Polytheism, the belief in many gods.
Polytheism characterizes virtually all In the earliest cultural levels, in which hunting and then pastoralism and
religions other than Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which share a common
tradition of monotheism, the belief in one God.
Sometimes above the many gods a polytheistic religion will have a supreme
creator and focus of devotion, as in certain phases of Hinduism (there is also
the tendency to identify the many gods as so many aspects of the Supreme
Being); sometimes the gods are considered as less important than some
higher goal, state, or saviour, as in Buddhism; sometimes one god will prove
more dominant than the others without attaining overall supremacy,
as Zeus in Greek religion. Typically, polytheistic cultures include belief in
many demonic and ghostly forces in addition to the gods, and some
supernatural beings will be malevolent; even in monotheistic religions there
can be belief in many demons, as in New Testament Christianity.
Polytheism can bear various relationships to other beliefs. It can be
incompatible with some forms of theism, as in the Semitic religions; it can
coexist with theism, as in Vaishnavism; it can exist at a lower level of
understanding, ultimately to be transcended, as in Mahayana Buddhism; and
it can exist as a tolerated adjunct to belief in transcendental liberation, as in
Theravada Buddhism.
Forms Of Polytheistic Powers, Gods, And Demons
Natural forces and objects
A widespread phenomenon in religions is the identification of natural forces
and objects as divinities. It is convenient to classify them as celestial,
atmospheric, and earthly. This classification itself is explicitly recognized in
Vedic religion: Surya, the sun god, is celestial; Indra, associated with storms,
rain, and battles, is atmospheric; and Agni, the fire god, operates primarily at
the earthly level. Sky gods, however, tend to take on atmospheric roles—
e.g., Zeus’s use of lightning as his thunderbolt.
SuryaSurya (the sun and the sun god), Konark Sun Temple, Orissa,
India.Loveless
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agriculture are clearly vital, religion exhibits these identifications in rites
connected with fertility. The sun’s vitality is seen in the cyclical effects of
causing things to grow and wither. Moreover, because of its dominance of
the world, the sun is often seen as all-knowing, and thus sky gods of
various cultures tend to be highly powerful and knowledgeable, if also
sometimes rather remote. The sky is also often associated with creation. By
contrast the moon is rarely of the same importance (though in Ur, a city of
ancient southern Babylonia, the moon god Sin was supreme). The role of the
sky god in ensuring food and in providing light and warmth, over against the
chaotic effects of darkness, was a theme of various myths of the cosmic
drama and was one main reason for the connection in mythic thought
between creation and light.
Heavenly divinities have also been influential in the development
of astrology, which assigns a special significance to stars and planets. In
the Middle East astrology was important but was weakened by monotheism,
and in Indian culture it came to be deeply woven into the fabric of
both Hinduism and Buddhism. Astrology was influential in the Greco-Roman
world and in the astral religion attached to Gnosticism (dualistic sects that
emphasized salvation through esoteric knowledge) and other cults of the
early Christian era. Astrology was also elaborated in Central America, for
instance in Aztec religion.
Gods of the sky become especially powerful when they take on an
atmospheric guise. The association of gods such as Zeus and Indra with storm,
as well as with fertility-bearing rain, makes their connection with warfare
fairly natural; thus, Indra is the most perfect example of an Indo-European
warrior. Many societies, however, have had separate gods of war.
The ambivalence of atmospheric deities is paralleled in female counterparts
who are both creative and destructive. The combination of sky and earth and
the joining of differing cosmic forces are sometimes represented in the hieros
gamos (“sacred marriage”)—e.g., between Apsu and Tiamat in
Mesopotamia, Shiva and Shakti in India, and Gaea and Uranus in Greece. The
forces of water and fire are particularly significant in bridging the gap
between the earthly and heavenly realms. Fire is manifested not only in the
hearth but also in lightning and the sun, and water is sometimes connected
with the moon. Thus, earthly fire and water can also be seen at work higher
in the cosmos.
 Important in the development of fertility religion were the “dying and
rising” gods, such as Adonis, Attis, Osiris, and Tammuz. Their cults had a new
life in the mystery cults of the Greco-Roman world, where the original
agricultural significance of the rites was transformed into more personal and
psychological terms.
On earth, besides the divine mother out of whose womb plant life has its
birth, there are a host of divinities connected with agricultural and pastoral
life. In addition, sacred significance is often attached to features of the
particular environment in which a given group finds itself. Thus, sacred
mountains, such as Olympus in Greece, have their resident deities, and a
river, such as the Ganges (Ganga), may be divinized. Underground rivers have
special significance in connecting with the underworld, or nether regions,
which can be important as the place of repose of the dead but also as the
matrix for the re-creation of life. Geographical locations can also have cosmic
significance; e.g., Delphi, Greece, was known as the navel of the earth.
Further, many cultures have gods and goddesses associated with the sea.
Vegetation
In a number of cultures trees are seen as a primordial form of vegetation and
have a symbolic connection both with heaven and earth; sometimes they are
held to contain spirits, as the yakshas of Indian tradition. Particular sorts of
trees, such as the ashvattha, or pipal (sacred fig), are held in special
veneration. Among plant deities, however, probably the most important are
those connected with cultivated plants, such as corn (maize) in Central
America and the vine in the Mediterranean world. Notable is the cult
of Dionysus, the ecstatic wine god who became one of the most influential
objects of devotion in the Classical period. The vine linked agriculture and
ecstasy. The connection between vegetation and dying and rising gods has
already been noted; to some extent such motifs were carried over into
Christianity in the notion that the cross was the tree both of death and of new
life. One of the most obvious modern survivals in the West of vegetation cults
is the use at the winter solstice of mistletoe, symbolizing fertility and
continued life.
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Animal and human forms
Just as plants can be seen as divine forces, so can types or species of animals.
For instance, the cult of the snake is widespread and is especially important
in the Indian tradition. The serpent is vital in the Hebrew Bible (Old
Testament) story of Adam and Eve and appears in the Babylonian Epic of
Gilgamesh as one who knows the secret of rejuvenation. The snake has a
fertility aspect because of its possible phallic significance and because it lives
in holes in the life-giving earth. The cult of the monkey is important in India,
having its essence in the figure of Hanuman, half monkey and half human. It
is possible that such theriomorphic cults (in which gods are represented by
various animal forms) have been assisted by rituals in which priests wear
masks representing the relevant divinities, a practice that may in turn explain
the hybrid half-human form. Examples of the wide variety of animal and living
forms in which gods appear include Huitzlipochtli (hummingbird; Aztec);
Cipactli (alligator; Aztec); Vishnu’s avatars, or incarnations (fish, tortoise,
boar, man-lion; Hindu); the Rainbow Snake (Australian Aboriginal);
Cernunnos (stag god with antlers; Celtic religion); and Nandi (bull; Hindu). A
figure partly in animal guise found in Les Trois-Frères cave at Ariège, France,
may represent a complex lord of the beasts analogous to the supposed figure
of Shiva (the destroyer and re-creator in Hindu mythology) found at sites in
the Indus valley, while a bird-man figure at Lascaux, France, may depict a
priestly representation of a divine being. Thus, theriomorphism seems to
have a very ancient pattern. In brief, various cultures have taken existing
species in their environment and woven them into the pantheon—partly
because of their essential dependence on the animals and partly for other
reasons, such as similarities between animal forms and other sacred forces
(e.g., the analogy of the lion to the force behind kingship).
Because human beings can enter into a living relationship with the
supernatural beings that surround and dominate their lives, it has always
been natural to model the gods as human beings. Such anthropomorphism is
most evident in the Greek tradition, in which the Homeric gods are brilliantly
and unashamedly human in their passions and thoughts. The human model
has been assisted by the representation of the gods in art, for a statue is not
just a symbolic representation of a god but often his place of presence and
influence. Thus, in a number of cultures, the images are treated as replete
with divinity.
Just as gods can be human in character, so men can be conceived as divine,
either by becoming identified with deities (e.g., through descent) or by
displaying appropriate power. Thus, divine kingship was a not uncommon
feature of the ancient Middle East. It was also found in the Roman world,
when the emperors were divinized, and in Japan and China, where the
emperor was son of heaven. Culture heroes and other significant humans
could be elevated to semidivine status or more—e.g., Guandi and other
heroes in the Chinese tradition and Rama and Krishna in India. Strictly, the
succession of sages known as buddhas and Tirthankaras in the Buddhist and
Jain traditions, respectively, were not conceived as divine but came to be
objects of a cult. In the Mahayana (“Greater Vehicle”), celestial buddhas and
bodhisattvas (those vowed to become buddhas) came to be profoundly
important for devotional religion; from a functional point of view, the
Mahayana has operated as a polytheistic system, united, however, under an
overarching doctrine of emptiness, or the void (shunya), according to which
all things are said to be empty of the characteristics assigned to them.
The Theravada (“Way of the Elders”) accepted the principle that virtuous
followers of the Buddha could be translated in the next life to a heavenly
existence in which they would have godlike status (an impermanent status,
however, for gods share the universal transitoriness of all living beings), but
such gods were scarcely the objects of a cult.
Functional deities
In addition to the various forces operating in nature, various social and other
functions are divinized. Thus, the god Brahma in the Vedic tradition, besides
being creator, contains and expresses in personal form the power implicit in
the Brahman class. There are gods of healing, such as Asclepius in Greece,
and of seafaring, agriculture, and so on. The most elaborate reflection of
human concerns is, perhaps, to be found in the later Daoist pantheon, which
provided a heavenly counterpart to the Chinese imperial court. In a number
of societies there have been gods of war, such as Mars (ancient Rome) and
Skanda (India); gods of learning, such as Sarasvati (India); and gods of love,
such as Aphrodite (Greece) and Kama (India). Even such abstractions as the
directions (north, south, east, and west) have been divinized. The fact that
these varied entities and relationships have been taken as gods is, perhaps,
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partly the result of the mythic style of thinking, in which distinctions between
natural forces and social conventions are not clearly perceived.
Of special importance regarding human affairs are the gods concerned
with death and judgment after death, such as Osiris in ancient Egypt, Yama in
India, Hades in Greece, and Hel in pre-Christian Scandinavian religion. There
are also gods associated with cemeteries and more generally with patterns of
the disposal of the dead.
The various gods must be seen against the background of a whole host of
spirits, demons, and other supernatural forces prevalent in the environment
of pastoral and agricultural communities. Among entities hostile to human
beings are the antigods, very often older gods, such as the Titans in Greece,
who have been displaced by later deities, or gods worshipped by a people
conquered by a new dominant folk. The warfare between the old and new
can be woven into dramatic myths of the fight between good and evil. This is
well brought out in the major myth of the Orphic writings: Zeus’s son
Dionysus-Zagreus was killed and eaten by the Titans, who in turn were
destroyed, burned up by Zeus’s lightning flash. Humanity is made of the
ashes, and therefore each human being is a compound of divinity and titanic
evil. Purification from this evil brings redemption and release from the round
of reincarnation. Sometimes, however, the ambivalence of good and evil is
built into the same deity, so that creation and destruction and good and evil
are seen as complementing one another.
Types Of Polytheism
Greco-Roman religion
By the time of the establishment of the Roman Empire, the Greek tradition
was already exerting considerable influence on the Roman, to the extent that
once relatively independent traditions became somewhat fused. Equations
between gods were freely made: Zeus became Jupiter, Aphrodite became
Venus, and so on. Originally, Roman pietas (sense of duty to the gods) was a
good deal less personalized than the relationship to
the anthropomorphic gods of the Homeric pantheon and was directed at
spirits called numina. In addition, the various philosophical systems, such
as Epicureanism and Stoicism, provided a more systematic cosmology and
sense of human destiny than traditional polytheism. Influential in the
Hellenistic period were mystery cults—such as those of Isis, Cybele, Mithra,
and Demeter—which catered more to personal concerns with salvation than
did the official and civic cults. Under the mid-4th-century emperor Julian, a
last vigorous attempt was made to revive paganism and to restore the cult of
the gods over against the widespread grip of Christianity.
Germanic, Scandinavian, Celtic, and Slavic mythologies
The sources for a reconstruction of northern European religion are far better
than those for the south Germanic peoples, but there were evidently
similarities between the religions. The three main Scandinavian gods were
Odin, Thor, and Freyr: Odin (or Wodan) had great magical power and wisdom
and was called All-father; Thor (or Donar) was the warrior god; and Freyr was
the god of fertility. It is possible that these gods are a reflection of the
tripartite division of Indo-European society—priest, warrior, and cultivator.
Among other deities, Balder, the dying god who was killed by a mistletoe
branch, had a poignant charm. Nordic mythology also carries with it a sense
of final doom of the gods, looking to the point when the world will be burned
up, before its eventual re-creation.
The pattern of Celtic cults is not easy to decipher, because of lack of written
records; but the stag-headed god Cernunnos was highly significant in
iconography. There was also a variety of ancestral gods and goddesses,
including a “great mother” of the type found in fertility cults of the ancient
Middle East. Celtic religion had a special reverence for water in such forms as
pools and rivers.
The Slavic religions of eastern Europe and Russia are likewise imperfectly
known, but they involved worship of a high god who is both a creator and an
atmospheric force. Another important figure in Slavic mythology was the war
god Svantovit. Finno-Ugrian pre-Christian religion bears some resemblance to
the Scandinavian, possibly indicating some mutual influences, while Baltic
cults are of Indo-European type.
Egypt and the Middle East
The Egyptian pantheon evolved into a complex form; many deities were
theriomorphic but were presided over by such great gods as Re, the sun god,
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and Nut, the sky goddess. Re’s transformation as Horus, with a hawk’s head,
was connected with the Osiris legend. The pharaoh was identified with him
as the “living Horus.” Despite the attempt of Akhenaton, pharaoh in the 14th
century BCE, to exalt Aton as the single god, the Egyptian cult remained
essentially polytheistic but highly articulated. With the domination of Egypt
by the Ptolemies about 10 centuries later, the worship of Serapis, a hybrid
Greco-Egyptian deity, was instituted as a means of binding together the two
groups.
Though in Egypt the cause of the rise and fall of gods was partially the political
struggles between the major city-states, the Sumerian religion was much less
affected by such “earthly” considerations. An, the god of heaven, remained
supreme, and such deities as the water god Enki and the air god Enlil were
prominent. In Babylon, partly the successor state of Sumer, the most vital god
was Marduk, creator of the world and of humankind, and victor over the
primeval Tiamat, or chaos, who all but absorbed the older surrounding gods.
His story is recounted in the epic Enuma elish (“When on High”). In Assyrian
religion Marduk was in effect replaced by Ashur; and Ishtar, the mother
goddess, was also important. In general, it can be said that Middle Eastern
religion stemmed from early Sumerian and Egyptian sources and that the
latter eventually had some effect on Hellenistic religion.
Early Indo-Iranian religions
For almost a millennium close relations existed between the Vedic
and ancient Iranian religions—from before the time of the Iranian
prophet Zarathustra, who reformed the ancient religion sometime before the
early 6th century BCE, back to the time of the Vedic religion of the people
who migrated to India about 1500 BCE. Zarathustra, in his reforms,
succeeded in excising the many gods, some of whom were subsumed as
qualities of the supreme Ahura Mazdā. The rich pantheon of the Vedic hymns
developed into the world of classical Hindu mythology, which was fed by
streams other than the Indo-Iranian.
Classical and modern Hinduism
Certain gods of no great importance in the Vedic tradition came to dominate
classical Hinduism, above all Shiva and Vishnu. The latter was associated with
belief in avatar, or incarnation. Most male gods in the Hindu pantheon also
came to be represented with a female consort, symbolizing the shakti, or
creative power of the deity. The increasing elaboration of Hindu cults as
different groups were absorbed into a systematized social fabric has led to
the estimate of as many as 33 million Hindu gods. It has been common
practice for devotees to select the form under which the divine is worshipped,
and such a deity is called the istadevata. Most Hindus are inclined to interpret
the many gods as being symbols of the one divine reality.
Buddhism
Buddhism’s tolerance of popular cults, provided that the main essentials of
the faith are maintained, means that in most Buddhist cultures several gods
are worshipped. In Mahayana Buddhism, increased devotion to the Buddha
became elaborated as a belief in many celestial beings—notably Amitabha,
the buddha of light, and Avalokiteshvara (feminized and known as Guanyin in
China and Kannon in Japan), the bodhisattva (buddha-to-be) of compassion—
who were, however, in essence all unified in the absolute (shunya, the void).
In Tibet a synthesis between the indigenous religion and Buddhism was
established. The most notable feature of this form of Buddhism, known as
Vajrayana (“Vehicle of the Thunderbolt”), was the use of divine forms to
symbolize the various factors of existence, such as the different elements
making up human personality.
East Asian religions
In ancient China the cult of heaven and ancestor worship were elements
woven into the system of Confucianism. Numerous lesser deities were
worshipped in popular Chinese practice, and the dividing lines between
Confucianism, religious Daoism, and Buddhism were hard to draw. In Daoism
an elaborate pantheon was evolved, modelled in part on the
imperial bureaucracy, and was presided over by the Jade Emperor (Yudi).
Other deities included atmospheric gods, gods of locality, and functional gods
(of wealth, literature, agriculture, and so on). The Daoist gods were in part a
response to the richness of Mahayana myth, with its cults of celestial
buddhas and bodhisattvas.
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The religions practiced in China influenced Japanese culture, which took over
some main elements of Confucianism and Buddhism, that interacted with the
indigenous polytheistic religion, Shintō (Way of the Gods). The divinities of
Shintō tend to be connected with natural forces and localities; the most
important deity is Amaterasu, who is the sun goddess and divine ancestress
of the emperor.
Religions of ancient Mesoamerica
The Aztec culture, successor of earlier civilizations, together with the
associated Maya culture, laid great emphasis on astronomical observation
and on a complex religious calendar. Important were the high god
Ometecuhtli, the morning star Quetzalcóatl, and the various legends woven
round Tezcatlipoca, patron of warriors, who in the form of Huit-zilopochtli
was patron of the Aztec nation. Inca religion also possessed a high
god, Viracocha; a number of the most important deities were associated with
celestial bodies, notably the sun, patron of the Incas. In both Central and
South America the fertility aspects of deities were also emphasized.
Modern ethnic religions in Africa and elsewhere
In some areas, such as much of Africa and Oceania, the indigenous religions
are ethnic or tribal; each group has its own particular tradition. These
traditions have been affected considerably by the impact of Christian
missions and Western technology. Clearly there is no single pattern of belief,
though certain patterns do recur in some of the cultures, such as belief in a
high god, totemism (characterized by recognition of a relationship between
certain human groups and particular classes of animals, plants, or inanimate
objects in nature), spirit possession, and so on. In various respects there are
matches between myth and social organization that are likewise quite varied.
Anthropologists, however, are far from a consensus on the role and origin of
the gods.