Very clever fusion. In the real world, they were related also, though not in the same way.
In the late ancient world, a growing number of polytheists floated the theory that they all worshipped different gods, just under different names. The only one of those correspondences that really took was the Greco-Roman one, largely because Roman gods didn't originally have the same kind of family relationships that Greek ones did, so it was easy to superimpose the Greek system over the Roman one. That didn't work as well where both religions had divine genealogies. For instance, Thor was identified with Zeus and Odin with Hermes--which turned both the kingship and the father-son relationships completely around.
Another theory, that the gods were both distinct individuals and yet capable of combining with each other worked a little better. This had already been seen in Egyptian belief, for example, in the merger of Amon and Ra into Amon-Ra. The later Greeks fused Helios with Apollo and Selene with Artemis. Yet these fusions were not exclusive, so that Hecate could be regarded as Selene in the heavens, Artemis on earth, and Persephone in the Underworld.
Examples of fusions across pantheon lines occurred in the late Hellenistic period in cases such as Hermanubis. Hermes was more commonly identified with Thoth, which led to the composite figure of Hermes Trismegistus (Thrice Greatest), later made a human wisdom figure who supposedly taught magic to Moses and was appealed to as an authority by medieval alchemists.
I'm not sure about how modern polytheists handle some of these issues, but I have read that Kemetists (worshippers of Egyptian gods) endorse the theory that the gods are present both as individuals and as members of flexible combinations.
In my world many of them are rivals or co-exist with their own 'kingdoms' of sorts, with some seeking to dominate men such as in the case of Zeus and others such as Odin wish to nurture humanity. The goal is to keep the myths faithful and yet spin out a series of tales that allow for a kind of Roman mythology to be spun from Greece (one without the Jupiter nonsense) and allows for the Norse, Egyptian and Shinto myths to have more stories to their names.
Greek, Norse and Egyptian mythology combined. I had no idea they were that closely related.
Hehehe in my world they are. This is a story I conjured forth from the ether at 14 and have spent almost twenty years working on.
Very clever fusion. In the real world, they were related also, though not in the same way.
In the late ancient world, a growing number of polytheists floated the theory that they all worshipped different gods, just under different names. The only one of those correspondences that really took was the Greco-Roman one, largely because Roman gods didn't originally have the same kind of family relationships that Greek ones did, so it was easy to superimpose the Greek system over the Roman one. That didn't work as well where both religions had divine genealogies. For instance, Thor was identified with Zeus and Odin with Hermes--which turned both the kingship and the father-son relationships completely around.
Another theory, that the gods were both distinct individuals and yet capable of combining with each other worked a little better. This had already been seen in Egyptian belief, for example, in the merger of Amon and Ra into Amon-Ra. The later Greeks fused Helios with Apollo and Selene with Artemis. Yet these fusions were not exclusive, so that Hecate could be regarded as Selene in the heavens, Artemis on earth, and Persephone in the Underworld.
Examples of fusions across pantheon lines occurred in the late Hellenistic period in cases such as Hermanubis. Hermes was more commonly identified with Thoth, which led to the composite figure of Hermes Trismegistus (Thrice Greatest), later made a human wisdom figure who supposedly taught magic to Moses and was appealed to as an authority by medieval alchemists.
I'm not sure about how modern polytheists handle some of these issues, but I have read that Kemetists (worshippers of Egyptian gods) endorse the theory that the gods are present both as individuals and as members of flexible combinations.
In my world many of them are rivals or co-exist with their own 'kingdoms' of sorts, with some seeking to dominate men such as in the case of Zeus and others such as Odin wish to nurture humanity. The goal is to keep the myths faithful and yet spin out a series of tales that allow for a kind of Roman mythology to be spun from Greece (one without the Jupiter nonsense) and allows for the Norse, Egyptian and Shinto myths to have more stories to their names.