Class II. Gods of All the Nations
Oh hear my song, o gods of all the nations
A song of peace, for their lands and for mine!
—Finlandia (Finnish national anthem)Just as modern archaeologists refer to the Stone
Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age, many peoples
have divided their conception of history into a se-
quence of World Ages. Unlike our modern notion of
“pro-gress,” however, these usually begin with a vi-
sion of a perfect utopian world in its original creation,
with a progressive deterioration over the ages to the
present time of woe and misery. Ages are often ended
by a great cataclysm, such as a flood, asteroid impact,
glaciation, or volcanic destruction. A typical example of
such a sequence of World Ages is the Greek version:The Golden Age—A time of perfect innocence and
happiness, when Truth and Justice prevailed. War
was unknown, and the gods walked among
immortal humans in an eternal Spring (perhaps
corresponding to the Neolithic, c.8500-5000 BCE).
The Silver Age—A time of harsh seasons, suffering,
hardship, and mortality. The gods withdrew from
the Earth, and men had to labor hard tilling the soil
and building homes (perhaps corresponding to the
Copper Age, c.5000-3000 BCE).
The Bronze Age—A time of war and violence, in which
powerful men destroyed each other (c.3000-1500 BCE).
The Age of Heroes—The Greeks inserted here a period
of demigods and heroes, culminating in the Trojan
War (c.1500-1200 BCE).
The Iron Age—A time of labor and toil, with rampant
crime. Positive ideals are stifled while greed, deceit,
hatred, and war rule people and nations (from 1200
BCE...until ??).Pantheons
The word pantheon means “all the gods.” The
pantheon of each culture is its own particular “family”
of gods and goddesses who are honored and
worshipped by that people. Each culture has its own
pantheon, just for them, and no one pantheon is for
everyone. The deities of each people are anchored in
the right cerebral hemispheres of all the people in that
tribe and are actual personalities as distinct as those
of the individual humans. Thus they can be both
immortal and omnipresent. This is very important to
understand: The gods are real—as real as you and I.
The actual origins of the gods are lost in the mists
of time, and all we have are the myths that have been
passed down. But all cultures include traditions of
exemplary mortals who were deified after death. Some
scholars believe that entire pantheons, such as those
of the Norse, Greeks, Egyptians, Celts, Hindus, Tuatha- Introduction: Theagonies
HERE ARE THINGS: MOUNTAINS, LAKES,
and rivers. Forests, fens, and
fields. The crashing ocean, the
fertile lands, the burning desert.
The Sun, the Moon, and the
wheeling stars. The broad Earth.
Stonehenge, the Pyramids,
Ankhor Wat. Animals and
humans. And there are events:
volcanoes erupt, eclipses darken the Sun and Moon,
comets appear in the sky, meteorites crash into the
Earth, earthquakes destroy cities, glaciers and floods
cover the land. Tides ebb and flow, the seasons
change, and some days, it just rains.
And then there are the stories we tell about things
and events. Most of these are by way of explanation:
How did things come to be in the first place? What
happened long ago? How did things get to where we
find them now? Who are we? Where did we come from?
And where are we going? Some stories are meant to
convey lessons, teaching by example—both positive
(“Do like wise so-and-so did.”) and negative (“Don’t be
like foolish so-and-so!”). Some stories explain why we
repeat certain customs (“And that’s why, ever since, we...”)Creation Myths
The foundation stories of every people are what
we call creation myths. The simplest ones tell how the
people came into being, and the really ambitious ones
account for the world and the Entire universe. Each of
these is different and unique, as seen from the
perspective of those telling them. While they all
express certain Truths in a metaphoric sense, none of
them can be taken as “true” in a literal sense—especially
since nearly all of them presuppose an Earth-centered
cosmology, with the Sun, Moon, and stars coming
into being later on!
However, the subsequent generations of gods,
and eventually people, are mythically linked in each
culture with the original Creation from which they all
proceed. So it’s important to know these stories. There
are far more than I can tell here, of course; I only have
room to mention a very few. There are many wonderful
books of myths and legends, and you can also find
them on the Web.World Ages
Corrected pages 3rd printing.2.p65 55 6/10/2004, 4:03 PM