Calling all PAGANS.... (page 2)

Anyhoo: Ah, who else would post here first but ziddina? I wouldn't have expected anything else. Zid, your input DOES belong here. BTW, what exactly do you mean by the neo-polytheisim thing anyway? What is it to YOU? I admit that I am highly skeptical of scientific/achaeological dating methods that have come out so far. I find it hard to swallow any extraordinary claims as to the chonological dating of any ancient artifacts and writings. There seems to be too many unreliable claims as to the specific ages of the oldest known human writings. I guess there's a crapload of digging I'm going to have to do there.
Really interesting stuff so far. Please keep posting people...

ziddina

"I wonder whether these ancient figurines of female "goddesses" weren't just their era's form of porn, as opposed to formalized religion. I also wonder whether spanking it to a sexy female statue and "worship" were considered one and the same at the time. ..."

Yeah, that's about it, Mad Sweeney...

Reproduction being the basis of life on earth, means that reproduction was EXTREMELY important to ancient humanity... Whether there were enough animals to hunt for food, whether that patch of wild strawberries - or rhubarb, or rose hips, or wild potatoes, or wild corn, wheat, rice, barley, spelt, and so on - were going to reproduce enough to keep the tribe from starving - that was a VITAL question then - and still is, by the way - even for modern humans...

We've become so far removed from our food sources, that we've forgotten what it REALLY takes to have 'bread' - food - on the table. Whether one is "hunting/gathering" or farming, the fertility of the earth determines whether we eat - or starve...

And starving to death is a slow, miserable way to die... I'd rather go out fast, than slowly losing my strength by starvation.

Another aspect of the "fertility" goddesses was their ownership of the life force - in other words, one often finds that a "fertility" goddess ALSO has aspects of control over Life/Death itself... Which segues back to the ever-present problem of starvation which faced humanity throughout almost all of its history, up to modern times [and including modern times for Third World countries...]

I'll get into the 'dating' issue later; but since you [Vampire 65] seem to have a problem with the great spans of time represented by the "Tan-Tan Venus" and the "Berekhat Ram" female figurine, rest assured, there are religious texts on the walls of Egyptian pyramids that are 1,000 years OLDER than the bible; there are the writings of the Sumerian civilization that record their Polytheist religions - which are well over 2,000 years OLDER than the bible; Stonehenge is at least 1,500 years OLDER than the bible, and so on...

Zid

ziddina

Oh, and Meeting Junkie No More??? I've read both the "Jesus Mysteries" and their second book, "Jesus and the Lost Goddess", which got into a deep discussion of Gnosticism.... Excellent books, and "Jesus Mysteries" discusses, to a certain extent, the Polytheist origins of "Jesus"...

If you want to find a fairly close match as a prototype of "Jesus", check out Dionysus, the Greek God of Wine...

One of these days, when I have time I want to do more reading on Gnosticism, especially its origins and involvement in the beginnings of the Christian beliefs...

Zid

only me

I am interested in paganism but don't exactly fit into any one discipline yet, though I suppose neo-pagan is a broad enough category that might include me.

You might like to read Lon Milo DuQuette's new book, "Low Magick:It's All in Your Head... You Just Have No Idea How Big Your Head Is"

http://www.infinite-beyond.com/

Magicka School has some good free online courses

Also http://www.realmsofmagick.com has something for everyone from beginners to very experienced

freeflyingfaerie

After leaving the religion ( I think we all know the one), I felt a deep hunger inside to be embraced by nature like never before. Wanted so much to just roll around in anything to do with the potency and beauty of the herbs, flowers, trees, moon , ocean, dance, my body.. my mysterious, wild , magical side.

found myself absorbed in it all..and anything otherworldy..daydreaming of the native americans, celts, any raw and earthy people

naturally,i came to pagans and witches ..pagan essentially means 'country dweller'. that sounded sweet to me. and it was so good to read that our roots are pagan. Rituals and practices have come from intuitive people in touch with the earth, its rythms and cycles and listening to their own bodies, and the spiritual aspect that connects people to it all (side-thought:just remembered the movie avatar and the tree and the connectedness). The more I learn about it all, the more graceful and intelligent it seems. There is a profound appreciation for life that pagans seem to have. Very sensual, and also very spiritual.. i like what i know of it...

Calling all PAGANS....

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