Are you Wiccan or are you a Druid? Don't resent it, just politely inform the person. Age of a path has nothing to do with anything.

So why do a predominant number of religions serve to placate evil or self fulfilling Gods or Goddesses?

Why did the Aztecs make blood sacrifice to evil Gods more than good ones?

Just a sample of a larger overall question of course since this will come off as a generalization.

Just call me Heathen and we'll get along just fine \m/

I am druid and touche.

Who would you want to appease first, the god that says hes going to kill you if you dont worship him. Or the one that says hes going to be nice but wont kill you even if you dont appease him immediately.

The Aztecs weren't placating evil Gods. They were trying to stop the end of the world as they perceived it.

What would you do or sacrifice to stop the end of the world and protect your family and way of living?

Evil is in the eye of the beholder. The deity is only as evil as the person perceives him/her to be. When one doesn't have a cultural standpoint or immersion in the beliefs of that deity, then they make a judgement.

Unfortunately, the majority don't know, and don't understand and don't really care. And it's not just religious views. I get all sorts of idiotic comments about the animals and farming.

haha like what ?

In order to get milk, the cow or goat has to have given birth. They'll produce milk 9 months or so, then you give them a couple of months to dry off so after they have the next baby they'll produce milk again.

One doesn't need a rooster for hens to lay eggs. You only need a rooster if you want fertilized eggs, or intend to hatch chicks out.

Vegetables are grown in the ground and don't magically appear in cans.

haha i like the last one.

Certain frogs and lizards don't need males to give birth. There is an Island in the South Pacific where every last lizard is female.

Some fish start as females and become males later in life.

Some lower order animals are BOTH male and female while others are neither.

Now humans are the only ones who complicate everything. Frankly many deities are only facets of an overall whole in life. People separate good and evil much like we try to deal with the idea that although different man and woman need each other but in some cases hate each other and in others love each other. Hinduism has a lot of strange Love hate relationships like Kali Maa and Shiva. Kali Maa is a destroyer yet she also is a mother and a latent creator. Shiva is a creator but likewise a latent destroyer. They are balance between the forces of nature. Ganesh is their "son" but was made of the death of a demon. He is the embodiment of loyalty and virtue yet he is no creator or destroyer. Most if not all of their pantheon are not really good or evil per say.

In the Pantheon religion of Egypt Bast is a guardian, Ptah knows everything, Ra is the giver of life, Set is the taker of life, but that gave way to an age of Egyptian monotheism and belief in the Aten Ra which gave us all life and being. Still animals were given special powers as forces of nature and oddly to me as personifications go some of them seem odd to me. Cats make lousy guardians. So do Crocodiles. And a Falcon being supreme? Birds have to land some times.

The Celts have a very rich religion as well and their gods and goddesses are reflections of all forces in nature. They are more interactive with life but in a different and more intimate way than most western understandings of the relationship of a god to his/ her people in any faith. But again there is a penchant for Good = creation and Bad = destruction. At least with Hinduism the creation destruction cycle is all relative to one another.

Now the Yin and Yang is for as simple as it is an eloquent statement to the nature of good and evil being relative. In good there is evil, and in evil there is good.

Christianity tries to draw clean lines between good and evil but when you do that you cannot see the evil in good. Yes it is good to feed the needy but what if you feed them too much and make them weak and strip them of their capacity to support themselves? Likewise when they paint their supreme being as just good and pins the evil of the world on the shoulders of a lesser deity and this tips the balance of good and evil in the wrong direction. When asked if a supreme being is god and evil Christianity falls apart. If God made everything then God is Good and God is Evil and likewise God is stuck in between. Then that means God is a God of both love and hate. And worst is the Christian God is an absentee! That God does nothing but demands worship? And it even says in the bible that God displaced the lesser gods. Baal ring a bell anyone?

"Blood for Baal! Blood for Baal!"



So who's Laughing now?

Now a philosophical question, is a good deed done for an evil reason still a good deed?

Jah Ha! Morals and Ethics all rolled into one question!

Really, read something besides websites when you discuss ancient history/religion. The religion of Egypt wasn't called "Pantheon," but the pantheon was the council of gods or the most important deities: all polytheistic religions had a pantheon.

Bast is a guardian because cats guarded the grain of ancient Egypt; they killed rats and other vermin. When your main supply of food is grain, the cats that helped protect that grain were important.

In some myth, Atum comes before Ra, but the beliefs of Egyptians or any other pagan religion is not so simple. Sometimes, the deities are combined and become such gods as Aten-Ra.

The polytheistic beliefs didn't "give way" to the monotheistic reign of the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten, but rather, he forced his beliefs on the people. As soon as he died--and we don't know how he died--the populace reverted to their former polytheistic ways. In addition, the god of Akhenaten was just "Aten," not "Aten-Ra," which would have not been a monotheistic deity.

Before you make judgments on the beliefs of a culture, it is wise to know what the culture thought--not overlaying modern ideas on those ancient beliefs. The Egyptians personified the animals around them because they viewed them in a different way than you do.

Your estimation of Kali is a bit off the mark: all destroyers are creators and creatrixes. Without destruction, there is no creation. Kali dances on the head of Shiva and he smiles because he understands the necessity. As a dark goddess, she is akin to Hekate and the Morrigan: women/goddesses were the portals to life and the portals to death.

All druids are dead. There are neo-druids, but the ancient druids would shudder at the audacity of such untrained people assuming their title.

Where did you learn to walk on water???? I still can't get it right.

Since when do Graineries and the Underworld have anything to do with one another? Likewise Snakes are better mouse killers than cats hands down and Egyptians kept them too. So you wish me to compress hours of study into simplistic sentences? There is actually more to the story of how cat's got the duty of guarding the gateway of the underworld, namely the "Western Gate." Life was supposed to well out from the Eastern Gate where the sun (the Aten) rose on Osiri's boat as it was carried across the heavens. Likewise the Pharaoh responsible for Monotheism in Egypt also was out to take power away from the temples and the priests which he did do but at a cost to his power and rule. I could get into this way more but I got work to get done so I will not spend all day in front of a computer typing away.

And as far as me "just using the internet?" Um, COLLEGE EDUCATED HERE! I kept my textbooks and I got mostly A's in history! Thank you...

Also no druids left in this world?

Lady, PLEASE! You assume WAY too much! Neo-Druids are wannabes. I came across a true druid once in my life. That is meaningless though. Druidism is a way of life and wannabes do not "live the lifestyle." I have met so many wannabe Wiccans that use religion to empower themselves without realizing their needs come with a price many of them are unwilling to pay! I likewise knew practitioners of dark arts. They were abundantly clear they paid the price to get what they wanted but in the end they know who is going to collect. Hell, people think they know what sacrifice is all about. that is a whole different topic.

Until then I would recommend a little less bite in your posts. everyone is an expert supposedly. Your Credentials are what exactly? I have been around the park quite a bit myself. I have been where angels fear to tread.

Untrained doesnt mean ye dont have a heart for it. No need to look down off your pedestal though, Thank ye kindly.

and to andy about good deeds done with evil motives -

If the motive is unclean then so is the deed. For the person doing it, for exp. a knife doesnt go around killing people, nor does it go around helping people, its the person using it that decides where it goes. Same as with deeds, motives are the people deeds are the knife.

The Druids (male and female) were the priestly caste of the Celts, but I suppose that you know that. "Heart" did not make a person a Druid: there was a long period of study, and the course of study was entirely oral--nothing was written. This was done for two reasons:

1. The novice KNEW what he/she needed to know and internalized the knowledge.

2. It was so the untrained could not obtain the information.




My credentials are an MA in English. My thesis was on archetypal myth in the works of Shelley and Woolf. I have been teaching mythology for over seven years on a college level, both archetypal myth (including Egyptian and Sumerian) and the evolution of modern monsters from mythic roots. I have dedicated the last decade of my life to studying archetypal myth. By no means do I know everything (by NO means), but I have to correct erroneous statements when I see them.

You ask what granaries have to with the underworld--um, I don't remember connecting the two. I said Bast (who is not a goddess of the underworld) was worshiped in her cat form because cats protected the grain.

In addition, the Egyptians didn't have an "underworld"; Tuat (or Duat), the afterlife, was located in a nebulous place to the west.

As for your statement about snakes being better rodent catchers--take it up with the dead Egyptians! I am merely repeating the most common theories for the anthropomorphic deities of Egypt. (By the way, the "Egyptians" called their country "Kemet"; the Greeks named it "Egypt.")

I am not sure which point you are trying to make in response to my comments about Akhenaten. He shifted the power away from the temples of the many gods and took it for himself, but that wasn't the point that you made in your other post and it wasn't to what I replied. I said "Aten Ra" was a misnomer in relation to the one god that Akhenaten worshiped; it was merely "Aten." In the 18th dynasty, monotheism was short-lived, and polytheism didn't "give way" to monotheism--not until centuries later when Islam became the religion of Egypt.

You don't have to repeat how Osiris' solar barge traversed the heavens; I am quite familiar with the myth.

I am also not sure of the point that you are making about the neo-druids. I was making the point that people can call themselves Druids, but the Druids are all dead. When they died, they took their knowledge with them.

"Dark arts"? A bit melodramatic. The arts are the arts--they are like fire, the intent is up to the user.

Since I don't believe a "collector," what people "sacrifice" is entirely in their heads.

If you perceive my comments as biting, I am merely trying to set the record straight.

History not best learned from college texts; it is best learned by reading primary sources and commentary by experts who delve deeply and spend their lives dedicated to the study of their chosen fields. I know that when I teach a class, I am giving the students a bare glimpse into what "is." The rest of their learning is up to them.

Untrained doesnt mean ye dont have a heart for it. No need to look down off your pedestal though, Thank ye kindly.


The Druids (male and female) were the priestly caste of the Celts, but I suppose that you know that. "Heart" did not make a person a Druid: there was a long period of study, and the course of study was entirely oral--nothing was written. This was done for two reasons:

1. The novice KNEW what he/she needed to know and internalized the knowledge.

2. It was so the untrained could not obtain the information


_________________

Doesn't mean the arts can't be rediscovered. And on the contray, heart is what makes all things. You are no one to try to cast a look of scorn on me. And as to 'the druids of old would be ashamed of neo-druids' I believe the opposite. I think they would be proud someone was trying to rediscover their heritage.

Aside from this however, I feel no need to try to argue with someone about who is right or wrong in a discussion on -personal- beliefs. So i bid you good farewell and wish you the best in life.
Might that the moon shines upon you when your clouds grow dark.

Silache.

Neo-Druids cannot reconstruct the arts of the ancient Druids. That is WHY they were oral!

Heart does not make "all" things: if so, the Morrigan would not have existed. The Druids accepted the dark along with the light.

I feel no need to try to argue with someone about who is right or wrong in a discussion on -personal- beliefs. So i bid you good farewell and wish you the best in life.
Might that the moon shines upon you when your clouds grow dark.

Silache.