Littleshylenn - I'm Lost

Do you think it's possible there are newer generations of Theoi? Younger, unrecorded gods that didn't make it into myths? The idea keeps haunting me lately.

Sorry for the late reply! This ask is absolutely fascinating but the answer might seriously break your heart so please proceed with caution!

Yes, I do think we have lost a lot of gods we will never get to know.

Unfortunately this didn't just happen to new, younger gods, but all kinds of other gods as well. These gods were either unrecorded, had written myths that got sucked into the sands of time, or got absorbed by a bigger more popular god and are now forever lost to us.

I will break down this explanation using two main points: Lack of Documentation and god-absorption.

1. Lack of Documentation:

A lot of places in Greece did not write things down. Unlike Athens, these places primarily focused on oral traditions. The unfortunate side effect of oral tradition is that when Greece changed religions and banned pagan traditions, they lost a lot of gods who were never recorded making them vulnerable to the false idea that "these gods never existed."

Another form of lost gods were the non-oral focused gods who were indeed recorded but whose records were lost to the passage of time. Usually Losing recorded documents and images of these gods to events like the burning of the library of Alexandria, the targeting of pagan temples, religious wars and politicians who changed their names in surviving documents or outright destroyed their documents. The gods who were especially susceptible to this were those that specialized in a specific region that we no longer have a name for because their legends were absorbed by the religion that ended up dominating the region or by another pagan god (usually an Olympian) that entered the region.

2) God-absorption:

A lot of minor gods were absorbed into other gods. Sometimes these gods belonged to a whole new religion like the non-Greek monotheistic god that took over after the Roman period. But more often than not minor gods would be absorbed by the Olympians themselves, (especially Apollo who is theorized to have absorbed a lot of gods): (LINK)

As an example of how easy it is for a god to absorb another god, I want to show you three gods currently in the process of absorbing another god or being absorbed themselves. (This includes them losing a domain because it is more popularly associated with a different deity)

Note: These gods won't fully succeed because we live in a time where we can easily access well preserved research and their followers are advocating for them. But imagine if we didn't have access to this information or have very limited access to this information like how it was in ancient Greece, then can you see why it was easy for a god to absorb another god back then?

The three gods I will be using for this example are Helios, Apollo and Athena.

These three gods are in the process of absorbing each other's domains as we speak. The way that a god absorbs another god is by taking on their domain and erasing the original god like how many people assume Apollo is "The God of the sun" (LINK)

even though in ancient Greece that role originally belonged to Helios:

As for Athena and Apollo...

Many modern devotees associate Athena with school, education and knowledge because Athena is the goddess of wisdom. However, the original god of school and knowledge in ancient Greece was Apollo because he is the god of Philosophy which is what the first professional teachers in Athens (the sophists) taught: (LINK).

Wisdom and Knowledge are very different but many people often confuse them with each other and assume the role of education belongs solely to Athena. Here's more information on the history of Education in Ancient Greece (LINK)

While wisdom can help you strategically tackle tests, you still need to acquire knowledge in order to absorb educational information, which is why even in modern times, the Academy of Athens in Athens, Greece has the statue of BOTH Athena and Apollo: (LINK)

I hope this helps!

A story in two parts

Have you ever seen a poster and thought.

Wait what.

I just did so i googled

Huh. That seems.... not that far? What about...

Okay. Okay that's... still.... but maybe I'm seeing distances wrong let's try what the poster said

.....

Huh. That's. I'm. Wait what is...

Okay so the international space station is roughly 10 times closer to me than the west coast is that's fine this is fine I'm fine what

sorry it took so long to get back to you but I think this covers it

Ok hear me out:

WE STILL NEED MORE GAY SHIT!!!

it’s never enough!