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Author Topic: Objections against the terms of Paganism and Heathendom among Hellenists  (Read 15032 times)

Haganrix

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Quote from: Melamphoros;103181
No.  I personally view them all as separate entities until "proven" (or at least a close approximation given the difficulty to prove such things) otherwise.

Thus you don't believe in personal Gods and universal divine powers? Are the Gods just archetyps that may be changed at any occasion?
« Last Edit: March 27, 2013, 05:06:30 pm by Haganrix »

Rhyshadow

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Quote from: Haganrix;103175
Don't we have the same Gods but just consider them from different cultural-coined views? Are there several multiverses? Isn't the world we live in one? Isn't Zeus the Dyaus-Pitar of the Vedes, the Jove of the Romans and the old germanic God Ziu?

 
As a Hard-Polytheist, I have to agree with Mel

Zeus, Odin, An Daghda, Ra all may have similar positions - father of the gods, for lack of a better term, as part of their areas of responsibility - but they are SO different in the details.

Haganrix

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Quote from: Rhyshadow;103185
As a Hard-Polytheist, I have to agree with Mel

Zeus, Odin, An Daghda, Ra all may have similar positions - father of the gods, for lack of a better term, as part of their areas of responsibility - but they are SO different in the details.

 

And that was not coined by human culture? Are the Gods dependent on our developments?

Rhyshadow

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Quote from: Haganrix;103188
And that was not coined by human culture? Are the Gods dependent on our developments?

 
Jury is still out on that - were the Gods 'formed' by perceptions of certain cultures, or did the different Gods split groups off from the whole and claim them for their own.

All I know is that when I work with Flidais (Celtic goddess of the hunt who uses a bow) the feelings and perceptions of personality I get from her is quite different than when I work with Skadi (Norse goddess of bowhunting)

Melamphoros

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Quote from: Haganrix;103184
Thus you don't believe in personal Gods and universal divine powers?


Not quite sure what you're getting at.  Also, as a note you may want to avoid starting statements with "thus" as it comes off as presumptuous.

Quote

 Are the Gods just archetyps that may be changed at any occasion?

 
No.  I'm a hard polytheist meaning I believe gods are real beings that are completely independent of one another.


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OfThespiae

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Quote from: Haganrix;103175
Don't we have the same Gods but just consider them from different cultural-coined views? Are there several multiverses? Isn't the world we live in one? Isn't Zeus the Dyaus-Pitar of the Vedes, the Jove of the Romans and the old germanic God Ziu?

I don't believe so. You're certainly welcome to believe that, but I personally see too many differences between, say, Lugh of the Irish pantheon and Apollon (or Hermes, if we're going by the ancient interpretatio) of the Hellenic one, or between Athene and Minerva, that aren't easily reconciled by just claiming it's a different cultural filter.
 
Quote from: Haganrix;103184
Thus you don't believe in personal Gods and universal divine powers? Are the Gods just archetyps that may be changed at any occasion?

I believe in personal daimones and universal divine powers that tribal deities tap into, but a single collective of deities or a single multi-faceted deity that's somehow all, doesn't really match my experiences.

As to the archetypes question, I think that the idea of archetypes can help explain certain roles of the gods to people unfamiliar, but that believing the gods are restricted to an archetype, even if allowing that archetype to morph with changing ideals, is to basically deny the gods agency and individuality. But as a hard polytheist, of course I'd think like that.
 
Quote from: Haganrix;103188
And that was not coined by human culture? Are the Gods dependent on our developments?

 
Yes. They were here before us, and will be here after. They're the deathless ones.

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Quote from: Rhyshadow;103185
As a Hard-Polytheist, I have to agree with Mel

Zeus, Odin, An Daghda, Ra all may have similar positions - father of the gods, for lack of a better term, as part of their areas of responsibility - but they are SO different in the details.

 
The way I put it is like this: Librarians have a bunch of things in common. But just because we're librarians (and, unlike the Gods, often bound by a common sense of professionally-relevant ethics, general best practices, and so on) doesn't mean that we're entirely interchangeable. We have different favourite books, favourite knitting projects, and favourite kinds of chocolate, for one thing.

Also, different names.

If you try to treat us interchangeably, we might get cranky. If you come to us and say "HEy, you're a librarian, and I've met other librarians who have some stuff in common with you", we might ask for a book recommendation (or a knitting pattern, or a place-to-get-good-chocolate) though.

With Gods, as long as they are presenting themselves to me by different names, with different variations of attributes, and with different things they're focusing on, I'm going to treat them like different people.

It seems only polite.
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Quote from: Haganrix;103184
Thus you don't believe in personal Gods and universal divine powers? Are the Gods just archetyps that may be changed at any occasion?

I'm a hard polytheist who believes each deity is an independent entity with his/her/its own personality, history, likes, dislikes, abilities, etc. -- at least until demonstrated otherwise (on a per deity basis, BTW).  So, no I do not believe in universal divine powers nor that the Gods are just archetypes.
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Quote from: Haganrix;103184
Thus you don't believe in personal Gods and universal divine powers? Are the Gods just archetyps that may be changed at any occasion?

 
If they were "just archetypes", then the whole "this god is the same as that god" thing would be a hella lot more plausible.  If you want to suggest that people are archetypalists, generally speaking it works better if you aren't conflating them into generics.
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Shine

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Quote from: RandallS;103217
I'm a hard polytheist who believes each deity is an independent entity with his/her/its own personality, history, likes, dislikes, abilities, etc. -- at least until demonstrated otherwise (on a per deity basis, BTW).  So, no I do not believe in universal divine powers nor that the Gods are just archetypes.

 
I like this interpretation.

I'm kind of on the fence with how soft my soft polytheism is. Definitely not all the way to archetypes, but definitely in the monistic/monolatrous neighborhood.

For the most part, I figure the creator--whoever he or she was/is--differentiated the world into a bunch of different things, and so, like Randall, I like to approach deities as separate entities until they prove otherwise. Or until they tell me they were going around as Deity A and B because I wasn't ready to deal with C and D yet. Gah, it gets complicated fast.

Maybe it's better not to think about it too much. ;-p
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Haganrix

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Because of syntax error see next post
« Last Edit: March 30, 2013, 04:42:22 pm by Haganrix »

Haganrix

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Quote from: RandallS;103217
I'm a hard polytheist who believes each deity is an independent entity with his/her/its own personality, history, likes, dislikes, abilities, etc. -- at least until demonstrated otherwise (on a per deity basis, BTW).  So, no I do not believe in universal divine powers nor that the Gods are just archetypes.

 

As you are an Hellenic Pagan what I found on your site have you ever heard about the myth of the birth of the Goddess Athena? Isn't there any connection between Zeus and Athena?

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Quote from: Haganrix;103755
As you are an Hellenic Pagan what I found on your site have you ever heard about the myth of the birth of the Goddess Athena? Isn't there any connection between Zeus and Athena?

 
Connection is not the same thing as "the same identity at the core." Some versions of the myth give Athen's mother to be Metis, Whom Zeus swallowed after impregnating Her, so His wife Hera wouldn't find out about yet another infidelity. Metis (goddess/personification of wisdom) had already conceived Athena, so Zeus went on to gestate Athena the rest of the pregnancy... in His head, where wisdom resides.
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Quote from: Haganrix;103755
As you are an Hellenic Pagan what I found on your site have you ever heard about the myth of the birth of the Goddess Athena? Isn't there any connection between Zeus and Athena?

 
I am not the same person as my father, so why would Athena be the same person as hers?

Are you the same person as your father?
as the water grinds the stone
we rise and fall
as our ashes turn to dust
we shine like stars    - Covenant, "Bullet"

OfThespiae

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Quote from: Sage;103757
Connection is not the same thing as "the same identity at the core." Some versions of the myth give Athen's mother to be Metis, Whom Zeus swallowed after impregnating Her, so His wife Hera wouldn't find out about yet another infidelity. Metis (goddess/personification of wisdom) had already conceived Athena, so Zeus went on to gestate Athena the rest of the pregnancy... in His head, where wisdom resides.

 
Yes.

Even if I did subscribe to the notion of Aphrodite as the mother of Eros (which I don't; I believe Eros to be significantly older than Aphrodite [as per Hesiod], and that she and Eros are companions, not unlike Artemis and Orion, for example), it still doesn't necessarily follow that they're one-in-the-same.  All that logically suggests is that each are deities with Love and Sex in Their domain, and that there is a mythological link between the two, as mother and son; if anything, such a mythology is further evidence that they're not one-in-the-same as it can easily be argued that They each preside over different kinds of love --and pardon me for saying so, but the love one has for a parent tends to be significantly different from the love one has for a lover.

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