Does anyone else find it utterly blasphemous this systematization

>>18485775
>blasphemous

Mad fundamentalist actually thinks god cares about how he/she/it is portrayed.

And if you actually had done any "deeper study of their lore" as you put it, you would find that many deities are related through history and cross-cultural fertilisation.

What are you talking about?

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>>18485809
>What are you talking about?

It sounds like OP puts a lot of faith in old texts, which he may have invest large amounts of time studying, and is now upset when others view elder entities in ways inconsistent with those texts.

I for one, think old texts have a lot to tell us, but the authors were humans too. And we as a species don't really understand all that's going on, everything is a learning process -- views change for better or worse with experiences. Old texts might, gasp, not be 100% correct at times.

PLUS how about giving the entities themselves the freedom to do some changing of their own over time.

>>18485775
Stop posting.

>>18485775
Isn't that what people have always done, pick and choose parts of a religion to suit them selves? Didn't the Romans just absorb the Greek Gods into their own Parthenon .

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>>18485873
Exactly, and Roman Saturnalia morphed and blended into Xmas/NewYears/Yule time.

>>18485873
To be fair that usually occurs naturally, people who complain about "blasphemous systematization" are usually complaining about deliberate attempts at cultural imperialism like most recently with western Buddhists, Rainbow Warriors, the weird shit fashion labels do, etc.

>>18485873

Sure, and then they absorbed Jesus into their religion and blamed the Jews for killing him.

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OP I find it frustrating when the teenage Wiccans begin to worship Woden or Hades, completely ignoring that these were feared and avoided. Instead they try to replace the monotheistic God they were raised with by Celtic gods that were part of a polytheistic system. Doesn't work.

It's also irritating to see everyone blindly accept aliens as being from outer space. Good job, CIA.

>>18485917
>Wiccans begin to worship Woden or Hades
They wouldn't really be Wiccans then would they.

>>18485901
I think technically they did didn't they? Didn't Pontius give them a chance to release him and they preferred a murderer?

>>18485775
>>Oh, Hekate is dark, and somewhat related to Cain
Can someone explain the whole Hekate=Lilith thing? I don't see it. I see Hekate more as Asmodeus than Lilith.

>>18485775
Why exactly does it bother you?

>>18485978
I though she was a cthnonic/Hellenstic diety, I don't see the connection with any of them.

>>18485888
Western Buddhists understand much less of the fine details of Buddhism, but they recognise the important tenets better than most eastern Buddhists.
t. Eastern Buddhist

>>18486075
Be nice

>>18486075
That's a horrible argument, eastern Buddhists don't recognize the important tenets because their actual Buddhists, 99% of Buddhism does not apply to householders; not being a completely immoral fuck and giving alms is literally all householders are supposed to do.

Western Buddhist are some weird pseudo-priests who practice without a teacher which the Buddha literally said you shouldn't do.

Most divinities are simply the personification of human emotions and natural forces, combined in ways that specific cultures associate them. That is their essence.

So long as the essence is maintained, of what importance is the name?

>>18486060
She is a cthonian, yes, but no, at the same time. Shit's weird. I never said that Hekate=Lilith, just that people lump them together for some reason. I just stated that she has more touching points in her portfolio with Asmodeus than with Lilith

>>18486126
Oh. Well I only know of her from greek myth and she is only mentioned on the side lines.

>>18486131
The way I figure faith, it goes kinda like this. Gods feed on the life force of the people who worship them (don't be afraid, it normally doesn't kill anyone). Generally speaking, the more people worship you, the more power you have. Deities like Hekate, Odin, Enki, the Zoryae (another triple goddess) are primarily worshipped by mages, people with considerable power themselves. That way, they could've stayed on the sidelines, yet remain respected and worshipped to this day, while gods like Zeus (yes, even he is mostly powerless now) are forgotten in the age of YHVH

>>18486090
>eastern Buddhists don't recognize the important tenets because their actual Buddhists

No, many eastern Buddhists practice local folk systems that are "buddhistic" and have strayed from doctrinal integrity. This is a reoccurring theme in the history of Buddhism, with the vast majority of the Greats in Buddhist history being reformers that recognized this and efforted to reestablish doctrinal integrity.

This applies to monastics and practicing lay renunciates, so how much more so to regular householders. Householders in China you see people who claim to be Buddhists buying and burning "spirit money" for their ancestors, and in Thailand you see people who don't know the 4 arahant truths or the 8 fold path but put a dagger under their bed to ward off pretas.

>not being a completely immoral fuck and giving alms is literally all householders are supposed to do.

Sure, they are mostly given instructions to practice meritorious behavior, how to run their business (for example in the suttas the Buddha advises people to split their earnings into thirds, one for savings, one to grow their business, and one to donate to the needy) what professions to avoid, and to give alms to the Sangha.

However there are instances where he promotes people look at the faults of householdership, to view it as a fetter, and to consider renouncing it. Furthermore he highly praises a women he comes across that is a householder, but spends much of her day practicing Jhana as he had instructed elsewhere. As such we shouldn't ignore the clear elevated status he considers householder yogis as having.

>Western Buddhist are some weird pseudo-priests

Plenty of Western Buddhists practice earnestly with a traditional teacher, full stop. Plenty don't and tend to be more hobbyist "Buddhists", people that are "into" Buddhism or some vague thing they consider to be "zen".

>>18486090
>who practice without a teacher which the Buddha literally said you shouldn't do.

The Buddha identifies himself with the suttas directly, and considers the suttas as being the highest teacher. He clearly says you should listen to the Suttas in all matters, including over the advice of an elder monk teacher or a groups of monks etc., etc. Moreover, all the the earliest material on practicing meditation starts by advocating you find a quit spot in seclusion.

While the Khaggavisana Sutta, one of the oldest, though praises having spiritual friends if you happen to come across a worthy one, explicitly praises being a recluse and going it alone with knowledge of the suttas.

>>18486075
Largely because aside from elements of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, doctrinal integrity has been partially reestablished by Europeans starting in the 1850s when the Pali Canon was rediscovered as a whole.

Eastern governments used this find, fearing the spread of "Western" Christianity, and spent massive amounts on social programs to to create new national identities that connected their people to a sense of antiquity.

This is literally the rise of the contemporary Theravada lineages, as the original Theravada lineages that had been completely lost. It rose on the back of massive state funding, and many still have major government involvement. Nonetheless, the drift away from doctrinal integrity was inevitable, and now we have the Burmese traditions which prefer the later, highly synthetic version of the mindfullness sutta (and so necessarily the furthest away from what the Buddha's original teaching of all the extant translations), as well as the later commentaries over the generality of the suttas themselves.

The same drift occurs almost everywhere even when a new doctrine has been established. Take for example in Dogen's iteration of Zen. Many Soto sects directly contradict their tradition's own progenitor by embracing Kishizawa's "spiritual source", even though it is structurally identical to the "ocean of true being" that Dogen explicitly singled out as a heretical Senika view.