What is your favorite mythological figure (of ancient religions only)?
Prometheus
It might seem like a subjective question, but the answer is objectively Prometheus and his replacements in other cultures.
Someone that went against God(s) to give humans knowledge that at the time was considered magical
Like, we talk about how much tech changes stuff today, but fucking fire?
Imagine being alive when your group of humans mastered fire. That shit would have been fucking mind breaking.
He is the one that have humans fire and was chained to the rock for all time while having his guts eaten by a bird each day which healed each night?
Yep.
The OG Light Bringer sentenced to eternal damnation for providing knowledge to humans.
And yes, I’m still salty Christians made him the bad guy.
Any trickster god.
Hail Eris!
Odin is cool af.
The Demiurge. Not that I like the Demiurge itself. But explaining the human condition as being a product of bad design appeals to me. I don’t believe the myth and I’m not religious. But as far as myths go, that one is my fave.
Perun. Kinda like Thor, but without whoring for Marvel.
Axe is cooler than hammer as well.
Mainly, Lilit(h). Not mythological for me, although both Sumerian and Jewish Kabbalah are generally said as “mythological” by historical references.
I believe in a Goddess that extends beyond a single archetype, while I try to blend archetypes and concepts from various religions and “myths” in order to materialize my own understanding of existence and cosmos.
For me, She is Lilith/Lilit (the fearsome Sumerian Goddess of Winds as well as the Demoness and First Woman not banished from Eden as She fled on Her Will), She is Kali (the fearsome Hindu Goddess and Demoness of destruction and transformation), She is the Yin (the receptive Darkness complementing whilst opposing the Yang light) and the Tao (the wholeness and oneness), She is Al-Lat / Allatu (the Pre-Islam Arabic Goddess of War and Fertility), She is Isis and Bastet and Naunet (Egyptian Goddesses) She is Asherah (Hebrew Goddess consort/sister of Yahweh), She is Ereshkigal and Inanna (Sumerian Goddesses), She is Nuit and She is the Scarlet Woman (Thelemite Goddesses), She is Hekate (the Greek Goddess of Magic and Moon) and Aphrodite (the Greek Goddess of Love) and Athena (the Greek Goddess of Wisdom and Warfare) and Gaia (Goddess of Earth), She is Morana (Slavic personification of Death) and a feminine counterpart of Thanatos (Greek personification of Death as well), and so on, but mainly, Lilith Herself, as beautifully multifaceted as She is, both motherly nurturing and darkly reaping, neither good nor evil, just… Her nature.
I believe in a Sacred and Dark Feminine energy that’s inside and outside everywhere, reaching scientific and philosophical concepts such as the entropy, the fields (as in electromagnetic field), the primordial soup from the beginning of earthly life, the quantum fluctuations, the apeiron, the Nietzschean Abyss. She’s the shining Darkness, infinite nothingness, omnipresent wholeness and the cosmic Oneness.
In summary, the Dark Mother Goddess, often manifesting to me by Her Lilith’s archetype.
Satan and Dionysus tie for first in my book.
Ganesha
Anubis and Thoth weighing the heart of the dead to see if it is as light as a feather before letting them into the afterlife.
I love the idea that there’s no “do this, do that”, or a concrete set of rules or commandments. But the idea that if you can look back on your life, and if your heart isn’t weighed down with the burden of all of the things that you did that know we’re just wrong…then you can go on to the afterlife.
It’s just no much more of a reasonable, adult approach to morality.
I think Odyssey is a pretty cool guy. Eh trojans hores and doesnt afraid of anything.
The Shintō sun goddess Amaterasu is quite interesting. As is the whole Shintō origin story.
Ninshubur. Dude is badass.
Talos
Chill out there, Heimskr.
Big fan of The Left Hand Path. It is many things to many people but my understanding is that within the left hand path comes the notion that growth is catalyzed by conflict. If all things align with your morals and situations you have reached stasis. Conflict challenges the self to overcome and grow. Thus I am able to look at a world full of conflict as full of opportunities to grow, and able to understsnd the fact that conflict will always eventually arise as the fact that we will always be able to grow.
Cybele, Mithras, Harpocrates