Pantheon dynamics in a globalized semi-secular civilization?

Meta-pattern via Engendering and Navigating Pantheons of Belief? (Part #4)

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The size of a pantheon (or memeplex) clearly varies. There are obvious preferences for particular sizes, with little explanation justifying the choice. Arguably the size may extend through 20 to 100, although the pantheons of Hinduism allegedly number thousands of deities. There is clearly an unexplored constraint on the number that can be held to be meaningful in experiential terms, especially given constraints on human memory, as separately discussed (Comprehension of Numbers Challenging Global Civilization, 2014).

The latter noted a possible upper constraint implied by " Dunbar's number", namely a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships (commonly held to be 150). Given the understanding of a pantheon as a set of interrelated stories, it might then be asked how many stories or jokes a raconteur is typically able to recall. At best, what mnemonic aids enable any complex set of memes to be recalled, as highlighted by Frances Yates (The Art of Memory, 1966)

Especially curious is the extremely limited attention to the relation between whatever distinct meanings are arrayed within any pantheon. This is as evident in the 8-fold, 10-fold, 12-fold, or 20-fold arrays. It is striking that the systemic nature of the pattern of relations between the UN's Sustainable Development Goals is considered of such limited interest -- given their acclaimed fundamental role for a global system in crisis. Little is known about the purported (or assumed) interactions between those goals, although  a recent analysis has been published behind a paywall (David Tremblay, et al, Sustainable Development Goal Interactions: an analysis based on the five pillars of the 2030 agenda, Sustainable Development, 28, 2020. 6).

If a pantheon is appropriately understood as a pattern -- potentially indicative of a meta-pattern -- a particular contrast to such systemic negligence is offered by Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language: towns, buildings, construction (1977). Alexander (and his team) clarified 254 interlinked patterns as providing one such pattern language with that particular focus. Their work was framed by a study of The Timeless Way of Building (1979), as discussed separately (Pattern language: a timeless way of building, 1981). As described there, of relevance to any understanding of a meta-pattern, this noted Alexander's argument that:

There is a central quality which is the root criterion of life and spirit in a man, a town, a building, or a wilderness. This quality is objective and precise, but it cannot be named

Alexander's focus on building was presented with the suggestion that other pattern languages are indeed possible. As an exploration of that possibility that set of patterns and linkages was "translated" into four other variants of the interlinked pattern of 254 (5-fold Pattern Language, 1984). With respect to any architecture of knowledge or experience, "building" can indeed be understood more generally -- and especially cognitively.

Also of potential relevance are the carefully articulated memeplexes of 64, 72 and 81, which feature in Western and Eastern traditions, with interrelationships most explicit in the Eastern patterns of 64 and 81 (9-fold Magic Square Pattern of Tao Te Ching Insights experimentally associated with the 81 insights of the T'ai HsÃüan Ching, 2006).

Metaphor is extensively used in the classic Chinese examples to render comprehensible the distinctions and the relationships between them ( Transformation Metaphors -- derived experimentally from the Chinese Book of Changes (I Ching) for sustainable dialogue, vision, conferencing, policy, network, community and lifestyle, 1997).

The 72-fold distinctions in the Western traditions are controversially embedded in mythological frameworks which undermine their credibility from a conventional perspective -- therefore calling for careful clarification (Variety of System Failures Engendered by Negligent Distinctions: mnemonic clues to 72 modes of viable system failure from a demonic pattern language, 2016; Engaging with Hyperreality through Demonique and Angelique? Mnemonic clues to global governance from mathematical theology and hyperbolic tessellation, 2016).

One obvious reason for preference for patterns of a particular size, and especially in the case of those of a larger size, is the characteristics of those numbers which facilitate memorability. Especially noteworthy are combinations of prime number factors (offering a degree of symmetry) which enable this. Examples include: 12 (as 2² x 3), 64 (as 2⁶), and 72 (as 2³ x 3²). The variety of such patterns is considered separately (Commentary on patterns of N-foldness, 2020).

It is however remarkable to note the extent to which the relations between the deities of traditional pantheons have figured in the memorable tales which are a feature of myth. There is a considerable degree of irony to the fact that the principal figures of such pantheons in the Western tradition have been appropriated for the iconography of the United Nations Specialized Agencies (Apollo, Ceres, etc). This offers the elusive suggestion that the relations between the functions with which those agencies are associated are implied by the myths of the pantheons with which they were associated.

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