Gods that come from the earth's substrata?

[Kyriakos]

Someone posted in another thread here that it seems most (or virtually all) historically worshipped deities seem to have been believed to either come from the sky, or to dwell high above the ground.

So i would like to ask if there were any notable cases of gods who were not only on the surface of the earth, but below the ground, while not being parts of a pantheon that mostly relied on higher deities (for example Hades lived in the Underworld, but he was only a part of the ancient Greek polytheistic system that primarily was focused on elevated deities such as those in Olympos).

It seems that the defeated order of gods get banished to some caverns deep inside the earth, such as the titans. But is there any example of a religion where the main deities live below the surface of the land?

 

[Borachio]

This is the obvious one.

Mother_Nature

Notice that she's female. While the major sky dwelling ones are male?

Then the Greeks, for reasons best known to themselves (funny lot, the Greeks ), decided that although she was the mother of all, she wasn't quite superior to some of her male children. Typical.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_(mythology)

 

[Kyriakos]

^Gaia

But Gaia is all of the visible land, and i am not sure if the core of the earth is part of her (the Theogonia probably would refer to this. Gaia obviously was one of the earliest creator-gods of the pantheon).

 

[Borachio]

Well.

Mother Nature (sometimes known as Mother Earth or the Earth-Mother) is a common personification of nature that focuses on the life-giving and nurturing aspects of nature by embodying it in the form of the mother. Images of women representing mother earth, and mother nature, are timeless. In prehistoric times, goddesses were worshipped for their association with fertility, fecundity, and agricultural bounty. Priestesses held dominion over aspects of Incan, Algonquian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Slavonic, Germanic, Roman, Greek, Indian, and Iroquoian religions in the millennia prior to the inception of patriarchal religions.

 

[Kyriakos]

From the Theogonia (by Hesiod) article by wiki:

In the Theogony the initial state of the universe, or the origin (arche) is Chaos, a gaping void (abyss) considered as a divine primordial condition, from which appeared everything that exists. Then came Gaia (Earth), Tartarus (the cave-like space under the earth; the later-born Erebus is the darkness in this space), and Eros (Sexual Desire -the urge to reproduce, not the emotion of love as is the common misconception). Hesiod made an abstraction because his original chaos is something completely indefinite.[8]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theogony

And this is the first paragraph of the actual text of the Theogonia on Gaia and Chaos:

(Original Greek)

"Ἤτοι μὲν πρώτιστα Χάος γένετ΄· αὐτὰρ ἔπειτα Γαῖ΄ εὐρύστερνος͵ πάντων ἕδος ἀσφαλὲς αἰεὶ ἀθανάτων οἳ ἔχουσι κάρη νιφόεντος Ὀλύμπου͵ Τάρταρά τ΄ ἠερόεντα μυχῷ χθονὸς εὐρυοδείης͵ ἠδ΄ Ἔρος͵ ὃς κάλλιστος ἐν ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖσι͵ λυσιμελής͵ πάντων τε θεῶν πάντων τ΄ ἀνθρώπων δάμναται ἐν στήθεσσι νόον καὶ ἐπίφρονα βουλήν."

I had some trouble to find the paragraph in an English translation, since the text seems to begin with an invocation, and this part mentions Chaos being 'born' first of all, and then Gaia, then the underground (Tartara) along with Darkness (Erebos), and more importantly Eros, presented in that text as the force which makes humans and gods act on impulse.

 

[Berzerker]

The Underworld may refer to southern lands in some cultures (or the other side of the world), the Sumerian version - Enki's Abzu - was where the gods found and used an already existing creature roaming the southern lands to make humans.

The primordial "chaos" was typically considered to be water and darkness and "the Earth" was the dry land that appeared after creation began. The first world was often considered a deity, sometimes a female monster in the form of a serpent or dragon. She was slain and her body became Heaven and Earth.

The "gods" could inhabit underground caverns, the Egyptian journey to the Duat took place underground and Dante's Inferno starts there before ascending the 9 levels of Heaven. A number of new world myths say the gods brought people into this world from caves, kinda like the Duat story, albeit the Duat was ultimately a trip into the sky like Dante.

 

[Gucumatz]

Well the gods of the Itza were supposed to have lived in the caverns/underworld of the world. In other Maya narratives the defeating of the gods of the Itza and the underworld is a big thing, so I am not sure if the Itza themselves thought of their Gods as living in Xibalba or if that was a later imposition by different Maya kingdoms. But if so - the Itza peoples would be one [there were shrines, ruins, pyramids, carved connecting canals from cenotes in caverns across the Maya underworld/in caverns/below the surface so certainly the underworld played a huge role although, again not sure if somewhat derivative]

 

[Perfection]

Batman comes from a cave.

 

[Berzerker]

for the Hopi anu = ant and naki = friend

it was these ant friends who took the Hopi underground to save them from fire and ice

 

[Rashiminos]

The Titans.

 

[Takhisis]

Pachamama.

 

[Berzerker]

isn't she the world or earth mother?

 

[Leoreth]

Well the Aesir weren't thought to live in the sky or mountains, but they weren't exactly subterranean either.

I guess it's hard to find such deities because one of their primary functions was to explain weather patterns and cover related domains (seafaring, agriculture, warfare), which makes it more likely to imagine them living in the sky.

 

[Borachio]

The Great Mole God.

Or GMG, for short.

As in the well known phrase or saying "OMGMG! Look out!"

 

[warpus]

I may be half asleep, but that might just be a brilliant anti-joke Borachio

 

[gangleri2001]

Dis Pater.

 

[Borachio]

I may be half asleep, but that might just be a brilliant anti-joke Borachio

I can't claim it's a brilliant joke, that's for sure.

But it tickled me, in its own way.


It's just silly, isn't it?

 

[bhsup]

All that comes to mind for me is the beginning of Conan The Barbarian ( the real one with Arnold, not that crap remake wannabe ) when Conan's father is speaking to him at the beginning. "Crom is our God and he lives in the earth." Or something along those lines...

Well, if you can speak French, you can hear it for yourself. Can't find the scene in English.


Link to video.

 

[Kyriakos]

I suppose the hypocthonic gods in the Greek deity-complex ( ) were either parts of the overall system as in Hades being in the underworld, or trapped remnants of the fallen order of the Titans.

 

[Yeekim]

Someone posted in another thread here that it seems most (or virtually all) historically worshipped deities seem to have been believed to either come from the sky, or to dwell high above the ground

Definitely not the case with ancient Fenno-Ugric beliefs, but proper sources are hard to find, especially so in English. Basically, think shintoism and ever-present "spirits", "essences" or "deities", that are associated with many understood formats; in some cases being human-like, in others being animistic, and others being associated with more abstract "natural" forces in the world (mountains, rivers, lightning, wind, waves, trees, rocks).