In many countries and past civilisations, monarchs were and are seen as gods. The problem was, when the king died, there was unrest and confusion. To prevent this, the Divine Right of Kings was developed, and then finally they removed the monarch from the picture - leaving only flags and symbols, ideas which would remain immortal, and maintain the power structure.
Transcript
What's the relationship between kings and gods?
The first kings were gods and I think that's very very important to remember, because it kind of breaks the mold of "hey, these are two completely separate things, what are they doing overlapping, never the two shall meet."
Basically to remember distinctly that politics and religion first of all were the same thing, still are understood as essentially the same thing in other cultures, and that basically this separation of church and state or of King and God is actually an upgrade. It's an upgrade to the religious structure because back when Kings were gods, shit would get awkward every time one of them died.
There are stories about how the North Koreans were freaking out
when Kim Sr. died and some weren't sure if the sun was gonna rise
next day - not sure how true that is.
There's a lot of upheaval when you think that God's dead. So the model of making the king - instead of the king being a god,
which was the case. An example like with Nimrod.
Of Sumer?
Yes. Nimrod's father Tammuz was the king and the god and his wife Semiramis was his queen, and when he died suddenly things got weird, and in my opinion she realized "Oh crap - there goes all my power, my comfortable lifestyle" and so on. So she probably got one of the high priests to fuck her immediately.
Anyway she became pregnant fairly quickly and pulled out the high priest alongside her and announced "Hey guys, calm down God's not dead, he's been reborn.
"I'm pregnant with him and it's it's him again."
So this is what was needed that the Trinity story, the story of the King, the father being reborn as the son was required to create continuity in this awkward story of "the king is gone, God is
the king."
So this is is actually an upgrade, when the King becomes merely a representative of God, then when the King dies you just some
more representatives.
So the Divine Right of Kings was to make it easier.
Right, it makes it way easier than the divine king because when you have a divine king, you've got a mortality problem. When you
have a Divine Right of Kings all you need is for the high priests
to anoint the next one.
It's an upgrade it makes the whole structure more resilient. Nasim Taleb would be proud of that development. Suddenly it's not all hinging on the life of a king. The death of a king wouldn't really be a problem.
Thank you so much. Mmm I'd say "Ching" but then we'd all go to hell. Can't cheers a non-alcoholic drink.
So basically it you can see how it eases the continuity. If the King is just a representative of the deity, the King can die and just be replaced. A good example of this would be when half the Russian government disappeared into the Ural in a burning wreckage of plane debris, nobody for a second thought that Mother Russia was
mortally wounded.
Mother Russia - power animal: bear. Gender: female.
No one thought that Mother Russia was mortally wounded - she just got new reps. Simple as that. Problem solved.
So you've got the structure where you have a an overarching deity, assigned a power animal and gender, it's casually spoken about as
if it has desires and characteristics and acts.
"Uncle Sam is paying" Is he? Not literally.
Russia's doing this, Mexico doesn't like that.
The most insidious one for us is of course "We did this. We, Mexico had a war with them, the US."
Yeah, that just shows the totemic nature of these deities because again the totem was never a representative of for example, the bear or the wolf or the eagle, whatever it was. It was a representation of "we the people".
Doesn't make it any less of a deity, and there's a good argument I've seen that even even the Abrahamic God and so forth is a representation of the people.
Elohim was supposed to be a fertility god.
Elohim is plural isn't it? That's true - in most cases fertility requires plurality.
That makes sense - it's not "I Am", it's "We are". That fits right in with that tribal theory.
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