Composite Imaginary Realms

Imaginative authors present a composite account of imaginary realms. Inconsistencies can be ironed out or incorporated into a multiple reality, e.g.:

Hesiod tells us that the goddess of love sprang from the sea-foam;
Homer tells us that she was a daughter of Zeus;
Plato explains that there is a heavenly love and an earthly love, thus combining two myths and transforming them into philosophy.

Some mysteries are explained whereas others remain mysteries. Modern successors of the Greek epicists include Poul Anderson and Neil Gaiman. Combining Anderson's and Gaiman's accounts of other realms, we learn that:

we do not know which unknown power granted the Taverners their charter to run the Old Phoenix Inn between the universes;

we do know that the Endless (seven anthropomorphic personifications of aspects of consciousness) granted its charter to the necropolis, Litharge;

however, "...there are some powers that no one, not even the Endless, seeks to inquire into too deeply."
-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: The Wake (New York, 1997), p. 17.

This kind of post appreciates Anderson's imagination and also his place in a tradition from Hesiod to still living authors and beyond.