Origins of Polytheism- A hypothesis
Had been thinking of blogging for some days now, especially with things not going too good @ work, was planning to write about it, but then didn’t get around to do it.
A strike had been called today which paralyzed the entire city. The unplanned holiday gave me a chance to catch up with studies and some reading. The past few days I have been going through an autobiography titled "The Memoirs of Aga Khan". Started reading a chapter called "The Islamic Concept and my role as Imam". The author presents an interesting perspective saying that the origins of man's religious aspirations are to be found in science. As often happens, the reading itself lead to a chain of thoughts. Reading further, I realized that the author presented ideas of divinity similar to the ones that I had come up with in one of my first posts titled, ""
The thought process led to a hypothesis on the origins of polytheism. If we are to accept that religion like science was an attempt to make sense out of the natural phenomenon, then one reason for the multitude of deities could perhaps be the civilization structure itself. I guess it’s fair to assume that organized religion must have been born after the birth of civilization. Because the societal structure was such that there was a specialization of roles, the farmer, the blacksmith, the soldier, the priest each practicing his trade, so must the deities. As the blacksmith didn’t double as a priest, so the concept of multitasking was a bit absent/rare. The natural phenomenon then too must be controlled by multiple caretakers, Poseidon in charge of the sea and Thor’s hammer responsible for lightning. And just like the hierarchy in society where one practicing a perceived superior trade had more power than others, so a hierarchy in the deity kingdom seemed natural. And just like the chieftain/ king in every society, a chief God Zeus/Jupiter, in charge of everyone else.
Like most of my ideas, this too seems so intuitively simple, that I am sure someone must have stumbled upon it earlier. The only way to find out, is to talk about it and that’s what I just did. Anyways the important thing perhaps is to keep exercising the upper chambers, something really difficult to find time for these days.
A strike had been called today which paralyzed the entire city. The unplanned holiday gave me a chance to catch up with studies and some reading. The past few days I have been going through an autobiography titled "The Memoirs of Aga Khan". Started reading a chapter called "The Islamic Concept and my role as Imam". The author presents an interesting perspective saying that the origins of man's religious aspirations are to be found in science. As often happens, the reading itself lead to a chain of thoughts. Reading further, I realized that the author presented ideas of divinity similar to the ones that I had come up with in one of my first posts titled, ""
The thought process led to a hypothesis on the origins of polytheism. If we are to accept that religion like science was an attempt to make sense out of the natural phenomenon, then one reason for the multitude of deities could perhaps be the civilization structure itself. I guess it’s fair to assume that organized religion must have been born after the birth of civilization. Because the societal structure was such that there was a specialization of roles, the farmer, the blacksmith, the soldier, the priest each practicing his trade, so must the deities. As the blacksmith didn’t double as a priest, so the concept of multitasking was a bit absent/rare. The natural phenomenon then too must be controlled by multiple caretakers, Poseidon in charge of the sea and Thor’s hammer responsible for lightning. And just like the hierarchy in society where one practicing a perceived superior trade had more power than others, so a hierarchy in the deity kingdom seemed natural. And just like the chieftain/ king in every society, a chief God Zeus/Jupiter, in charge of everyone else.
Like most of my ideas, this too seems so intuitively simple, that I am sure someone must have stumbled upon it earlier. The only way to find out, is to talk about it and that’s what I just did. Anyways the important thing perhaps is to keep exercising the upper chambers, something really difficult to find time for these days.
posted by Noorali Surani at 3:16 AM
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