Gods

Gods are ancient beings, some of which predated the Universe itself. There were gods in the ancient days, thousands of years past, when man was young. They were a diverse assortment, some being born ages before mankind itself had been, others emerging only shortly before mankind walked the Earth and others still only being birthed by false faiths invoked by visitors from beyond Earth.

What cannot be doubted is that every god, from Vishnu to Odin to Zeus to Quetzalcoatl, craves worship from man. There is something about it that sustains them, gives them life and vibrance. And moreover, it grants them power—power beyond that which could merely be obtained through being ancient or the involuntary support of actions in a god’s domain. But in those days, gods were many and humans were few, which was of course a problem. Gods do not need prayer but having it is certainly advantageous.

Wars within pantheons had been commonplace—the Olympians imprisoned the Titans, the Jotunheim warred with the Aesir and so forth, but as human civilization continued to advance past the Hyborean Age into the light of the Bronze Age, the gods increasingly came to regard their pantheon’s dominance to be of paramount importance. They began to covet the lands others ruled, the tropical gods longing for lands of ice, the desert gods aspiring for rivers. It was only a matter of time before war broke out among the pantheons, a war which would threaten the very Earth the Gods had set foot on, a war greater even than the war of the Great Old Ones and the earliest gods in the days before man was born.

The world’s pantheons were nonetheless prepared to move to fight, wipe out the others and claim domination of the whole of the Earth. Or at least, they would have were it not for the intervention of Gaia, the mother goddess sometimes also known as Sophia whom had been watching all occurring on Earth from her domain of Eden with her consort. Gaia was the only god or goddess who commanded universal respect from all pantheons and gods, either due to familial ties (the Olympians were great-grandchildren descendants of her identically-named daughter), age (she was as old as the universe) or simple power (the mere act of living sustained her). She was horrified of the potential destruction warring gods could wreck (having already seen the damage sparked by the clash of Yaldaboah and Mekhane). Coupled with the support of the embodiments of concepts such as Death and Dreams, she was able to prevent the breakout of conflict and demanded the pantheons meet her in Eden.

In that meeting, she decried the destruction they would bring upon the planet and condemned their willingness to destroy all they could rule over. She declared that she would lay out where each pantheon would be allowed to rule over and allocated lands and peoples thusly.

To the Aesir, she granted dominion over the northern reaches of the world, the North Pole, Scandinavia and the lands of ice surrounding the region. She promised their followers would become brave warriors and skilled navigators.

To the Olympians, she granted the northern Mediterranean, from Anatolia to Italy, promising that their worshippers would become cornerstones of art and philosophy and the seat of great empires.

To Ra and his acolytes, she granted the desert lands of North Africa and their worshippers the gift of lasting monuments and eternal memory.

To the kami and oni she granted the islands of Japan they had created, promising them honorable, bold worshippers.

To the Anunna, she promised the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and declared their lands would forever be known as civilization’s cradle.

To the Jade Emperor and his dragons she granted the vast lands of China and its people she proclaimed would be great creators.

To the Elohim, she promised the children of Israel and vowed that while small now, the day would come where they would multiply across the world.

To the Deva she gave the Indian subcontinent and followers whom would be those whom would help push mankind’s enlightenment the farthest.

To Ahuru Mazda and his spawn she offered up the desert lands of Persia and vowed his followers would build glorious empires.

Mesoamerica was gifted to the Feathered Serpent and his acolytes, his followers would be of high devotion and knowledge of the cosmos above.

The question of afterlives was a difficult one, as the various pantheons sought to rule their own. However, Gaia decreed each pantheon could create their own realm for their deceased followers, birthing the many worlds one could feasibly end up in. Gaia used her powers to create a few separate afterlives for those who followed no god, so that they would not be trapped in oblivion for eternity.

There were additionally many other gods granted followers across the world, from Anansi to Coyote.

In the end most would leave Eden satisfied with their portions of the world. All but one. The ruler of the Elohim, the god believed to have been made directly in the image of the Star Maker himself, known by many names including Adonai, Jehovah, Yahweh, YHWH, the Demiurge and Eru Iluvatar, the cruelest and yet most merciful god of them all, was a jealous god. A god who saw himself above the rest of those other gods and whose small share of the world was enraging. Yahweh, that great and terrible god, soon would come up with a plan for dealing with these other gods. Unlike the other gods, Yahweh told his worshippers that he and he alone was the one god of Earth. Worship of him was all that could be accepted and he portrayed worship of other deities as secretly the worship of the traitorous Lucifer.

The effect was small at first, as the worshippers of Yahweh were too few in number. But once Yahweh sent his son to Earth and raised him from the dead, his followers would drastically increase in number. This would only increase following his whispers in Muhammad’s ears and sparking the rise of the first Islamic caliphate. These developments would greatly weaken the western and Middle Eastern gods, as they found their followers ripped away either by death or conversion. The growing belief that worship of them was akin to devil-worship weakened them and resulted in numerous aspects of these other gods becoming separate from each other. A god going by the name Anubis or Poseidon could be the generally benevolent figures that had been worshipped before or they could be cruel, nearly-demonic figures as they were made out to be by Christian preachers and Muslim imams. Over time, the rival gods to Yahweh grew weaker as he grew stronger.

Despite this, Yahweh never could claim the mantle of supremacy as a god for himself. Even the aspects of each god were powerful enough that he and his forces along could not wipe them out. Additionally, the myriad interpretations of his own nature by the Jews, Christians and Muslims and sects within these faiths caused him to devolve into aspects as well, including eviler versions as atheists and gnostics condemned him. Some few worshippers of the other gods (largely consisting of their children or those they chose to operate on their behalf) persisted and even amongst those who did not sustained them in other ways—for instance, Wednesday’s name continued to grant survival to the Norse god Odin. A few aspects of the gods would flee Earth in favor of a new realm where their reign would not be threatened by the Abrahamic God (though they would face another threat in the form of an alien deity known as Ka-Anor). Faith in new things also arose, weakening Yahweh as the embodiments of new concepts (like Technical Boy or Madame Guillotine), nations (such as the ‘Countryballs’ or the Hetalians) or ideologies (a war of ideological avatars in the period of 2019 to 2020 may have been responsible for the unraveling of established political norms in the decade that followed) gained in influence with the rise of faith in things like technology, revolution or nationality. In the end, Yahweh was himself divided and for all proclamations to the contrary, was one of many gods present on Earth, just as he had been before.

And Gaia simply looked on in bemused sadness.

## **Notes**

This Post was originally made by Capitalist Hippie, now going bt Anarchy Occultist on Alternatehistory.com.