Polytheism is one of the oldest religious systems. As mankind developed, it was replaced by faith in one God, then by atheism and various philosophical teachings. Today's man is inclined to treat polytheism as a kind of children's fairy tales … But upon closer examination, the main figures in these fairy tales too often resemble pathological perverts and ruthless maniacs, and the fairy tales themselves should be rated 18+.
The “big God” hypothesis states that as long as the tribal leadership could personally monitor the observance of social norms, everyone was satisfied with the abundance of local gods who were not burdened with moral restrictions. The enlargement of communities required the change of a brood of irresponsible deities to a single super-being responsible for everything and everyone. This "cemented" heterogeneous groups, restrained the minor princelings, and made it possible to enforce social rules through religious fear, that is, without direct control.
Egyptian force
There is an opinion that the “moralizing god” - all-seeing, omnipotent and sinless - begins to take shape after the society reaches a critical mass of one million people. Although this is not a dogma. In the history of several ancient religions, aspects of monotheism have been identified since the Bronze Age. Let's say the veneration of Marduk in Babylon or Ahura Mazda in Persia. The first known attempt to use monotheism as a state religion was made in Egypt in the XIV century BC: Pharaoh Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten) tried to replace the Egyptian pantheon with the god of the solar disk Aten. After Akhenaten's death, the Egyptian elites deleted his name from all the chronicles and returned the country to the old gods, many of whom were not goodies.
Perhaps one of the clearest illustrations of the divine customs of the Egyptian pantheon is the story of Osiris.
Osiris, who taught people religion and agriculture, once had a falling out with his older brother Set. The vindictive Seth decided to get even. He killed his younger brother, emasculated him, cut his body into many pieces and scattered all over the provinces of Egypt. Having learned about the murder of Osiris, his wife, and also his own sister, Isis, putting on mourning, set out in search of her beloved husband. Isis managed to find and put together all the parts of Osiris with the exception of the penis. Then the goddess made such an important organ of her brother-husband from clay and, with unbridled caresses arousing him, conceived from her dead husband.
The boy who was born was named Horus. When the young god grew up, he immediately challenged Set to battle. The battle between uncle and nephew lasted for 80 years. One or the other took over. Seth tore his eyes out of Horus, but youth still won out. Horus overthrew his uncle, then found his torn eye, fed him to his father's mummies, and Osiris came to life. From that time on, Horus began to rule in the world of the living, while Osiris remained in command of the kingdom of the dead.
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The harlots of Babylon
There were enough ambiguous gods in many other religious cults. Babylonian Ishtar was known not only as the patroness of fertility, but also as the goddess of lust, constantly changing sexual partners, and also as a mentor of war and discord. In China, there was a god Tu Er Shen, who was in charge of same-sex love. In Hinduism, Kama and his wife Rati were considered the main masters of sensual love.
Kama, the future creator of the Kama Sutra, created Brahma to strike people with love arrows, and Kama immediately shot his creator's ten sons. The guys immediately fell in love with their own sister, which was generally considered unacceptable by the Indians. From shame, the young people began to sweat, and from this sweat Rati was born. It was she who was given to wife Kama, later incinerated by Shiva and resurrected by the gods in the form of Rati's child. Rati gave birth to a son, raised, and then married her own child … In light of this, to put it mildly, strange story, it is not surprising that Rati became the patron saint of exclusively sexual pleasures, but not marriage and childbirth.
Sex champions
If you make a rating of obscene gods, then the Greek celestials will apparently be on the upper steps. Their Roman counterparts are somewhat more restrained, but the inhabitants of Olympus are a real standard of debauchery.
There are no such sexual anomalies, sexual perversions, cruelties and atrocities that would not be noted by these characters. Incest, bestiality, homosexuality - this is an incomplete list of their exploits. In addition, as a result of sexual contacts with just anyone, they continuously gave birth to monsters and fantastic freaks.
The scope of the article is simply not enough to describe a small part of the escapades of the Olympic team. We will only mention the most notable ones.
So, one of the very first gods, Kronos, dissatisfied with the behavior of his father Uranus, watched over his parents during sex and completely cut off the genitals of his father. When Uranus bled out, Kronos took his place and became the main god, and after a while he was overthrown by his offspring Zeus. Having sent his father to Tartarus, the new head of the pantheon reigned on Olympus, where he got himself three official wives: Metis, Themis and Hera. The first wife was the aunt of the lightning thrower and was eaten by him to prevent the birth of a son, who was predicted to outshine his father. The second wife, Themis, was also Zeus's aunt, and the third, Hera, was his own sister.
At the same time, the thunderer constantly walked to the side. He acted with imagination, turning into a bull, then into a swan, then into a golden rain, seduced both goddesses and mortals, not limiting himself to women, and started romances with young men.
However, the spouses of Zeus did not remain in debt, giving birth to him numerous godless children, often from someone or from whatever. So, Hera gave birth from flowers (do not ask how this is possible), she conceived the monster Typhon from Gaia (Earth), and she bore the blacksmith Hephaestus in general from a desire to annoy her husband.
The god Apollo did not lag behind the Olympic Pope, seducing either men or women. Tolerance was in full bloom: one of the gods of marriage, Hymen, for some reason turned out to be an effeminate homosexual, and Aphrodite (Venus in the Roman version), born of sea foam, according to a number of information sources, was a bisexual being and was periodically depicted either with male genitals or with beard. Later, this androgyny resulted in the legend of the son of Aphrodite and Hermes, the bisexual Hermaphrodite. By the way, the temples of Aphrodite throughout the Mediterranean, Greece, Italy were grandiose centers of sacred prostitution.
From Yarila with love
Unlike the Greek gods, who divided their leisure time between perverted sex and bloody revenge, the characters of Scandinavian and Slavic mythology behaved much more modestly. Perhaps the reason for this was the harsh climate, which encourages restraint. Odins and Torah, of course, are harsh, like real Scandinavians, they did not turn pale at the sight of blood, but they didn’t go into incestuous relationships, as a rule, they married one chosen one, and if they walked on the side, it was not as extreme as their colleagues from Greece …
Something ornate became rather a rarity. Like a story with the god Loki. He, having turned into a mare, thwarted the work of the giant and his horse, who were building a wall around Asgard. The giant horse, carried away by horse sex, abandoned the stones to carry, the giant was not in time and said goodbye to the promised reward.
Even more chaste are the myths of our ancestors. Slavic pagan deities did not start harems. Veles, Svarogs and Khors did not engage in sodomy, did not seduce sisters and aunts. Leli, Lada and Zhiva did not embark on lecherous adventures. It happened that Slavic deities gave birth to monsters, such as Viy or the Lizard, but this usually referred to the Navi deities, such as Morena or Chernobog. On the whole, Slavic polytheism was very restrained and did not produce more negativity than life itself demanded.
According to many researchers, the mythology of pagan cults carries hidden meanings, it models the cosmogony of the surrounding world, weaving it into the laws of society. From this point of view, we can safely say that the world of the Scandinavians or Slavs was much cleaner and more chaste than the world of the Egyptians or Greeks. In addition, Slavic polytheism quite well confirms the theory of the "big god", since it is a transitional form from paganism to monotheism. After all, the ancient Rus considered their numerous gods only as the hypostasis of the supreme deity of the Clan, solving certain local problems through them. And this is already, you see, very close to the Orthodoxy adopted many centuries later.
Magazine: Mysteries of History №10. Author: Evgeny Zimin