The idea of an unseen spiritual agent being at work would prevent any search for a physical explanation, since polytheism is necessarily opposed to science.
The Egyptian polytheism was always more mixed, more strongly tinged with fetishism than that of Greece.
We may, then, define polytheism as the partition of the highest attributes of life between a limited number of agents.
Polytheism had to have a supreme god, no matter whether his name was Zeus or Jupiter.
It is probable, or rather certain, that even without foreign influence the polytheism of Greece must have developed a deity of love, as did the Mexican and Scandinavian polytheisms.
An organised polytheism prevailed, and in the temples of Centeotl and Tlazolteotl, Herodotus or Pausanias would have readily recognised the Demeter and the Aphrodite of Mexico.
No polytheism is likely to be without a goddess of love, and love is the chief, if not the original, department of Aphrodite in the Greek Olympus.
The Maoris are perhaps the least elevated race in which a well-developed polytheism has obscured almost wholly that belief in a moral Maker which we find among the lowest savages who have but a rudimentary polytheism.
There arose everywhere, consequently, a cry for reformation, or for a substitution, and this demand soon crystallised into a reform party, which rejected polytheism and preached asceticism while holding fast to a belief in Allah.
By the fourth century, however, the cross had triumphed over polytheism and Christian Emperors and pious persons erected splendid churches on the holy places.
From polytheism then, amongst the Israelites, monotheism was conceived to have been gradually developed.
It is not from polytheism that monotheism proceeds; nor does polytheism proceed from fetishism: it is from the heart of man that they and all other forms of religion emanate and radiate.
Muhammad accomplished most beneficent reforms in abolishing polytheism and such abuses as female infanticide, and at least regulating polygamy.
In a condition of polytheism we encounter the gods fully evolved, and often arranged in a hierarchy closely resembling the social polity of the tribe or people from whose religious imagination it has sprung.
Many of them hold their own until a later stage of polytheism is reached, and not a few supernatural forms of a primitive 'departmental' or 'animistic' type have achieved high rank in more than one later pantheon.
Thus Greek religion was unquestionably an anthropomorphic polytheism; the Mexican a polytheism with survivals of totemism and fetishism; and so on.
It is, however, only in the higher stages of polytheism that such deities are finally stamped with the 'departmental' character.
He himself failed entirely to realize the weight and abundance of the evidence for early polytheism and animism among the Israelites.
The important part of his writings for us is that in which he attacks the polytheism prevalent in his day.
If what is called in reproach 'Saint-worship' resembled the Polytheism which it supplanted, or was a corruption, how did Dogmatism survive?
We trace it from old barbarism to the methodized Egyptian idolatry; to the more flexible Polytheism of Syria and Greece; the poetical Pantheism of philosophers, and the moral monotheism of a few sages.
It thus became clear to me, that Polytheism as such is not a moral and spiritual, but at most only an intellectual, error; and that its practical evil consists in worshipping beings whom we represent to our imaginations as morally imperfect.
But I am not ashamed to share David Hume's want of ability to discover that polytheism is, in itself, altogether absurd.
Primitive polytheism is obviously unpropitious to monarchic rule; and in every ancient religion it can be seen to have undergone adaptations where such rule arose.
Evidence is not wanting to show that the mediæval magical cultus owes its conglomerate character to something more than the accidental mingling of races, or the spontaneous action of polytheism which I have noticed.
In the beginning polytheism is not necessarily vile and cruel; but it must become so as it develops.
Into a polytheism of this kind came Israel, to whom had been committed a revelation of the one true God, and in the first moment of homage at heathen altars the people lost the secret of its strength.
That day did come in the fourth century when Platonism and polytheism in close league were making a last stand against the victorious Church.
Yet, although there is a very decided tendency to monotheism in the Alexandrian religion, a tendency which appealed strongly to minds like Plutarch, it did not succeed in altogether breaking with polytheism and its attendant superstitions.
On the one hand, not only was the old ritual of classical polytheism scrupulously observed even by men like Plutarch and M.
So--Christianity is a viá media between limitless Polytheismand absolute Monotheism.
One in three, that is half-way to Polytheism and to Monotheism.
Some say that to see anything save Him, is polytheism for an Occultist.
This is verily the visible body of monotheism, frees one from gross polytheism and from hell, and leads to heaven.
The Prophet says, "Polytheism in my followers is more imperceptible than the motion of an ant on a black stone on a dark night.
They claim that this evolution has been by primitive man, from low forms of beliefs in spiritual beings, through polytheism and idolatry, up to the conception of monotheism and its belief in the one living God.
And finally polytheism had become the belief of the world, except of the many scattered small communities which, with their priests of the Most High God, like Melchisedek and Job, held the true light from extinction.
In other words, the doctrine of the Trinity is the attempt to combine gnostic polytheism and monotheism.
Investigators in the history of religion trace the steps from polydemonism to polytheism and thence to henotheism and monotheism.
The point I wish to call attention to is that the change from polytheism to monotheism did not involve any essential modification of the accepted notions of agency.
The middle age between himself and the polytheism of the Empire was a parched desert to him and to all his school, just as to the Protestant the interval between the apostles and Luther is a long night of unclean things.
Even then, however, his polytheism is of a kind which admits of a special devotion to a particular deity, who is called emphatically "his god.
We see its most rudimental traces in the polytheism of the savage mind, and its unconscious personification of nature's forces.
Thus has the collective and historical insanity which calls itself religion been developed since fetichism, passing through all the stages from polytheism to Christian monotheism.
It eschewed the polytheism and idolatry of Hinduism.
A generation ago few Hindus in the villages of the land would fail to defend polytheism and idolatry as an essential part of their faith.
Moreover, in the polytheism of the Puranas and in the laws and customs of Manu sin generally means only ceremonial defilement and the violation of customs and usages.
India finds polytheism no more satisfying than it does pantheism.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "polytheism" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word. Other words: anthropomorphism; dualism; monotheism; pantheism; polytheism; theism
