So I've been thinking, especially after reading this: https://acoup.blog/2019/10/25/collections-practical-polytheism-part-i-knowledge/ I'm thinking of things like mixtures of Athena and Hephaseteus for things like industrialization and factory work. Along with the gods and goddesses of hard work, timing, and coordination. Worship of the gods of the earth, fire, and explosives for mining crews. Trains would have Hermes, Hestia, and Hephasteus. After all, Hestia is of the hearth, and what is a greater hearth than a reactor core? So that's my thoughts for now.
Not sure what you're after exactly, but unions might be temple-affiliated. My buddy is a boilermaker and there are pretty strict rules about how much pipe they can install. Don't remember off the top of my head so I'm making numbers up, but boilermakers can handle all of the piping within the boiler and up to (maybe) 2meters outside of it. After that, they need to get in a guy from the pipefitters' union. Now combine that with some religious imperatives. Maybe the pipefitters' high holy day is Friday but the job's got to get done before the weekend, so one of the boilermakers works outside the union radius and inadvertently starts a holy war.... Shit, if you decide to abandon this project, lemme know
Nah, sorry, it's just a thought that came to me. I'm currently thinking of several tangents: 1. Adeptus Mechanicus - one of the religious views of science is that of course, there is no conflict. Understanding the world is understanding the gods, and of course, there is a vast difference between 'knowing' that steam makes the turbine spin and actually doing it. A technocracy where things like leadership, science, and technology are mixed together in a religious framework of knowledge cults, technology, and temple worship. Men sweat and bleed in factories and assembly lines, for in their toils the gods give them heat, light, magnetism, motion, and all the other energies of the universe. This entire thing can be complicated by the fact that the gods might exist, and are now very very happy about things. 2. Intra religious wars. Are steam engines beneath the aegis of the god of fire, metal, water, or technology? All 4? Well, the priests are arguing, sometimes with words, sometimes with the newspapers, and sometimes with steam powered cannons and rocket launchers. This entire thing is an argument, because things like the printing press, mining machines, and trains, all change how people live and die, and so the gods and their worship must change as well. Is Hermes a patron of the newspaper? Is a telegraph the embodiment of thought? 3. How does this tech alter society? I mean, this is basically industrialisation. Perhaps they realize the benefits the technologies bring, and view them the same way they view blessings of the gods? The romans believed that divine inspiration gave them technological growth. Throughout the world, there are myths and legends on things like medicine, tea, agriculture.... places that were polytheistic often had weaker barriers between man and god, in terms of their definitions. We might see deification or at least reverence of not just inventors, but anyone who manages to use the new transformations to benefit human society. Because truly now, what's the difference between the god of storms bringing you rain, and the central administrator constructing water taps so that everyone can have water in their homes with a turn of the wrist?
You could have like some Luddite type factions resisting any innovation beyond what is mentioned in the holy text, sabotaging things, etc.
I like the concept. There's definitely potential for a variety of stories in a setting like that. The big question to me is whether you go full fantasy and show the gods as real and interacting with the world (a la Homer or Terry Pratchett) or keep them as just the religious background. Either way could work, but with totally different results.
It reminds me, in a good way, of something Ted Chiang might write. He's always mixing religions and technology in interesting ways.
Oh, most definitely. Arguments over Pan and the like. Factories despoiling the landscape. Environmental laws placed in fear that the gods would strike down any who damaged or destroyed their domains. But holy text? What holy text? I don't think the polytheists ever had a holy text. I think the holy text thing is in fact something quite unique to the abrahamic religions or the Buddhist/ Hindu. Yeah, that's a pretty big thing. There are big gods (Zeus) and there are small gods (house gods). Does a steam engine have a god? Shinto has people praying to robot dogs, because they believe that it has a soul, a minor god, that lives within it. Korean people sometimes put bags of rice chips near their computer motherboards, because they believe it has done a good job and needs some snacks to behave better. This also works for the assembly line.
Yes, it was before written language. In fact the Old Testament was originally purely verbal, and was written down much later entirely from preserved verbal teachings. The polytheists relied only on their myths about the gods. But of course myths are nothing but the stories about the gods and heroes and prophets etc, which would eventually come to be written down as holy texts. If I understand correctly, the religions are considered to be 'living' when they're carried by verbal myths, because those are still evolving *, but once written down and fixed they become calcified. In fact Christianity (New Testament) was carried verbally for a few generations before anyone started writing any of the Gospels down. * I'm not entirely sure about this part.
