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Post by Deleted on May 9, 2009 15:41:55 GMT 2
Wolferin, that's because Dionysian Nights messed up his head from too much wine! Btw: wine they had our ancestors and beautiful women that's why the Romans came here ;D oh,and the gold!
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Post by Heer E. Tik on May 10, 2009 8:17:28 GMT 2
For me I can say I have my own religion - a little of everything I like. I like the strenght and vitality of Asatru, the idea of reincarnation in the eastern believes, the deep mysticism of the Slav paganism, the freedom of Tangrism, the wisdom in Koran, the idea "God is love" in Christianity. But sticking to one definite religion seems to me like putting in frames. What is Tangrism? I've never heard of it before. I agree with you Wolferin that the most meaningful personal experience with the spiritual matters comes as a result of making them exactly this: personal. Absorbing something that resonates within, internalizing it and assigning your own personal meaning to it that will be true to you and matter to you regardless of what anyone else thinks or says. I think this is actually the closest to the "real" paganism as it was... It wasn't a doctrine, it wasn't a set of beliefs, but a mixture of different belief systems that varied according to personal needs of people in different regions. Even within any branch of religions/pagan practices/beliefs, there will be variations and even contradictions - because different things matter to different people, some relate to some things more than others. Variation is in fact needed for folklore to survive, to be reabsorbed anew in each generation, as it takes on new meanings for younger folks so that it will stay relevant. Personal interpretation is everything. But lack of variation leads to ossification... in which case it is simply discarded as "old wives' tales" and irrelevant to today, or else turns into dogma with a set code of proper interpretation where all other interpretations are frowned upon. It's a pity that paganism today is so often seen as - and has indeed been turned into - yet another "religion", a concrete belief system with certain presuppositions and notions and dogmas. Expectations of how to behave, how to think, how to act, if one is to be "considered" a "pagan." In doing your own thing, in believing what matters to you personally, you're actually way more "pagan" than some pagans I've come across over the years.
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Post by Bartbär on May 10, 2009 20:46:59 GMT 2
Paganism is all about personal interpretation and what everything means to you. It is at the core of every worthwhile philosophy. The "doctrine" of dogmatism and the like is very negative for any belief system, both personal and universal. That is why paganism strives with individuality, it is hard to take all the symbols, history, and philosophies (most of which are found personally without any direct guidance) and throw them into a pile of "thou shalls" and "thou shall nots" for there is no foundation for such a concept to be constructed upon.
I guess that is why I've grown a little weary of these constant uprisings of various pagan and heathen organizations that preach dogma instead of a gentle guidance towards personal realization and transcendentalism. Small groups, tribes, and small collections of like-minded Heathens who create their own way of life is perfectly fine, afterall that is what a tribe is about: cooperation. As soon as the turns to organization, all thought flies away, and is replaced with that mind-set to "keep the rules in place". All of which is harmful to not only the group leaders themselves, but also to the very principles and virtues they are trying to acquire.
As for contradictions, those are bound to be found anywhere and everywhere. The span of the mind is so vast that it is impossible to remain completely consistent on all thoughts. Even the greatest thinkers of this or any time can be found supposedly "contradicting" themselves, and with good reason. Contradictions do not prove 100% that there are gross inconsistencies, but instead prove that there is a personal understanding which is able to link "opposing" ideas together.
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Post by Nordis on May 10, 2009 22:56:39 GMT 2
Isn't there another thread for religions and beliefs? Of course you can carry on here as well as you already have a good start but I'd love to hear some reasons why you believe what you believe. What makes you think that there's a guy in the sky that strikes lightnings with his hammer or turns you into a salt statue and hails you with brimstone? Is it because you've read about it somewhere or is there any genuine personal experiences that have brought you to your conclusion? And most of all: why does it make sense to you? I personally find it pretty hard to believe to any gods or goddesses that have a personality and a character. I've been trying to see behind all of the religions and figure out why people started to think planets and stars as characters that affect our lives and why they explained nature's phenomenons as someone's doing. I don't quite accept the theory that people were stupid back then and explained everything with the first piece of nonsense that came to their minds. Curiosity comes naturally to humans but would it cause such an urge to explain everything with something that doesn't have any kind of relation to the actual phenomenon? A red dot in the sky protecting your armies in a war? Why would it make sense? I support the general theory that all of the religions began from the worshipping of the sun. But why anyone thought that the sun won't rise if it's not worshipped and comforted with sacrifices in the first place? It has risen every morning and spring has come every year, excluding maybe some occasional volcano eruptions that have blocked the sun for months in some parts of the earth. Still, I want to know the actual reason that made people think that any worship is somehow necessary. I don't think it just popped into someone's mind one day.
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Post by Bartbär on May 10, 2009 23:27:01 GMT 2
It is impossible to ever know the origin of these things or how they came to be, and it almost seems silly to guess, but I'm with you in that I've wondered these same concepts.
It is good to have mystery, it is good to accept ignorance and put stories to the things we do and do not understand. I believe that the continual search for not truth but fact (since truth does not need fact in order to remain true) and constant evidence with advances in science and technology are bringing us away from the tranquil unknown and into an over amount of knowledge that only leads us to question the very meaning of our existence. We need meaning in our lives, and with the possession of a mind it is hard for us to accept anything less than that. If we find the answer to everything, then there are no more questions left to ask; eventually, we are only less fulfilled and more disgusted. More to come.
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Post by Deleted on May 11, 2009 7:47:34 GMT 2
I thought bout that too, Nordis..that we've started to post our religious condition first, but in a way tis good. Reasonable and decent explanations of the way religions came to life, l've read many Moons ago in Mircea Eliade's books bout the history of religions.
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