Lords of divination

In Serbian the expression "On vedri i oblači" means "he rules", "he has absolute control, absolute power". Literally this expression means "he makes the sky clear and cloudy"...

I talked about this in my post "The power of the Thunder Giant"...

This expression was obviously originally applied to the sky god, The God, The Lord of the early agricultural societies and the peasants, particularly the wheat farmers, whose lives depend on the climate being just right...

The sky god, the sky father, was over time split into Sun god (Svetovid) and Storm god (Perun)...

But the fact that these were just two faces of the old Sky god was preserved in Serbian folklore in Dabog (Giving God, The Sky Father)...

You know that you are dealing with someone powerful when his name is "Giving god"...This means that he can also not give if you piss him off..

Dabog was seen as both the sun god, and as the rain god...

Serbs also preserved the notion of the Sun and Thunder god being one and the same in their "thundering saint" Elijah the Thunderer...

He is seen as the burning sun of the late summer and as the cooling rainstorm of the early autumn...

Elijah the Thunderer is celebrated at the end of summer and start of autumn, on the old day of Perun's victory over Veles...But Elijah is both Veles, The Dragon (Drought) who steals Perun's "heavenly cows" (clouds), and Perun, The Dragon Killer...

I talked about this in my post "Dragon that stole rain"...

The other day I thought that I guess you could say that there is only one God in the sky, and that is The Sun...It is The Sun that both takes away the heavenly cows (causes drought) and mercifully returns them...If you pray enough...

I think that the Ancient Sumerians had the same view of heaven and who's the boss up there...

This is "dingir" symbol, which means "god" and is placed in front of every god's name to indicate that we are dealing with a deity...Originally though, it was an ideogram for the Sumerian word an ("sky" or "heaven")...People say it looks like a star. To me it looks like The Sun.

It is An, The Sky Father and Ki, The Earth Mother, who gave, and continue to give birth to everything...Including all the "gods" and all life. 

Father (sky) + Mother (earth) = Life...It is their union, their interplay, their intercourse, that creates that life...Interestingly, when you put the names of the Sumerian father sky and mother earth together you get AnKi...

Strangely similar to ankh...

I talked about this in my posts "Etemenanki", "Square and compasses" and "An Ki - Ankh"...

Anyway eventually The Sky god, The Sky Father, was split into Sun god and Storm god... In Akkad, Sun god Shamash and Storm god Adad...And interestingly, Shamash and Adad became in combination the gods of oracles and of divination in general...

Of course, because if you are a farmer, it is the will of these two, that determines whether you eat or starve, live or die...Which is why you turn to the sky in your prayers...

And so the main duty of diviners was to figure out what Shamash and Adad were up to. Basically what is Sky God, Sky Father up to...

In the annals and votive inscriptions of the kings, when oracles are referred to, Shamash and Adad are always named as the gods addressed as "lords of divination".

And it was the main duty of the priests to figure out what were Shamash and Adad pleased with and what were they pissed off with...What The Sky God, The Sky Father wanted...In return for "Giving" life and not "Taking" life...

And to put that into religious laws and make everyone obey these laws...And make everyone practice what pleases the Sun god and Storm god (Sky God or just God who are in...) and abstain from what might piss "The Lord" off...

Cause "On vedri i oblači" (he makes the sky clear and cloudy) and you don't mess with someone so powerful...