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The mythology or religion of most cultures incorporate a god of death or, more frequently, a divine being closely associated with death, an afterlife, or an underworld. They are often amongst the most powerful and important entities in a given tradition, reflecting the fact that death, like birth , is central to the human experience.
(The intimate connection between "holy war" and the "one true god" belief of monotheism has been noted by many scholars, including Jonathan Kirsch in his book God Against The Gods: The History of the War Between Monotheism and Polytheism and Joseph Campbell in The Masks of God, Vol. 3: Occidental Mythology.) [1] [2]
However, only the 7 greater gods, 18 intermediate gods and 6 demigods were given a full text description; the 29 lesser gods only received a single line on a summary chart. For non-human deities, the 24 from Roger E. Moore's Dragon articles were kept, and a further 9 goblinoid and giant deities were added from the Deities and Demigods rulebook.
The Earth Dragon is the great provider and the spirit of the earth. Those who worship it and obey it are promised protection. The Earth Dragon is said to know all the secrets of the land, favoring its chosen with power and knowledge. To please their god, the faithful must worship, sacrifice, and spread the faith to others.
The god Nabû was described as "he who tramples the lion-dragon" in the hymn to Nabû. [6] The late neo-Assyrian text "Myth of the Seven Sages" recalls: "The fourth (of the seven apkallu's, "sages", is) Lu-Nanna, (only) two-thirds Apkallu, who drove the ušumgallu -dragon from É-ninkarnunna, the temple of Ištar of Šulgi ."
The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey comments that "the themes of the Escape from Death, and the Escape from Deathlessness, are vital parts of Tolkien's entire mythology." [8] In a 1968 BBC television broadcast, Tolkien quoted French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir and described the inevitability of death as the "key-spring of The Lord of the Rings ...
The name Kuraokami combines kura 闇 "dark; darkness; closed" and okami 龗 "dragon tutelary of water". This uncommon kanji (o)kami or rei 龗, borrowed from the Chinese character ling 龗 "rain-dragon; mysterious" (written with the "rain" radical 雨, 3 口 "mouths", and a phonetic of long 龍 "dragon") is a variant Chinese character for Japanese rei < Chinese ling 靈 "rain-prayer ...
In the Vedas, gods battle dragons, but in Iranian tradition, this is a function of mortal heroes. Thus, although it seems clear that dragon-slaying heroes (and gods in the case of the Vedas) "were a part of Indo-Iranian tradition and folklore, it is also apparent that Iran and India developed distinct myths early." (Skjaervø, 1989:192)