Good morning, good afternoon, good night fellow community player! I'm Occultis, and today I'll be introducing myself and my educational project in this community.
Daily, I'm a writer and a history student, but for the past month, I've been also a GU player who fell in love again with this card game genre. As a child, I collected Yu gi Oh cards and stickers albums of whatever I could get my hands on, and as an adolescent, I bought The Witcher just to play Gwent, so when I saw this beautiful game that united us in a community, I dive right in, feeling that in my adulthood, I can still enjoy the things I loved in the past.
A fellow member of this active community, whom I get to know because of his streams, @feanorgu, guide me through the internet, teaching me about Hive, and GU community, and making me part of it, and today, I feel lucky to be here watching your content and having the possibility of combining three of my passion to make something for us. Those passions are writing, history, and gaming, so without further introductions, let me tell you about:
Gods unchained mythology series
Every card, all gods and lore have a symbology behind it, taken from different mythologies across the globe, and as a mythology addict, I'll be posting in this community the history behind the Gods unchained narrative, the symbols, and archetypes that enrich every single card you play, and maybe, like me, you'll be able to find yet another way to enjoy this wonderful game!
As an article example, of one of the most simple cards, let's talk about one of the first creatures to enter the board, the almighty BOAR!!!
Thou whoreson little tidy Bartholomew boar-pig, when wilt thou leave fighting o' days, and foining o' nights, and begin to patch up thine old body for heaven? William "mf" Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2.
Yes indeed, Shakespeare hate that pig for his health on turn one and called him Bartholomew, but let's see its symbology, and how the past societies represented it, especially the greeks.
Whenever we see a boar in the face of a god or goddess, its representation is earth, using etymology we'll see that the word pig in ancient times means grain and grain means earth, the first food of human history, being the gods of the earth the main cult deity figures across mythology. Boars are the wild predecessor of pigs, pigs that ended up like that because of domestication, and that domestication was because of the food they provide, and that's why its importance in the life of many ancient cultures and its deification, the boar is a faithful companion, and we can see that symbology until our days with Piglet, the best friend of Disney's Winnie the Pooh
A Long way before the boars were in our decks, these animals ran across Asia, and in the Near East, between the Tigris and the Euphrates, there, they were domesticated around 11000 B.C, and you should care about this, because 13000 years have passed, and yet you can't control who your boar is going to attack. Those far superior people than us venerated goddesses because up until approximately 6000B.C nobody in the world cared about men, because the role of man in procreation was unknown, so all the kings were queens, and all the gods, were actually goddesses. There are examples in Mesopotamia from around the previous mention period, but sources are few, so before going to the greeks, let's mention a goddess of Hinduism, the boar-faced Varahi:
Moving up to the greeks, one of my favorite subjects, there are A TON, of references to the boars, so I'll mention a few.
¿Remember there were only queens before the patriarchy kicked in? Well, those queens had seasonal lovers, and the representation of it in Greek mythology is the figure of Adonis, the most beautiful man, representation of the vegetation cycle. Given a previous conflict, it was decided by Zeus, that Adonis would be the lover of Aphrodite for a third part of the year, from Persephone the second, and a time by himself the third part of the year. Of course, all very greek, tragedy comes in. Aphrodite wanted him all by herself, and using magic, she persuaded Adonis to spend his time of the year with her. Persephone, furious, told Ares about it, and Ares, furious, went to the woods where Adonis was hunting, disguised as a wild boar, rushed him, and gored him to death. In fact, another representation of Ares as a boar comes when Typhon, the largest monster ever born, went to Olympus seeking revenge, and along with other gods, Ares turned into an animal and fled to Egypt, that animal, was a boar.
Throughout mythology history, several characters find death while facing a boar, for example, the Mesopotamian god Tammuz, and the Irish hero Diarmuid.
As a brief and final mention, I'll also leave you with the information about the myth of the Calydonian Boar, an epic hunt adventure which you can find in the Iliad by Homer, and finally, the fourth task of Heracles, to capture alive the Erymanthian Boar. With both of the stories, in addition to Adonis's tragic finale, we add to the boar's symbology the wrath and the revengeful character of the gods. I invite you all to search some of these stories if you are interested.
Thank you for reaching the end, I hope you enjoyed it, and tell me what you think, what do you want to see me explore in Gods Unchained. Thank you again, and have a great grind.