>>50245414
>There's absolutely nothing that indicates that Celestials and gods are completely separate concepts within the setting of Touhou.
If he was a god, Zun would have called him one, not 'celestial'. Just because his name has god in it doesn't mean really anything
>Miko gaining power from faith means she should probably be considered a god
No, you're murking the waters. She's a saint, which is probably another evolution of hermit, or just another type of hermit, if a special one.
>and even humans can be gods
Yes, evolving into one first. And no, Sanae is cheating by calling herself human, she's a demigod
>The Dragon God is not included in Gensokyo
He's worshipped in Gensokyo as its main deity, however? That includes him in the mix. And him being able to travel numerous realms isn't really that special for what the games has us used to
>One is that Patchouli and Alice are never considered weak magicians, with Alice being able to wield spells which are ancient and powerful enough to even draw Eirin's attention.
Patchouli is not a battlemage, she might know a lot of magic, but she's not that powerful. Alice's also not that special, even if Eirin might say that some of her spells are interesting that isn't grand in the big picture.
>Second is that PMiSS only claims that with enough preparation they can take on any kind of "youkai".
Youkai is an extremely broad term. It can include only the usual ones, to the point to include anybody remotely supernatural, like gods. This might imply that magicians, who start being as the weakest 'youkai' of all, have limitless potential.
>It is not a reliable reference.
People say that everytime they want to critize x youkai, but so far, she has been right. By that metric, celestials could also not be that special, and Tenshi could be just an outlier who is that powerful, like it was mentioned before
>Kasen's power is enough to impress Miko, so she clearly has a natural talent despite her lack of real discipline.
Still a pretty bad hermit all things considered
>Ibaraki-douji is also not weakened at all and the Arm is easily able to mentally dominate in the merger.
The manga explictly says that Ibaraki-douji was having an internal conflict between her three halfs, and Reimu sees that as their chance
>There's also no indication that Tenshi was all that serious in that fight since her goal was clearly to let Reimu get the win. She just needed to keep the oni busy.
'Nah, she wasn't fighting seriously.' If this is the answer of all Tenshilovers each time she fights...
>Completely baseless hypothesis
All records about celestials tell us that they do nothing, like >>50245036 said, but mainly they like to bully people that can't defend themselves from them. That sounds like 'fraud' material to me
>There's nothing in Touhou that implies that Celestials don't have a hierarchy (quite the opposite, in fact, as seen in Iku's article), and such a hierarchy could not be enforced if those at the top didn't hold more power.
That hierarchy seems more based by role than anything else. Oomura-no-Kami? It's said that hee was the celestial dealing with earthquakes AT THAT TIME. Besides, why would celestials fight themselves to rank up in the hierarchy? They are immortal, have everything they need, why would they burn Heaven over something as petty as getting duties over the rest?
>Characters in-universe also believe that Celestials vary in skill and ability, such as Komachi at the tail end of Wild and Horned Hermit, and nowhere does it ever assert any equality.
The mere idea that people like Komachi has to theorize on the power of celestials means that they don't get out of Heaven that much, outside Tenshi. So its hard to affirm or negate those thoughts.
>Closed to virtuous souls judged worthy of Nirvana by the Yama, but nothing is said about it being blocked to hermits seeking to ascend in the flesh
Closed means closed. For everyone.
>She enjoys her life as a hermit on Earth well enough and there's no indication she's particularly dedicated to hermit training, either.
She taught Miko, and Miko is pretty OP. Don't sleep on miss Nyan-Nyan. And with Tenshi getting out of Heaven, Seiga's reasons not to get into Heaven are well founded in my opinion.