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Dues Ex Caelestis


Fhaolan

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Just as a note, yes I spelled it very deliberately in the title. It may not be accurate Latin, but it does the job I want it to. I think.

 

I'm going to be walking a line with this entry, and I'm going to be trying very, very hard not to cross it. It's not against this forum's rules to talk about religion, but it's still a very tricky subject and can easily offend people when that is not my goal. At several points I was severely tempted to use current real-world religions and controversial current events as examples. But when looking over the essay a second time, I decided to pull back and use mythology that is old enough that nobody is currently using it as a basis of their faith. While there may be some people who do worship more modern versions of these religions, those forms do not resemble the ones I will use as examples and I hope that anyone who reads this essay understand and accept why I've taken this route.

 

Are Celestia and Luna Goddesses?

 

Sort of? By modern definitions of the term, no, not really. But in the way older civilizations defined gods then yes. Very much so. But then, with a bit of stretching of those same ancient definitions all of the Mane 6 could be counted as gods.

 

Let's deal with the Mane 6 being gods first, just to get that out of the way. I think everyone will agree that they are heroes, and they wield power outside the ken of their nominal peers. Aside from Twilight, that power manifests through the Elements of Harmony, but it can be argued that because the Elements of Harmony were recreated through the Mane 6 after Nightmare Moon 'destroyed' them, then the Elements are now more like physical representations and foci, rather than the actual powersources. But even so, in ancient times anyone who was a hero was a god, by definition. In fact, ancient Greek is where we get the word 'hero', which was the term they used for 'demi-god'. Demi-god is actually a bastardization of Greek and Anglo-Saxon languages and only became a real word relatively recently. Demi-gods were mortals with divine blood in them somehow. It didn't have to be a divine parent, as a divine great-grandparent, adoption by a divine being, or even consuming divine food would work. If you weren't in some way touched by the Divine, you weren't really a Hero. In this case, the Elements of Harmony themselves would count towards the Divine requirement making the Mane 6 all demigods by ancient Greek standards.

 

But that's one heck of a stretch, so let's drop that as being a bit silly and get back to the real topic. And let's continue with Celestia as the primary subject, just to make things easier than typing out 'Celestia and Luna' over and over again. That and Luna has some odd problems of her own with this topic, which will just confuse things. I don't want to deal with the other alicorns like Cadance and Twilight at all for this one, as it just makes things way too messy and I'm already having problems organizing this essay.

 

The modern concept of Gods is heavily informed by modern religions. So many people think immortal, omnipotent, omniscient, and often omnipresent as well. Always exists, can do anything, knows everything, is actually everywhere all at once. Again, I think we can all agree that even Celestia is not all of these things. In fact, I don't believe she's any of them. She is not all-powerful as she can be defeated. She's not all-knowing, but she does dissemble very well. To be expected of a being with her amount of experience. And she is definitely not all-present. In fact she seem to go out of her way to be all-absent on occasion. The only one that she seems to display is immortality. But in truth she seems to be demonstrating 'unaging' rather than the technical definition of 'immortal'. She *can* be hurt, and likely even killed, but her physical age is no longer connected to her calendar age.

 

This is a common theme in many pantheistic religions, such as the Greek, Norse, etc. In most of those mythologies, to become unaging you basically master transformation to the point that you can appear as any age you wish and the passage of time becomes irrelevant to you. In these mythologies a lot of creatures outside the gods have this ability. But then, in these mythologies none of the gods really fall into the modern definition of deities as they too can be killed. With great effort, and usually by each other, but it's very possible. They are also far from being omnipotent, omniscient, or omnipresent, being far more like mortals with a power boost of some sort and a job that requires that power, possibly even a career path that may lead to greater responsibilities.

 

This is what Celestia resembles the most, these kinds of deities. However, most of those have an older form where the gods weren't always 'gods' which maps even better to Celestia. Let me use old Irish/Celtic mythology as the model here, but know that similar forms existed in Norse, Greek, and the like.

 

The history of Ireland is described in archaeological terms as a series of invasions. Starting with the Pretanic peoples who were commonly called Cruthin, or Picts depending on who you asked. They were invaded by the Bolgic peoples, then simultaneously by three separate tribes; the Laigin, the Dommainn and the Gailioin, and finally the Goidelic (Gaelic) showed up, commonly known as the Milesians. All of these were technically Celtic as they all spoke different dialects of Gaelic, but they ranged in cultural development from stone-age to iron-age in technology and considered themselves as distinct peoples.

 

But take a second look at these events through the lens of Irish mythology: the Fir Bolg and Fomorians (Bolgic) were giants and shapeshifters, the Celtic equivalent of the Titans. Tossed out on their ear by the Tuatha De Dannan (Dommainn) who were gods, the equivalent of the greek Olympians. The Gaelic were the Irish themselves who didn't really 'invade' so much as colonize, integrate, and out breed the previous tribes. The Laigin and the Gailioin contributed other former heroes become deities, like Li Ban and the like. The Pretanics were almost lost completely due to being so far back in history they were barely remembered, remaining as a single deity going by the name of Crom Cruach (Cruthin) which had been reduced to an effectively demonic presence. Rescued from complete obscurity by modern fictional works like Conan, Slaine, and the relatively recent animation The Secret of the Kells.

 

What happened here was that the heroes of one people became the gods of the people who took over from them, thanks to their stories being 'upgraded' in the telling. King Nuada, the (probably fictional) heroic leader of the Dommainn, became Nuada of the Silver Hand, King of the Gods of the Gaels. The actual gods of the Dommainn, older deities like Lugh the Long Handed and Danu the Mother became the patrons (re: parents) of the new gods. This cycle shows up in many different Western cultures to one extent or another.

 

In the Equestrian version of this cycle, Discord would be the equivalent of the Fir Bolg, and Celestia and Luna would be the equivalent of the Tuatha De Dannan. 'Modern' ponies like the mane 6 would be the Milesians. To the ponies alive at the time Celestia and Luna took down Discord, the princesses would be heroes and treated as royalty for their heroic deeds. They had power beyond that of the normal (able to move the Sun and Moon, which normally took a team of unicorns according to Hearth's Warming Eve. Plus Celestia and Luna's mastery of a wide range of magic, both light and dark. Finally add in the Elements of Harmony which they likely assembled as part of their Hero's Quest.) and had visible attributes which marked them as demi-gods, or Heroes (with a capital H), which modern culture would call Superheroes.

 

Over time the history would become stories become mythology, and confronted by their unaging nature, the populace would slowly shift into thinking of them as full and proper deities. This process is called euhemerism, named after a Greek philosopher of the 4th century BC, Euhemerus, who wrote extensively about how mythology was heavily romanticized history, how gods were once heroes, and who were likely based on actual historical figures blown so far out of proportion as to be unrecognizable. He didn't invent the concept, as there were apparently philosophers before Euhemerus who wrote similar things, but he was the first known to apply this philosophy to all mythology in general rather than individual myths.

 

Ponies had a thousand years to make this mental shift. Even with the social change rate mentioned in a previous blog entry that's plenty of time. To bring in a different mythology, this is like the ancient Greek Heracles, a hero figure with many adventures first mentioned in the 7th century BC who, though he had divine blood (needed to be a Hero) was mortal and in one story did actually die. Slowly he turned into the Roman God of Strength Hercules who, at the end of the 4th century AD when the Roman Empire officially converted to Christianity, stood amongst the other Roman Gods as an full equal. It's the same character, the same person, with the same basic framework of stories being told, but as time passed the stories grew to the point that Heracles the Hero became Hercules the God.

 

Add to this the concept of the 'Imperial Cult' that occurred in Egypt, Rome, Sumeria, Japan, and many other places, where the King/Emperor/whatever is declared Divine and subject to no mortal authority. Again, this is much the same as the Hero needing to be in some part divine, in this case the definition of King, the leader by divine right, is taken to the ultimate extreme in that the King is by definition a God. This has occurred so many times in history, and even currently, that it cannot be discounted as a possibility here.

 

Of course, this would assume that Celestia was not actually available to dispute this shift. (Luna wasn't, which is one reason why her story is a lot more complicated.) But then, Celestia is an odd duck and sometimes lets things happen because it suits whatever purpose she has. I don't really peg her as the master manipulator though. Celestia is such a strong believer in fate, leaving so much up to chance that I honestly believe that Destiny is *her* deity more so than Harmony. Yes, she guides, but only minimally. She seems to honestly believe that her role is to not directly interfere with the development of 'her little ponies' unless it's absolutely necessary.

 

This would be why Chrysalis reacted the way she did when she fought Celestia. At first she honestly thought she was battling a God and that she would get squished immediately. But what she was up against was actually a Hero, a demi-god who had been stripped of many of her powerful weapons (Her sister, the Elements of Harmony, etc.), and who had been relying on her own reputation increasing over time as her primary weapon, a social weapon intended to prevent conflict from occurring in the first place.

 

Yes, Celestia was, and is, powerful, experienced, and extremely dangerous; with a wide range of magical abilities and resources that puts her firmly in the top tier of heavy-hitters. But by modern standards, she is not a Goddess.

 

She is a Big Damn Hero.

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Wow, man. Not a whole lot I can say other than this is an outstanding essay on the subject of Celesita's 'godhood'.

 

This is more or less how I saw Celestia before (just not in terms of the many examples you've used here), having taken note of her lack of invulnerability in spite of her immortality; she may be able to live for eons if unopposed, but as evidenced with her bout with Chrystalis, it would seem that she could one day meet her demise, which would preclude the notion of her being a god in the most ultimate sense. She's an outstanding being, to be sure, but she's no supreme being.

 

Anyway, this was a pretty great read - definitely leaves me further pondering the way the pony world works. smile.png

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