The Gods Thor and Odin

[Osweo]

Perhaps because nothing in the ancient lore suggests that Odin and Thor were deified wizards, but that they were actually Gods?

Heh, we could simply leave it at that, aye!

It's true that ancient European societies deified worthy mortals, considering them to be like the Gods themselves, but this isn't anything really noteworthy if you follow the veiled suggestions of the lore- that anyone can be so deified, assuming they were worthy.

Hang on, though. Might it be possible to state that this wasn't done by societies in a precivilised stage? Caesar and Asclepiodotus are fairly late, aren't they? And is the latter just another case of euhemerisation, anyway?

Is there a Dacian parallel? My memory is dim for non-Isles stuff!

For example, the mothers worshipped by the ancient northern Europeans were merely deified maternal ancestors.

Really? I see no grounds for such a neck-sticking-out 'merely' there! We aren't entirely sure WHOSE mothers the Matronae are, anyway. Perhaps it was of a God. Sounds pretty much like the typical Celtic idea of the Thrice Born Hero to me. Lug, Cuchulainn, Fiann, etc...

[Cato]

Caesar claimed divine ancestry, from Venus.

[Lyfing]

It's interesting how Odin and Thor have become euhemerisms..??

..Some will be counted as god/esses..!!

Evidence will appear, in the course of our natural history of the
gods, of the gods themselves as supernormal sign stimuli; of the
ritual forms deriving from their supernatural inspiration acting as
catalysts to convert men into gods; and of civilization this new
environment of man that has grown from his own interior and has
pressed back the bounds of nature as far as the moon as a distil-
late of ritual, and consequently of the gods: that is to say, as an
organization of supernormal sign stimuli playing on a set of IRMs
never met by nature and yet most properly nature's own, inasmuch
as man is her son.

Primitive Mythology, by Joseph Campbell..pages 43-44

..Men into gods..??

Thought does not die, but only is changed. The first man that began to think in this Planet of ours, he was the beginner of all. And then the second man, and the third man;—nay, every true Thinker to this hour is a kind of Odin, teaches men his way of thought, spreads a shadow of his own likeness over sections of the History of the World.

ON HEROES, HERO-WORSHIP, AND THE HEROIC IN HISTORY

Cattle die and kinsmen die,
thyself eke soon wilt die;
but fair fame will fade never,
I ween, for him who wins it.

Havamal 76, Hollander trans.

...

As far as Odin and Thor are concerned..

Thor is Odin's son..?? I don't think that's exactly the case. Thor is much like Heracles which is Zeus's grandson. Zeus is etymologically related to both Tyr and Thor. It has long been said that Odin took Tyr's place..??

Campbell had Thor figured from as far back as the Paleolithic era, with his characteristic hammer and giant killing ways. Even his travels with Loki point very much back to Paleolithic/Shamanic times.

..as maybe Zeus and Prometheus do..??

..for maybe more thought on this one see this post and think of the Fenris Wulf biting Tyr's hand off..

...

Now, of course, there is Hárbarðsljóð

Most will say it is a poem of a poet in favor of Odin with him carrying on with Thor..

Maybe that is so..

Others will say it is Loki and Thor..

The Problem of Harbard - by William Reaves

Harbardsljod and Lokasenna, by Mark Puryear

I think it is Loki and Thor, but maybe it is Loki's blood-brother Odin and just that sometimes it's hard to tell them apart..??

Later,
-Lyfing

[Cato]

Deifying a great individual is one thing, but saying that a God was actually a deified culture hero is a bit different. It's happened in some cases, of course. Take Guan Yu, for example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guan_Yu

"Guan Yu (simplified Chinese: 关羽; traditional Chinese: 關羽; pinyin: Guān Yǔ) was a general serving under the warlord Liu Bei during the late Eastern Han Dynasty and Three Kingdoms era of China. He played a significant role in the civil war that led to the collapse of the Han Dynasty and the establishment of the Kingdom of Shu, of which Liu Bei was the first emperor.

As one of the best known Chinese historical figures throughout East Asia, Guan Yu's true life stories have largely given way to fictionalized ones, mostly found in the historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms or passed down the generations, in which his deeds and moral qualities have been lionized.

Guan Yu was deified as early as the Sui Dynasty and is still being worshipped by Chinese people today, especially in southern China. He is respected as the epitome of loyalty and righteousness.

Guan Yu was very well-known within his lifetime (not after it, when his deeds became much embellished) and he epitomized cultural traits (Confucian iow) that the Chinese, to this day, consider to be divine and worthy of worship. However, Guan Yu is an example of a stand alone figure. That is, he wasn't a God who was recreated as a man-who-was-turned-into-a-God by the Chinese. This is also true of the western culture heroes like Hercules; no deity named Hercules pre-existed the mortal Hercules (such as how the Christians claim their Jesus pre-exists his mortal self in the form of the divine logos) and he was a mortal who, as the final act of his life, became a God.

These figures as mortals who become divine. Guan Yu is a figure worthy of respect as a man and, if you're Chinese, as a God. Take your pick as to what he was, but his life isn't a euhemerized story imo.

Odin's story is pretty well-known, and he isn't a man in this story. He was the son of Borr and Bestla, grandson of Buri and, I suppose, great-grandson of Ymir the cosmic jotun. Guan Yu's deeds are historical, as are the deeds of Hercules to an extent (if you follow Christian euhemerist dating, Herc died circa 1226bce; the Trojan war was 1194-1184bce or read a bit of Josephus, where Herc and/or his sons adventure with Moses in Egypt/Ethiopia). Odin's deeds are purely legendary and no date was given to them to my knowledge.

[Psychonaut]

I wonder what the feeling is amongst the recreationists about present day deification of worthy heroes from our past?

I'm all for it! I'll lift a horn to Vercingetorix, Charles Martel, Roland, and George Washington at any blót. Although, I would consider them more as intermediary figures betwixt my immediate ancestors and the Gods (our spiritual progenitors). I see their place in a religious hierarchy as being analogous to the place that legends have between texts of history and mythology.

[SuuT]

The deification of historical figures is at clash with modern sensibilities, more generally: Even the spiritually inclined that walk today have profound difficulty knowing exactly where to place their homage in the heirarchy that is their own nature. For where once the spiritual drive would have circumnavigated all aspects of the Self, and incorporated accordingly, the 'knowing' and hypertophied explanatory faculties of the modern spiritual psyconaut is beset with a prominence - on all sides of inquiry - of what can be seen and touched. I have yet to determine if this is balance (insofar as balance is relative to time and circumstance).

What is more, modern man has an aversion to that which he knows to be greater than himself - as opposed to an insatiable curiosity about that which he fears: the gravitas of what the ancients feared was, perhaps, the substrate from which the strongest natures took root; growing strong, straight and proud - and saturating all in their phenomenal field with new things to fear.


Fear: the Great Sieve.

[Cato]

SuuT, let me just edit your first sentence to say:

The deification of historical figures is at clash with modern socio-political egalitarianism.

People that stand out, to say nothing of head and shoulders over the rest, are feared and hated for the most part. The great ones are usually do-gooders like Gandhi or Mother Teresa; were a Leonidas or a Hrolf Kraki to step onto the stage of world history today, how do you think they'd be received? The notions of the hero in the true sense of the term are largely unacceptable to the compartmentalized society of the politically correct world.

[Cato]

Oh, there's also this point of view:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero#Hero-as-self

Imagine that, stories of great men and women and great deeds actually uplifting someone when they identify strongly with the heroic protagonist.

[SuuT]

SuuT, let me just edit your first sentence to say:

The deification of historical figures is at clash with modern socio-political egalitarianism.

I think you describe a symptom; an effect of the disintegration of heroism. It's causes lucabrating, percolating, within the very meaning of 'modern'.

[SuuT]

Oh, there's also this point of view:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero#Hero-as-self

Imagine that, stories of great men and women and great deeds actually uplifting someone when they identify strongly with the heroic protagonist.

The problem (as I see it) is that the very notions of "hero", "protector", "vigil", so on and so forth, have been diluted to the point of absurdity. Moreover, they have been largely inverted as concepts to - once again - quell the fear of the archetypal (read: True) hero.