Tuesday, August 27, 2013

No Single god of Weather

This weekend I watched Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters. I, of course, loved it because it has such a wealth of accurate Greek mythology. In the movie, Percy and his friends are traveling across the sea into the Bermuda Triangle (which they call the sea of monsters). Storm clouds began rolling in and they contributed that to the monsters. It got me thinking.... What Greek god would be in charge of storms?

Zeus has lightning, but not really weather. Poseidon is blamed if a storm happens on the sea, but he doesn't have dominion over "storms" in general. What I found interesting as I searched is that there is no single god of weather. The following site provides a nice list of different Greek gods in charge of various aspects of weather, most of which are wind related. So, when a catastrophic weather event happens (like a hurricane or a blizzard), one god/goddess may be blamed, but it really is a team effort.

I guess it wouldn't be good to provide a god of one event (like a tsunami or volcanic eruption) because they don't happen often. Who would remember the name of that god if it is so selected? From a writing standpoint it would be a bad idea as well because what will stop that god from taking control?

The idea of gods coming together to take out mankind is within mythology. In Plato's version, the gods come together to take out Atlantis by sending earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, sending the island below the sea. This idea is so unnerving, I can see it as a good apocalyptic movie. Someone should talk to Steven Spielberg!

No comments:

Post a Comment