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As long as humans were able to form ideas and religions there has always been some kind of "Devil, devils, Satan, Evil force" just as there has been a good counterpart.

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Actually, as mankind goes, the idea of competing forces of good and evil is a relatively new one.

The Greeks didn't have it. Their gods had agendas of their own, and some were decidedly inimical, but that was seen as the natural order of things.

Zoroastrianism, if I remember correctly, with the eternal conflict between Ahura-Mazda (the good guy) and Ahriman (the bad guy), was the first major religion to incorporate this feature.

If one looks to the east, one finds that many gods in the Hindu pantheon have both positive and negative aspects.

China gets even more complicated. Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism, however, share the desire to be at one with the universe (albeit in varying ways), rather than win some conflict of good v. evil.

Even Norse mythology, with its rich pantheon, didn't really label one side "good" and another "evil." Loki was a trickster, but would still fight with the Aesir at Ragnarok.

When one gets to the nature cults, one rarely finds "good" and "evil" drawn up in convenient sides for choosing. Some spirits are benevolent, and some are inimical, sure, but that's not the same thing as an eternal conflict between two clearly defined sides.

That, I'm fairly sure, was a Persian innovation.

but anything and everything is up to interpratation.. no one is really ever right.. and seemingly wrong either.

Reason why most Polytheistic gods weren't necessarily evil was that they were first generation deities, rather than deities that came about in response to existing structures. All the gods the Norse or Greek pantheons represented some aspect of life or the world. They were little more than being one step away from Animism (the belief in spirits of things in the world around you that don't necessarily act very human-like).

i now feel more enlightened for reading this.

any chance i could get some names of books you found this stuff in ?

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but anything and everything is up to interpratation.. no one is really ever right.. and seemingly wrong either.

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That's wrong.

You're changing horses in mid-stream, though.

While "evil-doers" were punished under Greek mythology, there was no eternal struggle between good and evil. Their gods represented the natural order of things, rather than being divided into good guys and bad guys.

Hades owned everyone after death. He simply handed out accomodations appropriate to the kind of life one led. Irrespective of which god one was affiliated with. It's not like followers of god A went to Tartarus while followers of god B went to the Elysian Fields.

Anyway the point is that "evil" gods often spawned out of the things in life that humans sought to avoid. Gods of animals or of nature were often given a somewhat savage edge because people were afraid of the beasts, while Zeus (perhaps the biggest jackass in historical theology, if you think about it) was lauded and loved. No god was completely evil, no god was really completely good. Or in the very least there was no definitive polarization til later.

And you two have proven that I do need to read more, research more. Which is a good thing.

I just know what i've learned so far. And have learned even more

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Nith D'vaz wrote, obviously thinking too hard:
whoa, all this time i have been looking, and researching stuff like this, i was only sticking my toes into the ocean.

i now feel more enlightened for reading this.

any chance i could get some names of books you found this stuff in ?

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I wish I could, but I've been interested in this stuff most of my life.

I got interested in witchcraft and the occult growing up, and read everything I could on the subject at the time.

I also like philosophy, and it tends to be interwoven with religion. Only lately has it taken a mostly linguistic flair.

What really helped me focus was a comparative religion class I took as an undergraduate. It traced the history of religious development and detailed the structure and beliefs of major religions throughout history.

Sorry.

Um.. some bookstores accually have books on this in their (heh ois) "New Age" section and Philosophy section... Most of my books I got from a small Wiccan and (sorry Blood Sage.. =\) "Pagan" Supply store.

I'd say you need to watch out lest you turn into me in ten years, but I've actually mellowed with age.

~~~

I just remembered: studying literature--and especially literary criticism--is a great way to pick up all sorts of things. You learn from the literature itself, obviously.

But you also need a basis from which to analyze the literature, so you end up learning history, philosophy, psychology, religion, and a bunch of other stuff, too.

Anyone who says English degrees are useless doesn't know what he's talking about.

do Have a chance to go back to college...

maybe a course or two couldn't hurt

Since I turned 5, I've not been in school a total of 6 or 7 years. I'm 36. And that's if you only count degree-granting programs.

I've always wanted a PhD, though. If I do it now, though, I'd sacrifice advancement, and I want to see how far I can take this military thing. Prolly never be a general . . . but you never know. Everyone else could keel over dead, or something . . .

Now, this religious thread is flame-free!??!?

It says in the manual that all religious threads must be full of fire and angst and woe!

Now, you chaos-filled rule-breakers! You'd better fill this thread with so much insulting and fire-ridden hate that chickens weep blood!

Actually, I'm rather impressed at how civil this turned out. Good show, all

To be honest, I can't remember which dogma believed in it - assuming I ever knew to begin with! - but essentially it was the mother of creation.
Tiamat spawned every living thing in the universe, but for reasons that escape me, turned right around and began destroying/devouring it. Its creations were, to put it succintly, righteously pissed off, and destroyed her.

Well, it was either that, or she turned around and devoured her paternal counterpart (whatever that was), and that incited her creations to rebel.

But like I said, I'm probably misremembering some of this

Damn! Played like a fiddle again! Oh, I'll be back, oh yes... and this time I will be the puppeteer!

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Ja'Deth Issar Ka'bael wrote, obviously thinking too hard:
Babylonian, if I'm not mistaken. All gods were spawned from Apsu, again if I'm not mistaken. And Tiamat and...Enkil...I think it was were the two who fought.

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RIGHT! Babilonia!

And *ugh* can't remember names.. but she was beaten by her son/lover and cut up to form the sky, earth, and water

As it were, Inubus, Set, and Osiris were all considered evil gods by the invading nations, but they actually weren't. They were, as Bloodsage put it (I think, that or Ja'Deth), with different means to get to similar goals.

Then, the points about Lucifer being the morning star; That came from post Greek era I believe.

In Latin, I think (or Greek, possibly), Lucifer means 'Lord of the Flies'. Flies connoted death and knowledge. So as it would turn out, Lucifer was a lord of knowledge; As such he is portrayed in Modern Satanism.
The Morning star was a Judaic term, I am fairly sure.

Oh, and Bloodsage; "Do What Thou Wilt" is Anton LaVey's credo. Aleistar Crowley was a bit more 'off his rocker'. He believed himself to be the reincarnation of the Anti-Christ. Anton LaVey just had selfish ideas.

Modern Satanism's main clause is 'Sanctity of individual's mind.' to my understanding, everthing else operates around that.

Taoism, as stuck strictly to the Tao Te Chang (I forget the exact title) is not a religion, but a set of ideas. This, obviously, would be very pleasing to Ruphas, the 13th apostle. (Catch the reference, two points.)

Does this mean they have like, Order of the Echinoderms or something?

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And I was all like 'Oh yeah?' and Aanile was all like:
RIGHT! Babilonia!

And *ugh* can't remember names.. but she was beaten by her son/lover and cut up to form the sky, earth, and water

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Marduk, as I recall. I had a virtual pet named after him once.

Interestingly enough this was in early times because lineage was matrilineal, not patrilineal. You married into power as a man. Women were seers and soothsayers. Anthropologists figure this was because women knew all the secrets. Men knew how to wage war and knew how to hunt, while women were left behind to tend children and farm. Women, therefore, were the ones who caught on to the early forms of genetics. They mastered domestication of plants for farming, and remembered in matrilineal lore when the best times to plant and harvest were.

So say your sister was the inheritor of your family's holding, and was not yet married. You would woo her and take her as your wife so that her power would be yours as well, and your future would be secure. This went on in Egypt longer than anywhere else.

Largely it died out, some anthropologists (a small group) think, when men realized the connection between childbirth and sex. They unlocked a secret (not all the secrets, but a big on). Men had the power to inseminate women. Women needed men (conveniently forgetting that men needed women, for the most part), so men started to think of women as being cattle. Cattle was important, women were important. This is further supported by the fact that the Aryan language (basis for the Hindi language forms) uses the word for "milk maid" for daughter. They saw it all in comparison to livestock holdings.

But old habits die hard. It was for their wisdom in regards to matters of the earth and "secrets" that men didn't know, that you see references to Earth Goddesses. They'd ask their wives where their wives learned such knowledge...and no sane woman in that time would tell their husband that some man came to her while he was away and whispered secrets in their ear...so they told a half-truth; that their Mother told them. This took on a somewhat mystical quality, and the great Mother, the primordial mother, was the Source. And that's why many religions have Earth Goddesses at the early beginning.

It's also why, theologians believe, that goddesses are generally associated with Wisdom. Frigga, Freya, Athena, even the Greek Titans had Hecate who was a patron of magic and secrets. And Zeus stayed with Hera because she was his wife...and clearly not out of wholehearted devotion.

Of course goddesses are divided into two general categories...you have the princesses and the mothers. Mothers are Hera's, Demeter's, Frigga's, etc. They're the ones representing the matronly sorts, mother goddesses who've birthed many children from their loins (a desirable trait in women at the time). The others were the eternal virgins...women who espoused some other element to titilate men. Artemis kept herself from men after her only true love was murdered (by a beast set upon him by her jealous brother...), and Athena also fell into the "virginal goddesses" bracket, having no husband or children; the very model of the wise woman (even if in her case her wisdom was born of Zeus's intelligence bred into the body of a wise woman). Goddesses were also shaped by infidelity; Aphrodite, for instance, represented beauty and physical love, but she herself was a unfaithful to her unattractive husband Hephaestus...often with the man who Hephaestus would have seen most often (being the blacksmith of the gods), Ares (who also happened to be Hephaestus's brother...). Of course Heph lived out the fantasy most betrayed spouses feel...he let everyone know how much of a harlot his wife was with an intricate trap that caught Aphrodite and Ares in mid-coitus. So you see the forms of women as men saw them reflected in the goddesses.

And the incestuous element was played out even into the time of the Romans. Aside from weirdos like Caligula (famed for laying with his sisters), the Egyptians had been inbreeding for years. The hilarious thing is that historians for some reason try to make Cleopatra out to be of native African descent...she's not. She's the product of something like a dozen generations of Macedonian inbreeding (her ancestors who'd been put in charge of Egypt were Macedonians who took a part of Alexander the Great's empire when he died).

Of course most of the revelations about that sort of thing were glossed over and downplayed during the high-minded eras when incest wasn't done anymore. But inbreeding still occurred...Hemophilia is referred to as the "royal disease" because due to European inbreeding amongst the royals, the recessive trait for it seemed to be carried by everyone.

Sort of an interesting socio-biological way to look at things, I've always thought.

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Ja'Deth Issar Ka'bael had this to say about Punky Brewster:
The movie "Dogma" and it was spelled Rufus (which is a Latin spelling because, you guessed it, it's a jab at what the Catholic Church enforces)

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I figured I spelt it wrong.

Two points Ja'Deth!

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Dr. Vorbis had this to say about pies:
To the point about Egyptian Religions; There was no glory battle.

As it were, Inubus, Set, and Osiris were all considered evil gods by the invading nations, but they actually weren't. They were, as Bloodsage put it (I think, that or Ja'Deth), with different means to get to similar goals.

Then, the points about Lucifer being the morning star; That came from post Greek era I believe.

In Latin, I think (or Greek, possibly), Lucifer means 'Lord of the Flies'. Flies connoted death and knowledge. So as it would turn out, Lucifer was a lord of knowledge; As such he is portrayed in Modern Satanism.
The Morning star was a Judaic term, I am fairly sure.

Oh, and Bloodsage; "Do What Thou Wilt" is Anton LaVey's credo. Aleistar Crowley was a bit more 'off his rocker'. He believed himself to be the reincarnation of the Anti-Christ. Anton LaVey just had selfish ideas.

Modern Satanism's main clause is 'Sanctity of individual's mind.' to my understanding, everthing else operates around that.

Taoism, as stuck strictly to the Tao Te Chang (I forget the exact title) is not a religion, but a set of ideas. This, obviously, would be very pleasing to Ruphas, the 13th apostle. (Catch the reference, two points.)

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Good--my initial thought was correct. And Crowley certainly was a little "out there."

As for Taoism--you're right, but that's why I said things got a little complicated in China. Confucianism isn't technically a religion, either, I don't think.

I'd have used the term "practical philosophy," but probably would have spent all night explaining what I meant.

Thanks for the clarification!

That follows along the 8 Sabbats and changes of the seasons.

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Lyinar had this to say about Reading Rainbow:
I'm amused by the phylum idea

Does this mean they have like, Order of the Echinoderms or something?

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Starfish attack?

Urchin stance?

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Pyscho_Pike wrote this then went back to looking for porn:
Starfish attack?

Urchin stance?

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lol.