Cratocentrism Flirts with Theocentrism

Abstract

Men’s imagination, and also men’s will, saw not only gods becoming men, but also the other way round, men becoming gods. It is virtually impossible to assess with reasonable accuracy which of these routes was followed in human history more frequently. But my impression is, at least from what is known about the civilizations of the Old World (the eastern hemisphere), that men became gods less commonly than gods became men. Apparently it was easier to imagine the descent of a god to man’s estate than the ascent of a man to the status of a god. Sometimes the supposition could be applied both ways: god and man met, so to speak, half-way. This was the case with the deification of a ruling monarch.