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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 8729177" data-attributes="member: 4937">No, I think you are explaining yourself just fine.I understand the issue very well.  First of all, at some level, it's all your issue.   When I described the family matriarch offering simple libation and incense sacrifices at the family shrine, and paying reverence to say Showna (goddess of the Sun), Sesstra (goddess of Labor including the labor of giving birth), her husband's great-great-grandfather who was awarded knighthood in battle and given the property they live on as part of his reward, her grandmother, and the Turnip spirit in her garden that a couple of times she's actually talked to, I didn't at that time say that they were all divine nor really does the worshiper think of all of the things she's praying to and giving homage to as divine.  You could ask her, "Which of these are divine?", and she could point to the icons of Showna and Sesstra as distinct form her grandmother and the Turnip spirit.  If you asked her about the Turnip spirit, she'd probably be a little confused and think about it for a while before saying, "Well, I guess e's sort of a small god, but e's not really divine if you get me meaning, sir."  Or if she had access to something like your Japanese she might say something like, "Well, he's a kami, but he's not an ō-kami".   Or if she was a bit learned in the lore of my campaign, she might say, "Little Radugulphey is of the order of lesser spirits, whereas Showna is of the order of the greatest."And the trouble she'd be having and which I think you are having is, "What does divinity really mean anyway?"Very much pertinent here might be Greek mythology and the trouble an ancient Greek might have with your question, because the same sort of problems can come up.  Suppose near her property was a spring or river known to be incarnated by a nymph.  And you asked her or the ancient Greek equivalent, "Is the nymph of the Rashdin Brook, that is Rashdina, a goddess?"  The answer to both speakers would have to be, "Yes."  In the case of the Greek speaker, there is often literal connected chain of being from one of the Gods down to the nymph daughter or grand-daughter.  In the case of the speaker in my campaign world, the fey are actually in some cases older than the gods and both have the same divine parent.  So there is no getting away from the divinity of the nymph, but it is also very clearly much less of it there (whatever it is) than there is with a being like Showna, Jord, Lado, Earatay or Airaval.  So you've sort of defined "divinity" by implication as meriting awe and reverence.  And I would argue that if you gave that definition to my hypothetical family matriarch, she'd think about it and laugh and say, "Well I guess Radugulphey is divine, but not much."  And Rashina the brook spirit is more divine, and Sir Hapsted the Jovial is possibly more divine, and Showna and Sesstra are a whole lot more divine.  There is this huge change of being extending from the littlest things in her life all the way up the most unfathomably greater things, but they are all in some sense worthy of awe and reverence.   I would also say that the word divinity is related to the word authority.  Raduguphey the turnip spirit has very limited authority.  But he does have some authority.  He has authority over the turnip crop.  In some sense he also is the turnip crop.  Make him happy, because of the family's special relationship with the turnip spirit, and they'll get the finest, best, and most prolific crop of turnips in the value.  Make him unhappy, and one of their key cash and food crops might get ruined in some fashion.   They rely on taking a couple of wagon loads of good turnips to market once a year.   Locals may actually be looking forward to it, because everyone knows the Hapsted's grow the best turnips.  It's part of the family's reputation.  That's worth a little bit of the family's awe and reverence.I think your worry over this matter comes from the idea that you shouldn't worship anything that isn't "divine" and the only thing that is divine is something that is most divine.  That's the idea that you only should give your awe and reverence to say Showna or at least to only things of the same rank because only Showna is divine.  But that's not an idea that is widespread within my campaign world.  It might be an idea that a few philosophers in the campaign world have, and it's an idea that at some level is common to cultures that fear and persecute Shamans and others that make bargains with spirits that that are not "true gods".   But even then, in most cases, as long as our hypothetical matriarch wasn't practicing "witchcraft" as the locals saw it, her reverence for Raduguphey wouldn't be seen as anti-social or odd.In fact, it's rather quite the opposite.  The strangest thing that the Matriarch is doing her is actually directly offering private reverence to Showna.  This would been seen as rather cheeky and an act of hubris, for her to petition and offering reverence privately so far up the chain of being as that.  In fact, she's probably only excused of it culturally because as the family matriarch she is representing the whole family as a corporate unit and offering to female deities in her role as female head of the family on their implied behalf.   It's not generally considered fitting for a private individual of low rank to offer private worship to a deity and especially a greater deity.  It's rather much like "breaking the chain of command" and trying to usurp privilege that rightly belongs to a priestess or to the community as a whole.  It would be totally appropriate for the whole community to corporately worship Showna lead by one of her priests or priestesses on the summer solstice.  It would be on the other hand probably be seen as inappropriate for the family matriarch's youngest daughter to sneak into the family shrine and make an offering or petition directly to Showna.  Just who the heck does she think she is anyway?I'm trying to explain why this intuition about the world, however right and functional it may be for this the real world, is not right and functional for my campaign world.  Hopefully I've explained why the radish spirit is owed some awe and reverence, however slight.   And honestly, in my campaign world, a rural farmer that found a snake in his garden would apologize to the snake for having to kill it, and then perform some sort of rite to avoid bad luck after doing so in hopes of avoiding enmity between himself and a possible snake spirit.</blockquote>

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