So, in my day to day life, publicly I like to tell people that gods are cultural representations and symbols of various aspects of life. For example, I like to describe the act of Odin killing Ymir and creating the world from his corpse to symbolize man’s conquest over nature, the first ordering of chaos. I think its a fair statement because we use symbols and symbolic meaning to interact with the world.
One Greek deity that society likes to portray is Aphrodite. Most forms of media like to uplift her as the symbol of love and romance. I instead use her to represent shallow beauty and glamour, often putting her down in favor of figures like Hecate or Hermes.
This seems to be a basic instinct in human nature, but I wanted to know if you’ve ever experienced gods and goddesses ever taking it personally. Or, do they just consider it part of the job, knowing that we mortals aren’t talking about them personally but using their likeness to represent something?
So a god will smile no matter how they’re portrayed, so long as they’re portrayed. Interesting. In a way, that’s like being a celebrity. So do they benefit in some way from this attention, beyond the attention itself?
With my experience with Cernunnos and Azazel it’s more or so they will sometimes laugh at some portrayals but at the end of the day it can make people want to look further into it. So yes they can benefit from it, the attention isn’t the main point but the attention can be the catalyst.
I do know Azazel does like (atleast from experience) that people use him as a symbol of liberty, mainly because of what he personally had to deal with himself being the literal ‘scapegoat’ and all.
I’m working on a Belial themed tarot deck. I thought it would be cool. Of course I asked him before going forward with it. There are many ways Belial likes to show up, more than enough for a deck and then some.
I’ve done the cups and some of the swords so far. They are really pretty. Belial only had one request, and that is I include Ronove in some of the cards as his wife. I worry I’m venturing into UPG here now.
Maybe that is generally true, but I don’t think Buer was ever too fond of the diablo2 style portrayal of demons.
Well, there isn’t really anything productive or positive about that game, it is just a massive time waster. Sure, on the surface it was a lot of fun when I first played it, mostly because trying of the different skills and gear was fun. The bad parts are, it has no source code available for it, so you won’t learn how to code by tweaking it. It makes demons out to be bad monsters that mindlessly attack you, not friendly beings that want to help and heal you. Religion is portrayed as just bad with temples full of demons that do nothing but attack you. You go to hell and turn into the thing you kill. I’m not sure there is really much to make him happy about it. No I don’t actually think he is sitting around plotting his revenge on the developers like some kind of vengeance driven curse demon, but that doesn’t mean he thinks it is great.
Not really, that’s under the idea that they can do something about it. Although I do agree they have more important things but at the same time, one can dislike something and not put action into changing it.
Most Gods are very open minded and rule over much much more than we think. Ares has been demonized a lot in the morden day but in reality he is a God you want on your side. Read his homeric hymn. It gives more insight into him.
Now they will help you in a way that’s best for you and depending on what you want. Want romantic love? Aphrodite can help with that. Want casual sex? She can help with that too. Need protection from an evil spirit? Aphrodite Areia is waiting for you.
I have a follow up question. What happens if you portray a god, but under an alias? I am guessing they wouldn’t care either way because they go by a bunch of different names already.
If it’s not like how silly people put Azazel as a name for Lucifer then it shouldn’t hurt. It can end up another name for them as Gods collect names from many people.