Pseudo-deity

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
romantic representation of the Ostara

With pseudo-deity , pseudo God or pseudo goddess is in the religious studies a deity understood, which is called in scientific or popular literature though, is not recognized by the research as historic. Pseudo deities are typical of religions and mythologies for which there is little source material, such as the Slavic or South Germanic religion, while, in contrast, the North Germanic or ancient religion with its rich tradition has fewer pseudo deities.

Not counted among the pseudo deities are literary figures whose fictional character is clear, as is the case with the deities in Wagner's operas or in the fantasy novels by JRR Tolkien .

In addition, the term pseudo-deity can also be used disparagingly outside of religious research, for deities who belong to a different religion than one's own.

The emergence of pseudo deities

Reasons that encourage the emergence of pseudo deities are varied. Frequent reasons are insufficient language skills of a researcher or wrong reading of a traditional source, but also wrong considerations and reconstructions. Even with the sources themselves, which are often based on older texts and traditions, there were already transcription errors that reflect the level of knowledge and the special self-interest of the respective contemporary author. The wish to ascribe deities to a foreign culture also plays a decisive role, whether it is to mark this religion as pagan , to increase its exotic potential or to fill in the large gaps in a tradition that has been poorly handed down. A third reason can be the endeavor to enrich a pantheon about which little is known with fantasy figures in order not to appear ignorant. In modern times, neo-pagan circles also want to vouch for their religious ideas as old and historical.

Islamic pseudo deities

In the Middle Ages, the Muslims were regularly assigned several deities, either out of ignorance of Islam , but also with the intention of devaluing the Muslims as pagans . Medieval epics from Germany, France or England call them Apolle , Jupiter , Mercurius , Terfîant ("the enemy") or Vigant ("enemy"), Tôt, ("death"), Medelbolt, and Machazên.

In the First Book of Parzival , Wolfram von Eschenbach names an oriental god on the journeys of Gachmuret , who later became Parzival's father:

“Sitting in Baghdad, he was told,
The Baruch, whom
two-thirds or more of the earth served;
His name rang up and dear,
As far as the world believes in Machmet ... "

- Wilhelm Hertz : Tales of the Middle Ages.

The gods ascribed to the Islamic world are a mixture of ancient gods, German names and of course the name of the prophet Mohammed. Although Islam has no cult of images , heroic legends describe how Christian heroes destroyed Saracen idols .

Ancient pseudo deities

According to Richard Jahnke, Robert Dale Sweeney and Jon Solomon, a supposed god named Demogorgon was created through a misreading of δημιουργόν (accusative from δημιουργός , Demiurge , old Greek for “craftsman”, “creator”) in the Thebais , an epic written in the first century after Christianity of Publius Papinius Statius on the seven against Thebes . In a comment by Lactantius Placidus on this in the late 4th century , the latter incorrectly reads the accusative as the nominative designation of a supposedly unknown god named Demogorgon. At one point in his comment, Placidus wrote accordingly: "Dicit deum Demogorgona summum, cuius scire nomen non licet" ("He calls Demogorgon the highest god, whose name is forbidden to know."). This supposed god appears in a note on Lukan's epic Pharsalia from the 10th century Commenta Bernensia , an early medieval collection of commentaries on classical Greco-Roman texts. In the Genealogia deorum ("Genealogy of the Gods"), Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375 ) finally declares the Demogorgon to be the progenitor of the ancient gods by incorrectly referring to a passage in the Metamorphoses of Ovid .

Although the mistake was discovered early on, Demogorgon remained for a long time after it was mentioned by Boccaccio and even experienced reinterpretations. In Ludovico Ariosto's The Furious Roland (1516), the demogorgon resides in a palace in the Himalayas , where the Moiren and Genii have to give him an account of their deeds every five years in a ceremony based on a witch's Sabbath . In Jean-Baptiste Lully's reworking of the Mad Roland as an opera, the Demogorgon appears as the lord and master of ceremonies of the fairies. According to the Dutch demonologist Johann Weyer , the demogorgon appears in the 16th century as the infernal master of fate. In Christopher Marlowe's play Die Tragische Historie vom Doktor Faustus (c. 1590) the Demogorgon is mentioned in a Mephisto evocation of Faust , at the same time he appears in Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene , while he appears in John Milton's Paradise Lost Demon in a misshapen, desert landscape , published in 1667 which (similar to Spenser) is ruled by chaos and nyx . In the short story Plato's dream by the French poet Voltaire , published in 1756, he is a “lower super being” who created planet earth. In the opera Il demorgone ovvero Il filosofo confuso ("Demogorgon, or the confused philosopher") by Vincenzo Righini , which premiered in Vienna in 1786 , he even played the leading role, and he was the child of Jupiter in the 1820 drama Prometheus Unbound by Percy Bysshe Shelley and Thetis , a gruesome, sexless shadow who overthrows Jupiter from the throne.

Germanic pseudo deities

One of the Germanic pseudo deities is Cisa , who is said to have been worshiped in Augsburg . The medieval text describing the cult of this pseudo goddess has been recognized by modern scholars as an unhistorical fiction. Other sources from the early Middle Ages, including the legends of saints, also name deities that religious research regards as spurious.

Several pseudo deities come from the research of Jacob Grimm , who was the first to seriously investigate German mythology. Although later researchers were able to prove that goddesses such as Hruoda , Ostara or Ricen cannot be historically proven, some of them repeatedly appear as supposedly historically attested deities, especially in non-scientific or popular scientific media.

Other deities are the result of misreadings and misinterpretations of ancient and medieval sources, according to Hertha , a misreading for Nerthus or Lollus , who is said to be mentioned in an allegedly lost text by Julius Caesar .

The Germanic pseudo deities include: Alemanus Hercules , Baldruus , Biel , Cisa , Fosta, Hama, Hertha, Hulda, Jecha , Krodo , Lollus , Ostara , Reto , Ricen, Satar, Siwa, Stuffo , Teut and Thisa.

Celtic pseudo deities

During the period of Celtic romanticism, in the 18th and 19th centuries, some new, supposedly Celtic deities were invented in circles of the modern druid orders , for example the British writer Owen Morgan , alias Morien, developed a neoceltic cosmology around the god Celi and the goddess Ced . The Welshman Iolo Morganwg developed the druid pseudo-deity Hu Gadarn from misunderstood texts that were later recognized as forgeries . Earlier, Annius von Viterbo had already reported in his forgeries, the pseudo- Berossos , of an alleged ancestor of the Celts and great Druids named Samothes , whom he identified with the Germanic great giant Tuisto and the Roman god of the dead Dis Pater .

Baltic pseudo deities

A particularly large number of pseudo-deities appear in treatises on the pre-Christian religion of the Prussians , Latvians and Lithuanians , many of which are popular transformations of Christian saints, such as Māra for the mother of God Maria or Tenis for St. Antonius . In the 16th century Jan Lasicki listed 78 gods and spirits, but only eight of these are considered real today. With national romanticism, "pseudo-gods have influenced not only the vulgar world of imagination, but even excellent scientific work to this day".

Slavic pseudo deities

There are also few reliable sources for the Slavic religion. The large gap in the Slavic heaven of gods was filled with pseudo-deities, especially by Polish chroniclers of the 16th and 17th centuries, based on ancient models.

Illyrian pseudo deities

For a long time an Illyrian goddess Oethe (᾿Οήθη) was treated in the scientific literature , until it could be proven that the inscriptions on supposedly ancient rings that name this goddess date from the 11th century and actually a mutilated Christian one Reproduce salvation formula.

Hungarian pseudo deities

A creation of romanticism is the pseudo god Ármány , who should embody the dark aspect of the world.

See also

Single receipts

  1. ↑ Otto Holzapfel : Lexicon of Occidental Mythology . Herder, Freiburg / Basel / Vienna 2002, p. 354.
  2. ^ Wilhelm Hertz: Stories of the Middle Ages. Mundus, Stuttgart 2002, p. 11.
  3. ↑ cf. Commentary in Volume 3 of Thebais des Publius Papinius Statius , Harvard University, 1898.
  4. ^ Dale Todd Sweeney (ed.): Lactantii Placidi in Statii Thebaida commentum (= Volume 122 of the Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana ). Vieweg + Teubner Verlag, 1997.
  5. ^ Jon Solomon: Boccaccio and the Ineffable, Aniconic God Demogorgon. In: International Journal of the Classical Tradition. Vol. 19, No. 1 (March 2012), pp. 31-62.
  6. ↑ Maximilian Rudwin: The Devil in Legend and Literature. AMS Press, New York 1970 [1931], ISBN 0-404-05451-X , p. 80.
  7. ↑ Jacob Grimm : German Mythology . Dieterich'sche Buchhandlung, Göttingen 1835.
  8. ^ Rudolf Simek : Lexicon of Germanic Mythology (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 368). 3rd, completely revised edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-520-36803-X .
  9. ↑ Jonas Balys and Haralds Biezais : Baltic Mythology. In: The mythology of the ancient civilized peoples. Volume 2: Old Europe. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1973, ISBN 3-12-909820-8 , pp. 373-454.
  10. ↑ Norbert Reiter: Mythology of the old Slavs. In: The mythology of the ancient civilized peoples. Volume 2: Old Europe. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1973, ISBN 3-12-909820-8 , pp 163-208.
  11. ↑ Maximilian Lambertz: The mythology of the Albanians. In: The mythology of the ancient civilized peoples. Volume 2: Old Europe. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1973, ISBN 3-12-909820-8 , pp. 455-510.
  12. ↑ Michael de Ferdinandy: The mythology of the Hungarians. In: The mythology of the ancient civilized peoples. Volume 2: Old Europe. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1973, ISBN 3-12-909820-8 , pp. 209-260.

literature