In a polytheistic culture, which god will be considered evil?

[Ai-chan]

Usually people say the sun god, the river god and harvest god are always good. And usually the death god or darkness god are evil, despite them just doing their jobs. But what would you consider an evil god? What is your justification for this god being evil?

 

[BlakeOblivion]

the pattern here is the gods associated with things humans need or want are generally good, while those associated with things humans avoid or hate are evil. so any god can be evil, if either: they're associated with something people naturally avoid or dislike, or if there's a specific cultural association that overrides that reasoning.

for example, a god of the sun can be evil if the culture interprets the sun as staring judgmentally towards us from above, it's gaze so fierce that trying to look at it directly hurts us, and has cultural associations like "X's sun has set." as a way of saying "x person died", as example.

 

[Jerynboe]

I’ll take the Egyptian stance and say that the god of chaos is evil, though it can sometimes cooperate or be useful to good. The idea of revolution and regime change being an equally positive force and counterpoint to stability is actually pretty recent historically speaking. Zeus was at best a marginal improvement over Kronos, let’s be honest. Chaos is important, even useful, but also scary as f*ck.
Most people would much rather know approximately what tomorrow looks like even if it isn’t great, as long as there is any kind of hope they could plausibly work towards in the current paradigm. Could be glory, could be eternal salvation, it could even be the peace of oblivion. Chaos makes it very hard to work towards much of anything.

 

[DannyTheDaikon]

The gods themselves are hardly good or evil, as they transcend the human morality. Whether they're one or the other is relative to humans. Good will be the ones that do what's considered good to humans and evil the ones that are associated with unpleasant things.

 

[BearlyAlive]

The god of evil, duh. There's always an evil god in bad literature...
Normally it's the gods of order or law that gets turned Orwell.
You can always turn whatever god you want evil

 

[LilRora]

I say that a god being evil is just human perception tainting the concept of a god, which cannot be evil in its essence; being noble, good, bad, and evil is a human quantifier that cannot be applied to gods, although can be used to describe non-divine beings that are perceived as gods.

Then, any such being can be evil, because they are not limited by what they are, and there doesn't have to be any justification, just like it is with humans.

 

[TheMonotonePuppet]

Usually people say the sun god, the river god and harvest god are always good. And usually the death god or darkness god are evil, despite them just doing their jobs. But what would you consider an evil god? What is your justification for this god being evil?

I am going to assume you mean from my perspective, rather than the actual adherents of the religion. The evil deities are the human ones, by which human logic can be applied to easily to their actions because they are practically human themselves, and are thus culpable when they fall to vices, hurting (includes traumatic pain like sexual assault) others besides themselves for petty slights and without the consent of the adherent, unforgivable actions such as mass slaughter or prejudice, and most important of all, hypocrites. Hypocrisy is a foul thing.

 

[Rhaps]

In Greek myth, it depends on the perspective, take the Trojan War for example where the gods split into two sides, one side supporting the Greek and the other Trojan. To the Greek, the gods supporting Trojan are evil and vice versa, but that's just dumbing it down.

"Evil gods" from a mythological standpoint are Obstacles for the hero, the antagonists but not villains.

Why don't ancient literature potray some gods as being truly evil? Because of fear, they don't want to pissed off the gods out of fear. Then you see some gods, being so scary they only speak their name is hushed tone or use title, like Hades. And some gods never have story to their name, because they are fear itself. For example, Erebus the Primordial Darkness.

 

[Kenjona]

All of them that are not YOUR specific deity, just some fools to be appeased.

 

[CarburetorThompson]

All of them that are not YOUR specific deity, just some fools to be appeased.

That would henotheism. Polytheism is the worship of all gods even the evil ones

 

[melchi]

I would agree that it is entirely subjective. For example Baal the god of rains and fertility became very hated in Israel.

Baal | Definition, Myths, Worship, & Facts

Baal, god worshipped in many ancient Middle Eastern communities, especially among the Canaanites, who apparently considered him a fertility deity and one of the most important gods in the pantheon. Learn more about Baal and the communities that worshipped him in this article.

www.britannica.com

 

[georgelee5786]

god of disease

 

[Prince_Azmiran_Myrian]

Your question is tricky. First, we must be able to define good and evil.

Since objective morality is defined by God, polytheistic view has a big issue: Which god defines it?

 

[Aader]

Usually people say the sun god, the river god and harvest god are always good. And usually the death god or darkness god are evil, despite them just doing their jobs. But what would you consider an evil god? What is your justification for this god being evil?

This is interesting as we [modern man] see Hades and Apophisis as evil, whereas they were considered good. In fact, very few polytheistic religions had an "evil" god

 

[longer]

One thing to consider is that sometimes people perform rituals for a god, not out of adoration but to appease them- get them to fuck off or look away. Sometimes sailors will make offerings to a sea god not just to get good waves but to prevent the same sea god from making their visit to their domain permanent. That sort of thing.

 

[Azure_Fog]

I believe it varies depending on which mythology you look at. Other times, the evil people aren’t even gods.

 

[Assurbanipal_II]

Usually people say the sun god, the river god and harvest god are always good. And usually the death god or darkness god are evil, despite them just doing their jobs. But what would you consider an evil god? What is your justification for this god being evil?

You have too strong Manichaeistic tendencies.

 

[Jerynboe]

This is interesting as we [modern man] see Hades and Apophisis as evil, whereas they were considered good. In fact, very few polytheistic religions had an "evil" god

I’m a little confused. I’m with you on Hades, but assuming Apophisis is the snake god of chaos also spelled Apep (google isn’t giving me anything else with that spelling except a unit in a video game that seems to be Egyptian coded snake people) I’m a little more skeptical. Seth was scary and opposed other sympathetic gods, but had his good points too and was widely worshipped.
Apep though? Archenemy of Ra who attempted to destroy the world literally every day. Most of the rituals involving him that I’m aware of were focused on making effigies of him and then ritually abusing them in order to reduce his power. At an institutionalized cultural level he didn’t seem to have a cult dedicated to him or praising him as a good guy. He genuinely seems to exist so that the other gods, who frequently have conflicts between them, have someone they can set aside their differences to beat up. Seems like an evil god to me.
Even modern pagan worshippers I’ve seen discussing him online (I don’t know them personally and will not weigh in on the differences between modern and ancient worship of this pantheon) seem to either see him in the same light a Christian would see a demon (to be feared and avoided), or acknowledge he is taboo even though they personally respect him as a kind of representative of the inevitability of oblivion. The only counterpoint I’ve seen was a couple of Pharaohs named after him, but we don’t really know what the logic going into that was.

 

[Lodur]

This is interesting as we [modern man] see Hades and Apophisis as evil, whereas they were considered good. In fact, very few polytheistic religions had an "evil" god

I agree. In best case some gods could be considered ambivalent, like Egyptian Seth, Norse Loki, Indian Rudra/Shiva, etc. Some people can perceive them as evil, because of their past or future deeds, but majority don't perceive them as purely evil gods. In addition, in polytheistic religions, the gods are often opposed by mythical creatures, equal to them in strength, but antagonistic, to whom evil is attributed. Such as the Scandinavian Jotuns or Hrimthurses, Indian Asuras (Daityas and Danavas), or the Japanese Youkai, opposing the Kami (gods).

 

[nemonusquam_]

It depends on what said society holds valuable. For a warlike culture like the Vikings, weakness might be seen as evil. For a pacifist religion like Buddhism, violence might be seen as evil. Conversely, what one thinks of as evil the other holds as good.