sky gods

the nature of a place matches its mythology. especially the sky.

look up on the steppe and you think: that is tengri. maybe it’s only because you know the word. but maybe the association runs the other way.

people close to the land looked at the sky and bowed, because they understood it was him, and his name was tengri. they looked at a river and understood it was her, and her name was syr darya. ganga, lena, every named mountain. the names came from somewhere, and they came first. in the beginning was the word.

a god extends into what it rules. it is the mountain, it is the river. a person lives in the category of ownership. the mountain is theirs.

the deeper and older the philosophy, the less personal its god. in the oldest cults god is nothing, and at the same time the fabric of reality.