Men started worshipping their ancestors, giving way to millions of Gods and Goddesses. The Seven stars of the Pleiades constellation became the first seven goddesses. Murugan advocated the worship of these goddesses. He introduced the Seven Sisters (Saptha Kanniyar) who came to be worshipped progressively as Kali /Durga (Black attire), Neelambikai (Blue), Pachaiamma / Meenakshi (green), Lakshmi (Red), Mariamma (Yellow/ Gold), Saraswathi (White) and Gangai (Neervannam) (invisible / transparent). Others started worshipping forces of nature. They created myths and stories around these personified elements in human terms giving rise to gods and goddesses. Ithihas is not history, it is myth.

Each god (and the respective idol) that man worshipped is said to have power over one aspect of man’s needs and aspirations. Accordingly, (only the Indian gods are mentioned here but there are Greek, Roman and other eastern and middle eastern equivalents for each of these) there is a god for knowledge (Saraswathi), a god for wealth (Lakshmi), a god each for the forces of nature like fire (Agnidevan), wind (Vayu bagawan), rain (Varunan – Indira) and earthquake (bhoomadevi), a god for protection from enemies (Ayyanar), a god for courage and physical strength (Hanuman), the Sun god (Suryadevan), a moon god (Chandrn), a god named after every visible planet, constellation and star, a god for this and a god for that. In fact, an Indian tradition says that there are three hundred and thirty million gods. And, each god tends to gain an upper hand over the others and there is always a fight for supremacy – the reason for inter-religious and intra-religious conflicts and wars today. “My god is bigger than yours” is the attitude of all religious communities, a direct result of people worshipping a creation, or a creation of their own imagination all built by their own hands (and by machines 😊).