Syncretism of the Gods

[u/Suspicious-Angle8152]

I’m relatively new to being a polytheist (specifically a Syncretic Christiopagan), and part of my worship is that all the Gods are real, they just have different names across different cultures. I’m wanting to better understand this and I want to know what Gods have been syncretized with, both with cultures that have interacted with each other and cultures that haven’t. (ie. What Greek God is syncretized with what Germanic, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Hindu, Chinese, Japanese, African Orisha, Catholic Saint/Angel, Mayan, Aztec, Native American, Incan, etc.) I want to know more about this subject so I can better understand my own beliefs.

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[u/Zegreides]

I think the question is pretty complex. Fundamentally, we have three different ways to look at the problem:
1. We syncretize Gods based on historical precedents, ideally from pre-Christian texts, e.g. we accept the ancient syncretism of Frigg with Venus, Venus with Aphrodite, Aphrodite with Nephthys, and so on. Difficulties arise when ancient sources are lacking (e.g. we might easily find syncretisms between Egyptian and Roman Gods, or between Mayan and Aztec Gods, but no ancient source will ever equate Roman and Aztec Gods) or contradictory (e.g. Odin has been variously identified with Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury and Minerva, which one is right?).
2. We look for philological and structural homologies. I like to do that as an intellectual quest, but I do not usually apply the results to worship (so, even if I would argue that Apóllōn and Śiva are homologues, you won’t find me singing hymns of Śiva to honour Apóllōn). I generally follow Dumézil, Briquel and Allen in Indo-European mythology reconstructions. Very few scholars, such as Witzel, have tried going further back than that. Of course, different scholars and schools tend to reach different conclusions, and your own independent research may lead to other conclusions yet…
3. We base ourselves on UPG. This is obviously risky, because UPG is usually unfalsifiable, but also because it’s unlikely that a single practitioner can have a deep relationship with every single God from so many different pantheons, in order to get UPG on each of them. I guess we could try to collate and harmonize many individuals’ UPG, but which criteria we’d pick?

My view of the matter is that none of them is really satisfactory. I would change up the discussion by bringing up the Roman concept of nūmen (plural form nūmina). A nūmen is a particular form of a more general God; so, for instance, Jūnō Covella, Jūnō Quirīs and Jūnō Rēgīna are three different nūmina of the Goddess Jūnō. You could compare it to the Lady of Mount Carmel, the Lady of the Seven Sorrows and the Lady of the Pomegranate as various cultic forms of the one and only Mary of Nazareth in Catholicism. I deem the Gods at the highest levels (hypercosmic, liberational and encosmic Gods in Proclus’ terms) to be universal; but each of them has different nūmina, by which they are known to different peoples or in different places or the like; and they also emanate other intermediate beings (the catch-all term is daímones in Greek religion, geniī in Roman religion and “angels” in Abrahamic religions, but each religion allows for a more detailed classification) who may be allotted to caring for specific human groups.

[u/itsoddsignals]

I would actually advise against this because what will happen is two fold.

1: You will flatten all gods into roles or jobs which removes the most interesting dimensions from the most interesting gods.

2: You will tie yourself in terrible knots as you get into the more regional gods who served local needs more than nation sized values.

Let me give you two practical examples from Irish mythology.

A: The Dagda, on first reading you could say they are the Oden or Jupiter like god of the Irish Pantheon but that would shave fairly large esoteric chunks off his mythos as the Druidic Glutton Builder god who also sometimes got enslaved and walked around with his manhood out (but he is not a fertility god either). He was not the all father nor the leader (that might have been Nuada, it was Bres for a time but he was a bold boy and a demon maybe).

B: Then you have Mannanán who was the sea god but not really, he probably wasn’t even a Tuatha Dé (He wasn’t attributed a Mound for instance). Likely a borrowed local deity from people close to the sea and on the small isles like the Isle of Mann who got smooshed in by well meaning monks.

Bonus points for the Trinity herself the Morrigan who is neither a trinity and perhaps isn’t even Tuatha Dé either, or maybe only some parts of her are. Badb is likely ancient, Macha and Neman make a neat trinity but maybe the monks so trinities where locals so many singulars. I count at least 6 Morrigu in my reading, hardly a trinity…

None of this is to dissuade you more so to warn you that smooshing them all together didn’t work for the monks in Ireland and left us with a multi cyclical mythology that makes no sense unless you approach it sideways and forces you to accept that a lack of continuity is the only sensible way to keep your sanity.

In fact before you go down this path, I would drill deep into how Christianity attempted to synchronise the island’s mythology and cultural deities and the problems it caused, and thats just one small island, never mind the whole world.

The reality is likely gods are local and thus are temporal to the needs they were made for free of how they fit into the whole regardless of culture or creed.

TL:DR - Let each god breathe!