On Fri, 11 Feb 2000 21:00:48 +0000 glenn morton <mortongr@flash.net>
writes:
> At 01:07 PM 2/11/00 -0700, dfsiemensjr@juno.com wrote:
> >As for the Ona, they may have lost the concept of a transcendent
> power
> >and a destiny beyond this life, but they had a mountain god who had
> to be
> >placated by what they didn't do, nature spirits of some sort,
> shamans who
> >could control matters by some power beyond that possessed by the
> common
> >run. These are all elements of religion, though of a very
> degenerate
> >kind.
>
> I would point out that the respect for the mountain was not the
> respect for
> a god but for a fellow being. Bridges pointed that out elsewhere in
> his book
> glenn
>
I may grant that the mountain is "a fellow being." But on what level?
Were the Ona individuals able to control the rains and winds? It seems to
me that the Olympian gods were just a step higher, essentially merely
human beings writ larger. Zeus had a thunderbolt where warriors had
spears--a bigger bang because, in Hephaestus, he had a better smith. The
heroes were half way to the gods, but were either human or half-breeds.
Remember that gods and men were at the mercy of the Fates.
Dave
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