There’s a post in the #heathen tag where someone responds to an ask about being Asatru while not believing in the gods as literal beings. OP regards the gods as personifications of phenomena, natural and otherwise. Leaving aside the fact that not all Heathens are Asatru
They’re of course free to view things as they wish, but their comment that they view Odin as the personification ‘of knowledge’ makes me side-eye the whole notion of gods as personifications. Mostly, I think that’s because when most people discuss personification, they end up being reductionist. It’s the thing I raised in my Gods Of post.
If we go with the OP’s Odin-as-personification-of-knowledge, where do his exploits as necromancer, as sexually and morally ambiguous wanderer, as kingmaker and kingbreaker fit? Wherefore lies the poetry and madness and murder, the terror and the ecstasy?
If Thor is merely the personification of thunder, what of his name as Deep Thinker? What of his role as hallower of brides and hofs?
I’m not trying to police anyone’s beliefs here - just querying the whole conception of ‘personification’ as a ‘reason’ for gods and spirits. If they arise from singular phenomena, whether they be anthropomorphized or not, then why does mythology ascribe personality and multiple facets and roles to these entities?
The myths present them as complex, rounded beings - and do so the world over, in many different cultures. As pure personifications, it doesn’t really make sense for them to have these overlaps, does it?
In fact, the more I consider the idea, the more I recall that the Death of the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett is probably the best example of the complexity of the issue. An eight foot skeleton with a scythe and robe - yet as the books go on, we find he has hopes, dreams, cares, likes curry and cats. He adopts a daughter.
As a personification, Death soon ceases to be that. He develops a character, or one is shown to us, because of events in the world. He exists independently of what he is supposed to personify.
He exists in the world of the books as his own thing, his own identity. What was originally a gag, is revealed to be a rich and complex being.
Now, some might ask if, by saying this, I am not giving ammunition to the idea that gods may have begun as personifications? I’d argue that this is not the case, precisely because all of the Discworld is fictional. It emerged from the mind of one talented man,
Whereas, the gods and spirits of real-world cultures are just that - there is a definitive real-world component. They have enough effect to have temples and shrines erected for thousands of years.
A disbelief in such things as entities in the world, has only existed en masse for maybe four centuries at a generous guess. Conservatively, as far as records go, we have several thousand years ( and probably much longer than that) where gods and spirits were facts of life.
They were as much a thing as the weather.
Modern materialist arrogance would have us act as if our ancestors were stupid, savage creatures, benighted by ignorance. Yet for all that supposed ignorant superstition, all that illusion and misperception, the fact is civilisations and empires rose and fell. Humanity prospered.
Human success and survival wasn’t accidental until the so called Enlightenment. On the contrary, it was borne of human ingenuity and skill, of understanding and working with the environment as best we could.
I’m not saying this was down to human belief in gods and spirits, or even the lack thereof. What I am saying is that there is a modern tendency to reduce and grossly simplify the complexity of lived experience - to place the ambiguity and strangeness of life into discrete categories and to manipulate things into new shapes that bear little resemblance to the original experience so as to make them ‘fit’ that box.
The idea that people could live in an ambiguous world seems anathema to moderns - that an existence of both-neither-maybe-all-ness might not be some flight of fancy, but instead, be intensely practical is mindboggling for many people today.
The fact is, there are many complexities which give rise to human perceptions and awarenesses. By definition, gods and spirits are ambiguous - they are weird, strange and different constellations of experience having and being had by humans and other creatures.
What they are, if they are, at all, is strangeness - wyrd. If they exist solely in the human mind, they are still wyrd. And if, as matches my experience and (apparently) thousands of years of human history, they’re in the human mind and outside it too…
Then they’re more than something that can be reduced to one thing, one category, one origin, just like humans. Their complexities, at the very least match our own. We are more than our jobs. More than our names. More than biological offspring of our parents.
If we, as products of cells meeting, of chemical reactions, are capable of all that humans are, then what?
If we reduce the universe to a mere exchange of energy, which it is, does this in any way serve us? Is it useful, or does it serve no other purpose than to produce a sense of superiority, an illusion of control, because we ‘know what it is’?
I am meat and chemicals. A meaningless biological automaton.
Does this serve, or in such reduction, am I not levelling and concealing much that is helpful, useful and practical?
Am I not ignoring my capacity to bring wonder, joy, rage, laughter, comfort, healing and harm to the world?
Isn’t it better for me to acknowledge that I know not what I am, from moment to moment? That I exist as myriad different images inside the minds of all who read these words? I’m just a bearded frothing madman. Just a guy in his thirties typing away on a website, and yet there’s a chance these words might catch fire, might stick in someone’s consciousness.
And in doing so, might not I alter the chemical makeup of someone’s body with words, stretching out across the the planet as I stir thought or emotion? In doing that, what category do I belong in? As these words are written, what am I? Perhaps they might be read long after I am dust and bones, or am old and dying? Anything is possible isn’t it?
I’m just a man, and if I’m all that as a man, then what happens when a person encounters a god or a spirit? What happens if the so called personification of knowledge comes upon you and leads you to open your heart to your beloved, or whisper words that aid in healing after a lifetime of abuse?
What happens if the so called personification of thunder drives away your nightmares and surrounds you with a sense of strength and safety, who utters to you without words, the sense that you are loved and protected, because that’s what Thor’s been doing for folk for centuries?
