Which Gods are Real?

[IcarusBen]

Simple; how many gods are actually known to exist in their original description. Is the Redguard pantheon closest? The Elven? Nordic? Cyrodiilic? I know the Daedra are all real, but what about the Aedra, Divines, etc.?

[BetaB17]

If you want a straight and honest answer? None of us know<_<

Certain trends exist, but again it's hard to say which account is more accurate, or whether they are one and the same. Plus different groups may have a different understanding than most. Only ones any certainty can be spoken of are Anu and Padoma, with some exceptions to Lorkhan given perspectives.

-Personally: I often find Elvish pantheons misleading, namely due to the veneration of ancestors, often to the point of those in high esteem being worshiped no different than a god. As opposed, Dunmeri pantheons prior to Almsivi have been pretty focused, then again Daedra have always been standard across Tamriel. Nordic tend to boil down to far-fetched tales and hero worship At least the redguards seem more distinct from the rest of mankind. And while Cyrodiilic seems to be most popular, I will admit many of the Divine's traits seem water'd downed, though it does make them easier to address in a way.

In short, when on the subject of Aedra, Divines, and other deities, it's hard to find the answer you're looking for. It's no different than comparing real world religions in an attempt to find some manner of truth.. you'll never be 100% certain. At least in TES, the presence of god like beings and their existence are an undisputed fact

[Pilaf The Defiler]

They all likely represent beings or concepts/spheres that are real. Whether or not the Yokudan deity Tava and the Imperial goddess Kynareth are the same being, for instance, or how different the Nordic version Kyne is from these deities is a matter of intense debate and speculation among the faithful of Nirn. Up until Skyrim came out, fans just accepted the story that Akatosh and Alduin were the exact same being, but their relationship and identities became more complicated and nuanced after that game released. I suspect some of the varieties of deities will turn out to be demigods or imposters like Alduin did, and some of them will turn out to be simply different names for the same thing, and others still will be entirely unique gods that defy the simpified model of the typical Eight Divines and seventeen Daedric Princes.

[Niid Onikaan]

My feelings on this are that there are "really" Eight (+1) gods, each with unique cultural aspects - each like a marble a column with different frescos depending on what direction you view it, each on painted by mythopoeia. That way Alkosh can be part of the Akatosh column yet still kick Pelinal out of Elsweyr.

As for the various ascended Hero-Gods, I'm not sure how that works. The consensus seems to be that mythopoeic forces only effect the eight planets so hero-gods shouldn't be able to grant any powers or blessings. I'm inclined to think that they get "absorbed" by the sphere they are most aligned to, becoming part of the fresco painted on the column.

Perhaps controversially, I see the Daedric Princes as being cast of aspects of the gods, eternally linked to them like darker sides of the Aedric personalities.

[legoless]

My feelings on this are that there are "really" Eight (+1) gods, each with unique cultural aspects - each like a marble a column with different frescos depending on what direction you view it, each on painted by mythopoeia. That way Alkosh can be part of the Akatosh column yet still kick Pelinal out of Elsweyr.

How do you explain gods like Baan Dar, the All-Maker and Magnus then? Many more gods are known to exist beyond the Eight and One and their cultural variants.

[Niid Onikaan]

My feelings on this are that there are "really" Eight (+1) gods, each with unique cultural aspects - each like a marble a column with different frescos depending on what direction you view it, each on painted by mythopoeia. That way Alkosh can be part of the Akatosh column yet still kick Pelinal out of Elsweyr.

How do you explain gods like Baan Dar, the All-Maker and Magnus then? Many more gods are known to exist beyond the Eight and One and their cultural variants.

I guess a god is a god if anyone believes them to be a god. So if you had worshippers, Legoless, you'd be a god too

As for the OP's spirit of the question, the "real" gods are those who can grant blessings in my book. It's a nice proof of concept. A being like Magnus who keeps looking back at us saying:

"When you wake up, I will still listen. I'm sorry I left, but hey, I'm still right up here. And my mnemoli? They show up every now and then, and collect all the songs you've made since the last time around. The last real moment."

I don't think he can do anything as he isn't affected by Mythopoeia. So as many people can pray to him as they want but he's not going to do anything because he can't.

As for Baan-Dar, the All-Maker and the rest, I think they get absorbed into the "bone" of the god they most resemble.

Like I say, it's just me though and probably not what others think

[BetaB17]

That's... A little too simplified of a view if I may say.

The issue with blessings is how you attribute the source, many times you could receive a blessing from a simple act of charity, or from some mundane shrine to a mortal. I mean in morrowind praying at a shrine to St. Nerevar grants a blessing... Which kind of seems pointless given whom you are >_> and we already know he is far from a god. We only know of a few mortals that have ever or suspected to gain divinity, yet many more mortals are granted godlike worship void of divinity and only praised for their achievements. If anything, to be acknowledge by a God as another God seems to hold more weight than any amount of worship or blessings. Even if they don't count you amongst their rank(I.e. daedra), it certainly beats being mundane(mortal) or having to mantle another god to gain some godhood

The All-maker for one represents too many spheres to ever be 'absorbed' rather the opposite would occur. Many et'ada are known to exist, and the same to greater spirits that helped aid in Mundas, yet we do not see blessings of their sort. Even the primordial beings seem absent from Mundas despite their known power, it hardly seems worship paid any effect in whether their still gods or not In a different account, some make their presence all to obvious for their actions to be attributed to another, like the Wilderking or other greater spirits, whether or not he/she answers to another Divinity

The worship of the divine is a simplified view and often forgets those also important in creation. Worship to the known Daedric princes is simplified if not for the better. Yet between these two there are still countless more divine beings, greater spirits, immortal gods, and the mantled to count, and even this excludes the different representations that exits. Point being, even in a simplified format, what truly defines a god is lost to us. Making the matter more simplified only makes things more vaque, which far from aids the cause. Thus I reflect to my first answer the op's question: none of just really know

[Br3admax]

The blessings from the saints in Morrowind come from the Tribunal, not the saints themselves, and that's made pretty clear in game.

As for which gods are real, all of them. I don't get where this, "Too many spheres," argument comes from. There is an overarching god, at least OOG, for ES. There are two gods that embody half of creation each. There is no such thing as too many spheres.

[Seht]

The generally accepted theory is that the gods in the Elder Scrolls universe are usually the same beings venerated in different forms, with the Divines themselves taking on so many different forms because of their unique nature somewhere between life and death. Because they're comatose and tethered to the Mundus the ways in which the Divines act depends on what mortals believe they will do (or perhaps due to them being driven insane if you want another theory). This is presumably why the Divines are so varied in action across every province while the Daedra are fairly consistent wherever they turn up. I'd also suggest that this multiple personality disorder is why the actions of the Divines don't always corroborate their supposed personalities, such as Stendarr sometimes being a seriously merciless individual.

The big two exceptions to this in the traditional Nine Divines are Akatosh and Talos/Lorkhan, who are both so weird for various bizarre reasons. The general theory for why Akatosh is so messed up and crazy is because all of his different aspects belong to an original "Aka-tusk" oversoul which was shattered at the moment of the Heart of Lorkhan's removal. So all the various aspects of the Time Dragon like Auriel and Alduin are the result of them all being separated from each other and becoming individual entities. The big exception to this is Akatosh himself, who is even weirder. Basically a group called the Marukhati Selective decided they weren't too fond of the original Auriel due to their massive hate-on for Elves so they decided to play with the universe a bit and strip those aspects of Auriel from the time dragon. So after doing a bit of break-dancing on top of White-Gold Tower they managed to cause a Dragon Break known as the Middle Dawn, possibly the most insanely messed up Dragon Break that had ever occured aside from perhaps the Battle of Red Mountain. By the end of it they'd managed to ruin Aka's mind even further than before and had retroactively turned him into Akatosh, the human-sympathetic god we all know and love.

Lorkhan's actually fairly straightforward by comparison. I'd argue that pretty much every race's account of him is basically the same, just from different perspectives. When you look them over Shor of the Nords and the Doom-Drum of the Altmer are actually pretty similar, with any differences just being a matter of bias on each race's part. Talos is the weird one in this relationship. Essentially what he managed to commit was a mantling of Lorkhan (which is way too complex a procedure to explain here but basically it's what you [possibly] did to Sheogorath at the end of Shivering Isles, taking his place and becoming him). Normally in a mantling the original personality of the mantler is wiped out and they take on the form of the mantled being but Talos has a certain ace in the hole with good old CHIM. Because he's in possession of CHIM Talos is effectively indestructible, with the concept of "Talos" being a permanent fixture within the universe. So Talos managed to mantle Lorkhan and grab all his power and his position in the universe but didn't lose his individuality.

As for other gods, I guess it's a bit more straightforward. It's pretty hard to dispute that the Daedric Princes are all real, although the nature of Mehrunes Dagon, Meridia, Sheogorath and Malacath suggests that they aren't a fixed number like the Eight Divines. Y'ffre's likely just the most powerful of the Earth Bones so is dead as dead can be but still acts upon the universe as a rule of nature (think of him/her as something like gravity). The Elven pantheon's a bit weird. The likely explanation is that they are extremely powerful Aldmer from back when ancestor worship was the norm who managed to become so powerful and famous that the mer just decided to focus on worshipping them instead of less notable ancestors. They may have also managed to mantle more conventional gods, or they may just be the Divines under the effect of that aforementioned cultural molding. Sithis is real but not the version the Dark Brotherhood worship, it's the void itself and any personification of it is meaningless. It's pretty hard to dispute the existence of the ALMSIVI and the Sharmat, although their unusual form of divinity might make you question how exactly godhood works in this setting. The Hist are who knows what, there's theories of them being escapees from a previous kalpa who managed to dodge Alduin, a strange race that popped up at the same time as the Ehlnofey or possibly even alien invaders from outside the Aurbis itself. I know very little about the Redguard pantheon but from what I've seen you could probably explain most of them as Divines through the Yokudan interpretation, with entities like Ruptga possibly coming from previous kalpas like the Hist. Ebonarm is... I dunno really. The fact that nearly all of the Daedric Princes have beef with him suggests that he's real but the fact that he's not appeared since Daggerfall suggests to me that he's not really canon. Alessia, Morihaus, Reman and Pelinal might all be shards of that Aka-tusk I mentioned before so they're probably divine, although whether they're capable of influencing the Mundus beyond death is perhaps a bit more disputable. Then you're left with gods like The Sunken One and Lord Irarak who are pretty clearly just powerful beings that have managed to dupe mortals.

So yeah, I think that's pretty much everyone covered that I can think of, ignoring obscure and weird gods like Ius and Mystara that nobody knows anything about. This is mostly quite simplified and from memory so it might not all be accurate. I would try and source it but I can't post links right now.

[legoless]

Ebonarm is... I dunno really. The fact that nearly all of the Daedric Princes have beef with him suggests that he's real but the fact that he's not appeared since Daggerfall suggests to me that he's not really canon.

Burn the heretic!

[Seht]

Hey now, I'm not saying I don't want him to be canon! I'm just reluctant to put any faith in his existence when he's only been mentioned in a game where the lore was still fairly dodgy. It's possible that following Talos's apotheosis at the end of Daggerfall worship of Ebonarm has just kind of died out as a much more powerful war god has come into the spotlight. Given the amount of enemies Ebonarm has I wouldn't really want to worship him.

[Niid Onikaan]

That's... A little too simplified of a view if I may say.

Ha:D

To be honest I'm a believer in the split personality disorder that Seht mentions below. I see that the dreaming Anu dreamt up another Anu and Padome as figments of his own mind, who as we know then shed two of their own personalities, Anuiel and Sithis. These then split further to create Auriel and Lorkhan,and at the moment time stabilised other spirits popped up. These spirits needed time (Auriel) and space (Lorkhan) in order to be, so in a sense they are all aspects of these two.

It's all very simplified, yes, but I don't think it needs to be as complicated as we like to make it.

[Pilaf The Defiler]

I suspect we haven't heard the last of Reymon Ebonarm. I have it from a good source that Schick is aware of our feelings on Ebonarm and hasn't forgotten about him, and that his exclusion was possibly calculated. Most of the other lore inconsistencies in ESO came from things being kept in, not things being taken out. When something that was in a book is removed, it's usually either a timeline thing, or a hint at a possible future questline.

[legoless]

Stop, you're getting me excited.

[Jeancey]

Stop, you're getting me excited.

I know for a fact that Ebonarm exists in the in-game lore. There is at least one item that uses the Ebonarm name. In fact there is quite a bit of Ebonarm if you know where to look. The dialogue line "I keep a shrine to Ebonarm in my home. Every Redguard I know honors the God of War that way." should excite you even more, as should "May Ebonarm walk beside you in battle, traveller."

[Minor Edits]

Ebonarm is... I dunno really. The fact that nearly all of the Daedric Princes have beef with him suggests that he's real but the fact that he's not appeared since Daggerfall suggests to me that he's not really canon.

Burn the heretic!

Lolol

...

Lololol

I guess a god is a god if anyone believes them to be a god. So if you had worshippers, Legoless, you'd be a god too

Then stand witness to his apotheosis: give praise to the almighty Legoless, Also Known As The Old Scribe Himself!

But seriously, that's pretty much the only distinction we can make in terms of fairly categorizing them. I've been meaning to bring up that Miraak should probably have an entry on Lore:Gods M, since he did have a cult following.

My personal belief is that divinity is ecumenical, right from the highest levels of AE down to the lowliest of drunken mudcrabs. It's all a matter of degree.

[Niid Onikaan]

Ebonarm is... I dunno really. The fact that nearly all of the Daedric Princes have beef with him suggests that he's real but the fact that he's not appeared since Daggerfall suggests to me that he's not really canon.

Burn the heretic!

Lolol

...

Lololol

I guess a god is a god if anyone believes them to be a god. So if you had worshippers, Legoless, you'd be a god too

Then stand witness to his apotheosis: give praise to the almighty Legoless, Also Known As The Old Scribe Himself!

But seriously, that's pretty much the only distinction we can make in terms of fairly categorizing them. I've been meaning to bring up that Miraak should probably have an entry on Lore:Gods M, since he did have a cult following.

My personal belief is that divinity is ecumenical, right from the highest levels of AE down to the lowliest of drunken mudcrabs. It's all a matter of degree.

You made me look up what "ecumenical" means and now it is my word of the day. I swear I will slip it into a real conversation before the sun sets!

Am I right in thinking that you are saying the different religions are just different ways of looking at the same thing? If so, what of Legoless' question about the cultural gods and ascended heroes? Is there the same number of these non-Aedra in every cultural religion to say "hey, Ebonarm is just another name for Reman, Baan-Dar is just what the Khajiit call Morhaus..." for example?

[Seht]

But seriously, that's pretty much the only distinction we can make in terms of fairly categorizing them. I've been meaning to bring up that Miraak should probably have an entry on Lore:Gods M, since he did have a cult following.

My personal belief is that divinity is ecumenical, right from the highest levels of AE down to the lowliest of drunken mudcrabs. It's all a matter of degree.

I don't think it's a good idea to grant godhood status to any old prick with one or two brainwashed followers. As I pointed out in my previous post there are people like Lord Irarak going around who are quite evidently not gods by any stretch of the imagination. Earning the status of a "god" from mortality is something that requires you being a certain gradient above a mortal to me, whether it's stealing divine power like the Tribunal, mantling another god like the CoC, being an avatar of another god like the four traditional Cyrodiilic heroes, becoming a walking metaphysical nightmare like Numidium or using a load of sneaky techniques to become all-powerful like Talos.

[Pilaf The Defiler]

Even by those standards, Miraak was coming dangerously close to mantling the Greedy Man, by his corruption of the standing stones on Solstheim. He didn't actually fully succeed, but he was definitely walking the walk, and had several followers. He was sort of a fledgeling god.

Ironically, The Greedy Man was just one aspect of The Adversary. Another face was "Thartaag the World Devourer", who was eerily similar to Alduin. Strange that both these beings appeared at the exact same time, both in prehistory and the Fourth Era. I doubt this is a mere coincidence. Alduin reappearing caused Miraak to gain enough strength to either awaken or begin to enact his ancient plan to re-enter Mundus, because both are aspects of the Adversary. If Miraak is not a god, he's still possibly the avatar or myth-echo of one, which makes him as dangerous and influential as anybody.

[Minor Edits]

Am I right in thinking that you are saying the different religions are just different ways of looking at the same thing?

Yes and no. There are a thousand different analogies to apply, all of which are slightly inaccurate. But in this context, light refracting through a prism is probably the best way to go, without writing a novel (on my phone at work). They're linked in origin, but also unique.

I don't think it's a good idea to grant godhood status to any old prick with one or two brainwashed followers. As I pointed out in my previous post there are people like Lord Irarak going around who are quite evidently not gods by any stretch of the imagination. Earning the status of a "god" from mortality is something that requires you being a certain gradient above a mortal to me, whether it's stealing divine power like the Tribunal, mantling another god like the CoC, being an avatar of another god like the four traditional Cyrodiilic heroes, becoming a walking metaphysical nightmare like Numidium or using a load of sneaky techniques to become all-powerful like Talos.

I agree, it's the worst definition for them. Except for all the others. At some point, some spirits may cross the existential singularity, break the divine barrier, and up until they accrue some sort of critical mass of power with which they can launch themselves into an apotheosis, they are just pretenders, false idols. I agree with this, but setting a moment where gradients stopped being divine and became "profane" is not currently possible. Achieving a consensus on which mortals achieved a legitimate apotheosis is not possible. And still, regardless of this nebulous threshold, it indicates that we are still fundamentally talking about degrees. A plane is a plane, regardless of whether it is capable of breaking the sound barrier. Well, a spirit is a spirit, regardless of whether it can break the divine barrier. It's not sacred or profane; sacred is profane.


Applying our own standards on the wiki regarding who we think is really divine and who is not is not fair; that leads to a tyranny of the majority. Being worshipped is a relatively bright-line categorization. Imperfect, absolutely, but preferable to the partisan imperfections which would otherwise dominate the issue.

[Jeancey]

ME, I worship you as a god.

[AKB]

A few Aldmeri Dominion agents would like to speak to you...

[Br3admax]

Nah. ME's an Altmer.

[Minor Edits]

ME, I worship you as a god.

The Only Commandment: Kill anyone who calls me an Altmer!

I guess I am an Altmer, in a meta kind of way. Haven't actually played one since Morrowind, but I put something like 1,000 hours into that character. Kind of burned out on Altmers after that, but I'll probably build one for ESO.

[IcarusBen]

Wow. Basically, the answers I've gotten all amount to "I dunno." That's... actually pretty funny. I was expecting the people who know so much more than me to be able to give a straight answer, only to find out there is no straight answer!

If you want my belief, most anyone who has been claimed to be a god is a god in some aspect, with the very possibly exception of Talos, who may just be an aspect of Lorkhan.