There doesn't seem to be any doubt that the ancient Israelites were originally polytheistic. Back in the Iron and Early Bronze ages, Yahweh was a tribal weather/storm/warrior deity and the Israelites worshiped a multitude of gods:
"At that time the Israelites [originally Canaanites themselves] worshiped Yahweh alongside a variety of Canaanite gods and goddesses, including El, Asherah and Baal, but in time El and Yahweh became conflated, El-linked epithets such as El Shaddai came to be applied to Yahweh alone, and other gods and goddesses such as Baal and Asherah were absorbed into the Yahwistic religion." (Wikipedia)
None of this is too surprising. The famous Old Testament story of Abraham and Isaac shows that the Israelites once practiced human sacrifice, a distinctly pagan ritual. In the current version of the story, God orders Abraham to sacrifice his son as a test of faith, but when Abraham starts to carry out the order God stops him and Abraham sacrifices a ram instead. Some scholars believe that the original version of this tale may have ended differently:
"Francesca Stavrakopoulou has speculated that it is possible that the story 'contains traces of a tradition in which Abraham does sacrifice Isaac.' R.E. Friedman argued that in the original ... story, Abraham may have carried out the sacrifice of Isaac, but that later repugnance at the idea of a human sacrifice led the redactor of JE to add the lines in which a ram is substituted for Isaac. Likewise, Terence Fretheim wrote that the text bears no specific mark of being a polemic against child sacrifice." (Wikipedia)
One way or another, the story shows that the Israelites once carried out ritual child sacrifices.
It would have been nice if this clip had actually shown the results of the examination of the infant skeleton.
The ancient Israelites also conducted animal sacrifices, a practice which is still recreated on special occasions in Israel today.
Video from 2016. Rituals like this are clear evidence of ancient Israelite paganism.
"Throughout antiquity, [Dionysus] was first and foremost the god of wine and intoxication. His other provinces include ritual madness or ecstasy (mania); the mask, impersonation, and the fictional world of the theater; and, almost antonymically, the mysterious realm of the dead and the expectation of an afterlife blessed with the joys of Dionysus." -- Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised).
The cult of Dionysus may have originated as far back as the 13th century BC. He was a foreign, perhaps Thracian god, a barbarian deity whose "wild nature was ultimately civilized and sublimated with the help of the Delphic Apollo," according to the German classical scholar, Erwin Rohde (OCD). The rites of the Dionysian Mysteries were "based on a seasonal death-rebirth theme (common among agricultural cults) and spirit possession" (Wikipedia) and centered around wild, trance-inducing processions and ceremonies:
"Following the torches as they dipped and swayed in the darkness, they climbed mountain paths with head thrown back and eyes glazed, dancing to the beat of the drum which stirred their blood' [or 'staggered drunkenly with what was known as the Dionysus gait']. 'In this state of ekstasis or enthusiasmos, they abandoned themselves, dancing wildly and shouting 'Euoi!' [the god's name] and at that moment of intense rapture became identified with the god himself. They became filled with his spirit and acquired divine powers." -- Hoyle, Peter, Delphi, London : Cassell, 1967. Cf. p. 76.
The cult of Dionysus is said to have included slaves and (according to the myths) women known as maenads who engaged in orgies of irrational, bloody slaughter while possessed by their god. In The Bacchae by Euripedes, for example, the hapless king of Thebes, Pentheus, hides in a tree to spy on the secret rituals, only to come to a very bad end. According to Wikipedia, "Dionysus, revealing himself, called out to his followers and pointed out the man in the tree. This drove the Maenads wild. Led by Agave, [Pentheus's mother], they forced the trapped Pentheus down from the tree top, ripped off his limbs, his head, and tore his body into pieces."
The Bacchae is a fantastic play, by the way. Very dark and violent. Highly recommended.
In the myths the followers of Dionysus took "delight in eating raw flesh," but this probably never happened in real life (?) According to the OCD, "in poetry and vase-painting, Dionysus and his mythical maenads tear apart live animals with their bare hands and eat them raw. But the divinely inflicted madness of myth was not a blueprint for actual rites, and the notion that maenadism 'swept over Greece like wildfire' is a Romantic construct that has to be abandoned along with the suggestion that the maenads sacramentally consumed Dionysus in the shape of his sacred animal."
Maybe that's true. Maybe not. The spread of maenadism could have been exaggerated in the sources, I suppose, but I'm not sure how the OCD comes to the conclusion that the Dionysian madness described in the myths "was not a blueprint for actual rites." Personally, I like the picture of frenzied, half-naked maenads ripping animals to shreds and eating them raw -- don't ask me why -- so I'm going to believe that's what actually happened.
Note: I'm not sure it's accurate to say that the Bacchanalia were popular with the Roman elites. The impression I get is that these rites mostly appealed to the plebeians.
The cult of Dionysus spread from Greece into central and southern Italy through Etruria around 200 BC. The region of Etruria was Etruscan in origin and "the Etruscan civilization was responsible for much of the Greek culture imported into early Republican Rome, including the twelve Olympian gods ..." (Wikipedia) The cult apparently infiltrated or transformed through a process of cultural osmosis an existing and similar Roman cult devoted to Liber, a god of wine, fertility and prophecy popular with the plebeians.
The Romans called Dionysus Bacchus and his rites the Bacchanalia. Always suspicious of private organizations, both religious and secular, the Roman authorities saw the cult as subversive and morally degenerate. The cult made them suspicious because it was divided into cells with their own oaths of loyalty, most of the members were apparently women, and its festivals were said to include orgies and animal sacrifices. As a result, the Roman Senate banned the cult in 186 BC.
Note: The Roman government had good reason to be suspicious of underground groups like this. In their experience, private organizations such as craft guilds and trade associations (which usually had a religious component) had a tendency to become centers of political agitation. The cell structure of the Dionysian cult in Rome was a bad sign as well, at least from the Senate's point of view (cells have always been a common feature of espionage networks and terrorist groups). Note that the organization of the cult was almost identical to the (supposed) organization of early Christianity, another cult surrounded with rumors of foreign rituals and bizarre sexual practices.
The cult of Dionysus or Eleutherios, "the liberator," as he was sometimes referred to, hasn't died out. It's been transformed. The irrationalism, mania and ritual madness of the Dionysian rites can still be seen in the modern world, though these rituals have lost all their form and religious significance. Dark and primordial, these chaotic impulses surface in everything from raves to sports riots and the destructive and meaningless street riots which have spread across the West recently. The only difference between the Dionysian excesses of today and those of the ancient world is that they're much more widespread now and these outbursts take place in urban environments instead of somewhere out in the wilderness where they belong.
The Romans knew how to deal with this kind of mass insanity.
"The Temple of Isis is a Roman temple dedicated to the Egyptian goddess Isis. This small and almost intact temple was among one of the first discoveries during the excavation of Pompeii in 1764." (Wikipedia)
"... The preserved Pompeian temple is actually the second structure; the original building built during the reign of Augustus was damaged in an earlier earthquake of 62 AD. Seventeen years later with the massive volcanic eruption, the Iseum [Isis temple] alone was the sole temple to be completely rebuilt—ahead even of the Capitolium."
Next video shows the standing ruins of the temple as they appeared in 2009. All of its wall paintings and statues were apparently moved to the Archaeological Museum at Naples.
"The worship of Isis was [originally] treated with suspicion in official circles [in Rome] because of its associations with Ptolemaic Egypt," according to Pompeii: The Last Day by Paul Wilkinson (p.47). "After the annexation of Egypt by Augustus in 30 BC, however, attitudes relaxed and by AD 38 Rome itself had a Temple of Isis. The cult of Isis had its own full-time priests, whereas the more official Roman religions did not[??]."
More views of the temple (including the entrance to an underground ritual purification chamber) can be seen in the next video. Turn up the volume.
According to Pompeii: The Last Day (pp. 176-177), "The sanctuary around the Temple of Isis is enclosed by walls on its east and north sides. It adjoins the Samnite Gymnasium [1] to the west and the theaters to the south. Very little is left of the original temple because it had been almost completely destroyed by the earthquake of AD 62. It was completely rebuilt in interesting circumstances by Numerius Popidius Celsinus. He was a six-year-old child who was admitted into the ruling body of Pompeii, the collegium decurionum, as a reward for his generosity (his fatherhaving actually provided the finances)."[2]
[1] "In the 5th century BC, the Samnites conquered [Pompeii] (and all the other towns of Campania); the new rulers imposed their architecture and enlarged the town. After the Samnite Wars (4th century BC), Pompeii was forced to accept the status of socium of Rome, maintaining, however, linguistic and administrative autonomy. In the 4th century BC, it was fortified. Pompeii remained faithful to Rome during the Second Punic War." (Wikipedia)
[2] According to Wilkinson, Numerius Popidius Celsinus was the name of the six-year-old child, but other sources give this as the father's name. It's possible that they both had the same name, however. One of the temple inscriptions reads "'Numerius Popidius Celsinus, son of Numerius, rebuilt at his own expense from its foundations, the Temple of Isis, which had collapsed in an earthquake; because of his generosity, although he was only six years old, the town councilors nominated him into their number free of charge.'" Source: The Post Hole. The Latin and an English translation of the inscription can be found here.
Note: The video above is part of a longer lecture series on a variety of ancient history topics.
Isis was an important deity in Pompeii, probably because of the goddess's association with water:
"Because this temple served the Isis cult and was not a public civil space, the Temple of Isis, or Iseum, and Isis herself must have held special meaning and value for the city of Pompeii. Pompeii’s seafaring economy and the rise of personal religion in the Roman world may explain this high value. Since Pompeii relied on commercial seafaring to support its economy, Isis’s emphasis on stable and life-giving water defeating the often treacherous, unpredictable, and sometimes-deadly water of the sea, strengthened the local cult. The confluence of architecture, art, and rituals implies why the Pompeiians so highly valued a cult sanctuary – gentle Isis, offering resurrection and regulated water, provided a comforting counterbalance to unpredictable Neptune." (The Post Hole).
The myth of Hell can be traced all the way back to the first civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia, but I'm guessing that the concept of an "underworld of the dead" had its origins in the earliest funerary religions of the Stone Age. The dead were buried under the earth, so the land of the dead was also seen as being somewhere underground.
Hell wasn't called Hell in Mesopotamia and it wasn't a place of punishment for sinners. That's a much more modern idea. Originally, the place we call Hell was just a grim vision of the afterlife waiting for everyone. In other words, back around 3,000 BC or so, everybody went to "Hell" so I guess you could say that Hell was the original Heaven:
"The Sumerian afterlife was a dark, dreary cavern located deep below the ground, where inhabitants were believed to continue 'a shadowy version of life on earth'. This bleak domain was known as Kur, and was believed to be ruled by the goddess Ereshkigal. All souls went to the same afterlife, and a person's actions during life had no effect on how the person would be treated in the world to come." Source: Wikipedia.
Closed-captions helpful. Sort of.
The Old Testament Sheol, also known as Hades, is basically identical to the Mesopotamian Kur. According to Wikipedia, "Sheol is a place of darkness to which all the dead go, both the righteous and the unrighteous, regardless of the moral choices made in life, a place of stillness and darkness cut off from life and from God."
The concept of an underworld where sinners are punished after death seems to have evolved in ancient Egypt and Greece, but several different versions of the myth were floating around the Near East and Mediterranean world back then.
The Greeks, for instance, had a concept of the underworld (Hades) as a "deep, gloomy place" where everyone went after death, but the element of judgment was also present in their mythology. " In the Gorgias, Plato (c. 400 BC) wrote that souls were judged after death and those who received punishment were sent to Tartarus," a pit or cave in Hades that was used as a dungeon. (Wikipedia) "Tartarus is the deep abyss that is used as a dungeon of torment and suffering for the wicked and as the prison for the Titans."
The next clip is from the great 1997 miniseries, The Odyssey, with Armand Assante (highly recommended). It starts off with the scene where Odysseus travels to Hades to ask the blind prophet Tiresias how to get home. The Hades in this scene is more of an underworld of shades than a place of divine punishment.
Hades was not only a place, but the name of the god of the underworld. Originally, he appears to have been one of many anonymous chthonic deities and it was dangerous to mention his actual name:
"...Hades lacked a proper name; as in the case of other nameless chthonians, his anonymity was a precaution. He was referred to by descriptive circumlocutions as 'chthonian Zeus' ... 'the chthonian god,' 'king of those below,' 'Zeus of the departed' ... 'the other Zeus,' 'the god below,' or simply 'lord.' As the Lord of the Dead, he was dark and sinister, a god to be feared and kept at a distance." Source: Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed. revised).
The history of Hell and its demons is too long and complex to describe in detail here, but our modern concept of Hell apparently originated with the Abrahamic religions, particularly Christianity. From what I've read, Judaism sees Hell as a state of shame and atonement rather than a physical place. The full-blown description of Hell as a literal pit of fire and brimstone and eternal torment seems to be an invention of the medieval Christian church.
Interestingly enough, "[t]he Christian doctrine of hell derives from passages in the New Testament. The word hell does not appear in the Greek New Testament; instead one of three words is used: the Greek words Tartarus or Hades, or the Hebrew word Gehinnom (1)." So the Hell of the New Testament has clear roots in the underworld of the dead as described by the ancient Greeks and Mesopotamians.
(1) The word Gehinnom derives from Gehenna, a reference to the "Valley of Hinnom," a garbage dump outside of Jersualem where people burned their trash. According to Wikipedia, "[b]odies of those deemed to have died in sin without hope of salvation (such as people who committed suicide) were thrown there to be destroyed. Gehenna is used in the New Testament as a metaphor for the final place of punishment for the wicked after the resurrection."
The valley is said to be cursed because some of the early kings of Judah sacrificed children to Moloch there.
These days, a majority of Americans still believe in Hell and a 2007 Harris poll revealed that more Americans believe in a literal Hell and Devil than they do in the theory of evolution. Some Christian denominations reject the concept of Hell altogether, while others still embrace the literal version of Hell famously described by Jonathan Edwards in his notorious 1741 sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.
The full text of this sermon is a classic well worth reading.
Back in 2018, Pope Francis created a storm of controversy when he supposedly said that Hell doesn't exist and that condemned souls just disappear, though it's possible that his actual words were misreported. If Francis doesn't believe in Hell, he apparently still believes in demons, however, because the Vatican announced in the same year that it would hold a "training course for priests in exorcism ... amid claims that demands for deliverance from demonic possession have greatly increased across the world."
Modern neopaganism isn't a "revival of the old traditions." It never will be as long as it ignores the ancient practice of blood sacrifice which was central to the real thing.
Modern pagans like to say they're "keeping the old ways alive," but the truth is that they're not pagans at all, at least not in any real historical sense of the term. Whatever they call themselves -- "Odinists," "Heathens," "Neo-Druids," Wiccans, etc. -- they're basically just Live Action Role Players who make up their rituals and beliefs as they go along, ignoring the little we do know about actual pagan religions.
The most glaring problem with modern pagans is that they don't conduct ritual sacrifices -- except in an extremely watered-down, safe and above all legal form. They replace this central aspect of real pagan religion with various invented rituals and "theologies" that never actually existed in the ancient world, and the result is usually ludicrous.
For example, the Odinist Fellowship (UK) web site openly admits that "It is a well-known fact that the most widespread form of communal worship practised in ancient times by pagans of every nationality was the sacrifice." They then go on to say that "Odinists in modern times do not practise elaborate rituals, such as animal sacrifices, that were common in olden days; it would be neither legal nor necessary to do so."
In other words, the Odinist Fellowship admits that it doesn't follow actual pagan rituals. Instead, its members rely on their own "interpretations" of pagan "theology" and these interpretations inevitably reflect their own thoroughly modern political and social ideologies -- environmentalism, intersectional feminism, political correctness, vegetarianism, egalitarianism, New Age spiritualism, whatever.
These UK Odinists explain away the fact that they don't conduct "unnecessary" sacrificial rituals by saying "What is necessary is that we understand the theological principles that underlie ancient practice, and apply those principles in forms better suited to contemporary conditions." As it turns out, "the form of sacrifice practised by modern Odinists is the libation of mead, accounts of which have been recorded in the literature."
They're sort of correct here. Mead and other things such as wine, milk and honey were frequently used for libations or offerings, but in the old days libations usually accompanied sacrifices. I'm not sure if libations and sacrifices can be considered the same thing, but never mind that.
There is nothing ancient about this path whatsoever.
The word "pagan" has two different senses. According to Merriam-Webster, a pagan is either "a follower of a polytheistic religion (as in ancient Rome)" or "one who has little or no religion and who delights in sensual pleasures and material goods: an irreligious or hedonistic person." Personally, I'd say that modern pagans fit more into the latter category than anything else, but whatever the case they can't call themselves pagans in the religious sense and claim to be following the "old ways" if they don't conduct ritual sacrifices.
This is an absolutely critical distinction. Sacrifice, especially blood sacrifice, was central to ancient paganism and I think it's accurate to say that authentic pagan religions consisted almost entirely of the correct practice of sacrificial rituals according to prescribed forms. There's no doubt at all that sacrifice was the major element in all pagan religions.
"Sacrifice was the most important form of action in Greek religion," according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised), and "Roman sacrificial practices were not functionally different from Greek." And it was the same with the so-called barbarian tribes of western Europe. There is a lot of archaeological evidence for Celtic/Druidic sacrifice, including human sacrifices. According to the OCD, "The ancients knew them [the Celts] as fierce fighters and superb horsemen, and noticed the savagery of their religious rites conducted by the priesthood, the Druids..." (Emphasis added.)
Ancient Greek sacrifice. Real pagan sacrifices were a straight-up transaction with the gods, a blood-offering in exchange for protection or other favors . There was no "theology" involved here.
Modern Druids and other neopagans can hardly be described as "savage" and I'm not sure where they get their "pagan theologies" from. In the case of the Druids, the little we know about their religious practices has been written from the perspective of the Romans and early Christian scholars. The Druids had an oral tradition and one thing we know about them, according to the OCD, is that they believed in sacral, i.e. sacred kingship. I doubt if today's neopagans would accept this concept any more than they accept the necessity of making sacrifices.
The one thing missing from every description of pagan religion I've ever come across is what we would now refer to as a "theology." Ancient people had their myths, but they didn't have theologies or dogmas as such, so it's difficult to see how the Odinist Fellowship (or any other neopagan group) can "understand the theological principles that underlie ancient practice."
Pagan religions were inherently ritualistic in nature. Unlike modern Christians, pagans didn't have to accept a particular doctrine or set or moral principles in order to be pagans. The correct execution of ritual was the heart of the matter. In Rome, for instance, it was perfectly possible, even common among the educated classes, to be "religious" without actually believing in the gods. Religion was ritual to the Romans. "Belief" had nothing to do with it. Ref:Cicero and the Religion of his Day, Eli Edard Burriss, 1926.
Images of Roman sacrifice. The pagan gods liked blood and the smell of burning flesh and offal.
The importance of ritual as opposed to dogma can be seen in the practice of Santeria, an example of a real pagan (see below) religion that still exists in the modern world. According to Wikipedia, "Santeria does not use a central creed for its religious practice; though it is understood in terms of its rituals and ceremonies." And one of its rituals involves animal sacrifices offered up to the gods for initiations and healing:
"As the sacrificial hour approaches, several priests (Santeros) are preparing the 40 assorted goats, roosters, hens, guinea hens, pigeons, quail, turtle and duck who grow noisy and nervous in their cages. Their lives will be taken in an exchange mandated by Olofi, Santería's supreme god and source of all energy, to heal the broken body and spirit of Virginia Rosario-Nevarez and to initiate her into the Santería priesthood." Source: Dallas Observer (2009).
Note:According to the Santeria Church of the Orishas, "The sacrifice method commonly used in Santeria involves the severing of the carotid arteries with a knife to cause the animal to pass out before it dies."
Just to qualify what I said earlier, I'm not sure if it's technically correct to call Santeria a "pagan" religion since it incorporates elements of Catholicism, but then again Catholicism itself also incorporates elements of paganism, so the picture gets kind of muddled. Santeria as we know it isn't very old, having originated in the Caribbean under the Spanish Empire, but it has deep roots in the Yaruba religion of West Africa. Yaruba is definitely pre-Christian, but has apparently been influenced by both Christianity and Islam over the centuries. Whatever the case, however, Santeria, at least in its ritualistic and sacrificial aspects, seems to have much more in common with authentic European paganism than any of these modern neopagan movements.
Real paganism as practiced in Santeria.
Modern pagans could easily incorporate sacrificial rituals into their ceremonies. The sources have detailed descriptions of how these rites were carried out, at least by the Greeks and Romans, and Celtic sacrifices were probably very similar. The legality of blood sacrifices is another matter. The US Supreme Court ruled back in 1993 that "city laws directed at animal sacrifice as part of the Santeria religion violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment," but I'm not sure if that ruling still stands. If it does, that hasn't stopped local officials from trying to prevent animal sacrifices for religious purposes. I don't know what the legal situation is in the UK and other European countries.
Blood sacrifices aren't absolutely necessary, of course, but the ancients believed that they had the most power to influence the gods and let's face it -- anything less would be kind of lame. Modern pagans could start sacrificing pigs, goats, cows, chickens, and so on. They might have to do it in secret, but it could be done. Neo-Druids serious about keeping the old ways alive could sacrifice the occasional baby or cheerleader as well, but here's the thing. The thought of killing animals, let alone human beings, would disgust and repel them -- most of them, at any rate. They're too civilized to do things like that.
And that's why they'll never be real pagans.
Modern neopagans have more in common with the Christians in this scene than they do with the pagans. They would run away screaming from a ritual sacrifice like this.
Today is "Christmas," whatever that means. The word comes from the Middle English Christemasse, which is turn comes from the Old English Christes-messe or "Christ's Mass," but it's unclear what the word "mass" actually means here. These days it usually refers to the Eucharist (Holy Communion) and the Catholic mass, but it may have had a different meaning when the first Christmas was celebrated in Rome in 336 AD:
"The English noun mass is derived from Middle Latinmissa. The Latin word was adopted in Old English as mæsse (via a Vulgar Latin form messa), and was sometimes glossed as sendnes (i.e. 'a sending, dismission'). The Latin term missa itself was in use by the 6th century. It is most likely derived from the concluding formula Ite, missa est ('Go; the dismissal is made'); missa here is a Late Latin substantive corresponding to classical missio." (Wikipedia)
If this is correct, the word "Christmas" means something more like "Christ's Dismissal" or "Christ's Sending," which may refer to the dismissal or "sending out into the world" of the congregation after the service. Various other explanations have been proposed, but the original meaning of "Christmas" -- like the origin of Christianity itself -- is still kind of hazy.
One thing that isn't hazy is why we celebrate Christmas on Dec. 25 (Gregorian Calendar) even though nobody has the slightest idea when Jesus was born. The date was first adopted by the Western Christian Church, sometime during the first half of the fourth century, because the early church needed to compete with important pagan festivals like the celebration of the winter solstice.
Christmas is a classic example of how the early church Christianized the pagan West by taking over its traditions.
"The Christian ecclesiastical calendar contains many remnants of pre-Christian festivals. Christmas includes elements of the Roman feast of the Saturnalia and the birthday of Mithra. The Chronography of 354 AD contains early evidence of the celebration on December 25 of a Christian liturgical feast of the birth of Jesus. This was in Rome, while in Eastern Christianity the birth of Jesus was already celebrated in connection with the Epiphany on January 6." Source: Wikipedia.
Christmas traditions have deep roots in the ancient pagan world. Take the Christmas tree, for instance. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, "The use of evergreen trees, wreaths, and garlands to symbolize eternal life was a custom of the ancient Egyptians, Chinese, and Hebrews. Tree worship was common among the pagan Europeans and survived their conversion to Christianity in the Scandinavian customs of decorating the house and barn with evergreens at the New Year to scare away the Devil and of setting up a tree for the birds during Christmastime. It survived further in the custom, also observed in Germany, of placing a Yule (1) tree at an entrance or inside the house during the midwinter holidays."
In Rome, the period of the winter solstice brought the seven days of the Saturnalia. "Saturn’s great festival, the Saturnalia, became the most popular of Roman festivals, and its influence is still felt in the celebration of Christmas and the Western world’s New Year." (Encyclopedia Britannica).
"The Saturnalia was the most popular holiday of the Roman year," according to the University of Chicago. Catullus describes it as 'the best of days' ... and Seneca complains that the 'whole mob has let itself go in pleasures" ... Pliny the Younger writes that he retired to his room while the rest of the household celebrated ... It was an occasion for celebration, visits to friends, and the presentation of gifts, particularly wax candles ... perhaps to signify the returning light after the solstice, and sigillaria [figurines given as traditional presents]."
Everything in Rome came to a stop during the Saturnalia, a festival of licentiousness and role reversals, among other things. According to History Extra, "We say that during Christmas today the whole world shuts down – the same thing happened during the Saturnalia. There were sometimes plots to overthrow the government, because people were distracted – the famous conspirator Cataline had planned to murder the Senate and set the city on fire during the holiday, but his plan was uncovered and stopped by Cicero in 63 BC."
Some Christians see the Saturnalia (and, by extension, Christmas itself) as satanic, which isn't too surprising since Christianity demonized all of the old pagan gods while simultaneously hijacking many of their traditions for their own purposes. In one case, that of Mithra (Mithras) -- the early church's main competitor -- the Christians may have appropriated a pagan god so completely that some have argued that Christ is Mithra in another form.
The identification of Mithra's birthday with Christmas is sketchy. While many sources claim that the god was born on Dec. 25, other sources say that this isn't true and the story seems to be a much later invention. According to Wikipedia, for instance, "It is often stated that Mithras was thought to have been born on December 25. But Beck states that this is not the case. In fact he calls this assertion 'that hoariest of 'facts'. He continues: 'In truth, the only evidence for it is the celebration of the birthday of Invictus on that date in the Calendar of Philocalus. Invictus is of course Sol Invictus, Aurelian's sun god. It does not follow that a different, earlier, and unofficial sun god, Sol Invictus Mithras, was necessarily or even probably, born on that day too.'"
Mithra was said to have been born from a rock (in one version of the story) According to The Mysteries of Mithra, by Franz Cumont (p 131), "the tradition ran that the 'Generative Rock,' of which a standing image was worshiped in the temples, had given birth to Mithra on the banks of a river, under the shade of a sacred tree, and that shepherds alone, ensconced in a neighboring mountain, had witnessed the miracle of his entrance into the world." Like the story of Jesus's birth, the presence of shepherds in the fields suggests that Mithra was born in the spring or summer, not in the dead of winter. Whatever the case, however, the Jesus/Mithra connection is persistent in popular culture:
One interesting fact about Mithraism is that it appeared in the Roman Empire around the same time that Christianity appeared and seems to have dropped out of sight around the same time that Nicene Christianity became the official state religion of Rome:
"The Roman deity Mithras appears in the historical record in the late 1st century A.D., and disappears from it in the late 4th century A.D.," according to The Tertullian Project. It's tempting to see this as circumstantial evidence that Christianity evolved out of Mithraism, but the truth is that all forms of pagan religion began to fade out after the church consolidated its power in the 4th century. Besides, very little is actually known about the teachings of Mithraism, an "organization of cells," according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed. revised), whose beliefs have to be reconstructed mostly from inscriptions.
None of this really matters, though. Mithras probably wasn't born on Dec. 25, but then neither was Jesus so what difference does it make? The connections between Christmas, ancient Yuletide celebrations and the Roman Saturnalia are clear, so if you're a pagan you might as well go ahead and celebrate Mithra's birthday today as well. Of course, this assumes that you see Christmas as a religious holiday in the first place. A lot of people don't:
"Most Americans celebrate Christmas, but its importance to people as a religious event continues to wane, according to a new survey by Pew Research." (News & Observer, 2017).
"The poll found that while 90 percent of Americans celebrate Christmas, only 55 percent regard it as a religious holiday. Further, the survey found, a decreasing majority of Americans believe in the main elements of the Christmas story as told in the Bible: that Jesus was born of a virgin mother; that three magi came to visit, bearing gifts; that an angel announced the baby’s birth; and that the infant was cradled in a manger."
Christmas has become secularized and increasingly commercial, to say the least. The holiday has degenerated into a month-long orgy of rabid consumerism and mass insanity, a typical example of the decline of the modern world. (Next video from 2018)
I have mixed feelings about Christmas. I'm an atheist, I don't believe that Jesus existed and I think that Christianity was a disaster for the Roman Empire and the West in general, but I'm not one of those rabid anti-Christians who protest manger displays and fly into shrieking tantrums every time someone says "Merry Christmas." And while it's obvious that the early (Western) church made Dec. 25 Jesus's birthday in order to hijack a pagan festival, I'm not especially bothered by that fact. I don't get all offended about it and start foaming at the mouth.
I can't stand what Christmas has become, but the holiday is a Western tradition so even though I'm a complete heretic I support the open celebration of the holiday because the West and all of its values and institutions and traditions are under attack by politically-correct vermin. I'd rather see a return to our true pagan roots (something I don't think is possible, by the way), but given the choice between Christianity and, say, Islam or Cultural Marxism or, God forbid, modern neopaganism, I'll take Christianity any day even though I don't believe a word of it.
So Merry Christmas and if saying that offends somebody I couldn't care less.
Notes: Cybele may have evolved from an even older fertility goddess in the proto-city of Catalhoyuk (7500-5700 BC), also located in ancient Anatolia. According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised), Cybele was "the great mother-goddess of Anatolia, associated in myth, and later at least in cult, with her youthful lover Attis. Pessinus in Phrygia was her chief sanctuary, and the cult appears at an early date in Lydia."
According to Theoi Greek Mythology, "Kybele (Cybele) was the ancient Phrygian Mother of the Gods, a primal nature goddess worshiped with orgiastic rites in the mountains of central and western Anatolia. The Greeks identified her with their own mother of the gods--the Titaness Rhea."
The cult of Cybele was apparently introduced fairly early (3rd cent. BC) in Rome. "Thanks to its official status and early naturalization in Rome and in Ostia, the cult spread rapidly through the provinces, especially in Gaul and Africa, and was readily accepted as a municipal cult. Its agrarian character made it more popular with the fixed populations than with the soldiers, and it was especially favored by women." (OCD)
Cybele was also known as the Magna Mater or Great Mother. According to The Ancient Mysteries: A Sourcebook of Ancient Texts, edited by Marvin W. Meyer (p.113), "she was honored as the mother goddess of fertility, but her particular power was evidenced in the wilds of the untamed forests and mountains." After Cybele entered the official Roman pantheon, "she was to function practically as a Roman national goddess" and enjoyed great favor with the emperors starting with Claudius in the first century.
"The most well-known Roman festival in honor of the Anatolian deities [Cybele and her consort Attis] was celebrated in the spring, during March," according to The Ancient Mysteries (p.114). These rites were associated with violent religious frenzy. "March 24 was aptly named The Day of Blood. On this day some of the fanatical celebrants flogged themselves until they bled and sprinkled their blood upon the image and altars in the sanctuary, while others are said to have imitated Attis by castrating themselves." (Ibid) Bulls were also sacrificed in honor of the Great Mother of the Gods.
A scene from the great HBO series Rome. Highly recommended.
Several Roman historians and poets described the cult of Cybele in detail. Livy, for instance, described how the cult was first brought to Rome in his History of Rome (Book 29.10-14):
"About this time a sudden wave of superstition swept over Rome. The Sibylline Books had been consulted because it had rained stones that year more than usual [!], and in the Books a prophecy was found that if ever a foreign enemy should invade Italy, he could be defeated and driven out if Cybele, The Idaean Mother of the Gods, were brought from Pessinus to Rome." (Ibid, p. 121).
Christian writers denounced the cult of Cybele and the church banned it altogether when they gained the secular power required to force their intolerant monotheism on the pagan world, but the tradition of the Great Mother still survives in the figure of the Virgin Mary.
"The remains of a 1,200-year-old pagan temple to the Old Norse gods such as Thor and Odin have been discovered in Norway — a rare relic of the Viking religion built a few centuries before Christianity became dominant there." Source: Live Science.
"Archaeologists say the large wooden building — about 45 feet (14 meters) long, 26 feet (8 m) wide, and up to 40 feet (12 m) high — is thought to date from the end of the eighth century and was used for worship and sacrifices to gods during the midsummer and midwinter solstices."
Note: "The Old Norse religion was suppressed from the 11th century, when Norway's kings forcibly imposed the Christian religion and tore down or burned buildings like the god house at Ose to enforce worship in the new Christian churches."
The main factor in the growth of Christianity was the violent suppression of paganism. The destruction of this Norse god house is just one example of a process that was repeated all across the pagan world.
"Researchers at the University of Dundee have recreated the face of an 18th-century 'witch' who died in jail before she could be burned for her 'crimes'." Source: Archaeology News Network (2017).
"Lilias Adie, from Torryburn, Fife, died in 1704 while held in prison for her 'confessed' crimes of being a witch and having sex with the devil."
Comment: This isn't ancient or medieval history, but I can't resist posting stories involving sex with the devil. If this reconstruction is accurate, Lilias Adie looks like she was a sweet old grandma, which just makes the wicked old trollop's behavior all the more shocking. But never mind that. Reading her tragic story made me think, in my usual roundabout way, that it's about time to bring back the medieval witch hunts.
Witchcraft, at least in a watered-down, New Age, politically-correct and feminized form, is alive and well in the modern world. Witchcraft is now a brand, according to Buzzfeed (2017) in an article about how "entrepreneurs [have blended] a passion for the occult with an understanding of e-commerce to capture a share of the new economic activity surrounding witchcraft." Magic, it seems, is a hot market these days:
"The owner of one such business, Goddess Provisions, said her customer base has grown from 300 subscribers to almost 6,000 in the last year and a half."
The goddess who runs this online store sells everything from crystals to aromatherapy, superfood snacks and spiritual growth tools, and her customers are undoubtedly a pack of rabid Third-Wave feminists who see themselves as being oppressed by the non-existent patriarchy. I have no evidence to back this up, but I imagine that the majority of them are -- among other things -- suffering from extreme forms of Post Trump Stress Disorder.
May the Great Cthulhu save us all from this plague of modern witches and neopagans in general. They're like nursery school kids playing dress-up compared to a necromancer like Joseph Curwen in H.P. Lovecraft's The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward, or, perhaps, to an alleged 18th-century witch like Lilias Adie.
It's amazing that in the 300+ years since Adie died in a Scottish prison after her confession -- three centuries that saw the rise of modern science and technology -- witchcraft has become a widespread, public, relentlessly left-wing and completely legal subculture with a thriving market for witchy products like mouse bones and pentagram pins. These feminist witches and white-magic practitioners are seriously boring, though. Maybe some of them dabble in curse spells and the like, but you'd be hard pressed to find any modern equivalents of Wizard Whateley in The Dunwich Horror or the evil sorceress Queen Taramis in Conan the Destroyer. As far as I can tell, modern witchcraft is more of a pose and a fashion statement than anything else.
Back in Lilias Adie's time, people took witchcraft seriously. Guilty or not, that's why she was in prison. The modern witchcraft brand, if nothing else, shows how much Christianity has degenerated over the centuries. Many modern Christians still believe that witches are real, but they're not inclined to do anything concrete about it. These days, even the most fundamentalist congregations have succumbed to creeping liberalism. For instance, they would never even think of actually going out and burning one of their local goddesses at the stake. That's too bad, if you ask me. Granted, it's hard to take these modern witches very seriously, but considering how obnoxious they are a revival of the medieval witch hunts would not only be a positive benefit to society, but highly entertaining.
What we need is a New Inquisition. The Catholic Church has become a squalid viper's nest of corruption. pederasty and Cultural Marxism, so the responsibility would fall on the shoulders of fundamentalist congregations around the world. Modern witches aren't hard to locate; most of them have Facebook and Twitter pages and so on. Once the New Inquisition Intelligence Service identifies them, it could dispatch howling mobs with torches to burn down every upscale witchcraft boutique they could find and round up all the Goddesses and Pop-Culture Heroines they could get their hands on. Teenage girls with a pack of Tarot cards, Goth chicks wearing pentagram necklaces, shady characters like this little girl -- no one would be immune from prosecution except for witches like Elvira, of course.. Everybody else would all have to stand trial, preferably by ordeal:
The guilty could then be disposed of humanely, just like they were in the Middle Ages:
"In England and New England Witches were hanged; elsewhere the most common form of execution was burning. Burning, by the way, didn't mean being burned alive. If you recanted (admitted you'd made a mistake and were sorry), you were killed beforehand, and then your body was consigned to the flames. Nobles were beheaded, commoners were hanged -- being burned alive was an extreme and unusual punishment except in Spain and Italy where the Inquisition did regularly burn people alive." Source: Summerlands. (Firefox is now giving me an Untrusted Certificate warning about this site, but it used to be OK.)
Witches weren't always executed. Sometimes they were banished, imprisoned or forced to do penance. The executions, when they occurred, were usually public because they were thought to be valuable "teaching tools," which I'm sure they were. The religious courts handed the condemned over to the secular authorities in order to keep the church's hands clean, but in the modern world I suppose the New Inquisition would have to do the dirty work itself. I imagine a lot of people out there would object to this, but look at it this way: The executions would not only rid us of all these LARPING New Age witches, but they would be good for the tourist economy wherever they took place:
"Executions were popular events. The largest had thousands of attendees, who often traveled many miles to see the deaths. Crowds were so large that the Inquisition would sometimes erect bleachers, so that everyone could see and hear." (Summerland)
Bring back the medieval witch hunts. It's just a suggestion.
Note:This article has been re-posted as a public service.
This is the temple of Apollo at the Ionian sanctuary of Didyma in Turkey. According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary, the oracular shrine of Apollo "was administered by a priestly clan, the Brnachidae, and rose to great prominence in the 6th cent. BC." The fate of the sanctuary "seems to have been sealed by an oracle given in AD 303, advising Diocletian to initiate his empire-wide persecution of the Christian church. Constantine I closed the oracle, and executed the priests; it appears not to have functioned thereafter."
In other words, the oracle was shut down in retaliation for its advice to Diocletian.
Modern Pagans Aren't Real Pagans
Modern neopaganism isn't a "revival of the old traditions." It never will be as long as it ignores the ancient practice of blood sacrifice which was central to the real thing.
Modern pagans like to say they're "keeping the old ways alive," but the truth is that they're not pagans at all, at least not in any real historical sense of the term. Whatever they call themselves -- "Odinists," "Heathens," "Neo-Druids," Wiccans, etc. -- they're basically just Live Action Role Players who make up their rituals and beliefs as they go along, ignoring the little we do know about actual pagan religions.
The most glaring problem with modern pagans is that they don't conduct ritual sacrifices -- except in an extremely watered-down, safe and above all legal form. They replace this central aspect of real pagan religion with various invented rituals and "theologies" that never actually existed in the ancient world, and the result is usually ludicrous.
For example, the Odinist Fellowship (UK) web site openly admits that "It is a well-known fact that the most widespread form of communal worship practised in ancient times by pagans of every nationality was the sacrifice." They then go on to say that "Odinists in modern times do not practise elaborate rituals, such as animal sacrifices, that were common in olden days; it would be neither legal nor necessary to do so."
In other words, the Odinist Fellowship admits that it doesn't follow actual pagan rituals. Instead, its members rely on their own "interpretations" of pagan "theology" and these interpretations inevitably reflect their own thoroughly modern political and social ideologies -- environmentalism, intersectional feminism, political correctness, vegetarianism, egalitarianism, New Age spiritualism, whatever.
These UK Odinists explain away the fact that they don't conduct "unnecessary" sacrificial rituals by saying "What is necessary is that we understand the theological principles that underlie ancient practice, and apply those principles in forms better suited to contemporary conditions." As it turns out, "the form of sacrifice practised by modern Odinists is the libation of mead, accounts of which have been recorded in the literature."
They're sort of correct here. Mead and other things such as wine, milk and honey were frequently used for libations or offerings, but in the old days libations usually accompanied sacrifices. I'm not sure if libations and sacrifices can be considered the same thing, but never mind that.
There is nothing ancient about this path whatsoever.
The word "pagan" has two different senses. According to Merriam-Webster, a pagan is either "a follower of a polytheistic religion (as in ancient Rome)" or "one who has little or no religion and who delights in sensual pleasures and material goods: an irreligious or hedonistic person." Personally, I'd say that modern pagans fit more into the latter category than anything else, but whatever the case they can't call themselves pagans in the religious sense and claim to be following the "old ways" if they don't conduct ritual sacrifices.
This is an absolutely critical distinction. Sacrifice, especially blood sacrifice, was central to ancient paganism and I think it's accurate to say that authentic pagan religions consisted almost entirely of the correct practice of sacrificial rituals according to prescribed forms. There's no doubt at all that sacrifice was the major element in all pagan religions.
"Sacrifice was the most important form of action in Greek religion," according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised), and "Roman sacrificial practices were not functionally different from Greek." And it was the same with the so-called barbarian tribes of western Europe. There is a lot of archaeological evidence for Celtic/Druidic sacrifice, including human sacrifices. According to the OCD, "The ancients knew them [the Celts] as fierce fighters and superb horsemen, and noticed the savagery of their religious rites conducted by the priesthood, the Druids..." (Emphasis added.)
Ancient Greek sacrifice. Real pagan sacrifices were a straight-up transaction with the gods, a blood-offering in exchange for protection or other favors . There was no "theology" involved here.
Modern Druids and other neopagans can hardly be described as "savage" and I'm not sure where they get their "pagan theologies" from. In the case of the Druids, the little we know about their religious practices has been written from the perspective of the Romans and early Christian scholars. The Druids had an oral tradition and one thing we know about them, according to the OCD, is that they believed in sacral, i.e. sacred kingship. I doubt if today's neopagans would accept this concept any more than they accept the necessity of making sacrifices.
The one thing missing from every description of pagan religion I've ever come across is what we would now refer to as a "theology." Ancient people had their myths, but they didn't have theologies or dogmas as such, so it's difficult to see how the Odinist Fellowship (or any other neopagan group) can "understand the theological principles that underlie ancient practice."
Pagan religions were inherently ritualistic in nature. Unlike modern Christians, pagans didn't have to accept a particular doctrine or set or moral principles in order to be pagans. The correct execution of ritual was the heart of the matter. In Rome, for instance, it was perfectly possible, even common among the educated classes, to be "religious" without actually believing in the gods. Religion was ritual to the Romans. "Belief" had nothing to do with it. Ref: Cicero and the Religion of his Day, Eli Edard Burriss, 1926.
Images of Roman sacrifice. The pagan gods liked blood and the smell of burning flesh and offal.
The importance of ritual as opposed to dogma can be seen in the practice of Santeria, an example of a real pagan (see below) religion that still exists in the modern world. According to Wikipedia, "Santeria does not use a central creed for its religious practice; though it is understood in terms of its rituals and ceremonies." And one of its rituals involves animal sacrifices offered up to the gods for initiations and healing:
"As the sacrificial hour approaches, several priests (Santeros) are preparing the 40 assorted goats, roosters, hens, guinea hens, pigeons, quail, turtle and duck who grow noisy and nervous in their cages. Their lives will be taken in an exchange mandated by Olofi, Santería's supreme god and source of all energy, to heal the broken body and spirit of Virginia Rosario-Nevarez and to initiate her into the Santería priesthood." Source: Dallas Observer (2009).
Note: According to the Santeria Church of the Orishas, "The sacrifice method commonly used in Santeria involves the severing of the carotid arteries with a knife to cause the animal to pass out before it dies."
Just to qualify what I said earlier, I'm not sure if it's technically correct to call Santeria a "pagan" religion since it incorporates elements of Catholicism, but then again Catholicism itself also incorporates elements of paganism, so the picture gets kind of muddled. Santeria as we know it isn't very old, having originated in the Caribbean under the Spanish Empire, but it has deep roots in the Yaruba religion of West Africa. Yaruba is definitely pre-Christian, but has apparently been influenced by both Christianity and Islam over the centuries. Whatever the case, however, Santeria, at least in its ritualistic and sacrificial aspects, seems to have much more in common with authentic European paganism than any of these modern neopagan movements.
Real paganism as practiced in Santeria.
Modern pagans could easily incorporate sacrificial rituals into their ceremonies. The sources have detailed descriptions of how these rites were carried out, at least by the Greeks and Romans, and Celtic sacrifices were probably very similar. The legality of blood sacrifices is another matter. The US Supreme Court ruled back in 1993 that "city laws directed at animal sacrifice as part of the Santeria religion violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment," but I'm not sure if that ruling still stands. If it does, that hasn't stopped local officials from trying to prevent animal sacrifices for religious purposes. I don't know what the legal situation is in the UK and other European countries.
Blood sacrifices aren't absolutely necessary, of course, but the ancients believed that they had the most power to influence the gods and let's face it -- anything less would be kind of lame. Modern pagans could start sacrificing pigs, goats, cows, chickens, and so on. They might have to do it in secret, but it could be done. Neo-Druids serious about keeping the old ways alive could sacrifice the occasional baby or cheerleader as well, but here's the thing. The thought of killing animals, let alone human beings, would disgust and repel them -- most of them, at any rate. They're too civilized to do things like that.
And that's why they'll never be real pagans.
Modern neopagans have more in common with the Christians in this scene than they do with the pagans. They would run away screaming from a ritual sacrifice like this.
Posted at 07:00 AM in Commentary, Paganism, Religion | Permalink