[nacht]

Erebus is the greek god of Darkness. Found this while reading "Magic Tree House #40, Eve of the Emperor Penguin" to my son
and guess what, Erebus was born from Chaos according to Greek Mythology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erebus

and some more interesting stuff here..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theogony

The primordial greek gods according to Hesiod

Gaia - Earth - Burn
Tartarus - Deep Abyss (Afterlife) - Hood?
Eros - Sexual Reproduction - Kilimandaros
Erebus - Darkness - Draconus
Nyx - Night - Nightchill

[Spoilsport Stonny]

By Jove, I think he's got it.

[nacht]

Stalking Stonny, on 15 March 2013 - 12:59 PM, said:

By Jove, I think he's got it.

Ha ha, I dont think so. Our favorite anthropologist authors are not that easy to figure out.. But it is fun to speculate on the sources for these characters.

There is greek goddes similar to Spite, called Eris :-)

Quote

Strife whose wrath is relentless, she is the sister and companion of murderous Ares, she who is only a little thing at the first, but thereafter grows until she strides on the earth with her head striking heaven. She then hurled down bitterness equally between both sides as she walked through the onslaught making men's pain heavier.

http://en.wikipedia....%28mythology%29
She apparently triggered the Trojan war. Our "Spite" is tame by comparison.

I didn't think Greek mythology would be this fun.

This post has been edited by nacht: 15 March 2013 - 06:31 PM

[Ulrik]

Its IMO much much more complicated. SE draws from many mythologies and of course, those sources are ovelapping itself and secondly, SE doesnt have to "copy" because many of myth became part of cultural heritage across cultural regions.

For example whole Tiam thing seems to be drawn from Babylonian mythos about storm god Marduk slaying monster goddess of chaos - named Tiamat. She gave "birth" to first generations of gods...and Markud slays her after, creting from her body earth and heaven. Some picture Tiamat as dragon, but its largely modern interpretation. I think that paralel to Anomander is clear.

From another part, wandering of Icarium and Mappo reminds me (slightly) Gilgamesh and Enkidu. And of course, whole Icarium line reminds cyclical myths as Baals (or Kumarbi) cycles - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumarbi http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Baal_cycle

Depiction of Kilmandaros in Forge of Darkness reminds me paleolithic "venuses", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venuses But IMO it can be applied to Burn, partly because Dog-runners reminds me paleolithic hunters.

Im not saying you are not right of course Just that SE has large source of education (god bless anglosaxian system of archeology/ anthropology).

[Iamme]

Abyss is not death. It is oblivion.

[Studlock]

I don't know Wu's primary pantheon is pretty much the standard Indo-European (lighter on the Indo part of it) pantheon with a little Mesopotamia thrown in there. Outside of that in SE gods and religion doesn't really reach that far out of that sadly. I personally think it's because of how the books are written aka the Greek mode of tragedy which calls for Greek like gods.

[champ]

Read Steven Pressfield - Gates of Fire about the 300 and the mountain there is called Kallidromos, always made me think of Kilmandaros.

This post has been edited by champ: 17 March 2013 - 05:46 PM

[nacht]

I always thought that Draconus and his aspect of darkness to be strange. My gut reaction is that darkness is just the absence of light. So it was interesting to find that the Greeks have a god for Darkness. Similarly shadow was a bit confusing.

In my (amateurish) taxonomy of the Greek gods, you can see sort of see three classes of gods. First are the "creation" gods (darkness, chaos, etc.) who basically create something from either nothing or from one kind of thing. Then come the "elemental gods" like space, air, water, earth, fire who own aspects of that physical world that was created. Then come the "human aspect" gods who are gods of "human interactions and culture" like gods of victory, spite, wars, healing, wine, agriculture etc. And then there are many demigods, spirits etc. A lot of the gods are given both an aspect and a star/planet.

In the MBotF mythology, we have "chaos", "abyss", "space", "vitr", "darkness". Then we have gods like Burn (earth), Mael (water), Olar ethil (fire), Kilimandaros (procreation), D'rek (dissolution). Finally there are gods like spite, envy, pinosel, jhess, QoD, QoW..
I think SE/ICE will provide us some consistent mythology but ultimately we have to throw away our "rational/scientific" thinking and have to accept whatever they provide as is.

[nacht]

Interestingly, there is a greek god called Horkos who will kick your butt if you break oaths. Maybe something like this will factor into the Crimson Gaurd and T'lan Imass storyline.

http://www.theoi.com...mon/Horkos.html

and Horkos sometimes is thought of as being Hades (the god of death)

[nacht]

Here is another very interesting Goddess. Hecate..

http://home.comcast....tch/hekate.html

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


She has some very interesting epithets (that all of us will recognize)

Queen of Witches
Light Bringer
"Goddess of the Paths"
and Edgewalker.. (controls the boundary between life and death)
Keeper of the Unconscious

[NefaraisBredd]

Spoilsport Stonny, on 15 March 2013 - 12:59 PM, said:

By Jove, I think he's got it.

By Zeus! I agree with the idea that SE is heavily influences by ancient mythology, hé is an anthropologist after all. I also can see why the Gilgamesh/Icarium comparison but à Greek Héro would be more apt. Greek heroes are abandoned and the havé helpers, divine and.mortal. Icarium was abandoned and he had several helpers. Hé also suffers from à curse. His 'lost time' and his search for memory/meaning/belonging is definitely similar to the heroic quest in that it represents nature vs civilisation, life vs death, etc.

[nacht]

Icarium's rage reminded of god Shiva's rudra tandava, which is a dance of destruction.

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

and I think we have to give ICE some credit for helping create this universe :-)

Reading FoD it is amazing how SE/ICE pulled off the azathanai mythology. Throughout this series MD/FL was extremely confusing (but hey, it almost seems consistent now)

SE is on record that Malazans are inspired by the Romans. So I am pretty sure the Greco-Roman pantheon is an inspiration.

[Sinisdar Toste]

certainly many of the gods resemble the indo-european types passed around in antiquity, but other cultures show different sorts of gods, or none at all. the wickans have a spirit-totem-rebirth thing going on, without a god in sight, while the dal hon have, in sergeant balms words, a 'whole disgusting menagerie'. the letherii worship a formless notion of success and the accumulation of wealth, surely a more modern god than anything else. many of the monotheistic religions can be said to riff on the abrahamic religions of our world. the worship of the lady in korel involved a hell of a lot of flagellation and people not expecting a certain type of inquisition. in seven cities, spirits and demons with little of the human about them shrug into layers of power that lie across the land and usurp them.

plain fact is, ICE and SE have drawn inspiration from everywhere and everything, and produced some truly original ideas. just like good authors should .

[nacht]

Sinisdar Toste, on 30 August 2013 - 02:45 AM, said:

certainly many of the gods resemble the indo-european types passed around in antiquity, but other cultures show different sorts of gods, or none at all. the wickans have a spirit-totem-rebirth thing going on, without a god in sight, while the dal hon have, in sergeant balms words, a 'whole disgusting menagerie'. the letherii worship a formless notion of success and the accumulation of wealth, surely a more modern god than anything else. many of the monotheistic religions can be said to riff on the abrahamic religions of our world. the worship of the lady in korel involved a hell of a lot of flagellation and people not expecting a certain type of inquisition. in seven cities, spirits and demons with little of the human about them shrug into layers of power that lie across the land and usurp them.

plain fact is, ICE and SE have drawn inspiration from everywhere and everything, and produced some truly original ideas. just like good authors should .

I agree that that different kinds of worship (for ex. the Semk and Bottle/Jakatan ) throughout the Malazan series. But even here the spirit worship seems less powerful that when gods are directly involved.
For ex. the whirlwind goddess Dryjna has quite a powerful influence in the seven cities, yet she is just a imass who managed to use a broken piece of emurlahn. Contrast her with Draconus who is in a different class of powerful beings
Similarly Nep Furrow even though he is a shaman of Dal Hon shows very little power in the series. My point is that even though there is spirt/animistic/pagan worship in the series, it seems less powerful than the worship of elemental gods.
Also, i can't explain this exactly, but the lady seems more like a cult than an example of an Abrahamic religion.

Starting with FOD, I think the Azathanai have a very clear greco-roman basis. The very fact that we have many azathanai excludes the possibility that the series has a single all powerful god. Another way to state this is that the Malazan mythology will not veer or even coexist with Abrahamic mythology (holy trinity, angels, satan etc.). For fun, we can compare with the Dresden mythology and it seems clear that each author has picked different mythologies even though both of them support the existence of multiple powerful beings.