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[Industrialblog, May 3, 2006]
Damned lies
Here is an article about the persistence of native and tribal beliefs despite globalism. I was interested in this part:

On a recent trip through West Africa, I saw how native religions persist - to the identical frustration of Christian evangelists and Islamist missionaries. In Indonesia a few years earlier, I met "Muslims" clinging to beliefs whose roots pre-dated Islam. From Sulawesi to Sonora, "Christian" practices aren't always Vatican-approved.


Great Woden's Beard! What a damned lie. May the writer of these calumnies be thrown into the mouth of the Midgard Serpent.
Chris (mail) (www):
Bill,

I'm a little confused. Do you mean that the author was making an extraordinarily obvious point?
5.3.2006 11:31am
Bill (mail) (www):
I'm making a joke about the persistence of pagan beliefs even in the Christianized and post-Christianized west.
5.3.2006 11:41am
Chris (mail) (www):
I'm sorry to ask you to explain it, but I don't get it. No one believes in Woden any more.
5.3.2006 11:52am
Bill (mail) (www):
That's a funny thing for you to say on a Wednesday.
5.3.2006 12:17pm
Mike Lafferty (mail):
Do not taunt the All-Father, heretic!
5.3.2006 12:24pm
TWS (mail) (www):
I got kind of woden the other night when someone tickled me in my nether region, does that count? :)
5.3.2006 1:28pm
Bill (mail) (www):
No :)
5.3.2006 1:31pm
Chris (mail) (www):
Bill,

The knowledge that wednesday is "Woden's Day" is pretty darn esoteric. Does it mean that we still worship the sun and moon because we have Sun Day and Moon Day?

Or are you just being silly with no point at all?

In that case, it's time to start smiting trolls like a true warrior born with mighty mjolnir!

(I loved the Thor comic books as a kid.)
5.3.2006 1:34pm
Bill (mail) (www):
Oh, like you've never worshipped the sun and the moon.
5.3.2006 1:50pm
TWS (mail) (www):
What about Eostre, the spring festival of the dawn goddess, where we celebrate her blessing us with new life by decorating our houses with bunnies and chicks, and dye Eostre eggs and hide them about for children to find?

[This is one reason that when I am feeling anal-retentive, I refer to the celebration of Christ's rebirth as the Paschal holiday]

Or Christmas, with all its strange Druidic elements that we have incorperated. Tree-worship? Holly and Ivy? Pagans! Burrrrn Themmmmmm! (Just kidding, really)
5.3.2006 1:54pm
Bill (mail) (www):
During my most fiercely protestant days, I didn't celebrate anything on the liturgical calendar for precisely these reasons. Christmas was irrelevant, as was Easter. All days were post-Resurrection and thus we weren't acting out some endless cycle, but living in a new period.

After all, all paganism is rooted in endless cycles, but as Augustine said, Jesus is the straight path that leads us out of them and into real progress toward the Kingdom of God. Christmas and Easter was all suspect to me, dressing up pagan holidays in Christian clothes. Wasn't remotely interested. And the fact that my non-believing friends would celebrate these things was proof, in my mind, that they were debased.

I've since revised my position somewhat, you know, when I joined the Church of Rome.
5.3.2006 2:10pm
Bill (mail) (www):
I was worried about Easter only until I learned the French word for it, which literally translates as Passover. And so do most languages. But we stubborn germanic and celtic tribesmen keep reverting to our pagan roots by naming things after dawn goddesses :)
5.3.2006 2:13pm
TWS (mail) (www):
Well, in my humble opinion it's just a matter of which pagan holidays you are con-celebrating with our newer meanings. The word 'Pasch' derives from a Hebrew word Pesach or somesuch that means 'limping' - referring to the limping of a hobbled spring lamb which is to be sacrificed as part of the spring festival of the newborn sheep and goats, as I recall, which custom was supposedly common in Egypt. I bet this practice continues among the rural herding peoples of the Middle East to this day. And this custom/paganism tied nicely into the passover when that came along. :)

At the end of the day, though, I suspect that all decent religions are mutts. Those rituals, symbols and faiths that came before them had elements of truth to them, or spoke to elemental or cultural parts of us if you want to go with a psych/anth theory of religion, or both, and we preserved those resonant parts, as best as we could, weaving them into the next faith, and the next faith, and the next faith that came along.
5.3.2006 2:35pm
Bill (mail) (www):
Those rituals, symbols and faiths that came before them had elements of truth to them

well, that's very catholic of you :)
5.3.2006 2:51pm
TWS (mail) (www):
It's Paul's fault, he started it. Or maybe it was Christ with his 'those who are not against us' open-door-hippy-dippy-radical-welcome shtick. They gave away the whole farm. How's a dogmatic member of the establishment supposed to dominate his spiritual minions?
5.3.2006 4:36pm
TWS (mail) (www):
Addendum:

In Monty Python Voice: "Or Her Spiritual Minions"
5.3.2006 4:39pm