How Do Oracles, Divination, and Prophecy Work?

So, this is not a “technical” question of the variety of “how does one do these things,” and thus a question of practice, but one of theory and theology.  Let me give it as it was given to me:

I think it would be interesting to here your thoughts on how exactly divination, oracles, and prophecy work.  Such practices are vital to the very way our religions work so it wouldn’t be unwise to have more literature out there on divination theory. 

As this is the “Theological Questions” blog, it is only appropriate to approach this question from a theological perspective, and I’m happy to do that!  😉

I don’t want to insist on the following three working definitions as being “true” and “accurate” (and even “appropriate”) for all contexts and circumstances, but just for the sake of simplicity, let’s take three fairly easy distinctions that can be made between these things:

1.  Divination is a technique (often mechanical in nature and involving specific objects) that is used to discern the will, thoughts, or desires of a particular Deity or a divine being (or beings), or to draw upon said Deity’s or beings’ knowledge.
2. A prophet is a practitioner who, through diverse techniques, is able to either (or both):  interpret signs, omens, and portents, or use some divination system in order to discern the will, thoughts, desires, or to obtain the knowledge of or from a particular Deity or divine being(s); undergo some form of possession or mantic trance in order to “speak for” or have the Deity or divine being(s) “speak through” their own mouth, thus uttering prophecies in doing so.
3. An oracle is similar to a prophet, and can use different forms of divination, but there is a key difference, and a requirement of three things in order to be an oracle:  first, the ability, either through natural talents or via an initiatory process, to act in this role; second, a specific Deity (usually, but not always) that has this devotional relationship with the oracle that results in this role being possible; third, a connection to a specific sacred place or location which allows this to occur, and often with an associated unique practice that is peculiar to this location.

The first of these, while not absolutely ubiquitous, is fairly common (or at least “uncommon, but not unheard of”) to find amongst polytheists.  (And yet, despite this, I’m somewhat amazed, and have even been appalled, at how some polytheists seem to regard such things, and might even prefer that such measures are not easily available lest the responsibility to use and follow the knowledge provided prove to be too great a burden to bear…perhaps?!?). The second, while also not entirely rare, is less commonly encountered, and the specific terminology of “prophet” often gets avoided lest people think things about the person involved that are mostly distortions from monotheistic religions, even though this concept was in polytheism for at least as long as (if not longer than) it has been in monotheistic religious contexts.  The third option above is a tremendous rarity these days, and all the more lamentable because of that.  While some people function as “oracles” for their communities these days, the lack of specific connection to place in such situations makes it difficult to function properly in this capacity.  (In certain diasporic polytheistic religions, this may not be the case so much…but the blurring of the line of what would be called “prophets” and “oracles” in the definitions above in such situations is also a factor to be considered.)

One of my suspicions for why the connection to specific places is necessary to be a full oracle is because of the unique relationship that the Deity has with the human oracular functionaries, and that to some extent a bit of syncretism of the Deity with local Land Spirits and other such beings combines to give the Deity a local epithet or form that can only be found there.  Thus, the oracle of Delphic Apollo with His Pythia priestess might give a different answer to a question than the oracle of Apollo of Claros with His thespiodos male priest drinking from the sacred spring present there, for example.  As these are each particular forms of the Deity-in-question, we can expect certain over-arching commonalities in certain respects; but the combination of Deity + location + oracular functionary will necessarily lead to different results in every case that any of those variables are, well, variant!

Some of my own experience with these matters flows from my contact with the only known modern oracle of Antinous.  In the original Antinoan group of which I was a part, we had agreed early on that we didn’t think having an oracle would necessarily be appropriate, because it would imply that said person would have a great deal of power and authority, and perhaps even a unique and “more special” devotional relationship with Antinous that might tend to overshadow others.  Little did we know that some of our ideas regarding those things were entirely irrelevant, short-sighted, and even stupid…just because someone’s devotional relationship with a Deity is as Their oracle rather than as Their worshipper, Their priest, Their poet, Their lover, or simply Their admirer and well-wisher does not mean any of these things are “greater” or “lesser” in importance than any of the others.  (Give me twelve diligent devotees, or five dedicated shrine-keepers, in preference to one oracle who thinks they are better than all others because they are THE oracle!)

Then, another sacred functionary came forward and said he wanted to be the new Oracle of Antinous.  We were initially suspicious of this, but as I got to know this individual, I could see that he was not doing it for selfish or self-aggrandizing purposes (and, in any case, certain other folks in the group could self-aggrandize with Bellerophon and Ixion and make both of the latter look modest!).  It became apparent that this would potentially be a good possibility, and so we pursued it, and in particular I guided the process, ended up imparting the Antinoan Mysteries to this future oracle for the first time, and then saw what he could do.

When the oracular sessions would occur, there was definitely a transformation involved–it was of a slightly visual sort in my experience, that his face no longer was quite “his face” and seemed to be overshadowed by some other type of presence.  In his experience, he thought it was pretty much Antinous possessing him, but I didn’t see it that way, and likewise had confirmed that it wasn’t quite the case (on which more in a moment).  The information that came with this was always interesting and often unexpected…

And, when it was then passed on to certain people–including leading individuals in the group–it was often summarily ignored because they did not want to deal with what was essentially a “divine commandment” (even though that isn’t what it was in any case).  If the question was serious enough to bring to the Oracle in the first place, then it should have had its answer taken just as seriously and with just as much gravity and importance…but it was not, unfortunately.  (But that gets into a whole series of other matters which are not relevant to this question!)

It turns out that what my reading of the situation happened to be was fairly well in-line with what many of the ancient theologians thought about some oracles, or at least about how Deities communicated with humans in many cases.

What I perceived to be occurring was not that our Oracle was possessed by Antinous Himself, but instead by the spirit (or spirits) of the Oracles of Antinous, and he was speaking from their collective wisdom, which was derived from Antinous.  Thus, in a sense, these were spiritual or lineage Ancestors.  Further, what the ancient theologians thought about these matters was not that the Deities Themselves possessed people, but instead that a daimon from the Deity or representing the Deity spoke through the person, as the Deity’s full power and knowledge would overwhelm the person and probably drive them insane.  In fact, this is precisely what people like Origen said of the oracle of Antinous (when they did not dismiss it entirely as fraudulent):  namely, that “demons spoke through it,” but it was the Christian understanding of “demon” rather than the Classical Greek understanding of daimon, which was not in the least negative.

I think that this daimonic intercession is what likely accounts for the fact that oftentimes, our divination results don’t necessarily line up with later established facts, or that they are potentially “wrong.”  While it is also not impossible for a Deity’s knowledge to be less-than-complete since our Deities don’t necessitate omniscience in order to be Deities, the fact that daimones are acting as intermediaries then puts another factor into the equation which can make it possible for transmissions to be less-than-perfect in their signal-to-noise ratio, as it were.

If one is also using a divination system involving particular divine grammatical beings (like the Runes or the Ephesia Grammata), or a spirit like Astragalos from the Toys of Dionysos if one is using knucklebones, then it can get even more complicated.  What if one does the Runes and is speaking with Odin?  Then there’s two sets of beings, plus perhaps even a third in the form of a daimon (or a vaettr–if I have the singular correct for a Norse context!) carrying the message from the Deity to the Runes…and maybe even a fourth further one who then carries that message to the human!  (And as the 23rd of January is the festival of the Agathos Daimon and Antinous, perhaps even one’s own Agathos Daimon is involved at this stage, too…so perhaps even a fifth factor, thus!)  One can use astragalomancy to talk to Hermes or Herakles or Dionysos, and there would be at least one daimon involved there, too, and perhaps more.

The following (awful!) diagram tries to map this slightly:

DEITY -> Daimon -> Divine Grammatical Being -> daimon -> individual agathos daimon -> human oracle

And while this may seem to be getting close to the “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin” sort of questions, it would be worthwhile to consider how many daimones there are in the service to a particular Deity or other divine being.  Do They always use the same one for a particular person, or a particular method, or a particular oracular location (with the thoughts on Land Spirits and such involved in a specific place also in mind)?  Or is there just a vast array of such daimones lined up and ready to be on-call, so to speak, at all times who can then be assigned a particular task?  And are all of these equal in ability, knowledge, and efficiency?  I suspect, because we’re polytheists, that a number “greater-than-one” is probably the most logical answer…but who can say for certain?  This does begin to become more speculative, but I think at least turning one’s thoughts toward such ideas is useful in understanding why some of the things seem to work in the fashion that they do.

So, those are my relatively brief ideas on how some of these things work theologically, and the metaphysical mechanisms behind them.  Even if it is not “correct” on a veridical level, the system as outlined here does line up with the evidence, and makes structural sense in the context of polytheism…and, in its own way and for its own limitations, is a rather elegant system, in my view!  A nice possibility, if nothing else, perhaps…?!?

FELIX DIES FUNDAMENTORUM ANTINOI! And, Is “Fact” or “Fable” More Important in the Context of Hero/ine Cultus?

[Just to let everyone know:  this is one of the LAST of the questions I currently have on-file for this series.  I can certainly generate more of my own, based on things I’ve been asked or matters about which people–whether those from other religions, fellow polytheists, or whomever-might-be-concerned have asked ne directly, or have raised in their writings or in their demeanor and reactions to polytheist religious phenomena or articulated positions–but it would be great to respond to more of these that are direct from readers who might like or be interested in what I have to say about these matters.  So, by all means, send in further questions, ask them in comments here, use the Contact page/form to get in touch with me, or feel free to e-mail me at aediculaantinoi (at) hotmail (dot) com and i will see what we can do!]

A few hours ago, I finished my Foundation Day ritual for the 18th time.  Sadly, this is one of an increasing number which I spent alone (like about the last three as well), but it was also a great improvement on last year’s because I was actually in my Shrine, and not laid up in a bed with a broken leg in another town, as was the case on this day in 2018.  Foundation Day, amongst other things, is also the day that I formally consecrated my Shrine in my apartment in 2015, so it is a big occasion, both for the historical cultus of Antinous, the modern organized practice (which began in 2002), and for all sorts of other reasons and in a variety of ways…!

It’s also a great occasion to be answering the following question:

What matters more in hero cultus: the stories and beliefs held about a person’s life or the actual history of a person’s life? An example would be Zoroaster.  If our ancestors considered him to be a magician in a lineage that includes Orpheus and Pythagoras, does that matter more than the fact that we know he probably would not have viewed himself that way? 

This is an interesting matter, and there are two ways to think about it, based on which sort of Hero/ine one is dealing with:  the Hero/ines of Greek myth, or the Hero/ines of Greek history.  In the former case, every time a new poet turns their hand to the retelling of a myth, nearly anything can happen, and can then also be influenced by cultic activities in terms of how the Hero/ine’s life is described, or such descriptions can lead to novel cultic practices as well.  This is the case for Achilleus, for Orpheus, for any number of other Hero/ines who had shrines in the Ancient Greek world.

The Hero/ines of Greek history, on the other hand (aren’t you all glad I’m not one of the Hekatoncheires–my explanations of almost all things would of necessity be even longer, then!), enter into a bit of a grey area.  Firstly, are these individuals actual people who really lived, or have their historical origins become so obscured by stories about them that such factual realities have retreated into the background entirely?  Such a situation, I believe, exists for one particular Hero from another religion that is very well-known, and yet too many people speak of the details of his mythic narratives as if they were historical and demonstrable facts when this is most certainly not the case:  namely Jesus the Nazarean.  It is entirely possible, I think, that he never had any earthly existence at all, and there is increasing interest in such a viewpoint amongst certain scholars (who tend not to be involved in the religion he ostensibly “founded”!), and there is nothing at all wrong with that being the case in my view.  Zoroaster is another of these:  some Zoroastrians put his historic origins back to over 10,000 years ago, which is highly unlikely (despite their attempts to claim this), and it seems possible that whatever group of Magi organized the reinterpreted ancient Iranian polytheistic system into the dualist system with which we are all familiar afterwards may have had him more as a legendary founder than as an actual historical personage.  If he was historical, then he is essentially the innovator of the Avestan language, and that is demonstrably later than Sanskrit, which means that he cannot be older than 5,000 years, and in fact is probably more recent even than that.  But, Zoroastrains can believe whatever they want to about him!

As for us polytheists, how do we sort these matters?  Remember, with Hero/ine cultus, the most important thing to remember is always that it is not the actual life of the Hero/ine that matters, but instead their death.  If they were human, they had to have died somehow, and most often that death is remarkable in its circumstances in some way, whether because of its particular manner (e.g. drowning, struck by lightning), its particular contextual circumstances (e.g. the first to die in some incident, dying in a particular sacred location or while something was being constructed, etc.), and so forth.  They may have had a noteworthy life in various ways, and legends and myths can be attached to that, and will tend to be with the greater profile of the Hero/ine concerned, but the most important thing is their death.

This then begs the question:  is the tale of their death factual or exaggerated and made more “heroic” in order to feed the Hero/ine’s further renown?

Let’s take the example of Sappho.  We know some details of her life, her relatives, some of their deeds and so forth, but one of the things about her that is remarkable (apart from her amazing poetic skills!) is that she was said to have leapt off a cliff into the sea, thus meeting her death in a manner that many Greek Hero/ines and occasionally formerly-mortal Deities (e.g. Palaimon/Melikertes and Ino/Leukothea) also did.  Did she actually speak with Orpheus’ head or have his lyre?  Probably not literally, and yet that is as much a part of Sappho’s story as any of the relatively scant historical details we know of her, and it accounts for some of the aspects of the culture of Lesbos as well as the particular strengths of Lesbos’ most famous daughter.

And, since this is me, and it’s Foundation Day (or, at least, it’s still Foundation Night, the seventh of the nine Sacred Nights of Antinous from the 24th of October to November 1st), let’s talk about Antinous!  Like Herakles and the Dioskouroi, as well as Palaimon/Melikertes, He was both a Hero and a God depending on where one encountered His cultus, and He definitely started out as a historical human, so we’re at least on more firm territory, in certain respects, with Him than with many others.

We know the date of His birth, and the most likely place of it, but not the exact circumstances of it.  (It has been argued that because His birthdate on November 28th is given in cult calendars along with the birthdates of Deities like Diana, that therefore we should discount it…but, the calendar of Lanuvium outside of Rome and a calendar on papyrus from Egypt agree on the date, and there is no definite connection between the two locations, so it is pretty certain we know the correct date!)  We also know the rough date of His death, but again, not the precise reasons for it:  only that He drowned in the Nile, no matter what caused that drowning.  About the only other things we know about Him were that he was Hadrian’s lover, and that the two had a lion hunt in the year before He died.  That particular event was of semi-epic proportions, it seems, and inspired a great deal of mythologizing after His death…but, we may well ask, what if it never happened?  What if Pachrates of Heliopolis just made the whole story of the Lion Hunt up, and because Hadrian liked it the details first given form there were proliferated and continued in other later texts and traditions?  What we know for certain is that there were red Nile lotuses in Egypt before Antinous’ time, it’s just that they weren’t particularly identified with any Deities or Hero/ines before the initial writings in Antinous’ cultus in the years immediately after His death.

Where myth is concerned–whether myths about Hero/ines, Deities, Ancestors, or really anyone (!?!)–proliferation is the norm rather than the exception, and so expansions and “exaggerations” and reworkings, revisions, and creative insertions and innovations will come up all the time.  If they didn’t, one would begin to suspect that some artificial force is maintaining a “canonical” check on anything that doesn’t fit with the “approved narrative,” and that’s monotheist nonsense, not something that has ever really flown well or at all amongst polytheists.  (Many Deities require many stories, including stories that actively conflict with or even utterly contradict one another!)

But what about when historical facts can be known in relation to historical human Hero/ines?  Even if there are facts involved, myth is far more powerful, and far more true.  The difference between a fact and a myth may simply be how one interprets the fact:  a tree falls, but was it because of the wind, because someone chopped it down, because a gigantic bull ran into it, because of an earthquake or a flood, or because any of those other things could have happened but a Deity was behind it, or any number of other possibilities?  Take any random fact about your own life, dear reader:  are you interested in architecture because you had a childhood friend of the family who was an architect that used to give you graph paper and old blueprints to look at, or because Seshat would become your patron Deity one day…or both?  And if you are lucky enough to be heroized after your death, what will those who follow your cultus have to say about things?

So, what I suspect is the case more often than not is that fact and fable always blur when it comes to Hero/ine cultus, and even with the sheerest and most materialistic facts, there is the possibility of myth and a mythicizing tendency lurking just under the surface, waiting to spring forth like a geyser if given the chance to spout.  It’s the Liberty Valance effect:  “When legend becomes fact, print the legend.”  Without a doubt, legend is almost always more interesting than facts, and even when the facts are “stranger than fiction,” even putting it in those terms demands that fictionalization be the background against which things are taken seriously.

There’s no escaping it…and, from my perspective, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that!

What Does It Mean When A Deity Is Described As Having Died?

Today’s question comes from my old friend Faoladh, and it is a good one…not only for many mythological systems and religious traditions, but for several of the particular ones that I follow, and especially for my foremost Deity, Antinous, though it isn’t an issue limited to Him by any stretch of the imagination.

And, let’s start there.

Amongst some people, both ancient and modern, Antinous was not or is not considered a full-blown Deity, but instead a Hero.  (Though, in fairness, Deity and Hero status are not mutually exclusive either…look at Herakles and The Dioskouroi, for starters!)  The common denominator for all Hero/ines in Ancient Greece was not their virtue, the importance of their deeds for the wider cultures, or anything like that which we often try to suggest or interpret in modern times (often in comparison to comic book superheroes); in fact, it is their deaths, and often the unusual circumstances of these which is significant.  It is one of the easiest ways for a formerly-living human to undergo apotheosis (or, as may be more appropriate in this circumstance, heroization…duh!) and to begin receiving a cultus locally that is greater than that which would have applied to any typical departed ancestor.  Palaimon/Melikertes is an excellent example of this:  He was considered a Deity in some instances, and a Hero in others, but no matter what, He was an infant when He died/was killed, essentially as a casualty of the wake of chaos that followed Dionysos wherever he went (and on Him, more later!), particularly in that God’s early infancy.  (Whether it was more Dionysos or Poseidon Who was responsible for Palaimon’s heroization/deification is dependent upon the particular sources consulted, but I kind of think of it as a conciliar/consensus case of apotheosis!)  So, having a weird type of death is one of the easiest ways to become a Hero, whether one is an infant or a youth or an epic warrior like Achilleus or a monster-slayer like Perseus (and the latter two are semi-divine anyway, but that isn’t necessary for heroization by any means!).  Death is natural to the moral condition, and therefore to undergo death is necessary to transcend the mortal condition as well into heroization or deification.

[Side-note:  This is something that I think often gets misunderstood about Irish tradition. No heroic trajectory in Irish tradition is complete without a death-tale of the Hero concerned.  Cú Chulainn, for example, would not be the paragon of warrior virtue that he is without his extraordinary and over-the-top death-tale, just like the rest of his life was extraordinary and over-the-top, including his multiple births and conceptions and his indomitable capacities in battle against entire armies alone.  Modern people don’t get this, though, because they want their heroes to live “happily ever after” and to somehow just go from their renowned deeds into their blessed afterlife, it seems, without any struggle or strife at all.  This is as antithetical to the Irish tradition on such matters as can be imagined.  Heroes should never go into decline and dotage, they should expire in as great a blaze of glory as can be mustered!]

But, what about the plethora of Deities Who are said to have died, and likewise Who are not also said to have been Heroes and Who thus have little or no element of the mortal in them to shed before their full glorification and apotheosis?  Let’s just do a brief roll-call of a few, off the top of my head, across a variety of traditions:

• Dionysos is said to have died multiple times–either before His birth from Semele or after it, and likewise to have been born multiple times (three, technically, if one takes the “synoptic” Orphic view on things with His first birth from Persephone, His slaying and then re-conception with Semele, and then His premature birth from her before his final birth from the thigh of Zeus…!?!).
• Osiris was born, was slain by Set, and then His body was further torn apart (again, in the “synoptic” version from Plutarch), thus having something like a “double-death” before His eventual revivification by the actions of Horus.
• Adonis–originally a Deity from another pantheon entirely!–is made into a mortal or semi-mortal, is eventually slain, and then has a kind of afterlife in which He is still alive in some sense…it’s a bit complex, but anyway, one can’t mention the previous two Deities in this post-Frazerian world without mentioning Adonis as well!
• We cannot mention these, either, without mentioning one of the original–and in some senses, still the best (!?!)–versions of the katabasis/underworld journey/death-and-rebirth narratives, namely that of Inanna/Ishtar, Who was not only a pattern-breaker by being a Goddess rather than a God Who died and was resurrected when She went to visit Her sister Ereshkigal in the underworld, but Whose narrative of this is one of, if not the, earliest narrative myth known with any certainty to any human culture in literate form, and which doubtless had profound influence on many of the other Near Eastern as well as Egyptian, Greek, and other cultures later in history.
• In Irish mythology, as extant in medieval sources, pretty much all of the erstwhile Deities are said to have died because the process of euhemerism has been pretty comprehensive in the surviving sources…
• But as one example among many that could be a “textual corruption” or a legitimate property and appropriate quality of the Deity-in-question, there is Miach in Cath Maige Tuired, Who is slain by His father Dian Cécht and then becomes the various healing herbs that are identified with the various parts of His body.  Despite this incident of His death being reported in the tale, He is then said to have been assisting in the healing of the other Tuatha Dé later in the tale…is this because They used herbs from His body, or because He was actually alive again and in essence “grew back” as one would expect a Deity of vegetation to do?  Hard to say, but there it is…!
• Baldr, the beautiful Deity of the Norse pantheon, was said to have been slain in a situation involving Loki, and His continued existence in Helheim is certain, though what may result for Him in the eschatological events of Ragnarok is another question entirely, as is the “motivation” (if there can be said to have been such a thing with any certainty) of Loki in the entire matter.
• Even though euhemerism is not something that seems to be necessary or comprehensive and structural in Shinto, many of the kami Who receive veneration are said to have died in the Kojiki, including many that are still actively worshipped and have active roles in people’s lives.  Amongst these is Sarutahiko-no-Okami, the head of the “earthly kami” (kunitsu kami) and the principal kami of the Tsubaki Okami Yashiro in both Japan and the United States.

Such a list could be multiplied ad infinitum, it seems, and the whole “death-and-rebirth” motif is a common one in many world mythologies, particularly of what one might call “Savior Deities” and Deities Who are the patron/esses of Mystery Traditions.

In light of this, and other matters, I’d suggest three reasons for why certain Deities are said to have undergone death–even if their “rebirth” is never explicitly stated in extant myths (as is the case with Shinto kami), the fact that They continue to receive cultus means that they cannot be “Dead Deities” in the sense that They are utterly removed from access in the cosmos…I mean, unless one is dealing with Cthulhu, but let’s not go there for now!

1. Death as part of the cycle(s) of nature:  Some of the Deities mentioned above, in particular ones connected to vegetation (e.g. Dionysos, Adonis, Osiris, Miach), as well as some Who are connected to the cycles of the seasons, and Who also often have Mystery Traditions connected to Them, end up mirroring the cycle of annual “death-and-rebirth” that is symbolized in the annual cycle of the year (which can be understood as the annual death-and-rebirth of the earth, the sun, and/or the Deities associated with one or both of these), the growth and hibernation as well as implied or literal “death” of plants in agricultural activities, and so on.  Having the Deities connected to these natural forces and cycles mirror them in Their own mythic biographies and cultic associations is a basic symbolic “given” of human cultures across time and space.
2. Death as a “humanizing” factor:  That particular Deities, especially those associated with Mystery Traditions, have undergone death and as a result have become connected with these cultic associations and practices makes the ordeals They have undergone that much more similar to what all humans must undergo, and given that these practices tend to be “dress rehearsals” for death and are connected to successful passage into the blessed afterlife, personal/psychological (in the “soul”-sense!) eschatology, and the process of apotheosis (on a small or large scale), it is that much easier and more appropriate for these Deities to be involved in such rituals because then the ritual dramas and ordeals that initiates undergo make it that much easier for a human to identify with this aspect of the Deity’s myths due to the congruence of their necessary deaths.
3. Death as the “ultimate mystery”:  If all Mystery Religions are in some ways connected to death (which they seem to be!), and death is the “great unknown” of human and all corporeal existence, then any Deity Who has undergone it has experiential knowledge of it in a manner that would be alien to any Deity Who has not undergone it…which seems obvious, but given that people often forget that in a polytheistic context, Deities are not automatically omniscient (and even with divine omniscience, are we talking about possessing all knowledge that is propositional, all knowledge that is experiential, or all knowledge that is procedural…and are particular Deities’ omnisciences associated with only one or the other of these epistemological areas?…That would make a great future question!), and therefore those Deities Who have never experienced death cannot know, understand, or even comprehend it like the ones who have can and do.  Isis may be great in magic, for example, but to have actually experienced death in a way that Osiris did and that She is generally not said to have done (perhaps with some exceptions!) is an entirely “other” realm of knowledge and experience than any other possessed by any of the Deities in Egypt.

So, those are some of my suggestions for why and how the motif of a Deity’s death is understood, is important, and has profound meaning for the religious systems which revere these types of Deities with that specific experience in Their mythic resumés.