I’m pretty sure I am late to this party. I only noticed this fact because I’ve been heavily playing both Assassin’s Valhalla and Immortal Fenyx Rising on my Xbox.

BUT!

Zeus and Odin have the same power….lightning right?

I started to think about it more intently because I’ve just started to listen to the audiobook ‘The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name’ by Brian C. Muraresku. As fascinated as I am by different cultures and religions, I always wonder where they came from, what started them and whether religion spread like a game of Chinese whispers, getting more tangled with each telling.

Anyway, I’m talking about Zeus and Odin here, not religion on a wider scale.

I have read many articles in my fascination of the two gods and it has only lead me to believe similarities hint they may have started in the same place.

Zeus wields the power of lightning and the power of the sky while Odin wields the power of lightning and yet hails from a different place – Asgard. Both Zeus and Odin married several times and had many children. Odin uses his power to defeat the Frost Giants. Zeus does not have the same man power as Odin but his own power is unpredictable and powerful, plus he can seduce anyone her wants. They are both worshipped and loved.

While Zeus was known to punish and torture those that opposed him, (like Prometheus), Odin was known for his kindness to those outlawed of Asgard as he himself once was.

While Odin was the only one of the two to have a wife, Frigg. Zeus on the other hand, though he was married to Hera, Metis, Thermis, etc., also had so many lovers that it is not known who he truly favoured or ultimately loved.

However, Zeus and Odin are both Kings and gods in their worlds. The similarities outweigh the differences. They both have immense power, a strong command and the respect of their people. The only difference that I can see is their past upbringing and the way that they like to rule.

Heaven forbid, the only real difference is that Odin manages to hold onto one wife, while Zeus plays the field.

To be honest, I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t more of an argument showing what deep similarities Zeus and Odin had with each other and the possibility that their starting point was another case of Chinese whispers, each filling a different line of society. I was also disappointed with the so called ‘differences’ between the two gods, which at best, amounts to nothing.

My thoughts on this may just be the way that my brain processes information, I mean that I might be seeing a scenario that has either been heavily studied or dismissed. However, I felt like I was seeing many similarities between the two as I played the games mentioned above. I feel like Zeus and Odin appear more like brothers who each went off into the world and established a live for themselves. Zeus as the god of Olympus and Odin as the god of Asgard.

There are far too many levels of matching for me to be able to write this thought off as something inconsequential and I’m far too curious to just let it lie. It seems that for now, I am alone in my musings of Zeus and Odin and how they came into being.

This topic has been bouncing around my head for weeks now, so I knew I had to get it down in a post. Let me know what you think. What are your thoughts on Zeus and Odin?