SMITE, or a reflection on classical mythology
Many conflicts today stem from differences, being based on things so insignificant to the colour of ones hair to topics more profound such as ideologies and culture. Mythology and folklore are apparently such categories that tends to divide people and turn against one and other. Yet, if one looks beneath the regional colours and practices, many striking similarities can be found and indeed link one mythology to another. SMITE is a well illustrated example of this observation. This video-game indeed showcase seven of the most prominent pantheon of pre-middle age era, them being the Chinese, Egyptian, Greek, Hindu, Roman, Mayan and Norse mythology and yet the gameplay doesn't turn one set of deities against another pantheon. No, indeed those are free to fight with whomever they choose. This illustrates one of the key-point of mythology : it stems from man itself and therefore is universal. According to Victor Hugo from his novel
Ninety-three “The legendary truth is of a different nature than the historical truth. The legendary truth is the invention resulting reality”. Invention is indeed the keystone of the whole marble temple that is mythology. But why invent such extraordinary and extravagant creatures and beings ? “Necessity is the mother of invention” said Plato in
The Republic. And effectively, what more natural for a primitive tribe to associate such phenomena as thunder, fire, seasons and others as acts of higher powers, them being gods, deities, monsters and other chimeras.
So it is natural for tribes to associate natural occurrences with the occult. But how does that link all these pantheons together ? They are link because they are human. There are some striking similarities. For instance all the principal gods and goddesses are linked by blood, either by being member of the same “family” (i.e. father, mother, son, daughter …) or by being married to one and another. Creating links is indeed something that all those pantheons seem to do and encourage; links being with another person or with a spiritual self. These mythologies also share “natural gods”; being supposedly controlling the natural elements and other natural phenomena. For instance the Chinese mythology has one of it's most famous dragons, Yinglong, controlling the rain; Ra is the Sun god in Egyptian myths; Zeus is said to control thunder in Greek mythology; Indra is the god-king of thunder, lightning and rain in Hindu myths; Jupiter is the god of the sky and thunder in Roman mythology; Kinich Ahau is the sun god in Mayan tales and Thor is the god of thunder in Norse mythology. So indeed, the natural elements are covered in all the mythologies.
In that respect, SMITE is an accurate commentary on the paradoxically humanity of classical mythologies. If one takes a step back, it's easy to see that pretty much all the pantheon follow a strangely similar scheme. This is why in the end it doesn't matter to know which pantheon is fighting against the other : they are so similar that a god from one mythology can replace another. However, saying that Hindu and Norse mythologies are the one and same would be a short-cut that leads to a blatant dead-end with the word “Wrong” written on it. If the stem is the same, the bark, leaves and flowers can be quite different. The form stays the same, but the content can very to little changes (Roman mythology integrated a lot of Greek myths in what is known as the “interpretatio graeca”) to concepts that are unique to one particular mythology (such as karma in Hindu cults).
Tl;dr I am most excited to play as the gods because they are really cool and I like all of them. Now to perhaps buy the game and not write an over extended essay on mythology late at night.
Prof
