• Sylvartas@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    How the hell is Mercury both Hermes and Odin ? I’m no theologist and I don’t know that much about the specificities of the Roman pantheon, but I thought that Hermes would be much closer to Loki than Odin

    • PugJesus@lemmy.worldOPM
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      3 days ago

      It’s recorded by Tacitus, himself somewhat pro-Germanic, that the Germanics worshipped Mercury as their chief god, who, he said, they called Wodan (itself the Low German word for Odin).

      The Romans were not known for their cultural sensitivity, lmao.

      The thinking is probably either “Mercury is a traveling god, Odin is a traveling god - obviously they are the same” or that both Odin and Mercury are the gods associated with leading souls to the afterlife.