Polytheism

Polytheism (from ancient Greek polys 'many', and ancient Greek θεοί theoi, German 'Götter') or polytheism refers to the religious worship of a multitude of goddesses, gods and other deities or nature spirits. Most religions of antiquity were polytheistic and had their own traditional world of gods, often enriched with figures from centuries-old cultural encounters and ideas.

These are forms of spirituality or cult or religion in which the action of several, personally imagined gods is assumed. This action is portrayed as interrelated, directed toward the world, and affecting human beings. A polytheistic religion differs from the mere existence of several cults of gods in an ethnic group by an "internal structure" of its apparatus of gods - by a pantheon that is structured in itself and determined by a system of action.

The polytheistic religions are opposed to the monotheistic religions with only one god. An intermediate form is monolatry, which is characterized by the worship of only one deity as a "special god" who stands alongside other gods of an ethnic deity world. A similar concept is henotheism, but this contains a temporal limitation on worship. In the cosmology of monotheistic religions, the polytheistic gods with their different functions are partly combined into attributes of the single God, partly assigned to lower supernatural beings such as angels and saints.

Overview

Approaches to polytheism can be found in the present day above all in the Bon faith originating in Tibet, the Candomblé faith widespread in Brazil, the Santería cult developed in Cuba, the Shintō religion prevailing in Japan, the modern Voodoo faith, the Wicca movement practiced in the United States, and in the numerous neopagan religions of Europe (see Germanic, Celtic, and Slavic neo-paganism).

The diverse religious complex of Hinduism, on the other hand, is polytheistic only in individual manifestations and is categorized in specialist circles as henotheistic. Vedic Hinduism (about 1200 to 600 BCE) was a purely polytheistic religion, though monism developed in later times. From the outside, the deity world seems diverse. The following short prayer (Mahakalasamhita), known in various variations, expresses the Hindu understanding of the divine (seen here as female): "As the sun reflected in the pools appears as uncounted suns, so do you, O Mother, appear as many - You One without a second, Supreme Brahman!"

All the Upanishads deal with this "unity in diversity".

The majority of traditional African religions are based on the assumption of a celestial high god, who in the course of time has also lost some of his veneration, mostly through the delegation of creative power to his descendants. Where a sky-god exists, who has divided his areas of responsibility to different deities (god of rain, fertility, iron, etc.), there is no actual polytheism. Pronounced forms of polytheism exist in those African societies that have deified mythical ancestors out of an ancestor cult, or where function gods, such as several hundred orishas among the Yoruba and Ewe, are worshipped as central authorities of individual clans (see African Cosmogony).

Polytheism also exists in non-Christianized areas of Oceania and the Amazon basin. The latter are shrinking in part due to the extinction of these tribes, their absorption into modern culture, or missionization by Christian or Islamic groups (see Shirk and Daʿwa). The extremely diverse worlds of gods and spirits of the tribes are subsumed under the umbrella term "ethnic religions".

Insofar as traditional tribes or peoples had a new monotheistic faith (or in the socialist countries, such as the Soviet Union, atheism) forced upon them, the old polytheistic faith was and is often secretly continued by many or some. When the state or social pressure subsided, mixed religions (syncretism) emerged and still emerge in some cases. Thus in South America there are both mixed religions between Christianity and old polytheistic religious ideas of certain South American Indio peoples and Mesoamerican ethnic groups, as for instance those of the Maya and Aztecs, and between Christianity and old polytheistic belief systems of the descendants of the people who had been taken into slavery mainly from West Africa, as the different directions of Santería and Candomblé and other Afro-American religions.

In part, the belief systems of peoples and tribes - often preserved by a few people - are also completely reactivated, as can currently be observed in Central Asian Tengrism. Such reactivations also occur with parts of some polytheistic religions of North American Indian tribes.

A growing number of people are even attempting to revive polytheistic systems that have been extinct for centuries, the content of which can only be reconstructed in fragments through archaeological finds and contemporary witness accounts (such as the Celtic or Germanic faith and heaven of the gods). However, the use of ancient names and signs must be taken with a grain of salt, as these cultures had very different regional beliefs and rituals. The original oral tradition of these cultures has been torn down and must be replaced by modern speculation. Adherents of these groups, however, claim that the basis of these cultures is the view and contemplation of nature.

Buddhism is not considered polytheistic, at least by its members. However, some faiths have an extensive pantheon of gods (adopted from other, older local religions), some of which are worshipped in prayer, through sacrifice, and through a variety of rituals.

All Islamic scholars, some Jewish scholars, and to some extent Unitarian Christians also understand the Christian doctrine of the Trinity as polytheism, which Trinitarian Christians clearly reject. The first reason the doctrine of the Trinity is considered polytheism is the idea that Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are called or considered God. According to the doctrine of the Trinity, the Father, the "Son" Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit together would constitute the one, triune or triune God. The second reason why the doctrine of the Trinity is considered polytheism is that Jesus Christ is considered the "Son of God" - the belief of sonship allows Jesus Christ to share in the reign of God.

Mormonism's doctrine of the "plurality of gods" is called polytheistic by other Christians, which Mormons again reject.

Polytheism in antiquity

Among the known god worlds of ancient polytheism are those of the Sumerian gods, the Babylonian gods, the Assyrian gods, the gods of Canaan and Ugarit, the Greek and Roman gods, the Egyptian gods, the Scandinavian Asen and Wanen, the Celtic gods, god systems of the Balts, Finns, Slavs, Orisha, Yoruba, the gods of the Maya and Aztecs. Today, most historical polytheistic religions are called mythology. In many cases, even where the tradition was only oral, as with the Celts, only names and a few remarks are preserved in texts of neighboring cultures.

Only a few religions of antiquity were not polytheistic. These include monotheistic Judaism and Christianity, dualistic Zoroastrianism, and Mithraism.

In contrast, the idea that there were many gods and goddesses prevailed among almost all tribes and peoples of early times. Already a Sumerian list of gods from the first half of the 3rd millennium includes about 1000 names of gods, which mainly represent different forces of nature.

Why the people of early times in their efforts to understand and cope with their environment and their fate rather built a pantheon of gods and goddesses, rather than believing in a single god, can be exemplified by a Mesopotamian myth, which can be found completely on a cuneiform tablet from about the year 1700 BC. Fragments of this myth can also be found on remains of tablets from the time 700 BC - so it has remained alive for at least 1000 years. The gods instructed the plague god Namtar to destroy the people. This one began to kill them with the plague. But one god who had pity on the humans, namely Enki, revealed to the human Atrachasis a ritual with which they could defeat the plague. The people are to worship the plague god Namtar exclusively of all the gods, and sacrifice only to him, and until he, overwhelmed with sacrifices, desists from his deadly doings. This is how it happens. Thanks to the sacrifices, the plague god desists from his rampage and humanity lives on. Now the gods decide that Adad, the rain god, should make it rain no more and Nisaba, the grain goddess assigned to him, should make grain grow no more. So it comes to pass. And again the god Enki reveals the ritual counter-recipe to Atrachasis: now the people worship and sacrifice Adad and Nisaba alone, and they do so until rain falls and vegetation revives. This myth shows the cause of polytheism. The people in their concern to avert dangers such as epidemics and to maintain life-giving conditions such as rain, sunshine, or fertility of plants and animals, seek ways to secure this through magical and ritual acts and imagine gods and goddesses as responsive and impressionable personal beings for the problem at hand. Some of the peoples imagine the gods in human form (anthropomorphic), some in animal form (zoomorphic), some in both forms and partly also as mixed beings. (Already in the rock drawings as oldest testimonies of human image representation there are animal representations, human representations and occasionally mixed beings). In the Mesopotamian and Canaanite pantheon the gods and goddesses are almost always in human form. Animal gods and mixed human-animal beings, on the other hand, are strongly represented in Egypt and in American culture.

In many civilizations, the worlds of the gods tended to grow in size over time. Deities initially worshipped to protect particular cities or places grew into powerful national gods as empires expanded. Conquests could lead to the subordination of an older pantheon in the defeated culture until a newer one emerged, as in Greek Titanomachy and perhaps Aesir and Vanir in Scandinavia. Cultural exchange could lead to "the same" deity being worshipped in two places under different names, as was the case with the Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans. A similar thing happened when elements of a "foreign" religion were introduced into a local cult, as when the Egyptian Osiris religion was brought to Greece. According to Veyne (2005), ancient man imagined the gods as overwhelming, worshipful beings superior to man. Yet the gods were not so much real beings as fictional figures sprung from a narrative imagination. They were the content of a simple narrative, in the sense of a literary figure. The gods, in the imagination of the believers, had all reached a certain age, which did not change, nor did the number of their descendants. Pagan religion and cults, however, made no offer of a loving God. Pagan piety is founded on sacrifice. The gods, from the pagan imagination, are not very closely associated with humanity, so that they are likely to be constantly disturbed. They are not informed about one's own individual mental state. Only the believer may remind them of the relationship established with one of them through repeatedly offered sacrifices. Pagan religiosity, according to Veyne, is an ensemble of practices; it is not about decided beliefs and ideas, but about practicing one's religion. The gods, according to the conception of the believers, took care that their person, their name and temple, their dignity were respected and noticed. In Paganism, he said, any connection between the gods and men that took place in the consciousness of the believer was alien. The pagans entered into relationships with their gods based on the idea of utility in a given situation, in the sense of a renewable contract. They could change their relationships with individual deities. Christianity, on the other hand, penetrated much deeper into the believer's imagination.