"I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust.
Demogorgon
Welcome to 2022 and the first-year edition of the GU mythology series. I hope you had a great year, and if not, we have a great one for GU ahead of us!
Today is the fourth delivery of this educational series, and we are having one of the most feared cards of Gods Unchained, to the players, and the wallets, because this bad boy does as much damage to both of them, the father of all creatures, the Demogorgon.
We will explore the symbology behind the card and a little bit of his history throughout time. So, without further introduction, from the depths of our decks -How I wish it was on mine-, roaring, the Demogorgon rises above.
"There is not a single good free image, ¿Now what? I guess I'll put the same picture."
Me, Myself.
The unnamable fear
There are very few sources for this creature, but we are humans and we will fight about who is right, so there are a few theories about the etymology of this creature, but this is not totally bad, because thankfully, it flourishes the art.
The first source for "Demogorgon" is in the commentary of Lactantius Placidus (c. 350-400) to Statius's Thebaid, an epic poem; there, it is believed that the Christian mythographer (Lactantius) wrote "demogorgona" instead of the Greek word "demiurge", error or not, (Ask him if you see him in heaven, or perhaps hell) it was the origin of the word.
Let's get a little juicier. The demiurge is utilized since Plato to refer to the creator of the universe, and because of the greek school of Gnosticism (Jewish and early Christian writers) the demiurge toke an evil persona, as the counterpart of God, and through the middle ages, pagans and Christians thought about the demiurge as an evil spirit who lived underneath the earth, and that is our first symbology in the card. If you check the images, you'll see the Demogorgon rising from the earth, killing men, and destroying his creations.
If we take the definition of the demiurge, we got the misconception of the middle ages and most of the writings that came after, that the Demogorgon was the father of all gods in greek and roman mythology, but there are no sources that support it. Still, you are free to believe it!
It was believed that it came from underneath, and it lived there because above the earth was God and everything on the earth was watched by God, so under the surface, was the place where the Evil could be, but that Evil didn't have a name, it was a primal fear of the unknown, and it was constructed like it because, in the Christian tradition, the things you see are related to God, and those you don't... well...
The second symbology we can talk about is the detail of the snakes coming from the Demogorgon, praise to the writers. Remember the etymology problem with "Demogorgon"? Well, apart from -demiurge- there was also a discussion about -Gorgon- indicating the Gorgons from Greek mythology, the three snake-headed monsters, from which you may know Medusa, so the fact they add it to the creature is just awesome.
With was previously said, you can figure out that the tribe "Nether" is pretty accurate. To deal 3 damage to every creature, I can think of the number 3 as a reference to the number that represents God, which would be cool. About the roar, I find it mercyful, wouldn't you like to be asleep if that thing came out?
That is all for today, I hope you enjoy the history and the stories, and I'll be here next week for another episode.
Have a great grind!