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Let's discuss death and resurrection as applies to deities.

I'd make some sort of introductory post, possibly about Baldr or Ragnarok, but I can't be bothered right now. Instead I'm just going to throw the topic out there and yield the floor.

Go!

Ooh yes, that annoys me.
A few years back I painted a picture of Anubis and everyone's reaction was either "what's that supposed to be?" or "omg evil, stay away."
Ok so he's associated with death...in the sense that he protects the dead...

People who live out of touch with, or entirely outside of, agrarian cycles of planting, growth, and harvest, tend to find gods of death baffling or frightening. Some people simply never connect to the places and ways that make their food. and don't understand, experience, or remember how fundamental agriculture is to human survival.

For me, having been raised rurally and seeing that first hand, it makes perfect sense.

The Wiccan God, embodied symbolically in the sun, goes into the plants and the earth to make things fertile and grow...and eventually he weakens from giving of his own essence, spread through the bounty of the earth. The harvest comes, and he is reaped, a willing sacrifice. He dies, knowing that his body will always return to the earth, and rise again through the Goddess. We can touch and feel the essence of our deities as embodied in the plants and animals around us, but we also have to understand that our survival comes at the price of having to sacrifice these things, and in turn that deific essence. If we don't honour Him properly, and we don't lay him to rest well, he may not resurrect at all...and in turn we will suffer.

I think the fact that Wicca is a fertility religion with an agrarian-based calendar is what really tends to throw people. I think it's also why people assume Wicca is earth-based, because many Wiccans tend to grow -something -; it's all macrocosm in microcosm. They mistake reverence for the earth and its' beings as worship.

The Gods I work with outside of Wicca tend to fall more towards being the gods of boundaries and liminal spaces, or 'trickster' gods who have many different aspects and skills, and are ever revealing themselves to me in different ways. I love their Mysteries, but they aren't the same thing - they are psychopomps and healers, magicians and messengers.

I don't know what to think about the Gods who die, and are not part of a resurrection mythos. I don't have much experience with these gods.

My own understanding of time is as a spiral, though, and the Gods may or may not walk through time in ways we don't comprehend. Our different turns of the spiral may touch and overlap, as well, so while still destined to die at one point, there could be relevant time issues that place us close enough to each other to perceive and interact that time in a straight line doesn't permit. Toss in the additional knowledge that there's relative time dilation effects in our universe as well, and what moves normally for us may be moving extremely slowly for the Gods - in effect we could be living faster, shorter lives than they do or ever will. The Gods may in effect be dead, and alive, simultaneous to where we are at any given time.

...and I bet that got a little dense. Sorry.

Death is odd for the gods in Norse mythology because it's not the same sort of death as we have. Just because you can go into Hel and back out again if you want to to have a chat. It's odd that the gods die because of this. Then again we wonder - is it only Sleipnir who can bring someone in and out of Helheim? is it because he is the horse that can go anywhere, or is it because she is his sister?

The Norsemen were fatalistic in the sense that you met your end with great courage. You went out into battle and if this was your day to die, it was your day to die, and you fought as well as you could anyway. So the idea that the gods would one day do the same must have appealed. It's like they share the experience of mortality with us, if only briefly, and are more dear to us for that reason. They might experience fear, they might experience pain, so they can empathise with our fears, our pains - but they still show courage, they still meet their fates, and we try to do so also.

Right! back to finish this thought.

So, Baldr - I don't actively worship him because I feel a bit bad about the whole mistletoe issue and I don't want to offend. Also I wouldn't really know how to go about it. But again he's meant to return from Helheim after Ragnarok takes place. And I've always wondered what everyone else does after the great war. Are all grudges forgotten? Does everyone just chill and have a drink? Does Hel let everyone leave if they want to, or can she even stop them if they have Sleipnir with them? What I mean to say is, I suppose if you can go to the Underworld and back when you feel like it, death rather loses its sting - like the deaths on the field by Valhalla every day. If everyone pops back into existence each night and has a beer, I suppose it stops being an issue. Like in Dragon Ball Z.

When I asked the question I was rather interested in the concepts of death for deities within the context of the religion and mythology, and I suppose as an aspect of ritual as well.

I mean, what is it to have a god who is both dead, but present and totally relevant? And then, what in practice distinguishes a dead god from a god of the underworld? What does it mean to us as mortals and worshippers to have a god who on the one hand has or will have experienced dying, or on the other, to have a god who transcends death?

For my part I have always been drawn to the idea of Loki bound. On the one hand he shakes the earth, he suffers, he withstands, he howls, he endures. On the other, he is entirely present. If he remains bound in a literal sense, he is also at the same time demonstrably not-bound. Meaning what? Has he left one part of himself to writhe while the rest of him potters about? Is he multi-tasking? Does he feel the venom while he sits in Odin's hall and has a glass of mead? And if he and Odin are apparently (my UPG here, but I suspect it is more SPG) on such good terms still, why would they leave Loki bound? Is this a way of restraining him, or an implicit threat, or what? Is Loki bound at all - is this after all some later story, or addition, by some skald, even after conversion? And which would I prefer? Like I say I find the concept of the bound god rather intriguing and, in some strange way, appealing.

Perhaps it's knowing that a god can suffer, which makes our own human sufferings seem less painful. Perhaps that makes them dearer to us.

I think he does actually. In the end, he may have lost his power over the living realm but he's still very powerful and can be communicated with. He's dead, but not dead.

I know some of the basics because I was big in the Egyptian mythology and history when I was in high school but It's a very shallow understanding so yes, I'd appreciate Yami's take if she cares to offer it.

Anyway, Since we're on the subject of Osiris, my understanding (and feel free to correct anything that seems wrong here) is that the Osiris/Horus story actually fits the cyclical nature of the Dying or Sacrificed God story rather well. He was essentially the ruler deity and a power of life and order. He was then murdered by his brother Set, a deity of darkness and chaos (kind of). In some versions, I've heard Isis actually resurrected/saved him once before Set dismembered him. Before he was killed for good though, Isis became pregnant with his child (Horus) who would basically take his father's place in the pantheon. And Osiris himself was eventually reassembled (mostly). He couldn't resume his place in the land of the living so he was made the lord of the underworld instead. So there's his own literal resurrection as well as the rebirth of his power and what he symbolized in his son.

Next time I'll post about my own pantheon.

That was the second time round, after the dismemberment. Because he couldn't be properly returned to life, he became a god of the dead. He was still mostly put back together though. And again, I've only come across the multiple death variant in some versions, not all.

Now for my thoughts on the relation of Norse Gods to death. There's actually quite a few of them that have some form of a death/resurrection story. Baldr is the most obvious of course but that's really the only story we have about him. Outside of that story, the only mentions of him are that he's beautiful. I just can't get a hold on his personality so I can't speak very well on him. And I really enjoyed San's discussion of the Bound God but my thoughts are on Odin. Odin's always had an interesting relationship with the underworld. His mount is Sleipnir, the horse who can travel to the land of Hel and bring you out again. Considering his other exploits and tendency to wander, I can't see him never trying that himself. And then there's the winning of the runes. He may not have actually died at any point during the ordeal (I have my own UPG on this) but his winning of the runes is often referred to as sacrificing himself to himself and it's at the least a symbolic death. Hanging for nine nights while pierced by a spear and all. And he comes back from this little visit with death having gained new knowledge and new power.

That's pretty cool! I hadn't heard that one.