Did the Theoi Punish Ovid?

[Muskrat]

Just to add to my last post: And many indigenous peoples' pantheons are also living traditions.

Though with writing up the religious, etc. practices of living traditions, you'd want to show the same care as Onyx Path has shown with their pantheons to be as respectful as possible, especially with oppressed groups like indigenous peoples, followers of the Loa, etc.

[Muskrat]

Well, with the Shen, they're a living tradition in Daoism and Chinese folk religion. This is true of a number of the other Asian pantheons as well. Even the Apu of the Inca are still worshiped by Quechua peoples in the highland Andes--Rituals of Respect by Inge Bolin is an anthropological overview of their rites in one village. So for such pantheons, it might well be a matter of digging into the anthropological literature to see how they are currently honored.

[Astromancer]

Regarding how the Theoi developed over time, Tom Stone's Zeus: A Journey Through Greece in the Footsteps of a God is a very readable account of the god's origins and how he and his worship evolved and spread, based on about 20 years of going all over Greece and doing research.

Having read that book, it's great. And you can get it cheap online.

[No One of Consequence]

Regarding how the Theoi developed over time, Tom Stone's Zeus: A Journey Through Greece in the Footsteps of a God is a very readable account of the god's origins and how he and his worship evolved and spread, based on about 20 years of going all over Greece and doing research.

[Baroness Nerak]

I think it's doable for the most popular Pantheons. (Greek, Norse, Egyptian, ect). Other pantheons could be gathered up in themed books with four Pantheons to the book. Same treatment on a smaller scale. Something beats nothing.

Yeah that is very true

[No One of Consequence]

Others, like the Shen, Theoi, and Netjer, have so much diversity over geography and time, thousands of years

I now have this image in my head of three Shen demigods, one from the Han period, one from the Tang, and one from the Qing, constantly arguing about how their department of the Celestial Bureaucracy is supposed to properly work. And the modern Heroes who work under them constantly grimacing in frustration.

[Astromancer]

One of the things I wish OP had the budget for is to give each pantheon its own sourcebook which included a lengthy section on how that ancient culture looked at the world and society, how that impacts how the members (including human cultist) think and act, and how it will often differ with what modern audiences are used to. Because I think that has the potential to be one of the more interesting angles for roleplaying in the game.

I think it's doable for the most popular Pantheons. (Greek, Norse, Egyptian, ect). Other pantheons could be gathered up in themed books with four Pantheons to the book. Same treatment on a smaller scale. Something beats nothing.

[Baroness Nerak]

One of the things I wish OP had the budget for is to give each pantheon its own sourcebook which included a lengthy section on how that ancient culture looked at the world and society, how that impacts how the members (including human cultist) think and act, and how it will often differ with what modern audiences are used to. Because I think that has the potential to be one of the more interesting angles for roleplaying in the game.

This is a good idea, but has more going against it than OPPs budget. Many of the Pantheons, such as the Tuatha and Nemetondevos and to a degree Aesir as well as groups like the Teotl and K'un, is we have limited insight into the societies, much less the gods. Trying to reconstruct even Aesir and the attitudes toward the gods is hard, because nothing was written down before Christianization. The Tuatha are worse, the Nemetondevos even worse. We do know some, but not a great deal. Others, like the Shen, Theoi, and Netjer, have so much diversity over geography and time, thousands of years, that the answers are very inconsistent on even very basic ideas. Like who the head of the Netjer Pantheon was, for example, or if it had a head. There is also weirdness like we don't know how women worshipped the Theoi because almost no information on that survived. We just know it was (in many places/eras) different. We see Netjer and Annuna from the most wealthy, we see Shen from the perspective of the most educated...we have a minority of the information that has existed.

None of this is to say it would be impossible or you could not do a great book on it. A lot has been and is being done by historians, religious studies persons, anthropologists, reconstructionist pagans and combinations thereof. I am like 3 of those things. Just that there are a lot of challenges and those challenges vary. On the other hand, there really has never been a better time.

I can recommend a handful of really good Youtube Channels that seem (IMO anyway) pretty accurate in their giving information on some of these, or at least don't make me want to clutch my head and scream a lot.

[Muskrat]

One of the things I wish OP had the budget for is to give each pantheon its own sourcebook which included a lengthy section on how that ancient culture looked at the world and society, how that impacts how the members (including human cultist) think and act, and how it will often differ with what modern audiences are used to. Because I think that has the potential to be one of the more interesting angles for roleplaying in the game.

Agreed. One of the things I like about Watcher's fan pantheons is the extensive backgrounds he gives on the cultures. We also want to be careful not those ancient cultures were unified in any respect, including in how they saw the Gods. My impression from reading Homer is that he thought of the Gods much the same way people in his day may well have thought of kings--as necessary for order, whether social or cosmic, but dangerous and not always reasonable. This is very different than Sophocles, though admittedly the two did live centuries apart.

[No One of Consequence]

Which is all to say that the Gods' actions make sense and are fair from their own perspective, just not that of contemporary people. But that's part of Scion--Gods from another age trying to operate in the contemporary world.

One of the things I wish OP had the budget for is to give each pantheon its own sourcebook which included a lengthy section on how that ancient culture looked at the world and society, how that impacts how the members (including human cultist) think and act, and how it will often differ with what modern audiences are used to. Because I think that has the potential to be one of the more interesting angles for roleplaying in the game.

[Muskrat]

Which is all to say that the Gods' actions make sense and are fair from their own perspective, just not that of contemporary people. But that's part of Scion--Gods from another age trying to operate in the contemporary world.

[No One of Consequence]

Zeus doesn't so much punish the Phaeacians as he allows Poseidon to punish them for aiding a man the Earthshaker had a legit beef with. Turning their better-than-everyone-else's sailing ships into rocks, effectively taking away the gift of the sea, is something that would fall under Poseidon's dominion rather than his brother. And the stone boat thing is a compromise between the two, when Poseidon being who he is probably wanted to do something involving earthquakes and tidal waves, and Zeus talking him down.

Added: Poseidon is also the Phaeacians' patron god, so this is him taking some or all of that away, which is probably seen as his right. His punishment also fulfills an earlier prophecy, which probably also influences Zeus's actions.

[Muskrat]

But in The Odyssey, Zeus does punish the Phaeacians for showing hospitality to Odysseus, though they had no way of knowing that he had incurred the wrath of the Gods. To modern eyes this looks hypocritical.

But I am reminded of something I read by Paula Gunn Allen, a Native American shaman--that even the most benign powers can be dangerous if not approached with respect, something she worries modern neo-pagans don't understand.

And Sophocles in his play Oedipus at Colonus depicts the Gods as perfectly just--in many ways, his description of them as transcendent, all-knowing, all-just beings reminds me of how the God of Abraham is depicted in the Hebrew Bible. And Sophocles considers the mass punishment of the people of Thebes for harboring the man who murdered their last king and has not married his own mother just--even though none of them knew that this was what had happened. It's a different idea of justice from our own.

[No One of Consequence]

Artemis probably finds the story of her and Actaeon to be deeply satisfying.

Also, the recent Overly Sarcastic Productions video about Zeus and Hera makes the interesting point that the Theoi aren't just people but are the embodiment of certain concepts. Artemis, in the above example, isn't so much reacting to the embarrassment of Actaeon seeing her (and her retainers) in the nude, but more to the fact that his actions are an affront to the very concept of Virginal Maidenhood. To not punish him would likely lessen her as a divine being.

On a certain level, Zeus is Hospitality, Hera is Marriage, Athena is Skill, and so on. To be inhospitable to a guest, especially when it is Zeus, is not just a personal insult, but one to his divine being and station. The idea of Zeus not punishing someone for that probably never even occurs to a classic Greek or Roman audience.

From another angle (again if I have my Scion metaphysics right), one could interpret the story of Aracne as a Scion of Athena who has decided to challenge her divine patron in an effort to become a Demigod of Weaving only to fail in the attempt.

[omenseer]

One of the recurring themes of Ovid's Metamorphoses (arguably his magnum opus) is the power of love to make fools of even the gods. In the World of Scion, it is very likely that he was inspired by Amor/Cupid, mantle(s) of Eros (who in Scion is maybe a Primordial who incarnated as an offspring of Ares/Mars and Aphrodite/Venus for reasons likely involving tying himself more closely to the Olympians and/or humanity, if I understand the setting metaphysics correctly). As such, his work is patroned by one of the Theoi, possibly a powerful one.

That is an interesting detail. Some of the Theoi are like who keeps protecting him and Eros is off to the side whistling while Athena grumbles inwardly.