LWDT 8: Hitting the Marx

[Washington Resistance Army]

The real practioners are perhaps not exactly visible and keep it low profile.

Pretty much this. The visible pagans are, like, Wiccans and stuff like that. Most of the people who practice things that would have been instantly recognizable to people a thousand or two thousand years ago are pretty low profile.

I mean if your parameter for "not real x" is no longer practicing animal sacrifice than the Abrahamic Faith's are gonna have an issue.

Judaism doesn't cause you can only do that at the Temple, which got destroyed and doesn't exist. Idk if Islam does animal sacrifice. Christianity never did.

Isn't animal sacrifice directly mentioned in Luke?

[Hanafuridake]

Also it's kinda scummy to dismiss what people believe because they don't have a connection to people from 1000 years ago when their pagan ancestors were converted at the tip of a Roman sword.

Which of Europe was converted "at the tip of a Roman sword?"

[Nakena]

Judaism doesn't cause you can only do that at the Temple, which got destroyed and doesn't exist. Idk if Islam does animal sacrifice. Christianity never did.

Animal sacrifice is a fairly big thing in Islam. I am genuinely surprised you didn knew about it.

And my parameters are an actual connection to the original pagan tradition, which hasn't existed for nearly a thousand years.

I wouldn be so sure. Of course not in its original form, but some aspects of it did, in some ways, survive underground.

[Genivaria]

Also it's kinda scummy to dismiss what people believe because they don't have a connection to people from 1000 years ago when their pagan ancestors were converted at the tip of a Roman sword.

Which of Europe was converted "at the tip of a Roman sword?"

I admit I was simplifying, more like Roman/Frankish/Visigothic etc sword.

[Washington Resistance Army]

Also it's kinda scummy to dismiss what people believe because they don't have a connection to people from 1000 years ago when their pagan ancestors were converted at the tip of a Roman sword.

Which of Europe was converted "at the tip of a Roman sword?"

Theodosius could be said to have done just that. Traditional practices were met with the death penalty and he at the very least tolerated, if not authorized, temples and other such pagan sites to be destroyed en masse. Very amusingly non-Christlike actions.

[Genivaria]

Which of Europe was converted "at the tip of a Roman sword?"

Theodosius could be said to have done just that. Traditional practices were met with the death penalty and he at the very least tolerated, if not authorized, temples and other such pagan sites to be destroyed en masse. Very amusingly non-Christlike actions.

The Frank's under Charlemagne did similar things, hell the Holy Roman Empire was essentially created from Charlemagne's eastern conquests of pagan lands; excluding Italy which was already Christian.


Oh and there's of course also the Baltic Crusade where the Teutonic Knights and many nobles committed outright genocide against the Lithuanian pagans.

[Northern Davincia]

Which of Europe was converted "at the tip of a Roman sword?"

Theodosius could be said to have done just that. Traditional practices were met with the death penalty and he at the very least tolerated, if not authorized, temples and other such pagan sites to be destroyed en masse. Very amusingly non-Christlike actions.

I am fond of looking to Revelations for Christlike actions in dealing with the world.

[Genivaria]

Also it still counts when the sword forcing you to convert is wielded by your own king like in Poland.

And I mean, South America even after the Smallpox was decimated by Spanish and Portuguese Conquistadors.

[The Greater Ohio Valley]

I’d prefer we stop believing in superstition entirely tbh, but that’s unlikely, c'est la vie.

People have already tried that.
Secular countries tend to either be fascist (PRC) or neoliberal (Western Europe.)
Like it or not, the idea of serving your fellow man is either a gesture of kindness or self-sabotage without the belief in a higher power who will punish you for not loving your neighbor.
Those two things aren't exactly enough to start a revolution.

I wasn’t talking about forcing everyone to stop believing, more like I’d wish people would just make it to that state on their own.

[Nakena]

People have already tried that.
Secular countries tend to either be fascist (PRC) or neoliberal (Western Europe.)
Like it or not, the idea of serving your fellow man is either a gesture of kindness or self-sabotage without the belief in a higher power who will punish you for not loving your neighbor.
Those two things aren't exactly enough to start a revolution.

I wasn’t talking about forcing everyone to stop believing, more like I’d wish people would just make it to that state on their own.

I used to be somewhat "atheist" when I was younger actually. Then I learned a few things about the world, and ended up... somewhere else.

But it didn really changed so much my beliefs as expanded them and I gained new insights.

[Novus America]

Also it still counts when the sword forcing you to convert is wielded by your own king like in Poland.

And I mean, South America even after the Smallpox was decimated by Spanish and Portuguese Conquistadors.

True but Europe was hit hard by a really nasty syphilis pandemic in return TBF.

Might not sound so bad now but when it first hit Europe it caused huge numbers of deaths. Until modern antibiotics it was like 80s AIDS. Basically a death sentence.

[Bienenhalde]

Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are all equally terrible.

It is time to return to The Old Ways and embrace THE OLD GODS.

brb going to get my offering for the local Pagan god's shrine.

Have fun with the human/animal sacrifices.

Human sacrifice is horrible of course, but if we can kill animals for food or fur, I don't see why we should object to animal sacrifices.

[Nakena]

Have fun with the human/animal sacrifices.

Human sacrifice is horrible of course, but if we can kill animals for food or fur, I don't see why we should object to animal sacrifices.

For once we agree.

[Genivaria]

Have fun with the human/animal sacrifices.

Human sacrifice is horrible of course, but if we can kill animals for food or fur, I don't see why we should object to animal sacrifices.

I mean are you going to make it painless and THAN make use of their parts?

[Bienenhalde]

Human sacrifice is horrible of course, but if we can kill animals for food or fur, I don't see why we should object to animal sacrifices.

I mean are you going to make it painless and THAN make use of their parts?

Well, I am no expert on animal sacrifice, but I imagine that modern-day pagans could agree to that.

[Genivaria]

I mean are you going to make it painless and THAN make use of their parts?

Well, I am no expert on animal sacrifice, but I imagine that modern-day pagans could agree to that.

My issue is when a spectacle is made and the poor creature is mutilated over several minutes while alive.

[Nakena]

I mean are you going to make it painless and THAN make use of their parts?

Well, I am no expert on animal sacrifice, but I imagine that modern-day pagans could agree to that.

The thing is most visible modern-day pagans are New Agers or LARPers in one way or another. Actual followers are rather unlikely to cosplay the stuff or move around crystals and all that mumbo jumbo.

[Mirial Magna]

Which of Europe was converted "at the tip of a Roman sword?"

I admit I was simplifying, more like Roman/Frankish/Visigothic etc sword.

Except that literally only happened in the Baltic States.
Granted, the Spanish/Portuguese did commit their share of atrocities in the New World, but the church did everything they could to stop these.

[Genivaria]

I admit I was simplifying, more like Roman/Frankish/Visigothic etc sword.

Except that literally only happened in the Baltic States.
Granted, the Spanish/Portuguese did commit their share of atrocities in the New World, but the church did everything they could to stop these.

Hahaha no. I already posted several examples.

[Proletariatets Demokrati Syndicate]

i would argue the paris commune of 1871 was more socialist than the bloated soviet union ever was

[Salus Maior]

Also it's kinda scummy to dismiss what people believe because they don't have a connection to people from 1000 years ago when their pagan ancestors were converted at the tip of a Roman sword.

They can believe what they want. It's just not the same thing as the original pagans.

It's a modern movement inspired by them.

[Fahran]

The track record of abrahamic religions isn't exactly stellar either.

That's why I included my initial sentence. "No. It really depends on the particular sect/denomination and broader social attitudes." It's silly to presume that all worshippers of Isis, Jupiter, or Yngvi-Freyr behaved in precisely the same way over time. At the institutional level, they probably changed their outlooks and attitudes quite dramatically in the span of millennia. For instance, the cult of Isis experienced an upswell in popularity following the establishment of the Ptolemaic dynasty - with Isis having been a more minor deity prior to that time. Following that vein of argument, there's a huge difference between medieval Christians and modern Christians or between Judaism at the time of the Roman-Jewish Wars and modern Judaism. My critique of Neo-Pagan religious beliefs put more emphasis on what I consider a lack of authenticity than anything else. My view on actual Paganism is more akin to that of Lewis minus the Christianity.

Especially not that of the two major variants, which both spread through the systematic application of gruesome violence. Such as the tribes people that tried to resist christianic or islamist encroachment and were usually rewarded with subjugation, enslavement or extermination (either cultural or physical).

That's mostly nonsense in the case of Christianity in all frankness. The one example people really cite as evidence of the brutal subjugation of pagan peoples by Christians are the Baltic Crusades and those came in response to the seasonal bouts of violence instigated by the Baltic peoples against neighboring German and Slavic polities, usually with the aim of taking booty and slaves. A lot of the appeal of Christianity came from it being a univeralist religion of salvation. A lot of the appeal of Islam after the initial conquests came from it being the religion of the elites and commercial interests - with the jizya being imposed on non-believers. It's not as though nonbelievers were simply butchered as a general rule. In fact, the adoption of the Abrahamic religions probably led to a decline in internal factionalism as disparates, often competing cults were subsumed into a more hegemonic religious tradition, improvements in the status of women since polygamy and slavery were frowned upon, and a lot of the old religious and social elites were effectively displaced by a class of elites with more intimate ties to the downtrodden.

[Washington Resistance Army]

Also it's kinda scummy to dismiss what people believe because they don't have a connection to people from 1000 years ago when their pagan ancestors were converted at the tip of a Roman sword.

They can believe what they want. It's just not the same thing as the original pagans.

It's a modern movement inspired by them.

That's only really true for some movements. Slavic neo-pagans for example have a lot to reconstruct because of the lack of written sources yeah. But Greco-Roman neo-pagans know pretty much everything and believe the same things, barring mystery cult stuff which true to the name is mysterious and hard to figure out.

[Salus Maior]

Isn't animal sacrifice directly mentioned in Luke?

Probably, but Christ's sacrifice is final sacrifice. That's how the Church has understood it.

Atonement comes from repentence and seeking forgiveness, not animal sacrifices.

[Fahran]

Most modern pagans do neither.

Kinda flies in the face of bringing back the Old Ways if you don't actually bring back most of the Old Ways.