Mythology Discussion / Potential Revisions

Hello everyone. Hope you are doing well.

So... Our current pages for Mythology are simply terrible. They are generally either outdated, simplistic, incomplete or downplayed. They lack proper information, descriptions, in-depth analysis and listed feats. And the Mythology Verse page is equally poor.

This has bothered me for the longest time, and I want to change it.

First of all, if we are going to make proper Mythology profiles, we need to establish some standards and be more analytical of feats / descriptions.

• 1) Old Cosmology vs Modern Cosmology?

What even is a universe, ultimately? Most mythologies tend to have Creator Gods and Creation Myths, where one deity or a group of deities shape the world from nothing (Creation Ex Nihilo).

This is really common in myths. Gaea sprung out of Chaos, Phanes was born from the Cosmic Egg, Ymir arose from Ginnungagap, the Creator Kami emerged from the formless darkness that preceded them, Tiamat and Apsu mated and gave birth to the gods, etc. Even Christianity has this, as it describes reality as a "formless and void" Abyss (Tehom), from which God created the world.

Though myths typically use metaphors such as an infinite ocean, an endless darkness, or a bottomless abyss, the intent is usually the same: In the beginning there was nothing, and then a God created everything.

However, the question is: "What is everything?"

A very common argument used to undermine the power of gods is to point out that they were worshipped by ancient people who knew little of science, and the worlds these gods create are small compared to the real universe.

This is a very flawed and generalized argument, but in fairness it does have some basis. Both Greek Mythology and Norse Mythology describe very tiny universes, so their gods should be 4-B tops, right? Well, I don't think so.

People ignore the non-physical side of old creation myths. In Greek Myth, Chaos is the formless primal amalgamation of everything, and Gaia is the first thing to emerge from it. While she represents the Earth, she is also the Source of Life, and is the progenitor of all the Primordials (This is in Hesiod's version). Literal Abstract personifications of Fate, Time, Necessity, Life / Procreation, Space, etc, all come from Gaia (Or her counterpart, Chaos)

There is no reason such a being wouldn't be considered Universal. Hell, at this point, the size of the physical world hardly matters given all the potent conceptual stuff.

So I think that we should at least be more analytical before dismissing a Mythology's power because of a flat Earth.

• 2) Classical Artwork vs Modern Artwork?

Another thing that bothers me is the inconsistent depictions used in such profiles. Sometimes they will use an Ancient artwork, while at other times they will use a Deviantart picture.

If we are to improve these pages, we need to establish a pattern.

Personally, I would be quite found of using Renaissance paintings for the Greek Mythology profiles, and Germanic artwork for Norse Mythology, and Ancient Egyptian two-dimensional art for Egyptian Mythology.

However, this is kind of impossible to do with some mythologies, which derive from cultures that really didn't have the custom of illustrating things. Try finding good Classical images for Japanese or Native-American deities, for instance.

In those cases, I am fine with modern artwork, as long as said artwork is at least somewhat authentic to the original depictions. As much as I like Genzoman's artwork, his drawings always look more like comicbook characters based on the gods than the gods themselves.

• 3) Original Sources vs Modern Retellings?

This is something I believe should go without saying: If you want to make a profile for a mythological character, you need to search for the original versions of his myths. Not necessarily the oldest. Greek Mythology has a million variations, and they are all equally valid to some extent.

What isn't valid is reading a "Dictionary of Greek Myth" and thinking you know the full extent of it.

If you wanna make a profile for Achilles, then get your hands on The Iliad. If you want to make a profile for Loki Laufeyjarson, then you better research The Eddas.

Mythology Guidebooks, Dictionaries and Summaries are great and can be of great help, but it's always better to read on the original sources. By my experience, they also often undermine the power of the deities.

HOWEVER, plenty of mythologies have Original Texts that are nearly impossible to find, or have a nigh-incomprehensible language. This is specially true of Egyptian Mythology and the myths of African and Native-American tribes.

In these cases, we have to use secondary sources by Necessity.

• 4) Multiple Verse Pages?

This is less of a demand but more of a suggestion:

I think that Mythology should have a Main Verse Page akin to Nintendo and the Nasuverse, and then Individual Mythologies should have their own Verse Pages.

The reason for this is that it would allow for in-depth Verse pages where the main concepts, themes, ideas and the Cosmology of individual mythologies would be explained.

The current verse page is atrocious, by the way, it barely explains a thing.

• 5) The True Nature of Gods?

This is a personal pet peeve I have with our current Mythology pages: They know so little about the deities in question. They give them little to no powers, ignore blatant Reality Warping feats, fail to realize their true nature, and overall Downplay them.

This mostly stems from people's familiarity with Mythological deities coming from Modern Adaptations and Retellings, rather than the original sources.

A common idea I see among people is that Mythological Gods are simply ageless beings with Supernatural Power, and that couldn't be farther from the truth.

The Greek Gods, for instance, are not just X-Men Mutants with specific powers, rather they are Personifications of Concepts / Ideas / Emotions. And in many cases, the things they Personify only exist because they exist.

Meanwhile the Norse Gods also have some Conceptual elements to them. Thor's mother is literally the Earth, and he represents Strength, and the existence of Humanity is tied to his own. He's wrestled Old Age herself and endured, and his buddy Loki has fought Fire himself, and another god raced Thought itself. And since Fenrir can destroy anything that exists, he is bound by chains made of things that don't exist.

I could go and on with examples, such as the Shinto Kami who are Incorporeal and vaguely abstract Spirits of Nature, but the gist of the is that Gods shouldn't be viewed as physical beings but rather as symbols / living metaphors.

Mythological stories are generally primarily allegorical and meant to convey something about life or the world (The story of Eros and Psyche for instance is a story about how Joy is created by the union of Mind and Love, and Journey of the West is a giant allegory for how the human Soul reaches Enlightening), and as such the Gods shouldn't be interpreted as purely physical and tangible creatures.

There are a few exceptions however, but this is how it is in the majority of Mythologies I know about.

I must say, I agree with absolutely everything.

1) In my opinion, the way they viewed the universe should be our main focus. If they thought the universe was just solar system sized, that would be solar system level. If they thought it to be infinite, it would be High 3-A. Of course, this becomes far less significant when dealing with conceptual entities and similar.

2) I prefer a original image when possible. If it's not, modern artworks are fine by me.

3) I agree

4) I agree with this as well

5) Also agree. In-depth explanations are needed when dealing with something like this

After reading this, i'm of the same as Kaltias here at least. #1 in particular seems like something that maybe we should really consider of the way people back then thought up of the universe the gods were said to have "lived" in.

But everything else, again, looks agreeable to me on his words above.

I agree with Kaltias about #1 as well.

I can explain in more depth later why the size of the universe in myths is very arbitrary.

1) I'm not really sure how to handle this, to be honest. As someone whose deeply fascinated in various Native American mythologies, it's almost impossible to find actual cosmologies for each mythology.

2) I try to use original images when I can, and when I can't, faithful representations. Really, I'm okay with modern art unless it has absolutely nothing to do with the actual mythology, like our old article on Sedna.

3) I generally agree, but not every mythology has the luxury of written down myths. I've been studying Polynesian and Iroquois mythology for awhile now, best I could fine was secondary sources for the myths. Thankfully, Cherokee Mythology has most of the original myths written down.

4) I don't even get why he have a singular page. But how should we handle it after the fact? An article for every single mythology? Or split them into general articles, like "African Mythologies", "Polynesian Mythologies", "South American Mythologies", each with sections dedicated to various mythologies within their general borders.

5) I completely agree. If Civilization IV taught me anything, it's "Not at all similar are the race of the immortal gods and the race of men who walk upon the earth"

I should also probably mention about #1 that I also think that it's fair to assume universe-sized universes if there is no proof that they considered it to be smaller/bigger.

1) This is one of the biggest reasons using Old Cosmology is sorta problematic. We frankly don't know for a lot of things, and we kinda don't use old cosmology for the size of Earth and the moon. Plus we are applying modern science and calcs to 1000 year old myths.

What I tried to point out in the OP is that the size of your physical world frankly doesn't matter if you are the Creator of everything.

Look at Egyptian Mythology, for instance.

Also, even back then, people reconciled science and faith. The upper-class Romans knew that the Earth was round, that the stars and planets were at least millions of kilometers away, and that the sun and moon were at least the size of the planet...

Yet they still believed in a religion whose sacred texts describe a Flat Earth with stars in a firmament.

Similarly to how reasonable Christians don't think that the Earth is flat and 6,000 old.

I fully agree with you, Matt.

Fair points. It's kinda complicated though.

If a book told me that its Sun was 1000 kilometres in radius, I wouldn't consider destroying it as star level, because its GBE would be different from that of the real sun.

It's more a matter of how its portrayed in its own mythology than how it actually is, because the moment you analyse feats the rules of the verse take precedence over those of reality.

I do agree that it's mostly irrelevant for creator gods because they usually create the universe from a formless Chaos -> space-time continuum -> Low 2-C. But if someone was just, let's say, destroying the matter of the universe, the size becomes important

Hmm...that is a good point there...

1.) Universe refers to the Phenomenal World (mostly in mythologies that have some kind of abstract reality/concept). The physical universe in some cases.

2.) Appeal to taste. Simple. Deviantart Artwork of Susan'no looks much better than actual depictions of him in the Nihon Shoki to younger members. While somelike like Tsubaki likes the original depiction. Another problem is being unable to find pictures of the original depictions.

3.) Original version. Obviously, we do so for any other verse. However, this should exclude Kemetic myth (Tsubaki has records of the oldest sources but very few) but we're talking about a mythology potentially older than Hinduism that was purposefully distorted and now it makes no sense whatsoever, however, only "modern" versions from 6,000+ years ago can be found as far as my knowledge goes. It is also extremely controversial (were the Ancient Egyptians black like other Africans, etcm) which leads to very dangerous debating territory.

4.) That's absolutely fine.

5.) I can help with this. I don't like omitting powers and like you said this is obviously the result of people not knowing the deity in question very well. Yeah sure, give Fuujin only Wind Manipulation and Superhuman Physical Characteristics, he has no other powers >.>

Universe refers to all things in creation (all creations). "Uni" means "one", "Verse" means "word"; One Word. People always say "how can this be multiversal if they said UNIVERSE!!" Well, you don't understand language in that case. It refers to All of Creation.

Would it be best to apply our current understanding of the universe to old mythology feats, or would it be best to apply what they thought the universe was like?

If our universe is x-dimensional, then any creation feat that specifies our universe should be x-dimensional? Simply put I'm wondering if we should scale 'real feats' to real life?

@Hat

My point is that analyzing Creation Myths from physical size only is ridiculously limited.

For instance:

"And Nyx bare hateful Moros (Doom of Death) and black Ker (Fate of Death) and Thanatos (Thanatus, Death), and she bare Hypnos (Hypnus, Sleep) and the tribe of Oneiroi (Dreams). And again the goddess murky Nyx, though she lay with none, bare Momos (Momus, Criticism) and painful Oizys (Misery), and the Hesperides (Evenings) . . . Also she bare the Moirai (Moirae, Fates) and the ruthless avenging Keres (Deaths) . . . Also deadly Nyx bare Nemesis to afflict mortal men, and after her, Apate (Deceit) and Philotes (Sex) and hateful Geras (Old Age) and hard-hearted Eris (Strife)."

Should the size of the universe really matter to such a broken Conceptual Creator?

I was asking about conventional creation feats, whether they should be scaled. It becomes a mythology because enough people accept it and it becomes established, to these people, it IS real. What distinguishes from fiction is that it was created with the belief it is real and enough people adhere.

I don't think i was very coherent, but i'm just asking whether feats should be scaled?

In order to determine the extent of the cosmology of a given mythology (i.e. what its understanding of it during its time) its best to figure out when said religion has stopped being practiced, believed, or displaced and its society's state of scientific knowledge during that time. For instance, it is probably safe to say the Ancient Egyptian religion started to erode from the minds of people in the Byzantine period. Afaik the Ptolemaic model was still the prominent at the time, so we can say the geocentric universe is the extent of that myth maybe? Also the importance of its gods may wane and other gods rise in importance to reflect the changing climate, so its influence and powers are not constant. It is not as consistent as is in fiction, maybe with the exception of Marvel and DC.

I have several problems with your interpretation, you are looking at the gods through the lenses of reality, not the myths themselves.

What people believed the universe to be has little bearing on the feats in the myths, and a God's power has nothing to do with worship.

Matthew Schroeder said:

I have several problems with your interpretation, you are looking at the gods through the lenses of reality, not the myths themselves.

What people believed the universe to be has little bearing on the feats in the myths, and a God's power has nothing to do with worship.

Click to expand...

I'll assume the reply was intended for me. I was just asking tbh, i wasn't really sure. "

What i was asking though, because i feel you didn't get my meaning is: if 'insert god here' was described as creating all of existence, and we know existence to be an x-dimensional multiverse, would they be x-dimensional multiversal?

It was aimed at Karin.

The Ptolomy model of the universe has nothing to do with how the universe was created in Hesiod's Theogony.

I do not have much do add here, so I should probably avoid interfering. However, I think that the arguments generally seem sensible, but am uncertain about point #1 and if we are able to find proper images if we set a firm pattern for what is allowed.

However, I wonder how Matthew is going to have the time to both revise our Marvel, Sailor Moon, and Mythology profiles.

I have Vacations coming soon.

Okay. Thank you for the help.

Anything new here...

I don't think so, but Matthew's Marvel and Sailor Moon revisions are prioritised, as is Mugen Souls.

Yeah. Mugen Souls I have to talk to LazyHunter about it, should be over quickly.

Thanks. Should we close this thread then?