How Can Deities Pray To Other Deities?

This particular question is one implied by a statement that one of my world religions students made in a paper more than a month ago, which I think bears examination in greater detail.

The specific statement made by this student had to do with the film Hanuman, which I screen with my students, and it never fails to divide the class:  either they’re enthralled with it (and some decide to watch it again with their favorite psychedelics!), or they hate it, but very few just have a “so-so” opinion of it.  In any case, one of my students expressed surprise with it and said that they couldn’t possibly understand Hinduism, because the film showed “gods praying to other gods [sic.],” and that just “doesn’t make sense.”

I’ve heard similar things from other people (including some pagans and polytheists!) in reaction to various different accounts of polytheistic cultures’ myths, but what dumbfounds me about these statements is the following, which is technically “weirder” than this.  There are multiple accounts in the Christian (New) Testament about Jesus praying to God the Father, and since orthodox Christian theology says that these are two persons of one singular godhead, that technically means that Jesus is praying to himself…!?!  What is the “Our Father/Lord’s Prayer” if not such a prayer to one’s own self, by the logic of Christian theology?  While that sort of thing also can and does occur in certain cases in polytheist cultures (on which more in a moment), what one more often finds is a particular Deity being a devotee of another Deity, especially in Hinduism, where there is Hanuman’s devotion to Ram and Sita (and Surya, and Shiva, and various other Deities…and with Shiva, since Hanuman is sometimes understood to be a rudra/avatar of Shiva, that would be a kind of self-worship, too!).  Narad, the divine messenger and son of Brahma, is known as a great devotee of Vishnu; and Shiva and Vishnu likewise have devotional relationships with each other.

Greek myth has Hermes entering the divine scene shortly after His birth by stealing the cattle of Apollon, building the first altar to the Twelve Olympian Gods, and sacrificing the cattle to Them, and including Himself among those to Whom He sacrificed.  In some sense, this is an act of self-apotheosis!

I’ve just learned via a blog post from Galina Krasskova that Freyja is given priestly titles that indicate She would make sacrifices to Deities, and presumably those Deities were not Herself (though She could probably be included among Them, too!); and of course Odin is famous for having sacrificed Himself to Himself when He hung on Yggdrasil and was able through His ordeal to gain the runes.

“To pray” is literally “to ask,” though it is often understood to be “asking, often with accompanying praise, in a religious context” in modern parlance.  Thus, while there is scant evidence for direct devotion between what we’d consider fully-fledged Deities in attested Irish mythological narrative, there is an incident in Cath Maine Tuired in which three of the Tuatha Dé–namely Lug, The Dagda, and Ogma–seek and ask for the assistance of three beings Who are specifically said to have been Gods, i.e. the Three Gods of Skill (Tri Dee Dána), Who might be Goibniu the smith, Luchta the carpenter, and Crédne the brazier, or Who may be the three brothers Brian, Iuchar, and Iucharba, and a good case can be made for either of these possibilities based on both internal and external evidence in the text.  (Though I would not go to the length that some scholars have suggested, and therefore conclude that these three sets of Deities are “the same,” or that one set was original and the other was derived from it.)  As the Irish cultural context understands various forms of clientship as applying not only between humans in various relationships (including using such terminology for married couples!), but also between humans and Deities, it would also thus make sense that such expressions would be in effect to indicate inter-divine devotional relationships or even limited contracts and favor-granting occasions as well.

[I’m sure there are examples of this to be found in Shinto as well, but I’m not recalling them off the top of my head currently…]

So, one can only conclude that inter-divine relationships that include the possibility of devotion, on both casual as well as ongoing levels, are attested in many forms of polytheism, and thus must be as natural to a polytheistic mindset as human-divine devotional interactions.  Just as Deities can have enmities with one another, so too can they have many types of alliance with each other, too, from marriages and familial/parental relationships, to fosterage and sibling relationships, to simple friendships, and even devotional relationships.  Why not?