Re: Pagan cultural appropriation
Most religions have at least one human who was deified and became a god. Most religions also have at least one deity who is jealous of interactions with other deities.
Yahweh told the Hebrews that he was a jealous god who would not tolerate other gods made more important than himself (thou shalt not have any gods before me) even though he was a lesser god than El who was the god of creation. The Jews solved that problem by combining the two. Yahweh was one of the many faces of El - part of Elohim. Still a single deity but different aspects of the primal deity. Yahweh was the war, mountain, and thunder god aspect of El. It was very useful to have a war god fighting with you when you were the invading force in an area that was new to you.
Jesus in a grand example of a deified human just as Sargon or others. The Catholic church, in deciding whether Jesus was god or not used circular logic to make the decision. In order to forgive all sin Jesus had to be god. Since he died on the cross to forgive our sins he must be god. Jesus is god because without the forgiveness of sins there is no church. Jesus is therefore god. There are some problems with the single god aspect in Christianity because if Jesus is god why would he say about his return that "only the father knows, not the son nor the spirit, but only the father". If they were the same deity wouldn't they all know everything?
Everything religious has been and will always be appropriated by other faiths or practitioners who have to connection to a specific religion. People traveling in the ancient past celebrated with the people where they were, hence the saying, "when in Rome do as the Romans do." My first tradition was distantly connected to the family traditions of Italy. It is said that a group of families (all Streghan) left Italy and traveled great distances taking bits of different faiths and cultures as they traveled. At around 600-500 BCE they were back in Greece because they also leaned from Pythagoras and his teachings. There were bits of Roman, Greek, Egyptian, and middle eastern aspects to the faith. There was also the belief that one should live a magikal path in every day of their life. This was the Order of the Phoenix. The magikal aspect of this path in probably why the name was used in the Harry Potter stories. It is also possible that the author never heard of the Order and used it because of the sound of it. It has caused some criticism of my claim to have belonged to the Order before it was even published in the books - "how dare I use a name to claim my history before it even existed!" I just have to laugh because the Order that I belonged to was a true religion with a mandated philosophy that in no way equaled the storybook "order".
Most religions have at least one human who was deified and became a god. Most religions also have at least one deity who is jealous of interactions with other deities.
Yahweh told the Hebrews that he was a jealous god who would not tolerate other gods made more important than himself (thou shalt not have any gods before me) even though he was a lesser god than El who was the god of creation. The Jews solved that problem by combining the two. Yahweh was one of the many faces of El - part of Elohim. Still a single deity but different aspects of the primal deity. Yahweh was the war, mountain, and thunder god aspect of El. It was very useful to have a war god fighting with you when you were the invading force in an area that was new to you.
Jesus in a grand example of a deified human just as Sargon or others. The Catholic church, in deciding whether Jesus was god or not used circular logic to make the decision. In order to forgive all sin Jesus had to be god. Since he died on the cross to forgive our sins he must be god. Jesus is god because without the forgiveness of sins there is no church. Jesus is therefore god. There are some problems with the single god aspect in Christianity because if Jesus is god why would he say about his return that "only the father knows, not the son nor the spirit, but only the father". If they were the same deity wouldn't they all know everything?
Everything religious has been and will always be appropriated by other faiths or practitioners who have to connection to a specific religion. People traveling in the ancient past celebrated with the people where they were, hence the saying, "when in Rome do as the Romans do." My first tradition was distantly connected to the family traditions of Italy. It is said that a group of families (all Streghan) left Italy and traveled great distances taking bits of different faiths and cultures as they traveled. At around 600-500 BCE they were back in Greece because they also leaned from Pythagoras and his teachings. There were bits of Roman, Greek, Egyptian, and middle eastern aspects to the faith. There was also the belief that one should live a magikal path in every day of their life. This was the Order of the Phoenix. The magikal aspect of this path in probably why the name was used in the Harry Potter stories. It is also possible that the author never heard of the Order and used it because of the sound of it. It has caused some criticism of my claim to have belonged to the Order before it was even published in the books - "how dare I use a name to claim my history before it even existed!" I just have to laugh because the Order that I belonged to was a true religion with a mandated philosophy that in no way equaled the storybook "order".
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