Historical Spiritual Trend of Lordification

(March 24, 2023, July 26, 2025) The fall of nature Paganism, and specifically Druidry, started when deities were forced into being human like lords and ladies

Deity Lordification and personification happened in different places at different times depending on the rate of social change towards kingship. It happened first in Mesopotamia. Later it occurred in Egypt and Persia. From there it spread to the rest of the Mediterranean and then following the Roman empire to the rest of Europe.

The cultural pressure towards lordification started with the rise of nation states. Distant kings came to be seen as just as powerful and just as capricious as nature powers. Because rulers tended to be male the ruling community deities also started to be seen as male beginning the downgrade of the divine feminine.

Consequently, Lordification is first seen in Sumeria with the rise of its king ruled its city-states. The change is seen in their language. The Sumerian word for lord and lady was “Nin.” After lordification most deities became personified royalty. For example Nin.lil meaning "Lord of Breath" was the epithet for the original Mu’ulil (one who sprouts breath and thus a motion power) and Nin.gal meaning "Lady of the Chalice" became the name for the goddess Erishkigal (a life power equivalent to Druid Kate/Hekate). 

The runic texts show that Druid community deities were mainly labels for clusters of divine powers responsible for changes in nature. Yet they could be optionally be personified. This is  perceptheism and it makes sense. In the absence of  identifying visual information people are identified by their personality, that is, their unique cluster of powers. 

Lordification, then, was the historical process in which the perception of these deities changed from being clusters of powers to being human-like royalty. Deities became “living gods.” Other divine powers were then lumped together as "winds/spirits." 

Sumerian and Akkadian even used the noun possessive suffix to represent deity powers. Since a deity cannot be owned they used the noun possessive suffix (the dual-use letter he) to indicate that a deity's powers were meant.  

Lordification changed deities into capricious human beings with all the emotional defects of humans. This caused lordified deities to be feared because they could be jealous, petty, and greedy. In order to please a deity in order to get something, priests and rulers had to plead, cajole, beg, and bribe. The ultimate bribe was child sacrifice. The greatest fear was that some deity somewhere would be offended by actions people did not even know they were doing. This fear of the deities is why the idea of a savior and easy forgiveness of sins became popular during the classical era.

This appeasement of lordified deities was given the name of "worship." It is a completely different concept from connection and attunement (logos) to those powers/deities found in perceptheism.

(July 26, 2025)

The genders in the Druid runic texts are complementary to each other. Humanity cannot exist without both of their powers. This goes beyond the biology of child production. It is all about making families and households work, and on a larger scale making society work.

Masculine energy always provide the raw power yet that power is undirected and chaotic. The direction for that power is provided by the feminine energy. 

Using this entry point, the ancient druid culture inadvertently stumbled across the core concept of causality. All causes need a flow and a channel to produced non-chaotic changes. Rivers have a current yet that current is channeled by its banks. Electricity also has a current which is channeled by wires. 

A society which is too masculine becomes too chaotic over time. A society which is to feminine becomes too rigid over time. Both excesses lead to its self-destruction.

(July 26, 2025) In Druid runic texts divine powers were emotions and emotions only because they are the source of activity and change. Yet as the rationale for deity personification was forgotten in Greek culture their philosophy extended it to any mental concept. For example, powers such as “wisdom” (“sophia”) could be personified as the goddess “Sophia” or seen as the power of wisdom. Ancient people originally had no division between gods and spirits. 

Such perceptheism, being a paradigm, was difficult to understand for those raised in the new lordified paradigm. For example, the Roman empire era Plutarch (Greek Πλούταρχος, c40 CE to 120 CE) who was raised in Greece and who later became a priest at Delphi wrote this: 

• Others again will say that Aphrodite is desire, Hermes speech, the Muses arts, and Athene wisdom. You can see the depth of atheism (atheotes) that yawns beneath us if we classify the gods as various passions (pathe), powers (dynameis), or virtues (aretai). (in Stafford 2022)

References

Stafford, Emma (2022) Worshiping Virtues - Personification and the Divine in Ancient Greece. The Classical Press of Wales