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alpaca-clouds · 3 days ago

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Dead Gods in Mythology

Okay, another little write up that has been requested. (Note, yes, you can send me requests for mythological and historical contexts. I love talking about this stuff. Just send a DM or Ask, and I will see to it when I get time.)

This came from a discussion about Sekhmet in season 2 in Nocturne, where someone brought up: "Well, she cannot really have been a goddess if she died." And of course I had to go: "Well, actually..." At this. It ended with me promising a write up on this.

See, this is an idea that is prevasive in western culture, and gets brought up again and again in media: Gods don't bleed, and gods don't die. It has been brought up in The Road to El Dorado, The Epic Musical, and in Kaos. But this idea is actually mainly rooted in - drum roll please - Christianity of course. With the Christian God being a single god, who is supposed to be all mighty and eternal. Polytheistic cultures meanwhile tend to have a couple of gods who within the mythology die. Sure, some of them are revived by some sort of magic - or continue to exist in another plane (in those cases often becoming the guardians of some sort of plane of the dead, where all dead souls go) - but yes, the polytheistic mythologies that we know off tend to have at least one god who dies.

So, let's talk about some of them.

Given our starting point is Sekhmet, let's start with the Egyptian mythology. Here we have two big examples of gods that prominently die.

One example of this is obviously Ra. Ra's entire thing is that he does not only die in the mythology, but that he dies ONCE A DAY, which was the Egyptian mythology's explanation for why there is night and day. Ra dies at the end of the day, and he moved through the duat during the night. This is in fact part of the reason why we know so many details about the duat, as those are described in several mythological texts about Ra's journey through the world of the dead.

Of course, this might be strange example, because Ra obviously gets revived daily, too, but that does not change the fact that he dies once a day. And for a good chunk of Egyptian history (please keep in mind that Egyptian religion shifted during the 3000 years that Ancient Egypt was around) Ra was one of the most powerful gods in their pantheon so to speak.

Osiris

Then Egyptian mythology has probably one of the best known examples of a god getting killed. And that is Osiris. Like almost all of the old mythologies, the Egyptian deities were a lot into siblings marrying. And in Egyptian mythology there were noticable four siblings: Osiris, Isis, Seth and Nephthys - the latter getting usually ignored by modern audiences for some reason.

Osiris married Isis, Seth married Nephthys. And of course, as it goes with godly siblings, Osiris and Seth had a lot of quarelling and rivalry going. Seth - of course - being a god of the desert and chaos. And eventually Seth manages to trap Osiris and kill him. Now, the details of this have shifted once more throughout Egyptian history. In some variations they aphyxiate him, in others Osiris gets hacked into 26 pieces. One way or another, Isis will look for her dead brother-husband, find his corpse or his corpse parts, revive him, get pregnant with Horus, and then they find out that because he was dead he has to become now the god of the dead, being turned into the god overseeing the souls moving into the afterlife.

Baldr

Then there is of course the myth of Baldr in Norse mythology. Another son of Odin and Frigg. And it was said that Baldr was the most beautiful of all the gods. And Frigg loved him so much, that she went around the world and made everything - every stone, every animal and every plant - promise that they would never hurt him. However, she did not get to ask the mistletoe, and Loki noticed this. And being the trickster that he is, he devised a plan. He tricks the blind god Höðr to shoot a mistletoe arrow at Baldr, which then obviously kills him. In the prose Edda this is the reason for Loki's punishment with the acid spitting serpent.

Baldr of course moves onto Hella - the place, not the goddess - and remains there.

It should be noted of course that in the Edda we also know that most of the gods eventually die during Ragnarök. Though this is also where we should note, that the Edda are of course a source that we should use with some care, given that it is not a first hand account by Norse people, but was written up by Christian monks. (Most notable, a lot of researchers doubt by now that Loki ever was an actual god in Norse mythology, but was invented by Christians to fill the roll of a satan-like figure.)

Zagreus

Where are my Hades peeps at? If you have played Hades, you obviously know that Zagreus has this habit of dying and coming back. And this game mechanic is actually based in mythology.

And this is the moment where we should speak about one important fact: We tend to act as if we know everything there is to know about Greek mythology, but actually we do not know this. We know a lot about the most important gods, because we have several written sources about this - but when it comes to smaller or local gods, we absolutely are loosely informed, given we often only have text fragments. At times several text fragments that are contradictory. Zagreus is one of these.

Zagreus is either an alternative name for Dionysus, the son of Zeus and Persephone, or the son of Hades. The latter aspect has been tried to explain by researchers with the fact that we are not sure if the three big gods (Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades) were always distinct entities or might have been for a long while different aspects of the same god.

One way or another: We have at least two different text fragments, in which Zagreus dies. Once he gets murdered by Titans, once he dies in an accident. One way or another he dies. And in the cases where he is a son of Zeus, this seems to be the explanation why he is bound to the Underworld.

The Hades game kinda mixed and matched with the mythology there xD

Lugh

There I go again, talking about another mythology that we are actually not quite as certain about as some people seem to believe we are: Gaelic mythology. Once more, our issue is that while some of this was written down, it was written down after the region had been Christianized, so there is a lot of Christian bias in those texts. In fact it is even more clear in this example, given that the written down accounts of the Gaelic mythology involve references to biblical events. And of course the Tuatha de Danann are in the written down accounts references more as amazing humans, rather than gods - though we are fairly certain they originally were deities, with Lugh in particilar being a god of justice and war.

In the variations of the story we know, Lugh kills another god named Carmait, as that other god had fucked one of Lugh's wives. And in revenge Carmait's sons end up killing Lugh, by spearing him on his own magic spear and then throwing him into one of the Lochs. So, yes, if you count, this story in fact involves two dead gods. Generally speaking, quite a few of the Tuatha de Danann end up dead, though, again, I will point out, that we are not fully sure how much of this is routed in the fact that these myths were recorded by later Christians, who might have wanted to make sure that everyone understands that the Tuatha de Danann were not actually gods.

Izanami

Technically we actually have a variety of Shinto gods (aka kami) who die. But I will focus maybe on the most widely known story, that pretty much everyone who ever played Persona might be aware of: Izanami. And if I recount the tale, you might in fact feel strangely reminded of other myths.

Izanami and Izanagi were the first kami that were created, and they created the land, and then the world around it, through the act of procreation with one another. Eventually Izanami gives birth to the fire god Kagu-tsuchi and he burns her to death. Her remains are buried, but the grief-stricken Izanagi cannot be without her. So he travels to the underworld, Yomi. Eventually he finds Izanami, but she tells him that she can no longer leave the underworld, as she has already eaten from the food of the underworld. He tries to convince her, but eventually he sees her face and realized that she has the face of death, and flees in terror. She gets angry at this, and curses him and the land of the living, before she remains in Yomi as the goddess of the dead.

Vritra

Vritra in Hindu mythology is one of the danava and serves as the personification of drought. In the mythology he once tries to block a river, of course with this causing a drought. The other gods cannot stand by this, and Indra, who sees Vritra as his nemesis, ends up slaying Vritra to stop the drought.

Note, here, too, that there are a couple of deities in Hinduism - as well as the religions that sprung off of Hinduism - that die at least for a shorter while.

If you have ever had the fun of talking to one of the very annoying atheists, you might have heard someone pointing out that Krishna dies and is resurrected in a way that is quite similar to Jesus. Because, yes, this general mythological concept is assumed to probably go back to the progenitor religion of the Indo-European cultures. While we do not know anything about that religion (because back then nobody wrote anything), anthropologists and comparative mythology researchers are fairly sure that there was a tale of a god dying and returning from the dead in that religion as well, which is why it shows up so often in religions of that cultural sphere.

Innana & Dumuzid

Now let's talk about another really old mythology, about which we know surprisingly much, because they have written a lot down - and we were able to translate it. And that is the ancient Sumerian mythology, in which we have Innana or Ishtar (who in Egyptian mythology later became Isis). Again, due to these also being within the realm of the Indo-European mythologies, you will find some similarities - though in comparison to other goddesses in the same role, Innana is a lot more proactive.

Innana is convinced by her brother to marry the shepard god Dumuzid, though it is fairly clear through the poems we have, that she and her husband never quite saw eye to eye. This makes her death also quite interesting. Because Innana dies by her own volition, because her sister Ereshkigal, who was made the goddess of the dead, misuses her position. So Innana dies to be able to travel to the Underworld and fight Ereshkigal to dethrone her. Enki at this point helps Innana to flee the Underworld and return to the world of the living. However, there needs to be balance in the world. So if she returns to the world of a living, someone else needs to take her place in the Underworld.

As she returns to the world of the living, she sees her servants having mourned her, while her husband, Dumuzid, just instantly went: "I am a widower? Sweet! I can fuck around with servant girls now!" And as we say: Fuck around and find out. So Innana goes: "That asshole has not even the decency to act as if he is mourning me!" So he tells the spirits of the Underworld to take him to take her place. And so they do and kill him.

Good for her!

Quetzacóatl

The very attentive of you might have noticed that all myths I have talked about so far (with the exception of Izanami, where anthropologists and comparative mythology people are still arguing about whether or not there was an influence there - mind you, I land very much on the side of "Yes, obviously, there is an Indo-European influence to Shinto-Myth!") are from the Indo-European influence sphere. So let's lastly talk about one other god, who just so happens to be probably important for Castlevania Nocturne as well: Quetzacóatl. Now, historians researching the Nahua, are fairly certain that this myth has come to be because there once was a Nahua ruler named Quetzacóatl after the deity, and that ruler died, which then in mythology got mixed up with the deity. Never the less: There definitely is written down myths about the death of Quetzacoatl.

The short of it is, that a couple of demons plotted to kill him, but knowing that they could not kill a god, they deviced a plan: They would feed him a beer that would drive him mad. While it took a lot of trickery, they succeeded, and drove the god mad, making him commit suicide by burning himself alive.

Maui

Okay, I know what some might say: "But actually is Maui a god?" I will answer: "That depends who you ask." Maui is a character that shows up throughout almost all the Pacifica cultures. He is always a trickster and a culture hero. At times he is a mortal, at other times he is a demi-god, and at yet other times he is a full god. Because those cultures were distant enough to have the myths shift around. So yes, maybe you will call this cheating. But fuck it, let me talk about Maui, because I kinda think his death is pretty darn cool.

So, if you have watched Moana, you know that Maui is a shape shifter. And he was very fond of humans. So, he decided that he wanted to make humanity immortal. His plan to do so was to go to the goddess of the Underworld and death, Hine-nui-te-pō, and reverse the birth by transforming into a worm and crawl into her vagina. However, she woke, and it turns out that her vagina had teeth - so she crushed him with her vagina teeth. Which is... pretty darn badass, I would say.

Lastly

Let me end this entire thing with the note that there probably are quite a few more gods that die within their respective mythologies. I know at least of two myths from North America in which Coyote dies (a lot of North American cultures have Coyote as a trickster god). And I personally am simply not well informed on South American mythologies or a lot of African mythologies. I do not know stuff about the Indigenous pre-buddhist mythologies of Southeastern Asia, and central Asia. So there is a good chance that there are gods that die - or die and get resurrected in those mythologies - but if there are, I simply do not know enough about them.

Generally speaking though: Gods rarely can be killed by normal mortals. Mortal half-gods might succeed at times. But other gods? Yeah, they sure can kill their fellow deities. And some deities also commit suicide to save other people. It is a common thing throughout mythology.

So, please, can we just stop claiming gods are truly immortal? They will usually not die of old age or anything like that, but they very much can be killed by other gods, magical weapons and such things.