"A god is a powerful being, 'supernatural', has a personality, may be one person or may have co-gods, and each may have one or more of the following powers which humans lack:
- controls between one and all aspects of human life
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controls one or more natural phenomena such as the sea, storms, volcanic eruptions, growth cycles of plants, fertility, etc. - creates some aspect of being, perhaps the whole universe
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creates or parents some demigods such as 'the furies', wicked imps or djinns, angels, devils, spirits and so forth, which themselves have limited superhuman powers - exists magically in a state of invisibility but can assume human or animal or inanimate form at will
- has a big ego and really likes it when humans fall down on their faces and beg, grovel, whine, praise, and voluntarily destroy personal goods (livestock, houses, crops, slaves, their immediate relatives) to 'prove' their adoration
- keeps a very close track of each human's innermost thought, in order to determine if that human should have a good outcome in crops, health, fame and glory, wealth or other things valued by both humans and the divine one
- speaks to certain persons secretly to convey the divine wishes, but mischievously gives each chosen one a completely different message to spread, but all the chosen ones have one thing in common: they are owed money, sexual privileges, political power, lifelong financial support, and so on, due to their having been chosen to receive the secrets
- may allow some persons to survive death in some form or other, and perhaps take on some attributes of the divine, or else suffer some sort of unpleasantness, anything from perpetual sadness and boredom to perpetual though bodiless pain, pretty much as the mood takes the god(s).
And the other thing about the gods is that they really, really like to be praised and admired. This is a universal attribute of all gods."
(I must be getting desperate. I'm quoting myself!
)
Gods.
