In Anderson's World Without Stars, Hugh Valland tells a story about Thor.
In Anderson's Genesis:
"'Ruvio bear witness that any judgments against me stand satisfied.' The Thunderer was the favorite god of most mariners." (PART TWO, II, p. 112)
Thus, Indra, Zeus, Jupiter and Thor are reborn in the collective consciousness of a second humanity. Gaia knows that her restored human beings will believe in deities at an early stage of their development and therefore communicates with them in that form.
For some of us in this time, polytheism appeals to our imagination but not to our intellect. The Thunderer passes overhead but not literally.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Polytheism appeals to neither my intellect or imagination. I have far more sympathy for the thinkers who composed the Amon hymns of the XIX Dynasty of Egypt. Their exalted conception of Amon-Ra shows them as groping and struggling to find the true Cause of all things, God.
And I have far more sympathy for philosophers like Plato , Aristotle, and the Stoics, who arrived at belief in one God thru philosophy. True, this was too remote and abstract to appeal to many. But it shows how some were dissatisfied with paganism.
Also, there was God revealing Himself to mankind thru Judaism. The exile and scattering of the Jews after the Babylonian conquest led to many Jewish communities thru out the Mid East and around the coasts of the Mediterranean. Jewish monotheism and ethics came to appeal to many non-Jews, even if they did not formally convert.
Last, what Judaism began was completed by God thru the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection of Christ, with the Church He founded being the means He desires mankind to use in seeking God.
Ad astra! Sean
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