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prolibytherium · 5 months ago

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There's a LOT of things people do wrong when constructing fantasy beliefs in pantheons of gods, but one of the more specific is having only one god related to fertility and it kind of being just a horny sex thing.

Like you'll have one in the entire bunch whose sphere is listed as fertility and it's basically like Yeah this is the sex one. She's always depicted naked (but not TOO naked because censorship and/or the writer's own skittishness). She's going to have the exact body type epitomized in contemporary western beauty standards and there's usually no chance in hell that she's gonna be fat (unless MAYBE they're referencing 'venus' figurines). Her thing is fertility, which means having sex and making babies. Might be a goddess of beauty or love or marriage too, because these are kinda sex things, but that's probably it. And yeah that sort of thing is virtually nonexistent in real life.

Like the concept of fertility is so fundamentally important to the function of most societies in human history in ways that it is just Not in industrialized imperial core countries. Most people are getting food from stores, and not having to worry about harvesting crops or breeding livestock or foraging for food or having enough animals to hunt, so fertility only really comes up as a concern if you're trying to have kids (and there is certainly societal pressure to have children, but your wellbeing and survival is rarely going to Depend on it). And I think writing only from that perspective and not even trying to learn about WHY fertility is so conceptually important is why you see this trend.

There's no absolute universal statement about how people believe in gods but it's broadly accurate that systems with many deities will Usually have more than one deity associated with fertility, and these associations will certainly include human reproduction but also the fertility of livestock/hunted animals, plants, the land itself.

Some fertility deities may also be heavily associated with seasonal changes or environmental factors that agriculture or foraging is dependent on (spring/summer/fall, seasonal rains, seasonal flooding, rain itself, sunlight, good soil, rivers, wetlands, etc). Some certainly might be related to love, marriage, sex, and beauty, but that's VERY RARELY going to be the sole way the concept of fertility is embodied. And they'll often will have other associations not directly about fertility, or related to fertility in culturally specific ways.

#I think a lot of the time people are using Aphrodite as their sole reference for the concept of Fertility Deity (and even then #not really grasping the nuances of her depiction/worship or place in the broader ancient Greek religious worldview)#Or understanding that she isn't the Only fertility related deity (like jsut off the top of my head there's fertility associations with #Hera + Artemis + Pan + Dionysus + Demeter + Persephone + Priapus and I'm pretty sure I'm missing several here)#Just in general pantheons where there is only one god associated with any given concept are very rare (unless the concept is very specific)#Like a pantheon with dozens of gods will probably have more than one solar deity but might have only one that presides specifically #over a certain crop or something #Also in a wide reaching/long-spanning religion associations might change with time or as a result of religious syncretism #Or gods may be worshipped under specific and/or localized epithets which describe the god specifically as it presides over this #location or the god as it relates to specific parts of its nature.#It might be a little different if you're writing in a context where the gods are a confirmable part of material reality but even then like #unless your gods are extremely active in managing how they're worshipped culture is going to shape their perception.#Also as a side note if you are completely within your power to depict what you want you should probably be okay with depicting #nudity. Like there's always cultural variations in what/how much/under which circumstances nudity is acceptable (and many cases #where personal nudity is not okay but depictions in art are). But the outright refusal to show a Bare Tit or Flaccid Penis even in art is #virtually nonexistent throughout the vast majority and wide span of human history and like realistically speaking there's going to be #Erect Phallus too. Phallic imagery isn't quite Ubiquitous but VERY common across human history like.. You gotta get over it

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