The General Religion, Mythology, and Theology Thread

If we are REALLY accurate, Hell is "being separated from God forever"

Aka, the whole idea of Hell as place of eternal torture itself is Word of Dante, whole point of "Hell" is not that its a place, its state of being where you can never gain redemption and get access to heaven ever again

Edit: Also what appropriate page topper for page 666(even if 616 is the real beast's number)

Edited by SpookyMask on Dec 20th 2018 at 9:09:33 PM

@Charles Phipps: Actually I was going to say "Ironically, not literally".

I'm fully aware that the whole idea of demons running Hell is Word of Dante. I'm referring to demonology mostly.

Among the Olympians... the younger had yet to be born so it was only the eldest fighting and Zeus, Poseidon and Hades did the heavy lifting (because Greeks) and Hestia is known to have sat out the fighting because that was what she did. I'm not familiar with anything about Hera and Demeter one way or the other but since they're not depicted in any martial aspect like Athena or Artemis, they probably weren't expected to do much.

As for Titans who sided with the Olympians. Brothers Prometheus and Epimetheus, Mnemosyne, Hyperion and Selene (the Sun and Moon respectively, though they mostly got absorbed into Apollo and Artemis later... except for the one time with Endymion. That's always Selene). Metis, Zeus's first wife and mother of Athena (sort-of. Weird origin there). Possibly more but those are the major ones that I know of. (And sort-of, kinda Aphrodite if you look at it from the right angle that that's mostly just me).

Other factions... most of them weren't around at this point, the Titanomachy is something of an origin story. The only group around in most tellings of these stories are the Protogenoi, the primal deities, Gaia, Ouranos, Tartatus, Oceanus, Kaos and they had mostly faded into the background with the rise of their childrn, the Titans.

And for your final questions. None. Heracles (Greeks, remember. Hercules is his Roman name) is from the Age of Heroes, after the birth of the younger Olypmpians and the Titanomachy was well and truly settled.

It is funny discussing Hell on page 666.

Anyway, there are references to hellfire in the Gospells, so the idea of Hell as a place of torment isnt modern (eternal torment is another issue).

As far as demonology is concerned, Medieval thought was generally uncomfortable with the concept of cosmic change. If something is true, then it should not change, consistent with Platonic thought. On the other hand, since Hell and demons are evil and therefore represent lies, maybe their hierarchy changing all the time could reflect that. But that would also imply that rising to the "top" spot in Hell would be essentially meaningless anyway, since I dont know why demons would listen to each other or fulfill an assigned function, unless directly forced to.

Edited by DeMarquis on Dec 21st 2018 at 12:27:16 PM

Thanks for the answers (and with the last one I was referring to the disney movie, not the namesake)

Right, sorry, hard to tell because so many things use his Roman name, even in their titles that it can be a little hard to tell if someone's referring to the figure or a show or movie.

In that case, dredging up what I can from the movie parts that were definitely left out of the movie. Chronus eating his five elder children, the fact that all six of them were the product of incest (Chronus and Rhea being siblings), Zeus's first marriage and subsequent absorption/eating of Metis, the fact that Zeus and Hera are siblings, the reason Gaia sided with her grandchildren was because Chrous castrated his father Ouranos and the fact that said castration gave birth to Aphrodite.

One (@this post), Oceanus isn't part of the Protogonoi, but a Titan. The actual primordial sea-god of Greek mythology is Pontos (with Thalassa as his feminine counterpart).

Two, I noticed something about Greek mythology's monsters (as in the actual monsters, thus excluding the likes of the centaurs). By and large, they fall into one of three categories: inhuman beasts (regardless of whatever humanoid traits they possess, e.g. the Minotaur), barely humanoid giants (e.g. the Cyclopes), or essentially women with monstrous traits (whether originally mortal or goddessess)... and from what I could tell, most of the humanoid ones fall in the last category (harpies, sirens, gorgons, Scylla, Charybdis, etc.).

Wow, I knew the Ancient Greeks were really sexist, but being this misogynistic is news to me.

Edited by MarqFJA on Feb 17th 2019 at 11:41:29 PM

The Ancient Greeks made misogyny into an artform.

Literally.

A lot of their art, myths, and writing was misogynist. Well-written but horrible subtext.

Which makes it all the more strange when they do the complete opposite and extol specific female figures. Take Athena, for example: They made her the goddess of wisdom and noble warfare (as opposed to the barbarism of war that Ares represented), had her be an indispensible benefactor of several of their heroes (as in, they would've failed in whatever task they were doing without her aid), and the Athenians even named their city (and by proxy, their people) after her.

But look how Athena and Artemis are near virgins while hera is pretty much a bitching harpy, show again how the greek thoughs

There is a school of thought, I forget who said it, that strongly patriarchal societies feel a need to "capture" femininity and sanitize it in the form of a Goddess or legendary leader who is female but displays few if any feminine traits. This theory has it's own problems, but it might explain the "dangerous women" prototype the Greeks seemed fascinated with.

I remenber roleplay game that took on the celt and said the greek and roman were in part repulsed by the sexual freedom(well, relative) celt woman have over their roman and greek counterpart.

The misogyny is also noted in Greek Mythology having, if not the Ur-Example,then pretty damn close to it, of The Smurfette Principle with Atalanta (among the Greek heroes, particularly among the Argonauts^note Though I do need to check if Medea counted as one, but even then some versions exclude her). Plus IIRC the Amazons seem to only show up to get Worfed by the usually male protagonists of the myths they appear in, and I'm certain Pandora was already mentoned on this thread.

By the way, Overly Sarcastic Productions recently did a video on Aphrodite (which I'll place at the bottom of the paragraph), which among other things, posited the theory (with some strong evidence) that she was adapted from Astarte (who in turn was adapted from Ishtar), and under that premise, pointed out that Aphrodite had less domains then Astarte (who had less domains than Ishtar.) Which isn't helping the Greeks' case.

@Marq even then, Athena does have a habit of siding with the men over the women (See Arachne, Medusa^note though that might just be Ovid., The Orestia)

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Feb 17th 2019 at 2:42:40 AM

I'm inclined to think a lot of heavily misogynist societies sublimate the humanity of women into idealized forms because they can't ignore it completely. It just pops up elsewhere.

Part of me wonders whether Athens did like the thought of a war goddess, after all... But found a way to completely de-Spartan her by lopping any connection with Asarte off in the process. Athena, after all... is all over Athenian justice, Athenian ideals of war and Athenian ideals of sexless, intellectual-only female principles (which clash with the depiction of Ares). But, most importantly, she upholds civilization. She didn't create it, though. Oh, no: Zeus (and her mother and Hera) did — she just looks after it in trust like a good girl should.

Then, Athens chucks in a massive "Athena and Aphrodite can't stand each other because REASONS that have nothing to do with us chopping one from off the other and washing that horrible, icky, Spartan passion, base physical attraction and sexual liberation stuff off" as a little extra anti-Spartan angle.

Aphrodite then still gets to diddle Ares on the side most regularly as a hint to her actual origins/ abilities. Probably because too many myths connected the two to completely sever the connection.

I can see the original Spartan import myth taking a leaf out of the Epic of Gilgamesh: to tame unbridled bloodlust and savage rage (and the original war god of the area)— get the sophisticated, more intelligent and very hot girl to bonk the stupid out of him while teaching him the importance of tactics, strategy and logistics. And which fork is to be used when. And how to cough up so she can pay the rent. In short: she creates ordered civilization out of chaotic, purposeless warfare.

Yeah, I can imagine Athenian philosophers aching to debunk the whole "sex with women tamed men and made us all much more civilized" angle. With fire.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Feb 17th 2019 at 11:20:55 AM

Yeah, Afrodites affair with Areas since a kinda throw back to her role as war-sex goddess.

Random thought: on the surface, Ares (Linear B) + Aphrodite (import) + Hephaestus (also Linear B) doesn't look very functional as a love triangle, because Ares is, like, so not into ugly-as-damn dudes that way.

But, what Ares is into is sweet, sweet gear to fight in. As was, most likely, Aphrodite... Do I spot a possible cunning plan that may have backfired horribly on the power couple? (I presume the moral of the story would be "don't try to get too clever by pissing off your volcanic arms dealer when trying to defraud/ distract/ inspire him".)

Edited by Euodiachloris on Feb 17th 2019 at 4:46:53 PM

Honestly, since it was Greece Ares and Hephaestus wouldn't be so bad. I'm surprised there wasn't much more male on male relationships.

Just Zeus and Ganymede.

Say, I've been thinking... Suppose there was a cult existed in Ancient Greece that venerated a pantheon of goddesses to the point of doing away with all the misogyny of the rest of Greece and actually organizing themselves as a matriarchy. If the cult considered themselves as the "children" of their pantheon's chief goddess and named themselves accordingly, would it make sense for them to use the feminine suffix -ῐδες (-ides) instead of masculine -ῐ́δαι (-idai) in the construction of the name even if the cult included many males among its numbers, as a way of giving the middle finger to other Greek cults' male chauvinism?

Also just a thing: for what I get, ares wasnt always the buffon and many thing it was because of Athenas influence trying to make him look bad.

But I still consider the fact Aprhodite who was sort of war god before having affair with one war god something of a reference.

I mean, a mystery cult might do some form of esoteric naming without getting tied up in the practicalities of grammar.

Additionally, grammatical gender and sex were only loosely correlated in Greek. A grammatically feminine noun wasn't considered inherently "womanly."

That's one of the interesting things about Greek mythology. With so many archaic survivals, and what with so many "layers" of deities taking over older gods' portfolios, we often end up with a very complicated system of heavenly dibs:

• Really old deity who is pretty much X itself
• Still pretty old deity who was at least the god of X (e.g., the Titans)
• The current god of X

Stories about any one of these deities often end up attributed to one or more of the others. Also, any historical differences between them, their attributes, or their worship tend to get retconned out. (see also, the original distinctions between Latin and Greek deities).

The fundamental reality is that the ancient Greek religion was never uniform or standardized. There had always been great regional and temporal variation in names, responsibilities and relationships among Gods; an "Official" version only developed when playwrights started mining the ancient beliefs for the purpose of public entertainment.