagonist and also thinks that murdering minorities is acceptable since everyone wants to get rid of them anyway, and I'm still deciding on whether to make him The Oathbreaker to cover up any inconsistencies with what he says, so anything he says about Christianity should be taken with lots and lots of salt.

edited 18th May '17 8:59:18 AM by Sharysa

In my work, you have the Old Gods who the Gods of Dark and the Gods of Light killed off before ascending to divinity themselves. The Old Gods were tremendously powerful but flawed in such a way as that seizing their aspects and roles drastically depowered them.

However you also have Gillianos Demiurgos, who is neither a Dark God or a Light God, or an Old God for that matter. Everything about him is weird, contradictory and speaks of a trickster god.

For one, his heart was ripped outta him when the rest of the gods realized he conned them in some way*...except Gillianos cannot die, so his heart carried right along and can even speak and move on its own. Still a pretty grotesque giant heart.

Basically, objective physical reality exists because of the Heart of Gillianos, and the Heart of Gillianos exists because of the existence of Objective Physical Reality. The Heart is terrifyingly powerful, and numerous Gods, Kings and Empires have been made or broken or both by the Heart's sheer power.

Just one fraction of a drop of its blood became a highly unstable magical artifact.

• The Light Gods insist they "eviscerated wretched Gillianos" for tricking them into making a number of flaws in physical reality. Nobody can agree what those flaws actually ARE though. The Dark Gods instead say they were forced into helping murder Gillianos because the Light Gods were angry that Gillianos made mortals special in some way independent of the Light Gods.

edited 11th Jun '17 5:59:24 PM by NickTheSwing

Are we talking about Jack Kirby's New Gods? Because Darkseid is.

You know, you can almost said that Jesus and his father is a good example of new and old good: YHWN read a times as old, elemental god who dosent care that much about the world while Jesus is the more, "human" version of itself.

I dont know, just saying.

Of course. Jesus is God's reincarnation. A change of perspective is to be expected with every regeneration. Like Odin, he is his own sacrifice to himself.

Heh, I remember a time when that entire concept confused you. It still confuses me, to be honest.

It's an after-the-fact invention designed by committee, it's not supposed to make sense, but I look at it in an Avatar-of-a-Hindu-god sort of way, you know, Vishnu-Krishna.

Except Jesus never played asshole strategist.