On the Birth and Death of the Lesser Gods
A Dunmari theological treatise, written in the DR 1670s, by Esa
On the Birth and Death of the Lesser Gods is a work by Esa, a Lakan scholar who wrote in the 1670s. Esa examines minor divinities that seem to arise and disappear, comparing several traditions that Dunmari theology groups uneasily under the category of lesser gods. Much of the work concerns a group of deities often linked in Dunmari religious traditions: Bhishma, Shakun, and Adra. In classical Dunmari teaching, these deities are believed to have received divinity from the Five Siblings, who bestowed part of their power upon those who would otherwise have remained mortal.
Esa, however, is interested in comparative practical theology, and seeks to place Dunmari tradition the context of three other traditions that are less easily classified: the Kestavo of Sembara, the tanshi of the northern Deno’qai, and the kadaa, or saints, of the Mawar. Most of her work concerns long discussions of the theology and reality of these traditions, from a Dunmari perspective.
The kestavo are largely dismissed. Esa proposes that some of these, or perhaps many of them, are in fact fey mistaken for gods, much like the like the fey guardians associated with Tyrwingha. The kadaa, the saints of the the Mawar, she discusses only briefly. These deities, she writes, are simply mortals raised to divinity by the Eight Divines of the Mos Numena tradition, directly analogous Bhishma in the Dunmari tradition.
The tanshi, which occupy much of the text, present Esa with a different problem. She accepts them as genuine gods, yet observes that many appear to have vanished as their worshippers were dispersed or destroyed. Drawing on accounts of the Drankorian conquest of the north and later devastation during the Great War, the Blood Years, and the hobgoblin wars, she asks whether a god can truly die when the community sustaining its connection to the world is destroyed. Esa argues that divine energy cannot itself be destroyed. A god whose worship disappears should therefore be understood not as dead but as severed: a surviving divinity whose connection to the world has faded away. If belief creates or sustains that connection, she reasons, renewed worship might restore it. The work consequently imagines lost divinities wandering in some unknown realm beyond the Divine Veil, cut off from Taelgar but potentially capable of return.