The Nature and the Divine

The Nature and the Divine: From the Past to the Present

Topic: Compare and contrast the idea of Nature gods as mediators between the Divine and human beings in both Early Vedic mythology and Shinto Mythology (Japanese).

The Nature and the Divine: From Past to Present

Religion has always been part of human life; with evidences dating back as early as the construction of sacred temples and the creation of worshipping idols. We cannot tell the true reason for the development of these worships; however, we may hypothesize that the origin for the creation of gods, myth, and idols is based on human’s admiration to the world and the nature. These admirations were centered on things unexplainable and far too complex for human understanding of that time, including but not limited to life, death, universe, and natural phenomena. It is rather interesting that even people on different places and continents had developed a similar but unequal gods and rituals as part of their worshipping. In this essay, differences between the concept of nature gods as mediators between the divine and human beings will be reviewed carefully between the Indian Early Vedic mythology and the Japanese Shinto mythology. Despite of the long distance separating India and Japan, both places had developed beliefs of nature gods as a reverence to the power of nature. People worshipped life and death, the four element including water, fire, wind, and earth, and also other things related to their daily life. Just like in the Vedic mythology there are gods, in the Shinto mythology there are kami or gods in some way. However, the interesting thing is that no matter how different the cultures between the both countries can be, their religions do certainly have some similarities between them. Although nowadays people rely more and more on what can be explained with science and technology, people in India and Japan still conserve their ancient beliefs, which take important roles in their life. Religion...