gods and goddesses

• primitives regarded Prince’s staff as

66:4.1The ar­rival of the Prince’s staff cre­ated a pro­found im­pres­sion. While it re­quired al­most a thou­sand years for the news to spread abroad, those tribes near the Mes­o­po­ta­mian head­quar­ters were tremen­dously in­flu­enced by the teach­ings and con­duct of the one hun­dred new so­journ­ers on Uran­tia. And much of your sub­se­quent mythol­ogy grew out of the gar­bled leg­ends of these early days when these mem­bers of the Prince’s staff were reper­son­al­ized on Uran­tia as super­men.

• Sumerian cities did not federate out of deity jealousy

78:8.7Af­ter the breakup of the early Sume­rian con­fed­er­a­tion the later city-states were ruled by the apos­tate de­scen­dants of the Sethite priests. Only when these priests made con­quests of the neigh­bor­ing cities did they call them­selves kings. The later city kings failed to form pow­er­ful con­fed­er­a­tions be­fore the days of Sar­gon be­cause of de­ity jeal­ousy. Each city be­lieved its mu­nic­i­pal god to be su­pe­rior to all other gods, and there­fore they re­fused to sub­or­di­nate them­selves to a com­mon leader.

• early gods were glorified departed humans

87:3.1The ad­vanc­ing ghost cult made an­ces­tor wor­ship in­ev­i­ta­ble since it be­came the con­nect­ing link be­tween com­mon ghosts and the higher spir­its, the evolv­ing gods. The early gods were sim­ply glo­ri­fied de­parted hu­mans.

• Andites had 33

94:1.2The Vedic cult was then in pro­cess of growth and meta­mor­pho­sis un­der the di­rec­tion of the Brah­man caste of teacher-priests, who were grad­u­ally as­sum­ing con­trol over the ex­pand­ing rit­ual of wor­ship. The amal­ga­ma­tion of the one­time thirty-three Aryan de­i­ties was well un­der way when the Salem mis­sion­ar­ies pen­e­trated the north of In­dia.

94:1.3The poly­the­ism of these Aryans rep­re­sented a de­gen­er­a­tion of their ear­lier mono­the­ism oc­ca­sioned by their sep­a­ra­tion into tribal units, each tribe hav­ing its ven­er­ated god. This de­vo­lu­tion of the orig­i­nal mono­the­ism and trini­tar­i­an­ism of And­ite Mes­o­po­ta­mia was in pro­cess of resyn­the­sis in the early cen­turies of the sec­ond mil­len­nium be­fore Christ. The many gods were or­ga­nized into a pan­theon un­der the tri­une lead­er­ship of Dyaus pitar, the lord of heaven; In­dra, the tem­pes­tu­ous lord of the at­mo­sphere; and Agni, the three-headed fire god, lord of the earth and the ves­ti­gial sym­bol of an ear­lier Trin­ity con­cept.

• progress of science adds to mortality of false

102:6.1The philo­sophic elim­i­na­tion of re­li­gious fear and the steady prog­ress of sci­ence add greatly to the mor­tal­ity of false gods; and even though these ca­su­al­ties of man-made de­i­ties may mo­men­tar­ily be­fog the spir­i­tual vi­sion, they even­tu­ally de­stroy that ig­no­rance and su­per­sti­tion which so long ob­scured the liv­ing God of eter­nal love. The re­la­tion be­tween the crea­ture and the Cre­ator is a liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, a dy­namic re­li­gious faith, which is not sub­ject to pre­cise def­i­ni­tion. To iso­late part of life and call it re­li­gion is to dis­in­te­grate life and to dis­tort re­li­gion. And this is just why the God of wor­ship claims all al­le­giance or none.

• false gods in man’s image

196:3.23The ide­al­iza­tion and at­tempted ser­vice of truth, beauty, and good­ness is not a sub­sti­tute for gen­uine re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence—spir­i­tual re­al­ity. Psy­chol­ogy and ide­al­ism are not the equiv­a­lent of re­li­gious re­al­ity. The pro­jec­tions of the hu­man in­tel­lect may in­deed orig­i­nate false gods—gods in man’s im­age—but the true God-con­scious­ness does not have such an ori­gin. The God-con­scious­ness is res­i­dent in the in­dwelling spirit. Many of the re­li­gious sys­tems of man come from the for­mu­la­tions of the hu­man in­tel­lect, but the God-con­scious­ness is not nec­es­sar­ily a part of these grotesque sys­tems of re­li­gious slav­ery.