neowiccan ([info]neowiccan) wrote,
@ 2009-11-04 19:56:00
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Current mood: pleased

devouring edward butler
edward has been striking gold with me a lot lately, and since he recently gave me permission to post his stuff...er....without asking his permission, i've got to pass this one along.
may be something all of you polytheists have always just assumed, but for me it's something that for some reason i've felt but never really been able to work through. then when it's put so clearly like this i want to thump my forehead and quaff a V-8.
this was in response to a question about whether an egyptian god (i think it's horus but i get lost in the egyptian pantheon very quickly) with two similar titles is two distinct gods or the same one.
'My encyclopedia is called a "theological" encyclopedia for just this reason; I don't distinguish between traits deities displayed earlier and later in Egyptian history, because I assume at the outset that the Gods revealed different aspects of themselves as historical circumstances provided the opportunity for different aspects to be experienced.'
i don't know how to change fonts for emphasis, but this part 'I assume at the outset that the Gods revealed different aspects of themselves as historical circumstances provided the opportunity for different aspects to be experienced' is what i lurve.
i've been inundated lately with folks who get angry because i don't share their belief that the gods are flawed and evolve like humans, and point to differing mythologies and interpretations to prove their point. my belief is more than edward's explanation, but that gives me a firm footing from which not only to explain, but explore.
khairete
suz


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[info]ursus_of_unrv
2009-11-05 01:28 am UTC (link)
i've been inundated lately with folks who get angry because i don't share their belief that the gods are flawed and evolve like humans, and point to differing mythologies and interpretations to prove their point

They get mad at you? This is one of the things that bug me about Hellenism. People spend so much heated energy on debating ultimately unprovable things like theology. I think people should just agree to disagree and move on, and leave the heated theological discussions to Christians.

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[info]neowiccan
2009-11-05 05:08 pm UTC (link)
not so much in hellenism lately (although it's absolutely happened in the past) but in the more wicca-based larger community. i'm with you on agreeing to disagree and moving on.
khairete
suz

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[info]ursus_of_unrv
2009-11-05 05:17 pm UTC (link)
Oh, Wiccans. Well between you, me and everyone else reading this, I've found dealing with the Wiccan community more trouble than it is worth. :-)

Cheers.

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[info]hewet_ka_ptah
2009-11-05 04:26 am UTC (link)
I love all of this

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[info]melia_suez
2009-11-05 04:28 pm UTC (link)
Isn't that I great comment?! He perfectly described in only a sentence why I "lump" everything that I read into about a deity into a single description of the deity and not worry about historical context. I've never seen the gods as flawed or evolving either, realizing that this puts me in a minority position. I don't think it is worth debating because it is all just speculation any way.

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[info]neowiccan
2009-11-05 05:09 pm UTC (link)
i hear ya!
khairete
suz

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[info]chironcentaur
2009-11-05 06:18 pm UTC (link)
The only time I ever get pissy and angry with someone over a stated belief is when they indicate that of course everyone else believes exactly as they do, or if they act like their beliefs are so self evident that you'd have to be a moron not to see the light of their wisdom (that one I run into *a lot* with the Hellenics, particularly the NeoPlatonic ones). Other than that, really, who gives a shit? *shakes head*

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[info]lemon_cupcake
2009-11-06 04:31 pm UTC (link)
i've been inundated lately with folks who get angry because i don't share their belief that the gods are flawed and evolve like humans, and point to differing mythologies and interpretations to prove their point.

I've always been troubled by the willingness of many pagans to live in the frame Christianity has created for us, effectively ceding to monotheism the realm of Being and transcendence and restricting our Gods to the realm of Becoming and immanence. This is troubling for so many reasons.

First, because it comes from buying into a completely skewed reading of the history of ideas, in which the rise of philosophical thought was a rejection of pagan religiosity, and thus pagans should reject any of its fruits. This has the unfortunate corollary of abandoning a huge contribution made by pagans to world civilization, because last time I checked, no important philosophical movement was originated by monotheists prior to the modern era (I'm counting medieval Christian and Muslim philosophy as essentially Aristotelian). Most educated monotheists innately understand that they are in possession of a stolen legacy here; ironically, most pagans are not. But this rejection of metaphysics also forces pagans into positions leading to relativism and skepticism, which is a kind of unilateral disarmament in any debate, and to be a pagan in this society is to be bombarded all the time by subtle or overt monotheistic argumentation.

Second, because it comes from buying into a bad metaphysics in which positing any kind of transcendence denigrates the natural world and the body, or in which any recourse to formal thought has to mean the reduction of difference to the same and of multiplicity to unity. This is largely the result of the distortions introduced by monotheistic apologetics into metaphysics in the Middle Ages, as well as just to the general "dumbing down" of philosophy after the closure of the Academy at Athens and the purging of the faculty at the Academy in Alexandria, after which philosophy was no longer in a position to be any sort of counterweight to Biblical orthodoxy for hundreds of years.

I know that it seems to some that I am dogmatic, but all that I am ever trying to do is to hold options open that others seek to foreclose. To me this is a matter of preserving a legacy and handing it on to future generations in a better condition than we found it.

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