Relevancy22: Contemporary Process Christianity: Post-Evangelic Topics and Theology: Evolution of Worship & Religion: Introduction

Illustration by R.E. Slater & ChatGPT

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The Evolution of Worship and Religion:

From Cosmic Awe to Processual Faith

A Metamodern Journey through the History of the Sacred

INTRODUCTION

by R.E. Slater & ChatGPT-5

In the beginning, there was wonder.

And wonder is where worship began.

An Introduction: On the Nature of Sacred Evolution

An introduction to the project’s aim - to trace religion not as a static inheritance but as a living, evolving psycho-social phenomenon, where the sacred might be understood as God's, or the universe’s, mirror of (divine) consciousness.

We therefore will ask: "How did awe become theology, and how might worship today rediscover its creative, relational core?"

Religion did not begin with theology.

It began in awe - as the shiver in the human chest when lightning cracked across the sky; when the dead did not return back to the land of the living; when the newborn babe drew its first trembling breath. Before words, before creeds, there was astonishment at being itself once it became understood.

From that incipient astonishment, worship was birthed, and has grown ever since. From childhood to its teen years, and then into its varying stages of adulthood, till death. Each stage driven by wonder. Each stage seeking explanation. Each stage experimenting with approach, dress, style, form and format, apprehension, myth, truth, practicum, and so on.

From primeval astonishment, worship was begotten...
as a seed sown in the soils of wonder,
to evolve across humanity’s ceaseless becoming.

From the first innocence of its dawns,
through the ardent fires of its adolescence,
into the aching awareness of adulthood.

Each age an annunciation of awe,
an approach toward the Almighty,
an ascent into abiding presence.

- R.E. Slater

The First Gesture

Long before gods had names, people raised their hands toward the sun, prayed to rivers, buried the dead with shells, beads, and ochre. These were not the gestures of superstition but of broken relationships cut off from the eternal - as early attempts to speak with the earth and sky rather than merely live within it. To worship was to listen, to respond, to participate in something vaster than one’s tribe or one's self.

The sacred was not a uncrossable realm apart; but the shimmering dimension of immaterial existence seemingly everywhere surrounding one's being, temptingly inviting entrance into it's eternally benighted beauty.

From Presence to Personhood

As language and understanding deepened, the unseen, formless powers which granted food and water, safety and protection, shelter and clothing, gained form within the human breast. The storm had a face; the moon, a memory; the fertility of the field, a mother’s tenderness. The gods emerged not as mere earthly inventions but as ethereal symbols of relationship - personifications of natural order to match human longing.

To name a god or goddess, a stream or hillside, a tree or beast, was to know the invisible power or beauty; and by knowing was to bind, and bring near, a chaotic world into meaningful resolution.

Thus arose the great pantheons to the gods - from the divine cities on the plains of Sumer and Egypt, to the hymns of the Vedas; from the legendary stories of the Nile and the Tigris, to the great Indus and Aegean seas. In each, humans projected their religious and social imaginations onto the heavens: so that kingships mirrored imagined cosmic orders; personal or communal justice reflected perceived deistic solar cycles; and observed creational events recited daily renewal of divine breath and activity.

From Myth to Meaning

Some 300,000 years ago, through the earlier eras of evolutionary humanity, something profound was occurring when myth began to turn inward. Shamans, Soothsayers, Prophets, philosophers, and poets alike were asking, "If the gods shape the world, who shaped the gods?"

The conjectured answers slowly unfolded, experience-by-experience, culture-by-culture, era-by-era: that the sacred was not only external but internal as well; that the deities were not merely the cause of existence, but its continuing pulse within humanity's growing consciousness.

This reflective, albeit religious, turning - from ritual to reflection, from symbol to soul - marked the axial revolution of human religion. Ethics began to replace religious appeasement; compassion outgrew conquest; and the divine voice began to echo in the human heart it's responsibilities toward the earth and one another. It was an age of value, empathy, compassion, thoughtfulness perhaps described by karma, fate, fortune, destiny, kismet, providence, nemesis, retribution, consequence, and so on.

The Great Eclipse and the New Dawn

Modernity would later call this "inner" voice an illusion. The Enlightenment, armed with reason and telescope, stripped the heavens of its sacred hierarchy. What remained was a universe vast, silent, and cold - and yet still radiant with cosmic mystery. In that silence, new theologians and philosophers (Whitehead among them) began to hear again the murmur of creativity itself - a divine process (sic, philosophy) rather than a divine person (sic, theology), an evolving (processual) cosmos rather than a eschatologically finished creation. This stressed the philosophical side of Whitehead's Victorian theology. It's philosophic foundation upon which a processual theology could be constructed.

Thus, for the process Christian - of which Whitehead, in his Victorian restraint, was precisely this - an processually evolving cosmos echoed an evolving, processual God: a Deity that was growing, responding, and becoming in relational tandem and experience with a living, evolving, processual creation. Here, within creation's experience, divine immanence is not the negation of divine transcendence but its deepest expression - that God is continually present in all things, even as God surpasses all things in ontological scope, goodness, beauty, and value.

[Side note: This is not classic theism: God above all; nor Eastern pantheism: God in all; but, processual pan-en-theism:God with all.

Further, Process philosophy regards a conscious creation as a living organism which is panrelational, panexperiential, and panpsychic (this latter refers to the conscious part of creation as reflecting God's inner Being and latent energy throughout creation).

And for the non-religious person, God or theology may be replaced with some form of universal, cosmic consciousness; one that perhaps might lean towards goodness, value, purpose, and meaning as an evolving form of cosmic teleology. Hence, in process thought, process philosophy and process theology are integral to each other's necessary development and construction.]

In this way, religion, in its deepest form, has always been about the universe awakening to itself through the eyes of the living... through the eyes of homo sapiens (modern man). This re-centering of theology upon its philosophical foundation, thus provides the ground from which a processual theology may emerge - one that sees divinity not as distant architect but as relational presence within cosmic, or creational, becoming.

Toward A Processual Faith

This series will follow such a "divine and/or cosmic" awakening - not as a history of doctrines, but as an evolution of human participation with the divine, with nature, and with itself. Both the good and the bad. For and against. Hatefully or lovingly. We will trace how humanity has learned to live - or refuse or ignore (not live) - in relation to the Sacred.

from the animistic awe of early human experience alone and in it's tribes,
through to the structured devotion of ancient empires,
to the reflective interiority of prophetic and philosophical faiths,
and presently, in a metamodern synthesis where divinity is relational, processual, and alive.

The story of religion is not one of decline or replacement. It is an ongoing creation of meaning - the world’s self-expression through humanity's yearning, art, societies, and compassion.

To reflect on man's evolving story with "the Sacred" is to remember what it means to belong: not merely to a past or present human tradition, but to participate in the unfolding of faith and faith's inspire as living, aspiring, imaginative beings.

Maps visualizing the geographic regions of the Mesopotamia and the broader “Semitic” cultural-linguistic zones:

Mesopotamia refers chiefly to the land between the Tigris River and the Euphrates River (modern-day Iraq and parts of Syria/Turkey) - known as the “two rivers” region.
The Semitic region covers a much larger area: parts of the Levant (Syria, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine), Arabian Peninsula, Mesopotamia, and further into North Africa in later periods.
In terms of geographic extent the Semitic-language/culture sphere is broader than the core Mesopotamian region - though Mesopotamia was central to early Semitic civilization and language development.

TABLES & BACKGROUND

List of Key Semitic Deities

(Both West- and East-Semitic Deities)

From the Neolithic/early Bronze to Biblical era, each with a very short description. The list is non-exhaustive and focuses especially on Canaanite/Levantine and Mesopotamian Semitic traditions.

Deity	Role / Short Description
El	The “father of the gods,” supreme deity in Ugaritic/Canaanite pantheon — wise, old, creator-figure. ResearchGate+2Wikipedia+2
Baal (also Baʿal Hadad)	Storm-god of rain, fertility, vegetation; fights sea/chaos in Ugaritic myth. Wikipedia+1
Anat	Warrior-goddess and sister/consort of Baal in Canaanite myth; associated with love, war, fertility. Encyclopedia.com+1
Asherah	Mother-goddess figure in Canaanite tradition; sometimes called “Lady of the Sea” or “Tree of Life” figure in Israelite context. Religion Wiki+1
Yarikh	Moon-god in Ugaritic tradition; name means “moon/month,” widespread in West Semitic. Wikipedia
Shapash	Sun-goddess in Ugaritic religion; carries sunlight and judges in underworld. (Mentioned in Ugaritic texts)
Mot	God of death, drought and underworld in Ugaritic myth; opposes Baal. Wikipedia+1
Kothar‑wa‑Khasis	Divine craftsman / artisan god in Ugaritic pantheon (smith, architect, magician). Wikipedia
Hadad (Akkadian = Adad)	Storm- and weather-god in Mesopotamia and the Levant; thunder, bull symbol, fertility & destruction. Wikipedia+1
Dagon	Fertility/vegetation and grain-god of Near East (esp. Amorite/West Semitic contexts). Encyclopedia.com+1
Shahar	Dawn-god in Canaanite/Ugaritic religion; twin of Shalim (dusk). Wikipedia
Baalshamin	“Lord of the Heavens” — Northwest Semitic sky-god title applied in Syria/Phoenicia, akin to Baal of the Heavens. Wikipedia
Yahweh	In later Israelite religion becomes the national God of Israel, but within earlier West Semitic context possibly one among many; monolatry/monotheism evolves. Wikipedia+1

A Cross-linked List of Semitic Gods

with Mesopotamic Gods

The Semitic pantheons of the Levant (Canaanite, Amorite, Hebrew, Phoenician, Aramaean) were culturally and linguistically related to the Mesopotamian Semitic ones (Akkadian, Assyrian, Babylonian). Below is a concise cross-mapping showing these links and continuities across the Semitic world.

Canaanite / West Semitic	Mesopotamian / East Semitic	Functional / Linguistic Relationship
El	Anu / Enlil	El, “the high god,” parallels Anu (“Sky Father”) and Enlil (“Lord of Air”), both supreme deities; all three represent primordial authority.
Baal (Hadad)	Adad / Ishkur	Direct linguistic and functional equivalence — West Semitic Baal Hadad = Akkadian Adad (storm, rain, thunder, fertility).
Asherah (Athirat)	Ashratum / Antu / Ninlil	Consort roles; Asherah corresponds to Akkadian Ashratum, wife of Amurru, and has traits overlapping with Antu (Anu’s consort).
Anat	Ishtar (Inanna)	Both warrior and love goddesses; Anat’s ferocity and erotic energy parallel Ishtar’s dual nature of war and fertility.
Dagon	Enki / Ea (partial)	Dagon, the grain/sea deity, possibly syncretized with Enki/Ea (lord of waters and fertility). Sometimes regarded as a local form of Enki.
Yarikh (Moon)	Sin (Nanna)	Direct lunar parallel — Yarikh = Yareah (moon), equivalent to Akkadian Sin/Nanna.
Shapash (Sun)	Shamash (Utu)	Direct solar correspondence — both are sun deities, bringers of justice and light; only gender differs (female vs. male).
Mot	Nergal / Ereshkigal	Personifications of death and underworld. Mot = “Death,” Nergal = god of war and pestilence ruling the underworld.
Kothar-wa-Khasis	Ea / Enki	Craftsman-magician archetype; both divine artisans who create tools or charms for gods.
Shahar & Shalim	Utu / Nanna / Lugalbanda (symbolic)	Dawn and dusk twins find solar-lunar analogues but not direct Mesopotamian equivalents; still tied to cosmic diurnal cycles shared across cultures.
Baalshamin	Anu / Marduk	Title “Lord of Heaven” overlaps with Marduk’s elevation to supreme god and Anu’s domain.
Yahweh	None direct (possible syncretic influences)	Early Yahweh may have absorbed attributes of El, Baal, and perhaps Marduk (as national creator and warrior god).
Astarte (Astoreth)	Ishtar (Inanna)	Essentially the same deity in linguistic and cultic terms — West Semitic Astarte = East Semitic Ishtar.

🜂 NOTES ON CROSSLINKS

Cultural osmosis: Amorites (a West Semitic people) settled in Mesopotamia and brought Hadad, Dagon, and Ashratum cults eastward (Old Babylonian era, c. 1900 BCE).
Syncretic layering: By the Iron Age, divine epithets like Baal-Shamem (“Lord of Heaven”) and El-Shaddai reflect Mesopotamian theological influence under Assyrian and Babylonian rule.
Gender reversals: Some roles swapped gender - e.g., Shapash (female) vs. Shamash (male) —-showing cultural adaptation rather than strict equivalence.
Biblical evolution: Many Yahwistic attributes (creator, warrior, lawgiver, compassionate judge) were assimilated from this cross-pantheon field as Israelite monolatry developed.

Here is a chronological chart (Neolithic → Iron Age) showing when and where these equivalences emerged — for example, from Ugarit to Babylon to Israel — with arrows or layers for cultural transmission?

Illustration by R.E. Slater & ChatGPT

The Grand Comparative Cosmology Question

The question as to how early divine archetypes evolved and differentiated themselves as humans migrated across Eurasia and North Africa can be approached systematically... by evolutionary phases and diffusion lines, showing how Mesopotamian gods served as cultural “bridge-deities” between Neolithic animism and the later structured pantheons of Egypt, Persia, India, and the Mediterranean.

🜂 I. PREHISTORY: NEOLITHIC ROOTS (c. 10,000–4000 BCE)

Cultural setting: Fertile Crescent — where agriculture, settlement, and social stratification began.

Religious form: Animism → zoomorphic spirits → divine hierarchies.

Archetype	Proto-Theme	Early Echoes
Mother Earth	Fertility, regeneration, soil	Neolithic “Venus” figures from Anatolia, Levant, and the Indus Valley (Çatalhöyük → Harappan → Inanna/Ishtar → Isis).
Sky Father	Storm, authority, rain, fertility	Proto-Indo-Semitic-Eurasian sky god → Dyaus Pitar (India), Zeus (Greece), Jupiter (Rome), Anu (Sumer/Akkad).
Storm/Warrior Deity	Power, fertility through rain, cosmic order vs. chaos	Hadad/Baal (Semitic) → Teshub (Hittite) → Zeus → Indra; same archetype spread via pastoral migrations.
Underworld Lord	Death, cycles of decay and renewal	Nergal / Mot / Osiris / Yama / Hades — all tracing to agrarian cycles.
Craft / Wisdom God	Techne, magic, civilization	Enki/Ea (Sumer) → Ptah (Egypt), Hephaestus/Hermes (Greece), Vishvakarman (Vedic India).
Sun / Moon Deities	Time, order, navigation	Solar/lunar worship ubiquitous: Shamash/Sin in Mesopotamia, Ra/Thoth in Egypt, Surya/Chandra in India, Helios/Selene in Greece.

🜃 II. MESOPOTAMIAN → EGYPTIAN CROSSLINKS (c. 3500–2000 BCE)

Mesopotamian	Egyptian	Shared Motifs
Anu / Enlil	Ra / Amun / Ptah	Creator and sky gods — cosmic authority, kingship, solarized over time.
Enki (Ea)	Thoth / Ptah	Wisdom, magic, language, arts, technology; bringers of civilization.
Inanna / Ishtar	Isis / Hathor / Sekhmet	Fertility, erotic love, motherhood, and cosmic femininity; dual gentle and wrathful aspects.
Ninhursag / Damkina	Nut / Geb (Earth–Sky pair)	Maternal fertility and the birth of gods; Earth–Sky separation myth shared.
Shamash	Ra / Horus	Sun as judge and moral order.
Nergal / Ereshkigal	Osiris / Anubis / Nephthys	Underworld and resurrection motifs, governing death cycles.

🔹 Cultural pathway: trade and migration via Levant & Sinai (Byblos route).

🔹 Egyptian cosmology diverged by solarizing Mesopotamian motifs — Ra, not Anu, became supreme.

🜄 III. MESOPOTAMIAN ↔ PERSIAN (IRANIAN) PARALLELS (c. 2000–500 BCE)

Mesopotamian	Proto-Iranian / Zoroastrian	Shared Archetypes
Marduk	Ahura Mazda	Supreme ordering deity; champion of cosmic truth (asha).
Tiamat	Angra Mainyu / Ahriman (chaos)	Dragon/serpent of chaos; opposition between good order and destructive disorder.
Enki / Ea	Mithra (mediator)	Cosmic covenant-keeper, wise intermediary.
Shamash	Hvar Khshaeta (Sun)	Justice, light, moral illumination.
Anu / Enlil	Zurvan (Time)	Abstract ordering principle; “father of gods.”

🔹 Diffusion: Indo-Iranian migrations eastward from Mesopotamian highlands (Elamite corridor).

🔹 Innovation: Persia moralized dualism (Good vs. Evil), converting Mesopotamian mythic polarity into ethical metaphysics.

🜅 IV. MESOPOTAMIAN ↔ INDIAN (VEDIC) CONTINUITIES (c. 2500–1000 BCE)

Mesopotamian	Vedic / Hindu	Shared Function
Anu / Dyaus Pitar	Indra / Varuna / Agni	Sky/storm gods, thunder and kingship motifs; sacrificial cosmic order (ṛta ~ me).
Enki / Ea	Varuna / Soma	Waters, wisdom, sacred drink, cosmic law.
Inanna / Ishtar	Ushas / Durga / Kali	Dawn and war-love goddess archetypes.
Tiamat	Vritra	Serpent/chaos monster slain by the storm-god (Marduk–Tiamat; Indra–Vritra).
Shamash	Surya / Mitra	Sun, contract, truth, moral witness.

🔹 Diffusion: Indo-Aryan movement from Iran through Bactria-Margiana (BMAC), which already had Mesopotamian motifs.

🔹 Result: shared mythic grammar — chaoskampf (dragon-slaying), cosmic waters, sacred order.

🜆 V. MESOPOTAMIAN ↔ SOUTHERN EUROPE (AEGEAN–MEDITERRANEAN, c. 2000–500 BCE)

Mesopotamian	Greek / Roman	Common Archetypes
Anu	Uranus / Cronus	Sky-father and first ruler.
Enlil / Marduk	Zeus / Jupiter	Storm god, cosmic king, upholder of law.
Inanna / Ishtar	Aphrodite / Artemis / Athena	Fertility, sexuality, war, and wisdom blended.
Ereshkigal / Nergal	Hades / Persephone / Ares	Underworld and death.
Tiamat	Typhon / Echidna / Chaos	Primeval serpent of chaos, slain by the sky-god.
Enki / Ea	Hermes / Hephaestus	Craft, invention, mediation.

🔹 Transmission: through Phoenician traders, Hittite and Minoan exchanges, and later Hellenistic syncretism.

🔹 Continuity: the chaoskampf and divine hierarchy motifs are universalized in Indo-Mediterranean myth.

🜇 VI. EVOLUTIONARY SUMMARY

Animistic → Anthropomorphic: From natural forces to human-like gods controlling them.
Local → Imperial: Clan spirits → city gods → empire-wide pantheons (e.g., Marduk in Babylon).
Mythic → Ethical: Persian dualism and Israelite monotheism moralized cosmic order.
Symbolic Fusion: Egyptian solarization, Indian cosmic law, Greek rationalism — all echo earlier Mesopotamian cosmograms.
Linguistic Web: Semitic, Indo-Iranian, and Proto-Indo-European languages share mythic vocabulary for sky, law/order, water, light, and life — likely rooted in common Neolithic mythopoesis.

SUMMARY

This thesis will show how religion evolved in accordance with human self-awareness... from its instinctual roots as participation in nature’s powers and enlightenments, to reflective participation in the divine process of creation-making, symbolically depicted in the biblical moment when Adam and Eve “named” the animals in the Garden of Eden.

Each succeeding essay will build upon the last, revealing how religious worship continually transforms as humanity’s understanding of the cosmos, ethics, and divinity deepens through encounter, experimentation, and rupture.

Across the millennia, faith reflects not only shifts in belief but shifts in consciousness - a process of learning, rupture, and re-forming that unfolds alongside the creative advance of the divine, creation, and humanity as all move together toward an integrated becoming.

~ Continue to Maps, Tables & Data ~

Evolution of Worship & Religion