As I was reading the course document for The Tain, a quote that really caught my eye was "The Celts viewed their history as mythological, as opposed to mythology being historical". In Mahabharata and The Iliad, the Gods have their own special places to live in, far from the mortals. But in The Tain, the divine and the mortals live in the same place, side by side with one another. While this was a bit surprising to me, I also liked the the idea very much. It's great just thinking that I'm being surrounded by Gods. If you had the choice of bringing God(s) down to this earth, would you do it? What do you think would be some of the advantages and/or disadvantages of being around the divines everyday of your life?
Answering my own question: Although the idea of living with Gods sounds really fun and interesting to me, I think I would leave God out of this world. The divine should have a separate place to watch over the humans from, rather than interfering at every little thing.
I don't think I would want the gods living in the mortal world either. There just doesn't seem to be any advantage to having all-powerful gods dwelling in the same space as humans- The Irish were constantly fighting with their gods for control of their world.
ReplyDeleteI would hate to have gods in this world ..side by side with us? Especially if they were anything like the Celtic or Greek gods. These divine beings were arrogant and selfish and quick to anger. We would constantly be fighting and we would lose..badly. It might just be my Catholic background, but I prefer gods to be benevolent but unable to intervene with free will, omnipotent but with the wisdom to not interfer with the affairs of men to much.
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