The Gods

[Ophidia]

I'm not entirely certain that I could call on Thor right now without thinking of the short, grey supreme commander of the Asgard fleet in SG-1. Granted, SG-1 Thor is awesome but I'm not sure the divinity Thor would appreciate the comparison.

Especially considering that many of SG-1-Thor's machinations were more Odin-esque :P

[MaskedOne]

Hadn't actually thought of it that way but yeah I could see a parallel or two. SG-1 Asgard were tricky bastards when it suited them. Benevolent, least to those who aren't body-snatching parasites with delusions of grandeur, but tricky as hell.

[Bjorn]

Being as how lovely points for ARES have already been brought up, I'd like to direct the attention of this thread onto that reckless and restless god for a few minutes.

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To me, Ares has almost always accompanied several conflicting images. There's the lover, who took his sister Aphrodite as often as possible and showered her relentlessly with affection, passion, and fathered many children with her. There's also the warrior (I prefer this to soldier, because warrior has always come with a more ferocious connotation than a peon soldier) who was fearless in battle and craved the thrill of the fight. There's also the father, who loved his offspring.

Some traits I associate him with are: reckless, tactless, courageous, fearless, aggressive, powerful, determined, skillful, passionate, and fiery.

For brevity's sake, I shall stop there and simply allow the conversation to develop organically.

So let's have it. What do you think of Ares? Are there any myths that you find particularly helpful when defining what this god means to you? What are some ways to like to call up the energy of Ares?

Discuss.

[PainAndLight]

Being as how lovely points for ARES have already been brought up, I'd like to direct the attention of this thread onto that reckless and restless god for a few minutes.

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To me, Ares has almost always accompanied several conflicting images. There's the lover, who took his sister Aphrodite as often as possible and showered her relentlessly with affection, passion, and fathered many children with her. There's also the warrior (I prefer this to soldier, because warrior has always come with a more ferocious connotation than a peon soldier) who was fearless in battle and craved the thrill of the fight. There's also the father, who loved his offspring.

Some traits I associate him with are: reckless, tactless, courageous, fearless, aggressive, powerful, determined, skillful, passionate, and fiery.

For brevity's sake, I shall stop there and simply allow the conversation to develop organically.

So let's have it. What do you think of Ares? Are there any myths that you find particularly helpful when defining what this god means to you? What are some ways to like to call up the energy of Ares?

Discuss.

Personally, I never think of Ares in the sense of being brother to Aphrodite- while some of the myths cite Zeus as her father, I find a much stronger association with the story of how Aphrodite was born of the sea foam generated when Ouranos's lopped-off manly bit was cast into the sea- probably because her name does mean foam-born.

I don't call up the god's energy, I speak to the god directly. I have a necklace that I made in his honor, of red tiger's eye, carnelian, red garnets and smoke-colored glass beads. I also associate bloodstone with Ares- it looks like blood shed on a field of battle. I tend to think he looks a bit like the actor Joe Mantegna (this came about a while back, there was a Hellenic divination deck out on deviant art that got posted all over the place. I couldn't stand most of the artwork on that, but the Ares image was one of the few that I really liked. The face of the depiction of Ares looked to me like Joe Mantegna, so the mental image kinda stuck.)

The German band Break Dawn has a great song about him called Ares, and there are a few other songs that tend to make me think of him- American Storm by Bob Seger, All Fall Down by One Republic, Light The Fuse by Deep Blue Something.

The qualities that I tend to think of most readily in Ares are strength, badassery, necessity- this may seem an odd one, but if you consider once again that he doesn't just strike out unprovoked, he reacts, and does what is needed to achieve his means, endurance, a certain degree of arrogance, brutality (not just in the bloody, killing sense, but also in the sense of just not holding back, not going to wrap it all in foam rubber so you don't stub your toe sort of brutality), danger, protection.

[Tylluan Penry]

Ares was a plague god too... Apollo was sometimes invoked against him.

[PainAndLight]

Ares was a plague god too... Apollo was sometimes invoked against him.

I've never heard of Ares as a god of plagues before, did a little bit of looking. The only ancient mention I find with Ares tied to any sort of plague comes in Oedipus Rex, with several deities invoked for help, Apollo being just one of them. While it makes sense to link plague and war, it doesn't really seem to me that Ares was ever actually attributed much of an association. Additionally, that single reference is from a literary work. If there are any actual historical instances of this, I've never come across them.

I'd be far more worried about Apollo as a plague god. He actually does have some fairly serious plague associations, as he can also heal them. God of Mildew sound like fun?

[Tylluan Penry]

I think the fact that the Theban chorus in Oedipus invoke Apollo Lykeios asking him to ‘scatter his arrows about’ does suggest that Ares had some plague associations as long ago as the 5th century BCE. I know that Euripides could be a bit creative with myth, but normally he was pretty good at sticking to the attributes of the gods. Also of course you could argue that if the Theban chorus had to invoke several deities against Ares, then he was regarded as pretty powerful in the plague department. It can be tricky sometimes because the evidence is so fragmentary. As you say, Apollo definitely had associations with the plague, one of the very earliest mentions being the epidemic he sent to the Greeks in Book 1 of the Iliad.

[WhiskeyJack]

I'm going to add my bit to the thread...

Hermes

And i'm just going to talk about the Greek Hermes, not Hermes Trismegistus (from what i remember, that is kinda like a Hermes-thoth mix, god of alchemy etc.)

Most of us know him as the Messenger god for Zeus, god of... well like everything awesome:
Shepherds
Thieves
Travelers
Murderers
Athletes
Commerce
Communication
list goes on.... (my favorite is the beekeeping)
But i don't think some of us know his history (other than within the myth stories, stealing Apollo's cattle, creating fire, slaying Argus etc.) They actually are starting to believe that Hermes was, originally, a sort of shamanistic god. A god of magic, divination, initiation and etc.
I tend to gravitate more toward Hermes' rustic qualities (though i am a thief and a good-for-nothing wayfarer), such as being the 'good shepherd', being the god of beekeeping.
I have dealt with Hermes for some time now, and haven't felt the need to press on to any other god. Some say he will play tricks on you if you follow him, but i've felt the opposite is true, he looks out for you and helps you avoid being tricked or trapped. I cannot count the number of times he has helped, especially in my dreams ( i have had bad nightmares ever since i was a small child, but in my dreams Hermes always chases them off). I try not to invoke him too much, because I generally like to work things out on my own, but there were times where i needed help through awkward situations socially and invoked him (which imo helped a lot.)

[dantefrizzoli]

Aphrodite

APHRODITE was the great Olympian goddess of beauty, love, pleasure and and procreation. She was depicted as a beautiful woman usually accompanied by the winged godling Eros (Love). Her attributes included a dove, apple, scallop shell and mirror. In classical sculpture and fresco she was often depicted nude.

According to the cosmogonic views of the nature of Aphrodite, she was the personification of the generative powers of nature, and the mother of all living beings. A trace of this notion seems to be contained in the tradition that in the contest of Typhon with the gods, Aphrodite metamorphosed herself into a fish, which animal was considered to possess the greatest generative powers.But according to the popular belief of the Greeks and their poetical descriptions, she was the goddess of love, who excited this passion in the hearts of gods and men, and by this power ruled over all the living creation.

Ancient mythology furnishes numerous instances in which Aphrodite punished those who neglected her worship or despised her power, as well as others in which she favoured and protected those who did homage to her and recognized her sway. Love and beauty are ideas essentially connected, and Aphrodite was therefore also the goddess of beauty and gracefulness. In these points she surpassed all other goddesses, and she received the prize of beauty from Paris; she had further the power of granting beauty and invincible charms to others. Youth is the herald, and Peitho, the Horae, and Charites, the attendants and companions of Aphrodite.


I just find her the most interesting. Although she was the Goddess of beauty and love, she was or is still considered very powerful.

[Northman]

Also a god of great passion, which was seen through the many, many children he had with Aphrodite (his sister, might I add)


Sorry for being pedantic but wasn't Aphrodite actually the primordial Goddess of love who rose from the blood of Uranus following his castration at the hands of the Titans? Rather than a sibling of Ares? In all the greek mythology books I've ever read that's what it's said :P

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I'll be honest I've never been that fond of Ares, I've always found him to be quite a brutal god more representative of the inhuman savagery of war perpetuated by terrorists etc rather than the alternative war deity Athena who I think of as more representative of war strategy for more just reasons like the second world war etc :P also I know pretty much the entire pantheon had some kind of adulterous affair at one point or another but the fact that Ares slept with Aphrodite, the wife of his own and only full-blooded brother Hephaestus to be slightly malicious :P if I had to pick an Olympian god that I'd prefer to venerate it's be most likely Dionysus because I think his debauchery is quite representative of what I tend to get up to at parties aha also I think he contrasts quite well with my preferred goddess Athena who I like to venerate because I'm still studying and overall like her style after reading the Odyssey