About masks

What are masks?

Often Gods and Goddess merge or change over time due to different cultural preferences, while the essence stay the same. Such a thing, we call a mask.

A mask acts like a lens to only refer to a particular aspect of a divinity. Often times masks were created to isolate certain properties. E.g. when you work with Belial you can choose to work only with the lawlessness aspect of his energy or only with the masterless aspect.

A divinity can choose themselves what mask is appropiate to use or a practioner can directly work with a specific mask.

Later epithets were created to do the same, however I view this as specific masks for specific purposes.

A viewpoint

Astarte explained it to me as such. A deity is like a corporation, where a lot of spirits are working together. The CEO is the divinity itself. You seldom need to talk with them.

A corporation can have offices, that are special purpose (these are the masks). They can fuse together with other corporations or even split off to form new companies.

I found this analogy quite clear, but be aware it upg.