Wonder Woman #15 Discussion/Spoilers

[Desaad]

Fair enough. So you think the explanation of who the Second and Third World Gods are is fine, but just keeping the relationship between them more vague?

For the most part, yeah. I mean the whole 'third world' vs 'fourth world' is certainly what Kirby intended (that the 3rd world would be the old world gods). That the Old gods are, in fact, the second world -- well, that goes against what Kirby was saying, but it functions well enough.

Part of the problem here is I think reducing everything down to very easily understandable, and mundane, nuggets ultimately imposes limitations on what you can do in the future. I know you've expressed distaste over Morrison showing the New Gods some 42,000 years ago (Orion and Lightray, no less, relatively youngish gods) in the belief that they should be 'new' in a literal sense, but I think he's clearly operating under the belief that they exist outside the sphere of time, that they are supra-real. As far as we're concerned they have always existed, will always exist -- they don't see time the same way we would.

[CaptMagellan]

Hey do you guys (Capt and berk) have any links to read more about the interpretation/ideology behind polytheism worship? It's hard to find the exact words to google search.

The first one I would start with is Mircea Eliade's "The Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and History"
http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Eternal-R...eternal+return

It's, in my opinion, absolutely essential reading for average 'Westerners' to be able to start to understand that for non-Abrahamic cultures, historical and mythological time wasn't combined together. This plays into the way that polytheistic cultures interacted with their gods, spirits, ancestors, etc. as it explains how mythologically cosmogonic, eschatological (and all in-between) processes are constantly ongoing and can be culturally interacted with via communal or individual ritual.

The 'paradigm shift' of thought that Eliade provides is essential to even attempting to understand how polytheistic cultures would have seen the world, their gods, their rituals, and each other.

His book "Myth and Reality" then expands upon the groundwork laid in "Eternal Return."
http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Reality-R...yth+as+reality

I would also recommend Scott Littleton's (editor) "The New Comparative Mythology"
http://www.amazon.com/New-Comparativ...tive+mythology

These are a series of essays analyzing aspects of the Dumezelian approach to (specifically) Indo-European cultures. If I'm remembering right, a few of them go in to the evolving academic thought behind what 'gods' are to a people (euhumerized ancestors, explanations of nature, to the more nuanced view mentioned above in this thread).

Then there is Georges Dumezil's work itself. A lot of his 'conclusions' are debated, questioned, championed, etc. depending on political and geographical factors but his work is such that it can't be ignored.

"Gods of the Ancient Northmen"
http://www.amazon.com/Northmen-Compa...eorges+dumezil

While sounding Norse specific, actually lays out much of the groundwork for his analyses of Norse, Greek, Roman, Vedic, Hindu, and Iranian mythology and social structure (and how the two are interwoven).

Also his "The Destiny of the Warrior" and "The Destiny of a King" both go into the cultural roles of those classes, how they interact with the gods that provide exemplary models for each and, pertinent here, demonstrate a bit of how gods like Ares or Zeus would have been seen by the cultures that worshipped them.

His "Archaic Roman Religion" vols 1 and 2 are excellent also.

That should more than get you started.

[berk]

Anything. But, to keep it of interest to Wonder Woman fans (and also because they are books of his that show a certain specialty of his that others don't cover) his "Polygamy, Prostitutes and Death: The Hellenistic Dynasties" is a very interesting treatment of the political power struggles between the genders and the classes. It shows the nuances between male and female power in what was a classic patrilineal society and also shows how the Hellenic cultures bore very little resemblance to the 'mythic' culture that Homer and others were parodying.

Also, his "Greek and Roman Necromancy" and "Magic, Witchcraft and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds" would be wonderful sourcebooks for any aspiring WW writer who wishes for a bit more creepy versimillitude in regards to mythic magic.

Thanks, all those sound very intriguing and are hereby added to my extended "to-read" list. BTW, in regards to the feminine/masculine problem in ancient Greek culture, ever read a book called The Glory of Hera? Can't recall the author now, but I found it extremely thought-provoking. Treats not so much Hellenistic but Classical Greek society and the myths and institutions that informed it, IIRC.

And the comics that continue that intellectual exercise, by extension, are usually not thought provoking explorations but are as whacked out as "Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter" is in regards to the dominant religious context of modern Western society.

The only two guys in comics that immediately come to mind as having looked at Judaeo-Christian myth in the way I was thinking of are Garth Ennis and Steve Gerber. Of course it's been referenced and exploited by many more than those two, but they took it on directly in a critical way. If a modern writer in our western culture wants to make a statement about our culture's relation with its gods, that's what they should be looking at. Writing fictional Greek gods as arrogant tyrants to be knocked off their pedestals doesn't exactly show much imagination or indeed relevance on the part of a contemporary writer. It's just another way of saying "my god is greater than your god", in tried and true Christian fashion.

Hmm... it *will* be interesting to see how Azz dances through that particular minefield... and how Didio, Johns, and the other less than stellar decision makers at DC decide to shape their various 'pantheons' in the DCnU.

I'm afraid that he seems to be following the usual pattern, so far, but I'll try to suspend judgement for now.

Hey do you guys (Capt and berk) have any links to read more about the interpretation/ideology behind polytheism worship? It's hard to find the exact words to google search.

To be honest, I'm not particularly well-read in the subject, as far as the theory and scholarship is concerned; CaptMagellan is the better person to ask, and I see he's already listed several good books. For an overview of how the theory of religion has changed over the last 100-150 years, there's a nice short volume by Graham Cunningham called Religion and Magic that I thought was quite good, though necessarily biref given the number of different ideas about the subject he had to cover. For a more subjective view of the role of myth in human culture, I liked Karen Armstrong's A Short History of Myth. Both of those are very brief, easy reads, though the Cunningham you might a bit dry if you're not interested in the theoretical side of the question.

I come at it from a slightly different direction, which is reading a fair bit of ancient Greek literature, history, and philosophy and paying attention to how those writers spoke about the gods and about religion in general. When you do that, you notice, for example, that even progressive, questioning writers like Herodotus and Euripides show a remarkable sense of respect for religious ideas and for the gods themselves. They took it very seriously. And in fact, even when Plato or Euripides questioned the actions of the gods in some of the myths and traditional stories, they concluded that the stories, rather than the gods themselves, must be false.

In the later Greco-Roman period, the old religion really was breaking down and there was an influx of various cults mostly from the eastern part of the empire and beyond - Mithras and Cybele being two of the biggest. In a sense, Christianity was just one of many, though it differed in that it wasn't easily assimilable even to the syncretic religious milieu of the time.

Anyway, what I got from all this is that, although it sometimes isn't easy for us to understand them, since the pagan traditions and their attitude towards the idea of the divine were so different from our own, in Classical times and earlier, the Greeks took their gods and their religion very seriously.

There is a fine line between confidence and arrogance. I'd argue that Azz's Orion, thus far, is the former rather than the latter. It's a dangerous game, though.

Yes, it's really too soon to say much yet. I see warning signs, but it could be that I'm over-suspicious due to the overwhelming majority of poor versions of the character we've seen since Kirby.

We've discussed this -- this feels, to me, more in keeping with your inflexibility rather than any loss of genuine impact and meaning. While I'd agree that in an ideal world we'd get a genuine evolution, I do think there is much to be taken and done with this more commercially viable state of affairs.

I wouldn't say I'm totally inflexible - if I was, I wouldn't bother looking at this at all. I do think it's possible to have a DCU Orion that's worth reading, though it hasn't happened often.

However, when it does happen - as in Kirby's original - a major contributing factor is that the story ignores the rest of the DCU cosmic hierarchy and acts as if it was taking place in its own fictional universe. That can't be done here, because Orion's being imported into Wonder Woman's universe, in which the Greek Gods provide the background: so it will be difficult to avoid giving us a watered-down version of Orion, since he's already been taken away from the context of the story that gives him meaning. So the best I'm hoping for is an accurate rendition of the character.

[Mr. Holmes]

For the most part, yeah. I mean the whole 'third world' vs 'fourth world' is certainly what Kirby intended (that the 3rd world would be the old world gods). That the Old gods are, in fact, the second world -- well, that goes against what Kirby was saying, but it functions well enough.

Part of the problem here is I think reducing everything down to very easily understandable, and mundane, nuggets ultimately imposes limitations on what you can do in the future. I know you've expressed distaste over Morrison showing the New Gods some 42,000 years ago (Orion and Lightray, no less, relatively youngish gods) in the belief that they should be 'new' in a literal sense, but I think he's clearly operating under the belief that they exist outside the sphere of time, that they are supra-real. As far as we're concerned they have always existed, will always exist -- they don't see time the same way we would.

It sort of just made sense to me that they would be "new" gods and they come after the old ones that our ancestors worshiped, but I'm more open to that take, even that's not a perfect match with my intuition on the idea.

The first one I would start with is Mircea Eliade's "The Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and History"
http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Eternal-R...eternal+return

It's, in my opinion, absolutely essential reading for average 'Westerners' to be able to start to understand that for non-Abrahamic cultures, historical and mythological time wasn't combined together. This plays into the way that polytheistic cultures interacted with their gods, spirits, ancestors, etc. as it explains how mythologically cosmogonic, eschatological (and all in-between) processes are constantly ongoing and can be culturally interacted with via communal or individual ritual.

The 'paradigm shift' of thought that Eliade provides is essential to even attempting to understand how polytheistic cultures would have seen the world, their gods, their rituals, and each other.

His book "Myth and Reality" then expands upon the groundwork laid in "Eternal Return."
http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Reality-R...yth+as+reality

I would also recommend Scott Littleton's (editor) "The New Comparative Mythology"
http://www.amazon.com/New-Comparativ...tive+mythology

These are a series of essays analyzing aspects of the Dumezelian approach to (specifically) Indo-European cultures. If I'm remembering right, a few of them go in to the evolving academic thought behind what 'gods' are to a people (euhumerized ancestors, explanations of nature, to the more nuanced view mentioned above in this thread).

Then there is Georges Dumezil's work itself. A lot of his 'conclusions' are debated, questioned, championed, etc. depending on political and geographical factors but his work is such that it can't be ignored.

"Gods of the Ancient Northmen"
http://www.amazon.com/Northmen-Compa...eorges+dumezil

While sounding Norse specific, actually lays out much of the groundwork for his analyses of Norse, Greek, Roman, Vedic, Hindu, and Iranian mythology and social structure (and how the two are interwoven).

Also his "The Destiny of the Warrior" and "The Destiny of a King" both go into the cultural roles of those classes, how they interact with the gods that provide exemplary models for each and, pertinent here, demonstrate a bit of how gods like Ares or Zeus would have been seen by the cultures that worshipped them.

His "Archaic Roman Religion" vols 1 and 2 are excellent also.

That should more than get you started.

To be honest, I'm not particularly well-read in the subject, as far as the theory and scholarship is concerned; CaptMagellan is the better person to ask, and I see he's already listed several good books. For an overview of how the theory of religion has changed over the last 100-150 years, there's a nice short volume by Graham Cunningham called Religion and Magic that I thought was quite good, though necessarily biref given the number of different ideas about the subject he had to cover. For a more subjective view of the role of myth in human culture, I liked Karen Armstrong's A Short History of Myth. Both of those are very brief, easy reads, though the Cunningham you might a bit dry if you're not interested in the theoretical side of the question.

I come at it from a slightly different direction, which is reading a fair bit of ancient Greek literature, history, and philosophy and paying attention to how those writers spoke about the gods and about religion in general. When you do that, you notice, for example, that even progressive, questioning writers like Herodotus and Euripides show a remarkable sense of respect for religious ideas and for the gods themselves. They took it very seriously. And in fact, even when Plato or Euripides questioned the actions of the gods in some of the myths and traditional stories, they concluded that the stories, rather than the gods themselves, must be false.

In the later Greco-Roman period, the old religion really was breaking down and there was an influx of various cults mostly from the eastern part of the empire and beyond - Mithras and Cybele being two of the biggest. In a sense, Christianity was just one of many, though it differed in that it wasn't easily assimilable even to the syncretic religious milieu of the time.

Anyway, what I got from all this is that, although it sometimes isn't easy for us to understand them, since the pagan traditions and their attitude towards the idea of the divine were so different from our own, in Classical times and earlier, the Greeks took their gods and their religion very seriously.

Thanks a lot.