How do you conceptualize the gods? In a more Homeric way, as beings involved in mortal affairs. In more a of Jungian way, as personifications of humanity's collective unconscious? In a Platonic way as unchanging eternal beings? Or something else entirely?
>>18648347My perspective as a norse pagan:The gods represent the unity of perfect action with perfect essence.Action without essence is random and fleeting. Everything acts on the world in some way or another, whether its good, bad, or indifferent. Anything which persists in a state of action for long enough will begin to contradict itself/ make errors. A river that brings life-sustaining water to an ecosystem can also flood and destroy it.Essence is the codification of what makes you you. It's your perspective, your opinions, principles, etc. Essence without action is static and unchanging. Essence with action is diluted and warped.When Odin sacrificed himself on the world tree, he offered himself (his capacity for action) to himself (the essence of Odin: knowledge, wisdom, divination, ecstatic fury). Perfectly uniting these things is what makes him a god, and we know the union is perfect because Odin reincarnates as himself at the end of Runatal. He does not suffer an impediment to action nor is there a drift in his essence upon being reborn, as is the case for men.
>>18648347Trojan war, Zues won and Apollo lost. Worship means take an offering (cattle usually) to the temple and barter for the services of the god's people with their Priest.That is the essence of Greek religion.
>>18648507What's this have to do with Norse paganism? I could have ChatGPT write up a fictional mythology and say all of this about whatever fantasy gods it makes
>>18648520>what does Odin have to do with norse paganismwe just don't know
>>18648347Not pagan, but looking into paganism as having better values that Christianity when it comes to honor, Glory, strength etc. Exactly as you said, I look at them as manifestations of our collective unconscious. They are archetypes mixed with cultural tropes, in a purely Jungian way. I also appreciate the fact that the incoherences are obvious hence it is clearly symbolic/metaphors (aside from the actual cult) rather than trying to be taken litteraly or saying "it's a parable!! No, it's actually the word of god hence it's law!!" when convenient, like Abrahamic religion do
>>18648347I lean most down Jungian way of thinking. Makes the most logical sense to me, while still providing a spiritual basis for philosophy. The gods are metaphysical philosophers to me.
>>18648347Believe it or not, they are the same people.
>>18648347Platonic
>>18648347The Neoplatonic view combines all of these. The transcendent or archetypal aspects (henads) identified by Jung would refer to higher expressions of the serei (or chain) that permeates throughout the stratas of created existence whereas the Homeric depiction of the deities would refer to the 'lower' expressions of the deities as they operate within the mortal realm. It's similar in a way to how Jesus is thought to be both the human person of Christ and the Logos.
>>18648347Like in Buddhist and Hindu cosmology where they are inhabitants of the higher spheres of existence living in more subtle bodies or being entirely non physical. They are at war with the Asuras, beings that are the reason for suffering and created Abrahamism. In the Age of Atlantis before the younger dryas the world was different and the gods were in contact with earth and we lived in a golden age. The Holocene is a post apocalyptic world and the Asuras brought to the present world.
>>18648561Is that you Robert Graves
>>18648507That's really interesting thank you.
>>18648507saved
Jungian archetypes are the same as Platonic forms. Jung = Plato = Alchemy = Orphism = Hellenism
>>18648507LARP
>>18649076Just found out that in Buddhist cosmology the Gods have to take a coarser form to be seen by those of a lower realm, just like in Homer.
Eternal and Cosmic Beings that effect our mortal lives through our collective unconsciousness
>>18648529Why Odin *specifically*? You could pattern-match that with tons of other gods
>>18648347You are asking a question to fucking Indians my man; this board has more of them than anywhere else on this site except maybe /pol/.
>>18648347>How do you conceptualize the gods? In a more Homeric way, as beings involved in mortal affairs. In more a of Jungian way, as personifications of humanity's collective unconscious? In a Platonic way as unchanging eternal beings?Well, I've done offerings and sacrifices, and that stuff worked, so they're definitely not just archetypes or metaphors. I'm still unsure if it's the first or the third one.
>>18650336Are you now asking me why I as a norse pagan worship the Aesir rather than gods from a different religion???
>>18650355There are more Indian Christians in picrel alone than there are anons on this board. Any claim that they’re somehow responsible for online paganism is laughable when you consider the fact that every single MAGA “Christ is king” account on Twitter is run by Indians
>>18650558
>>18650558Also Brahman is basically the Abrahamic God but for Hindus, while Krishna is the incarnation of God just like Jesus. Hinduism is not Paganism, at least most forms. Hindus openly admit they're monotheists.
>>18650541Yes, your explanation had little to nothing to do with North gods specifically. It would be like if you asked someone why they believed in Islam and they said "the Koran is printed in ink".
>>18650981>attempting to parse the meaning and significance of the Runatal section of Havamal has nothing to do with norse paganismI honestly don't even know how to reply to this, other than to just say that I vehemently disagree.
>>18648561Sure, and that's Ishtar on the right. She's also Aphrodite to the Greeks. She really got passed around quite a lot over the millennia. Virtually everyone but the Egyptians had Ishtar in their pantheon at one point or another.
>>18651011From an outside perspective it looks like thin pattern-matching you could do with genuinely anything. "When Odin sacrificed himself on the world tree, he offered himself (his capacity for action) to himself (the essence of Odin: knowledge, wisdom, divination, ecstatic fury). Perfectly uniting these things is what makes him a god, and we know the union is perfect because Odin reincarnates as himself at the end of Runatal. He does not suffer an impediment to action nor is there a drift in his essence upon being reborn, as is the case for men."How is this any different from me just making up based on 2 Kings 6:1-7 to verify that Elisha is a real prophet:"When Elisha cast the piece of wood into the water, he offered wood - living, organic potential - to water, the realm of chaos and dissolution, in order to recover iron, the hardened embodiment of human action. Perfectly uniting these three principles is what makes Elisha a prophet, and we know the union is perfect because the iron rises without ceasing to be iron. It neither dissolves into the water nor takes on the nature of the wood through which it is restored, as ordinary things lose or alter their essence when swallowed by chaos. When the prophet reaches out his hand and takes it, human agency is reunited with its proper instrument: action, nature, and prophetic wisdom have become one."
>>18651048>From an outside perspective it looks like thin pattern-matching you could do with genuinely anything.If I am just "pattern-matching," as you say, then I'm pattern-matching based on various different textual sources of norse pagan beliefs, so again, I don't see what the problem is. I'm using the text of Runatal to explain inconsistencies in depictions of reincarnation for the gods (as in Runatal itself, but also Voluspa) and contrasting it against the cycle of rebirth for men as depicted in the various heroic lays of Helgi. If you think it's bad analysis, that's fine. We can just agree to disagree. But to say that what I'm saying is somehow untethered from heathenism despite my interpretations relying on a multitude of heathen sources and nothing else is ridiculous.
>>18651112>despite my interpretations relying on a multitude of heathen sources and nothing elseIt's just ad hoc allegorical eisegesis. People do this with all sorts of religious texts. They take some passage, say "wouldn't it be cool if this REALLY meant..." and then make something up. The things you're getting it to say are so divorced from the text itself that saying the text is their source doesn't make sense.I could take the same passages and say:"When Odin sacrificed himself on the world tree, he exposed the division between himself, (his capacity for action) and himself (the essence of Odin: knowledge, wisdom, divination, and ecstatic fury). Far from being united, these things can be reconciled only through violence and self-destruction. We know that this union remains imperfect because Odin reincarnates merely as himself at the end of the Rúnatal. He cannot transcend the identity whose internal fracture made the sacrifice necessary. He therefore suffers both an impediment to action and a failure of essence, as is not the case for a god, whose actions would flow without conflict from what he is."You can reach opposite conclusions with equal ease since it ultimately means little.
>>18648347I don't know 4chan, aren't gods supposed to be unknowable?
>>18651372>Odin reincarnates merely as himself at the end of the Rúnatal.then under that reading, men are supreme gods, because they are reborn with divergent identities, as in the heroic lays of Helgi Hundingsbana, and that the gods are thus subordinate to us, despite the fact that our minds and bodies are the handiwork of their "astkir," (loving creation), which is a prima facie ridiculous interpretation.
>>18648507>>18651431>>18651372>all these posts pontificating about Odin sacrificing himself on the world tree and associated psychobabble and spirtuality>not realizing that almost everything you know about norse mythology is post-Christianizatio nof the region via missioniares and that the bulk of these stories are actually inspired by Christianity and not the other way around e.g. even Ragnarok is inspired by the apocalypse in Revelation and there is no evidence for this or Odin on the tree etc in the pre-Christian eraHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAneo-pagans are so funnyyour gods are all dead, their worshippers are bones, their temples and high places are dust and ash, all of their real rituals and traditions have been utterly forgotten, their myths carried away like sand on the wind. You are NEVER getting the glory days back, you don't even know what they actually were. YOU LOST. JESUS CHRIST IS KING, LORD, AND GOD, NOW AND FOREVERCRY TO YOUR FALSE FALLEN GODS, POUR OUT YOUR LIBATIONS AND BEG THEM TO SAVE YOU, YOU WILL ONLY HEAR SILENCE>Wherefore should the heathen say, Where is now their God? But our God is in the heavens: he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased. Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands. They have mouths, but they speak not: eyes have they, but they see not: They have ears, but they hear not: noses have they, but they smell not: They have hands, but they handle not: feet have they, but they walk not: neither speak they through their throat. They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them.
>>18648535You understand India is a pagan society, right? What is the honor and glory of the average Indian?The peak of Christianity in the West coincided with chivalry for a reason.>The first noted support for chivalric vocation, or the establishment of a knightly class to ensure the sanctity and legitimacy of Christianity, was written in 930 by Odo, abbot of Cluny, in the Vita of St. Gerald of Aurillac, which argued that the sanctity of Christ and Christian doctrine can be demonstrated through the legitimate unsheathing of the "sword against the enemy".[42] In the 11th century, the concept of a "knight of Christ" (miles Christi) gained currency in France, Spain, and Italy.[38] The two are easily reconcilable. Stop spouting this low-IQ Nietzschean bullshit.
>>18651501>>not realizing that almost everything you know about norse mythology is post-Christianizatio nof the region via missioniares and that the bulk of these stories are actually inspired by Christianityall of the similarities that cumslurping christians obsess over are superficial at best, which is how we know that documents like the codex regius are authentically pagan.You alleging that ragnarok is derived from the biblical end times is proof of this, because besides the fact that there is a world-ending event and then a reformation afterwards that could be conceived of as heaven made manifest on earth, the arc of the bible is ultimately linear, whereas Voluspa and the myth of Ragnarok are cyclical. Voluspa begins with heaven on earth and ends with heaven on earth, but in each case, the forces of evil signal the eventual degradation and destruction of the world. The bible ends with an ending. Voluspa ends by looping back around to the beginning and doing everything all over again.Any similarities you will try to identify will follow in a similar vein.
>>18651501Every Catholic seminarian since the thirteenth century has been trained in a metaphysical system whose structural backbone is the work of a pagan philosopher, whose school the Catholic Church had worked three centuries to destroy.>your gods are all deadYours are based on pagan gods
>>18651538Catholics don't even deny this though. The emergence of a monotheistic revelation among the pagans surely lends more support to Christianity than anything else. Effectively saying that any polytheism will come to realize the unity and goodness behind the gods.
>>18651547Nope, those ideas are strictly polytheist and have no relation to anything monotheist whatsoever. Cope
>>18651501What answer do Christians have to Jesus apparently believing Noah was real, a global flood really happened and not knowing that the “abomination of desolation” in Daniel just refers to Antiochus IV Epiphanes sacrificing a swine to Zeus on the altar in the temple during the Maccabean era rather than a future event or that both animal sacrifice and kings being anointed with oil are both just widespread traditions in the Near East that existed before Yahweh intervened so it's kinda odd that creator of the universe is so heavily tied to these local traditions that weren't even unique to Judaism so it's even odder that the whole point of the Messiah (Anointed One) just comes from this local regional tradition that isn't even just specific to Judaism?
>>18651550They obviously do because Plato/Socrates identify the Good as the source of all goodness and in the Republic argue against the presentation of Gods as capable of evil. The Christian move is to identify the Good with a being and not solely a concept.You can read the dynamical process towards a monotheistic creator that is all-good in the actual writing of people at the time. The influence of their philosophy onto Christianity was highly organic because of it.Really, the smarter thing to do is to stand back from all this and to stop with the stupid team sports of pagan vs Christian because the boundaries between them are unclear. Any neo-pagan movement in the West is going to be overwhelmingly influenced by the millennia of Christianity before it anyway.
>>18650125>>18650355>>18651501>>18651510>>18651547Modern e-christians are just another form of redditors. The fedora meme has become projection.
>>18651552Socrates’s last request before his execution was literally to sacrifice a rooster to Asclepius and he believed he was following the will of Apollo based on the Oracle of Delphi proclaiming him to be the wisest man in Athens. The actual reason he was executed was because several of his followers became the thirty tyrants who terrorized Athens (hence why he was charged with “corrupting the youth.” Athens declared a political amnesty after restoring democracy, meaning that the court could not legally charge Socrates for past treason, so vague charges like “corrupting the youth” allowed prosecutors to punish him for the results of his teachings without violating the amnesty). The idea that he “rejected pagan gods” is a myth, what he did reject was the anthropomorphic view of the gods and the myths surrounding them, not the gods’ existence or worship which he viewed as legitimate. When Socrates claimed that true gods shouldn’t be humanlike or temperamental like the myths portray them as, he wasn’t using it as proof the gods weren’t real but rather as proof that Homer was slandering the gods. There’s a massive difference between “I don’t believe Zeus had affairs” and “I don’t believe in Zeus at all.”Not only that, many of his critiques of mythology also apply to Christianity and later opponents of Christianity like Celsus, Porphyry of Tyre, and Emperor Julian used those exact same arguments in their critiques of Christianity. Socrates believed that the divine are perfect, transcendent beings and in this worldview, the idea of a god becoming a man of flesh and blood and allowing himself to be crucified and experience any sort of pain or suffering is downright degrading. The Hebrew Bible also depicts God as a wrathful, jealous being prone to emotional outbursts which is incompatible with the Socratic belief that the divine must be changeless and beyond the need for emotion.
>>18651547>The emergence of a monotheistic revelation among the pagans surely lends more support to Christianity than anything elseThat "revelation" is a product of Neoplatonist philosophy, which a anonymous monk + church fathers + emperor Justinian I stole and took the credit for during 6th century. >Catholics don't even deny this though.The leaders of the church don't deny it, anymore, but the average believer doesn't know anything about the historicity of these things. Catholics still have no problem taking credit for stolen Platonist philosophy. >"Ps.-Dionysius"
>>18651552>>18651560Same with other Greco-Roman philosophers. They did not reject the Greek gods but rather they rejected the myths surrounding them which are entirely different stances. Plato was a zealot polytheist who affirmed Zeus as the god of gods and outlined in his Republic that impiety towards the gods should be punishable, meaning that any Christian who calls Zeus a false god or demon would face imprisonment or execution in Plato’s ideal society. Even then, the total rejection of mythology wasn’t a unanimous position amongst pagan philosophers. Aristotle, despite rejecting the historicity of myths, still had a more positive view of them than Plato did and again, Aristotle still believed in the Greek gods. The idea of a prime mover does not nullify polytheism since gods generally aren’t viewed as omnipotent or the absolute source of everything. Many philosophers like Plutarch, Proclus, and Theagenes of Rhegium also treated myths as allegories rather than literal history.
>>18651560He argues Homer is slandering the Gods because he identifies the Gods with the Good which is a single cosmic principle underpinning their existence. He even frequently swaps from the plural to the singular. The links to Christianity are obvious and there's a clear reason why his work was preserved.
>>18651563>They did not reject the Greek gods but rather they rejected the myths surrounding them which are entirely different stancesIt depends on the reason for the rejection. If you are arguing that the Gods are facets on the same cosmic-spiritual body, then it's starting to look rather like monotheism. This is the case with Plato. You call him a zealot but he wasn't zealous for the type of Greek religion understood by the majority of Greeks. Your post is written confusedly as if to suggest what Plato calls Zeus and what others call Zeus is the same when it isn't.
>>18651573Ok it’s obvious you don’t know what you’re talking about. Socrates didn’t actually write anything down because he had an intense hatred of writing for some reason, everything we know about him comes from contemporaries rather than Socrates himself
>>18651592What a stupidly irrelevant thing to say. Everybody knows this which is why Socrates is just a shorthand for "Plato's account of Socrates".
>>18651591>then it's starting to look rather like monotheismThe Ancient Egyptians believed every god was a manifestation of Amun-Ra, were they monotheists? What about Hinduism since pretty much every Hindu believes in Brahman? Monism is not monotheism nor incompatible with polytheism and you are retarded for thinking so
>>18651591He was referring to the same Zeus worshipped in temples and festivals, Zeus is Zeus.
>>18651573>The links to Christianity are obvious and there's a clear reason why his work was preserved.>Links to ChristianityAre artificial and a reflection of church council politics, not organic "christian philosophy" whatsoever. There is nothing that resembles Platonist philosophy which you can derive from biblical scripture, until 'Dionysius the Areopagite' (and the stolen literature attributed to that name) was invented by the church >there's a clear reason why his work was preservedIn spite of Christian political agenda & their apologetics against it, sure. Christians instigated multiple "holy wars" against paganism, following laws they invented to close down pagan temples & academies, as soon as they gained imperial authority to legally justify it. The churches have a history of covering up and lying about their own legacy, demonizing "pagans" who resist and reject their cult, and even silencing their own bishops and church fathers who opposed the (privately) politically-agreed upon narratives about scripture which change greatly over the centuries.
>>18651602But not the same Zeus recounted in Homer or the myriad other stories at the time, which was a major part of Greek religious life.
>>18651600They weren't monotheists as such but they were on a path towards monotheism which you can see by tracking belief in Amun-Ra over time. He wasn't always the supreme deity but increasingly took over that position. You see this in the Biblical OT as well where God goes from urging the Israelites not to worship other Gods to then affirming he is their God and finally the (only) God. The historic record shows something similar with him initially being a storm God in part of a bigger pantheon.Monotheism is practically a consequent of the expansion of human consciousness and intellect and any paganism that is serious and not just for show or a stand-in for politics will end up back here.
>>18651604It's not artificial, the identification of a metaphysical Goodness behind the Gods is mirrored in Christianity which goes a step further and identifies God with the Good.
>>18651597I brought it up because the dumbass claimed that “Christians preserved Socrates’s writings” even though Socrates wrote nothing to begin with. He does not know what he is talking about
>>18651510>You understand India is a pagan society, right? What is the honor and glory of the average Indian?It's not Brahman is more similar to the Abrahamic God and Krishna to Christ than Pagan deities>The peak of Christianity in the West coincided with chivalry for a reasonNo, it didn't. The peak of Christianity coincided with the early middle ages, ie the dark ages. Chivalry coincided with the 12th Century Renaissance which was a revival (albeit small) of pagan values. Gothic art which developed during that time was characterized by themes that were less Christian then the previous romanesque art and had even pagan themes such as gargoyles and green men, the buildings of emperor Frederick II had even more pagan themes.Chivalry was even stronger among the heretical albigensians with the poetry of courtly love focusing on love for a woman instead of Christ.
>>18651552>the boundaries between them are unclearThe insurmountable wall is the Christian notion of original sin and grace by way of submission. That boundary is extremely stark
>>18651620>is mirrored in ChristianityYeah it's mirrored because it was developed in Platonism, middle-Platonism, and Neoplatonism for centuries before Christianity took up the ideas and injected them into their theology.
>>18651591That is not monotheism. Monotheism would be a total rejection of the Greek pantheon, which these philosophers did not do. Believing in a first principle does not require you to reject gods like Artemis and Apollo since they are viewed as intermediaries or emanations. Believing the gods come from a single source is not monotheism unless you also believe Hinduism is monotheist. To project a Christian mentality on Greek philosophers is an anachronism and as I previously said, their beliefs were literally at odds with Christianity.>Not only that, many of his critiques of mythology also apply to Christianity and later opponents of Christianity like Celsus, Porphyry of Tyre, and Emperor Julian used those exact same arguments in their critiques of Christianity. Socrates believed that the divine are perfect, transcendent beings and in this worldview, the idea of a god becoming a man of flesh and blood and allowing himself to be crucified and experience any sort of pain or suffering is downright degrading. The Hebrew Bible also depicts God as a wrathful, jealous being prone to emotional outbursts which is incompatible with the Socratic belief that the divine must be changeless and beyond the need for emotion.Also, these philosophers defended traditional religious practices as valid, which is again not monotheist.
>>18651551>What answer do Christians have to Jesus apparently believing Noah was realNoah was real>a global flood really happeneda flood of the Mesopotamian world definitely happened>not knowing that the “abomination of desolation” in Daniel just refers to Antiochus IV Epiphanes sacrificing a swine to Zeus on the altar in the temple during the Maccabean era rather than a future eventit refers to both>or that both animal sacrifice and kings being anointed with oil are both just widespread traditions in the Near East that existed before Yahweh intervened you already answered your own question; YHWH intervened to manage and sanctify the human-invented traditions>so it's even odder that the whole point of the Messiah (Anointed One) just comes from this local regional tradition that isn't even just specific to Judaism?It isn't, part of the profoundness of the Incarnation of God as Jesus is not only God willingly becoming a human and living a real full human life but that he even carried out his mission in line with human-invented customs too.The difference between the pagan gods and the Biblical God is that the pagan gods are separate to humanity and don't love humans and their human ways but are weirdly just like humans, whereas the Biblical God is beyond humans but does love humans and their human ways and is close to them to the point of becoming one of them for real
If it's alright I'm going offroad for a little bit. My current definition of Gods: entities that have influence on humans. From this relatively simple perspective Gods can theoratically be certain funghi's. Yea that may sound a bit strange but hear me out though. I recently read some stuff about scientists that discovered a form of communication being used by certain funghi's that show similarities with how we humans communicatie but in a telepathic way. Like with some kind of words that form sentences and are being broadcasted. They think it was ment to tell others where to find food but who knows, it may just have been some gossep about random stuff. Ayway, if they have a similar way of communicating they may actually be able to 'talk' with us by using telepathy and thereby have influence on us. Like Gods.Perhaps they're able to read our minds and store that information in some kind of biological black box. Maybe this is why 'the bad guys' are desperately trying to destroy all those forests. They dont't want the funghi Gods to tattle on them.And maybe that's why we're all being distracted constantly. So our minds are never quite enough to hear what the funghi's are broadcasting.Some believe that a secret translation of the Bible actually says that Christianity was originally based on funghi stuff.Anyway, a quick glance told me that the world of funghi's is pretty interesting. One certain funghi (forgot the name) seems to be some kind of forest moderator. It somehow senses when there are too many of a certain animal species (in this documentary it was a specific kind of ants) and then releases 'spores' in the air that enter the brain, basically take it over and causes the ants to walk up a grass straw where it bites the grass and stays there untill it is dead. It gets weirder. Then from its head, some kind of horn grows out of there that spreads more spores and infect more ants. So when you see someone climbing a tree and biting it, you now know why.
>>18652415>Noah was realThat's what Christians and Jews believe. But there's no historical evidence that Noah was real, other than some cult fiction written by Hebrew scribes which cult followers agree with each other as "is real history, not fiction".>a flood of the Mesopotamian world definitely happenedThat's not "global". That's local to a specific region in the middle-east.>part of the profoundness of the Incarnation of God as Jesus is not only God willingly becoming a human and living a real full human life but that he even carried out his mission in line with human-invented customs too.That isn't "profound". That's Semitic cult nonsense which you've psychologically conditioned yourself to assume is 'true'.>The difference between the pagan gods and the Biblical God is that the pagan gods are separate to humanity and don't love humansNo the difference is pagan gods inspire philosophy which lead to the development of reason, morality, and the concept of law in civilization. Pagan gods are what gave Hebrew scribes the template to invent their biblical god from.
