What kind of paganism can a white American get into without it being a complete LARP?
What kind of paganism can a white American get into without it being a complete LARP?
What kind of paganism can a white American get into without it being a complete LARP?
bloodline ancestor worship. sons of Zues/Odin, etc.
My ancestors are English afaik. Bunch of Protestant gays.
>My ancestors are English
what is an English? people from the continent who considered themselves originally either sons of some deity from the Olympian pantheon, or sons of one of the tribes of god-men from the Norse system. If you are english indiginous, then look to the celtic Tuath Dé ("tribe of the gods").
if you are white, your ancestors believed they exist because gods fricked their ancestors to create them.
>My ancestors are English afaik.
Congrats then, Christianity has been your ancestral culture for about 1500 years now. English identity itself was formed *after* Christianization anyway. There's nothing you can do to be a "pagan" that isn't LARPing, you were born to a particular culture and raised in it, that's the fact of life.
The closest you'll get to authentic pagan practice is being a superstitious guy who believes that them hills have eyes and hold a reverence and respect for folkloric creatures which exist in your area.
>Christianity has been your ancestral culture for about 1500 years
you can just go with the old Christian interpretation of genesis and claim descent from Lucifer. Angels fricking is the actual truth about the garden of Edin story anyways.
>Angels fricking is the actual truth about the garden of Edin story anyways
We don't know what was going on with the pre-adamites ( I think there was humans around before Adam given creation order). But suffice to say, it probably was getting bad enough that God needed Adam to take over the priest role. If we go by the Greeks, the Golden Age probably was the antediluvian age.
>English identity itself was formed *after* Christianization anyway
Not true that's the whole point of Beowulf. Christianity isn't a valid identity it's an opt in cult which is why self hating browns push it.
So Germanic paganism, particularly Anglo-Saxon paganism then. Folk religion existed up until about the 1000's in England and then really started to die off due to heavy persecution by Norman invaders consolidating land and heavily persecuting the Anglo-population.
The religion isn't really hard to "convert" to, especially if you want to be a henotheist or have a household patron deity as was common. Make a small votive alter for sacrifices of oat cakes/libations or meat, to the god of your choosing. Since you are a layman, that would be Thunor, Ing, Tiw, Wotan or maybe Freya. If you want a baptism or to be blessed "blœdsian", you can either douse/sprits yourself with the blood of a sacrifice (literally what "blœdsian" or "bless" in OE means), or unironically jump into a river/body of water near a historical site to the god of your choosing.
Just generic classical theism, anything else is a larp
None, your authentic culture has been a Christian one for as long as history can remember. If you don't believe in Christianity then just be an atheist like normal people. You have no organic connection to some long dead barbarian from Germania or whatever. Your "ancestral folkways" are what your actual grandparents did. Now go tell your grandma you love her and spend some time with your living real family.
This is so fricking depressing.
It's depressing only if you're so completely fricking disconnected from reality and real socialization that you can't conceive of any identity outside of romanticized Victorian writings and fantasized alternative realities where you were born somewhere else.
God forbid, you might learn your actual family history by talking to grandpa, as opposed to learning about dead cultures whose customs and beliefs can only be superficially reconstructed and extrapolated by historians and archaeology.
It genuinely boggles my mind that these wannabe pagans think they're any different from a Weaboo who says "I wish I was born Japanese". You weren't born as a Norseman in the year 1000, you weren't born as an Athenian in 400 BC, you weren't born a Lithuanian pagan in 1300, you will never be these people, you were born here and now and your culture is the people around you and the things and ideas you grew up with.
I know my heritage and my place in the world: my ancestors for the last 300 years were woodsmen, farmers, shipyard workers, etc. in Massachusetts. What the hell do I care about a nameless barbarian from 2000 years ago which I might be descended from? I never even knew his name
Christianity is no longer European.
>Most Muslims are Indonesian
>Therefore Syrian Muslims should no longer be Muslim and just abandon the last 1400 years of their cultural development
right sure thing
Besides, I'm not European either, I'm American. I grew up in North America, Europeans frequently express their disdain towards me and my people, I don't want to be one of them.
Your country was originally European, though.
I dont get why you reject that, when it's literally the foundation of your country.
>Your country was originally European
And the Anglo-Saxons originally came from Germany, but I've yet to see an English patriot start describing himself as "German" and declaring his allegiance to Germany...
>when it's literally the foundation of your country.
The unified foundation of our country is literally us declaring independence and fighting to secede from the British Empire. I have no grievances against the British, I admire their culture, but I'm not one of them and they themselves make it very clear that they see us 'Yanks' as different and foreign to them. Our cultures are not the same anymore, we have differing ideas about somethings, it's no big deal.
Mormonism is America’s paganism. I mean, theologically in Mormonism humans are basically Daedra.
Either Germanic or Celtic, so the Edda or the Taìn. Also, since America is built on Roman values, you can use the Roman pantheon as well.
So, depending on where your family is from, either Celto-Roman or Germano-Roman
Pray to different gods and see which ones you get answers from.
Just worship the Founding Fathers directly. It's not that weird considering both Rome and the Greek city states would often deify their founders and important leaders. I've found offering stereotypical American products like bourbon whiskey, tobacco, pine tar, maple syrup, cotton, etc. for sacrifice has improved my life overall.
that is a fricking horrid idea because it puts the nation as the religion when the nation is actively trying to exterminate us.
*the country is trying to exterminate the religion
what are you even talking about? you are given two options within the overton window... either be atheist or be one of the abrahamic religions. The catch is that the abrahamic religions have perverted their teaching of genesis and told you that as a white man you are not from a bloodline that traces back to a godly being.
If you want a religion that is based on the truth then you can not deny your godly bloodline because it is the curse and source of all the amazing things our race has achieved which sets apart from the other lesser creatures on the earth.
Race worship is cringe dude. Us as whites aren't gods, we just simply have the best culture. Paganism is transparently fake.
>Race worship is cringe
it isn't. that is what your ancestors did and it is the original formulation of Christianity as well. Only modern bullshit equality of the races suicidal propaganda his convinced anyone otherwise.
My brother I am a white nationalist, race worship is just a step too far.
>race worship
ancestor gods, not race. the race exists because gods fricked mortals in order to create it.
I respect the Himmler autism, but sadly we do not descend from Hyperborean gods. It's our duty to make our reality as close to that ideal as possible.
All three are inseparable
>we do not descend from gods
That is not what your ancestors believed, and that is not what the original Christian missionaries told your ancestors either. The genesis story from the bible teaches that we exist because angels fell from heaven in order to create us to glorify God. Our failures shame our fathers and our righteousness redeems us.
Why do you believe the white race is unique in this regard though?
Because it is unique. We are the ones with the holy spirit in us and because of it we are the only ones who can do what we have done.
Then why is the white race, the one, abandoning God nowadays, while the other races are filling the spots left open by white people?
All great works which have been wrought upon the earth are from God through the bloodlines touched by the divine. This is truth and only by the truth can the blood of the holy spirit be saved.
Kys, LARPing moron. You're worse than israelites.
Your hatred for my people is why it comes to this.
>we are the only ones who can do what we have done.
Europeans are the only people who can make European culture, what a shock.
I don't understand it, white people have the most to be proud of, being proud of our culture should be enough.
because they need an excuse to feel special and taking a ride in the accomplishments of the great man of the past isn't enough
>That is not what your ancestors believed
no, only the nobility was thought to be descended from the gods in any meaningful way, plebs where as "divine" as regular humans
>only the nobility
that is not true. what you are recalling is that the more pure the blood the more you are one with the holy spirit. the royalty have always claimed to have the most pure bloodlines.
>u are one with the holy spirit.
there was no such thing in euro paganism, it wasn't race worship
>wasn't race worship
even in the religion taught by the Christ it is blasphemous to deny the nature of the holy spirit. So to deny your only godly bloodline which grants the holy spirit is to blaspheme against God.
That is how you would have been taught these mysteries had you been born but a scant few thousand years ago.
there no concept of a "holy spirit of the race" in the pagan religions of old
you are just trying to force "paganism" as hollow aesthetic for your mix of judaism and failed politics
There is no pre-Christian European belief system that did not include being directly descended from a god or gods. This is the same as the garden of eden story in which the fallen angels fricked people to create the race of mankind with holy spirit. This is the meaning of all the mysteries and the answer to all the riddles.
>There is no pre-Christian European belief system that did not include being directly descended from a god or gods.
all religions claimed that humans were created by gods, but neither the greeks, or roman or norse claimed that their race specifically were the blood of the gods, only the nobles claimed descendance from the gods
There no mention of any "holy blood" or "holy spirit of the race" or even a notion of a "white/european race" in those systems
>This is the same as the garden of eden story in which the fallen angels fricked people to create the race of mankind with holy spirit.
that's not part of the garden story, or is canon in any abrahamic religion
>This is the meaning of all the mysteries and the answer to all the riddles
no, that's your schizophrenia mixing a israeli framework of a "chosen people" (the only real religion you know), faild politics and trying to force old religion as an aesthetics
>created by gods
is not the same thing as a god fricking your ancestor to create your bloodline
>not part of the garden story
anymore, Enoch got dropped but the truth is now knowable in spite of the efforts to suppress the truth
>you crazy
not an argument
>the greeks
>Nobles claiming divine lineage to separate themselves from the plebs and legitimize their claims
Not the own you thing it is
Only after euhemrization and conflation with biblical narratives
>Yes they did
they didn't, only the nobility claimed such blood relation with the gods
>ut all Indo-European peoples believed that their group was descended from the Gods at least once
no evidence for that
>The Franks believed that all Franks drew descent from Thor ("Germanic Hercules")
they didn't
>Kennings, poetic formula, and outright attestations abound.
there no such atestations
>The Julii claimed descent from Venus, for example.
yeah a noble family claiming divine lineage to legitimize their claims and separate themselves from the non-divine plebs
>The Greeks were even more explicit about this.
only in your imagination
>The concept of an all-soul is pretty consistently alluded to throughout the sagas and eddas.
it isn't
> I'm not arguing for the "soul of the white race"
that was exactly what you were arguing the whole thread
>but that would be true if we consider that these are religious views that were handed down throughout communities
no, it wouldn't
> Ancestral cult? Yes.
not even close
>Only after euhemrization
nah. you are just in denial and probably have some reason to reject the truth.
their no truth in your claims, the tuatha de danann where seen as a pantheon separated from most mortals and were only conflated with ancesters as their were euhemrized and mixed into pseudo-biblical narratives
there almost nothing left from the original beliefs of the irish
>their no truth in your claims
frick off moron. you can look into shinto and chinese ancestor god religions too. this shit was literally everywhere at one point and needs a revival.
>shinto and chinese ancestor god religions too
the ancestor in those are just dead humans, literally ghosts in the afterlife not gods
it's closer to Catholics praying to saints or dead relatives they think are in heaven and can intercede/pray for them up there
ancestry to entities equivalent to the western notion of a god was still reserve to nobility as a way to differentiate themselves from the plebs and legitimize their claims
also most of the worshiped entities are not ancestors
>just dead humans
nope. their ancestors are gods, they are descended from gods, their bloodline exists because of gods fricking mortals.
example
example
Not many people worship specifically him. Many chinese just pray to whatever god is at the temple. Too bad we’ve been tainted by Buddhism.
ancestor of the imperial family, no the avarage jap
>Shangti
Not much of a thing in the folk religion and associated to the emperial cult, and later discarted and replaced by the the concept of Tian
also he was conflated as ancestor of humanity as a whole, not just the chinese, so not the own you think it is
You should stop just taking shit from the first google result used for you /misc/infographics
I have shown you specific historic examples from the west shores of the pacific to the east shores of the atlantic of peoples having deep historic belief systems revolving around the idea that bloodlines of people exist due to gods fricking mortals. At this point you're just willfully ignorant if you choose to remain in denial.
>ancestor of the imperial family, no the average jap.
Dosen't matter, the average jap still cares about this, just look at the amount of average japs here:
They take the amaterasu emperor thing, very seriously.
So you are wrong.
At best, you're a troll; at worst, you're a pedantic moron who's a few google searches in. Have your (you)
Heimdall fathered all three norse social classes so you're wrong
all humans were classified on those classes among the norse, so that isn't the claim of special divine blood you think it is
Do you think that germans are going to disagree with other tribes and ethnic froups that claimed descent from an entirely different god to their own? Do you think the anglo-saxons still assumed Wodan was the ancestor of manlet romans even if the romans say otherwise? Use your godamn brain mate holy shit
>of the race
>but neither the greeks, or roman or norse claimed that their race specifically were the blood of the gods,
Yes they did. The nobility claimed a more recent divine descent, but all Indo-European peoples believed that their group was descended from the Gods at least once, usually multiple times. The Franks believed that all Franks drew descent from Thor ("Germanic Hercules"), for example. Kennings, poetic formula, and outright attestations abound. The Romans and the Greeks were similar. The Julii claimed descent from Venus, for example. The Greeks were even more explicit about this.
In addition to attestation from ancient lore that survives to us, the Church Fathers and later Christian evangelists talk about this as one of the wicked blasphemies that Pagans believed that needed to be snuffed out. The Byzantines referred to people who held to the idea of different races of men existing as "ethnikoi", and various Germanic kings were congratulated for publicly rejecting this belief by their evangelizers.
>American
Look up the Asatru Folk Assembly.
>Look up the Asatru Folk Assembly.
a bunch of dysgenic degenerates with no connection to american culture or the pagan
cults they claim to be part off trying to twist a poorly attested religion into 'white's man judaism'
That's not the case, so it sounds like you're looking for excuses to sit around and be bitter so as to not achieve anything.
It's not race.
It's culture which indicates the race.
Culture is ethereal and that manifest in reality on the race.
Ancestors get added to the mix, by that point.
So:
Culture-Ancestors-Race.
That's how it works.
Why bother with religion at all if you just see it as an extension of your personal views on race? It's not like you actually believe in God(s). You just hate shitskins and want an affirming pat on the back.
>if you like yourself then you hate me
Frick off
>I'm just proud of being White!
>.....
>..........
>and I fricking hate shitskins!
Conciousness is racial. You won't find a million Black folk creating something or living like a million white Europeans would.
And?
>the nation is actively trying to exterminate us.
>getting gentiles to worship their own destruction
I sense a theme here
All paganism is a larp
That's the problem.
You can't.
Maybe try and replicate/reconstruct 1st Century Christianity or something, like some groups in the US are doing nowadays.
That's probably the best option for people like you.
Going away from protestantism, into a more "freeing christianity" almost.
But paganism is too far, if you are not connected with the land.
Worship of the Old Ones
Grand Temple of Salem
Cthulhu and Carcosa
Klansman-style secrecy, orders, ceremonies, rituals with titles like Wizard and Dragon
Look at it as your ancestors did. I'm going to use the Scandinavian stuff because it's easy to explain through examples, although it may not directly apply to you.
>year is 980 AD
>you are Bjorn Gormsson, a Dane
>You are a devout Pagan
>throughout your travels you have encountered runestones that are 500 years old, maybe older
>you dress in the style people dressed in a thousand years ago
>you only use bronze and stone tools because that's how the ancients did things
>you change your name to Birnijō Gormsson because that's the proto germanic version of your name
>you go to the local horgr/temple/grove and burst in, shouting "γōðaz daγaz, ya-kunzjaz!!!!!"
>you run up to the three central statues and spin around playing with your dick shouting "hailaz Þorraz, og hailaz Freyr, og hailaz Wōðinnaz!!!!"
>you get laughed out for acting like a fricking sperg
Keep in mind that it is very likely that most people back then thought of the Voluspa, Havamal, etc as allegory and a collection of good life lessons. They're also likely incomplete remnants of an oral tradition. Read the texts, think about them, try to understand them. Larping is fun but keep in mind that the way things were done at any given point in time were no different than how they are done now. If you gave a viking an AR-15 and 10,000 rounds of ammo, they wouldn't reject it in favor of a sword.
Some good resources are Maria Kvilhaug, Survive the Jive, and The Sun Riders.
The only sane answer ITT
Americans can’t be pagans because they are spiritually disconnected from the land, are mongrel dogs, and are entirely disconnected from their true ancestral lands.
“No!” Hiking is not spiritual connection to the land.
“No!” Camping is not spiritual connection to the land.
“No!” Hunting is not spiritual connection to the land.
The only valid “paganism” in America are the natives.
So is it fine by you if intelligent White Americans move to Europe?
It's like they fused all the cultures, into such a bizarre creation, that the end result ends up being no actual culture, or a connection with some lan, nothing.
Tragic.
Very tragic.
And that's exactly what's happening to the entirety of Western Europe right now, but you guys are too pigheaded to realize it.
israeli nonsense.
The indo european gods were from the pontic steppe and spread all across eurasia and now the americas. They are where their people are and their people are in America as much as they are in Germany or Northern India.
People are going to sperg and ree but this is the objective truth. People migrated and we're dealing with oral traditions that go back a long time. There's also consistent similarities, in both concepts and linguistics, that link those regions together.
That's flat out not correct. The concept of an all-soul is pretty consistently alluded to throughout the sagas and eddas. It's also in related religions. I'm not arguing for the "soul of the white race" necessarily, but that would be true if we consider that these are religious views that were handed down throughout communities as they moved. Race-religion? Not quite. Ancestral cult? Yes.
AFA get some of it, some of it they don't. It's a good place to start but not worth sticking around for the long haul.
Why are you doing this? You've been spamming this shit for a few weeks, and clearly no one is taking the bait. What you want is Asatru, why do you keep trying to dress it up in a Christian garb? None of the Pagans on here are going to take it because they've already got what they want and are open about it, and none of the Christgays on here are going to take it because what you're suggesting (ethnoreligion) is explicitly what they're trying to avoid.
The claims of descent from a god/gods (like in the Ynglinga saga or Kongsbok, I don't remember which one) are often just integral to the position. There's tons of stories from allover Germanic Europe, over thousands of years, of a king or leader having to enter into a "sacred marriage" with a goddess. I'm of the opinion that this refers to an initiation into a mystery cult where it's often portrayed as the initiate traveling to a world past normal mortality, meeting a goddess or female divine being, gaining special knowledge, and returning. We've seen evidence of this from the Minoan civilization to the end of the Viking age. Even Socrates was an initiate into the Eleusinian Mysteries.
You must be thinking of a different poster, anon. This is my first time posting in a thread on Paganism. Is it beyond your comprehension that multiple people might like something you don't understand?
While I don't arrive at the same conclusion that the gods are real, I do absolutely agree that there's a certain amount of simplifying of the content of the texts, often saying that the prechristians actually took these stories at face value ("they were too stupid to understand lightning so they made up Thor"), or pressing our modern ideas onto those stories that doesn't totally line up, like in your example. It's really a bummer that this stuff was so suppressed and warped for so long that even if we could figure out exactly what they believed back then, we'd still be missing 1,000+ years of development of these ideas.
No, it's pretty obvious that it's just you. It's the same lines, the pics, the same responses every time.
Except it's not. Post examples? We can compare writing styles if you'd like. But in the meantime, put effort into your replies or don't reply, schizo.
We should just make new religions for the criseses of our times.
It's clear that as much strong these religions were, they are not adapted for the current problems of our time.
Unironically read about the archetypes you shitter.
VGH
>What kind of paganism can a white American get into without it being a complete LARP?
Just be esoteric bro, that's the best Paganism. Paganism is the worship of
>Gods
>heroes
>ancestors
An American could for example worship George Washington like the Roman emperors were. With a cult such as this wokeness would be dead before even getting born.
>worship George Washington
that is moronic because there is no truth in it and like I already said, that makes the American nation the church and that nation is currently genociding white people as fast as it can.
>yakub
>there is no truth in it
As opposed to Real and Legit Zeus chilling on Olympus?
As the early Christian missionaries would have told you, there is one well from which there is one tree and no matter what fallen god you think sired your bloodline there is but one source and that source unites us all in common spirit and common cause.
Let's put it this way:
Do you really want to exist just to worship George Washington?
Really?
That's what you choose to do in this existence?
I would say, worshiping Zeus is weird, but it's MUCH much much better than the other option.
>currently genociding white people
Nice brainrot you've got there.
You and religion are made for each other.
Well, what are you currently about it
>inb4 I'm not American
No one asked you
>nation is currently genociding white people as fast as it can.
I ignored this because of how stupid is but it's time to address it.
The nation is genociding Whites because it is ruled by israelites and it replaced the values of the founders with israeli values, by worshipping the Founders you'd bring back those white nationalist values that built America.
This is obvious I shouldn't have to say it but American education strikes again.
If the west had some worship of heroes and ancestors it would never have fallen like this but thanks to Christianity our values have been israeli from the start
You can get into any as a white American. If you're choosing based on your race and shying from the perception of others, then you're just a LARPer too scared to be called out as such.
I'm not here to help you windowshop beliefs based on how well they'll be perceived by others. I have more respect for professional paid cosplayers than I have for you.
If you want to be accepted, learn from their communities to see if you resonate with what they believe. Most religions, even the niche ones, are fairly welcoming to well-meaning curiosity.
When asked, "why are you interested in our faith?" Just consider the difference between the answer of:
>It just called to me. I owe it to myself and to you to follow the thread.
And
>I think I can pull it off in spite of the fact that I see my skin color and country as things that will always come before a religion when I am perceived by others.
Your heart shows its true beliefs when you assert that your faith will never be real by virtue of your birth.
Anything you do will be a LARP, and only the foolish will take you seriously.
eh just make some shit up. go into a d&d book and take some of those gods and use em frick it. you'll be LARPing no matter what my homie might as well have fun with it. you're not a Spartan and you're not a Viking, so don't grow a shitty beard and wear a hammer necklace because that's gay as frick. you don't really believe Thor is out there fighting giants and you don't really believe our solar system is actually a giant tree. you don't believe it's all metaphorical either. these pagan religions are always LARPs because their cosmology is incongruous with a modern educated understanding of the universe. therefore you should just make one up that suits better and who knows, in a few decades perhaps even your LARPing fun will be popular and become a little family tradition, then the tradition will take off and become full blown truth. the gods are fickle after all
>their cosmology is incongruous with a modern educated understanding of the universe
Yeah, fortunately space is fake and gay. Curvature has never been measured, motion has never been detected. Cartoon planets, fisheye lenses and astronots on wires and greenscreens won't change that fact. Modern cosmology is peak reddit.
None. Your ancestors are all Christian going back nearly 2000 years. Genetically and culturally speaking, you have absolutely no relation to pagan Europe. It would be no different than dressing in a costume and speaking a dead tongue.
If you're so antisemitic that you can't bring yourself to participate in the religion of your family and folk (a religion that israelites despise, mind you), then just be a deist with a side of American Civil Religion
Be a reformed druid
>go to solstice and equinox celebrations
>frick a goth girl
>climb trees
>laugh at norse-larping milsim Cool Guys
>eat berry
>find mushrooms
>laugh at norse-larpers some more
>throw rocks into creek
>make a shitty chair out of wood by hand
>sit outside in shitty chair
>touch some moss
>life is good
Christianity
The one of your race. Germanic ancestry then it's Germanic and so on.
Nature cults, they go as far as naturalism, and well is very close to nature itself, if you find spiritualism in it
Norse folkways were still practised up till 1960s and the general revivals; those were brought to America.
People were still praying to Wodan in the English countryside up until at least the 19th century.
Modern Paganism is and always will be a LARP. Because you don't actually believe it's true. You're just an right wing Atheist pitching a fit that "Atheist" is considered a left of center term.
Wrong. The Gods are real. israelite "gods" are not.
>white American
E-Pagans are not beating the libtard allegations anytime soon.
Emersonian transcendental nature worship or pragmatic theist idealism
The Wolves of Vinland guys do a good job but they're not very open to outsiders
Don't worry, Wolves of Binland is open to everybody who wants to worship ancestral Finns of The Proto-Finnic Holy Roman Khaganate.
>without it being a complete LARP?
any of them, so long as you have genuine belief and commit to reading texts associated with the faith and practicing it in earnest.
The obsession with LARPing comes from the christians on this board who are basically atheists that cloak their disbelief in lots of formalistic theological prose.
True belief, the opposite of LARPing, in other words, is when you live your faith rather than litigate it endlessly.
There's lots of people who say they're pagans but say the gods are just archetypes or metaphors. It's weird to say the gods you worship are metaphors. These people even give these gods they think are metaphors sacrifices for magick.
>archetypes or metaphors
Big difference between these.
Asatru religious texts like the codex regius are obviously not without their intended metaphors, allegories, illusions, symbolism, etc., but committing to an interpretation of pagan texts where everything presented is ackshually a metaphor for some kind of natural phenomena (The slaying of Balder, for instance, is often claimed to ackshually be about the length of time in a day or some stupid shit, rather than being the story of a troubled father losing his beloved son) is merely an attempt to mirror the way atheistic christians spout formalistic jargon whenever the authenticity of their faith is implicated. It's all just atheism with extra steps.
True belief, whether in the aesir or the christian god, points you away from these habits, not towards them.
There's certainly a lot of those who see the gods as just archetipes or alegories, but even if Ares is "just an archetype" but can still frick you up if you don't behave, at what point do you "not believe"? If you believe a tiger will frick you up, but can be kept at bay by offering it food or just putting distance between you and it, you still "believe" in the tiger. The idea that a God has to be this omnipresent boogeyman that will frick you up over incredibly minor things that you can't even perceive is just simply not how historical pagans saw their Gods. It's not even how Christians historically saw their God. It's a weird strawman that Christians adopt in these debates, where they assume that if the non-Christian doesn't act Christian, then they're not "real". No shit non-Christians don't act Christian, they aren't Christian.
Aristotle's theology placed the Gods as the Prime Movers (plural, there's more than one) that move the planets in the sky. Does that mean that Aristotle doesn't "believe in Zeus" even though Zeus literally causes phenomena to occur, and can be interacted with? If so, then how is that any different from what Aquinas does? Are the angels, who he attributes to the Prime Movers, "not real"? Is God then "not real"?
This is to say nothing of the Stoics and Platonists, both of whom have a radically different idea of what constitutes the divine than "Chris Hemsworth running around doing stuff". And this doesn't even touch on the "Allegorists", such as Heraclitus (no relation to the Flux Master), who argued that yes, the Gods were essentially just Jungian archetypes
I worship Djehuty.
Well, feel free to go back to worshiping Zeus or Jupiter and start sacrificing animals and praying to rocks again, no one is stopping you. Let me know how it works out for you.
If you want to return to a polytheistic system of animal sacrifices, and divination through animal entrails, and believing in Zeus the rapist god, then I don't know what to tell you. Have you ever slaughtered an animal and butchered it in many pieces? You would really make your life decisions based on what some intoxicated girl mumbles to some priest and if a goat's liver has a blemish?
If you want to return to a Polytheistic/Pagan world, consider what that involves. Consider the traditions of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Consider worshiping statues and multiple gods, and making animal sacrifices. The Oracles at Delphi, (the priests of Apollo), performed animal sacrifices that involved divination based on the entrails of an animal. They would intoxicate young girls who would go into a trance, where they would mumble nonsense that could only be understood by the priests... very similar to how modern-day Christians behave when you see them mumbling nonsense in Church. This is a Polytheistic tradition.
These are the European traditions you want to return to? Do you really want to go back to a pre-Christian Europe?
Many of the greatest Greeks OPPOSED the Greek gods and the Greek system that enslaved the masses with vain superstitions, exactly like modern-day Christianity, which is far more polytheistic than it is monotheistic.
>Zeus the rapist god
This is based and uncucked.
Sounds kino. Sign me up.
You should help israelites rebuild their temple then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_(emperor)#Attempt_to_rebuild_the_israeli_Temple
...no
Larper.
I ain't no israelite, pal.
You should follow in that great pagan emperor's footsteps, though.
What's great about Julian?
Zeus is basicaly the OG demiurge sky god, there is little difference if you worship Yahweh as a deistic entity intervining in the world as an agent, showing grace,choosing sides, punishing the unpious etc. If anything if you remove the sex stuff , Yahweh in the OT sounds just as assholish as Zeus if not more. While in the NT he impregnates a virgin like many gods did in a so many ancient near eastern and greek mythic cycles.
The big difference is realy between christian and classical art. This is the big break, Christianity introduces a humanistic element that was lacking in classical art, even though ironicaly classical art would be become the reference for renaissance humanism later.
There is a legend that the oldest depiction of Jesus in Hagia Sophia was refferencing the a classical bust statue of Zeus. Similar to the Christ Byzantine pantocrator icon from the 6th century at Sinai. The main difference being the right side of his face shows classical qualities , while the left one shows human qualities breaking from the rigid classicism. Since ancient greek religion was basicaly based in art and in creating art inspired by the divine and myths. It influenced religious Christian depictions in both subtle and overt ways. The contentious issue in Christianity and Islam for many centuries was if you could depict in art the divine at all, because art influences and affects people massively more than mere preaching or dogma. In this way the superstition that you mention became "idolatry" charge for Christians and Muslims and as such you have events like the Byzantine Iconomachy and the Protestant reformation.
The ancient greeks did decry superstition and made fun of it as you suggest and that did influence early Christianity somewhat. But they never questioned the place of art in daily life as a religious activity in honoring the divine.
*Supposedely the Jesus at icon at Hagia Sophia was based according the Zeus statue at the Olympia temple complex. It was considered as one of the "seven wonders of the ancient world" and made by Phidias, the same Athenian sculptor that designed the Parthenon statues.
Also I think that rather than the usual historical charge that Christians vandalized and destroyed these pagan temples, I think its most likely and probable that they were most likely destroyed and despoiled by barbarians such as Alaric, or looted by the state itself for funds during times of fiscal emergency.
>Also I think that rather than the usual historical charge that Christians vandalized and destroyed these pagan temples, I think its most likely and probable that they were most likely destroyed and despoiled by barbarians such as Alaric, or looted by the state itself for funds during times of fiscal emergency.
>barbarians such as Alaric
Sooo, by Christians?
As if Christianity was any kind of "pure monotheism"
LMAO.
Stop saying that lie, you morons.
Christianity is still very polytheist in it's thinking, like you worship the triunal god, the angels, and if you are catholic the saints, dosen't get any more polytheist then that.
>Zeus the rapist god
point a myth where the women didn't consented
most of the mentions of "rape" in greek mythology is merely a misstranslation of stealing, in the context of taking the women without her father's permission or taking a women who should remain cast due to her position
>. Have you ever slaughtered an animal and butchered it in many pieces?
not really a necessary thing, animal sacrifice in antiquity were not the norm. Most sacrifices were grain, fruits ,wine/watter, or baked goods; animal sacrifices were reserved to bigger festival and weren't much different than slaughtering an animal for non-ritualistic consumption.
>You would really make your life decisions based on what some intoxicated girl mumbles to some priest and if a goat's liver has a blemish?
not integral part of the religion or worshiping the gods
>Consider worshiping statues
the statues were not what was worshiped, they were an aid, a tool for worshiping
> divination based on the entrails of an animal.
that was romans, not delphi
also not a core, integral part of the religion or the cult of the gods
> They would intoxicate young girls who would go into a trance
There's no evidence of the intoxication myth, and analysis of the gases in the area already showed that it wouldn't induce such state
>where they would mumble nonsense that could only be understood by the priests...
non-sense only from the perspective of a non-belived
also we don't have records of what they actually said, and no way to know if it was pure non-sense or not
>ery similar to how modern-day Christians behave when you see them mumbling nonsense in Church
because all christian churches are part of the charismatic movement and into glossolalia
also ignore case like Hildegarda and her lingua ignota
>Many of the greatest Greeks OPPOSED the Greek gods
no, at most they opposed the poets that wrote myth that painted the gods in a bad light or in a way that disagreed with their particularly philosophy
Hinduism. You can hang out with all the faux-spiritual white women who also believe in astrology and shit.
None.
The Germanic pagans are the only ones who take their stuff seriously.
>take their stuff seriously
they don't believe in shit, it's just an aesthetic
you think it's serious because it's pushing politics you like
Chad Hellenes: