Links between all the faiths

Witchy Wisdom
1

Ok. I was doing some reading in my Valhalla app just now, and I was re-reading about the first man and woman.
In heathenism, it’s Ask and Embla. Ask (male meaning ash tree) and Embla (female meaning elm tree). These were the first two humans created by the gods.
And it just dawned on me, hang about, those names are like Adam (first male) and Eve (first female) :thinking: Both the Poetic Edda and Prose Edda, state 3 gods (Odin, Hoenir and Lodurr) are involved in the creation of all life.

In one of my books, pagan portals its believed, among some heathen circles, Lodurr is another name for Loki. I don’t know :person_shrugging:, but 3 gods, again like the Trinity. And then also of Zeus, Poseidon and Hades.

It just struck me, there’s cross themes in all the religions, I found it interesting, and how I didn’t notice this before, I don’t know. Maybe there is just one divine team, and we all add our own names and stories to them :heartpulse:
Even in science, it’s talks about life just exploding random, chaos, (Loki’s God of chaos) etc. This is really intriguing me, not that I’m scientific, but there’s another theme.

I think I’m going to dive down this rabbit Warren :joy: and see where I end up. It might be fascinating. :heartpulse:

15 Likes
2

It’s a rabbit hole, for sure! I think there is some truth to all religions. Many of them have overlapping stories such as this one, or themes like the Trinity.

It’s also interesting to think about the idea of Christmas being around the Winter Solstice. At Christmas, people celebrate the return of the Son of God. At the Solstice, people celebrate the return of the Sun God. I think there are also a lot of correlations between Egyptian mythology and Christian mythology. I know there are videos out there on YouTube that explain it, but I can’t attest to the reliability of those sources.

I hope you’ll share what you learn on your jump down the rabbit hole!

11 Likes
3

Oh yes of course.

And then there’s All saints Day, all hallows Eve, Samhain. Easter linked with spring equinox. Yep, that’s my project for the winter. I’ll share all I find. Perhaps there’s stories in Islam, Judaism, Hinduism etc. This will be such a learning experience.
:grin::heartpulse:

9 Likes
4

There are even stories of great floods in many different faiths! There’s the flood of Deucalion in Greek mythology, the flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh from ancient Mesopotamia, and the story of Manu’s ark from Hindu & Buddhist religions! Lots of different parallels!

11 Likes
5

Fascinating. Hopefully others here can add stories. I’m going to make a chart I think, visually link it all up. Such fun :grin:

10 Likes
6

Ohh, I can’t wait! Visuals are a great way to learn and connect information lol it makes it so much easier for me to understand.

9 Likes
7

This is a fascinating project, and I tend to agree, it feels like everyone has a picture of how the reality looks to them, and while not exactly the same, things match in shape and rhyme with each other :sparkling_heart:

There’s the significance of numbers and certain geometric figures too. 3 and 7 are very common, also triangle and pentagram. The use of candles and incense, bells, chanting, prayer, sometimes on your knees, and putting your hands together for it.

There’s a trinity in Hinduism too, Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer… (re)birth, life and death. And another trinity of Goddesses, that I’m not going to name because they have so many forms… :smile_cat:

This is an interesting one! :blush: And Sun worship in general, and how I’m pretty sure it exists in all religions, in some form. :hugs: :sun:

I remember reading about Ash and Elm somewhere, I think it was some flavor of wicca…

Sounds like a lot of fun, we’d love to see what you come up with! :blush:

10 Likes
8

They’re all linked, as far as I’ve learnt. When a new religion would come along, they would adapt from the existing ones to help ensure that it would be adopted more easily. With people migrating all over the place all over history, stories easily spread and take form in regions, evolve to match the values of those there, and before you know it, new religion/belief system/etc.

The classic examples being of the Romans taking from the Greeks, and Christianity adopting from everything before it. But there are many more beyond that.

Funnily enough, my family follows the Orthodox Christian dates for celebrations, which don’t follow the same dates that everyone else here in Australia is used to. From what I’ve learnt about that, it’s because the standard ones are the dates adopted from other traditions, like Christmas coming from Saturnalia, and so on. But practically, it means I get two Christmases, two Easters, and so on. :joy:

When I first got into my studies I had a big rant to my partner one night about how I was convinced that everyone was Lilith. :joy: I was like, “And she was Ishtar and Inana, and then when she moved west, she became Hekate, and even further west, she became the Morrigan, and I mean, look at all this symbolism, the queen of night and magick and witch craft, the snakes, the owls, and she’s got so many known names already, even Kali who is found to the east, and…” (Yes, I was talking fast and excited as a kid getting a year’s worth of free candy. :joy:)

Edit: Sorry, I was using my phone to type this up and I find using my phone to write kind of frustrating. If any of that came through in this via my being short or anything, please understand it’s directed at my phone. :sweat_smile:

10 Likes
9

@starborn I see this pattern, that’s why I’m wondering if it’s one divine team, all working together for the good of humanity, with a few demons just to keep things exciting and a little off kilter :rofl: (my brain is going off in all directions :exploding_head:). Anyways, I’m going to start digging :rabbit2: :heartpulse:

9 Likes
10

Belial crosses his arms, gives a stern look, and says, “ahem”. :joy:

9 Likes
11

@starborn Tell him sorry, it’s the Loki in me coming out. He’s welcome for tea and cake anytime :rofl::heartpulse:

9 Likes
12

Have you read The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell? He discusses ideas such as comparative mythology, universal themes across religions and the importance of storytelling shared down from generation to generation. You might find it interesting. I think it stemmed from a PBS series of the same name. My favorite takeaway from him is to “Follow your bliss”.

11 Likes
13

Aww. :black_heart:

:joy: It’s funny how opposite they are.

9 Likes
14

Nope, but I think I will now!

Well, not right now. I need sleep. But in the near future. :smile:

9 Likes
15

@korvo I’ll add it to my list. :grin:

9 Likes
16

@starborn Ok, I’ve been a snooping around on Wikipedia etc at the mention of Belial and there’s a general belief that the demons were once angels but are now called demons cuz they are not part of the heavenly family. I’ve yet to read S Connolly books yet, but they’re on my kindle. If this is true, this links again all the Divine, making the demons divine too. Now that’s controversial territory, but me thinks, well alot of these angels left heaven and I guess took up a new name maybe. Anyways, my book list is growing too much now, and this rabbit hole is growing by the second so I’m going to stop here, before I dig anymore holes. :person_facepalming::rofl:

9 Likes
17

Don’t put down the shovel, shore up the sides. When we dig deeper we need to support what we find. :people_hugging:

:goat:

9 Likes
18

The Luciferianism I tend to follow believes this as well.

We see all the “ranked” ones as once being angels loyal to Lucifer. So from Lucifer, to the six princes, Belial, Leviathan, Beelzebub, Mammon, Asmodeus, and Belphegor, to the rest, such as Clauneck, Ipos, Marbas, Paimon, Valac, Samael, and so on, they were all once angels. But lesser demons are fully demons.

Aren’t we all? :smiling_face:

9 Likes
19

That’s exactly how it looks sometimes! And I know that as other faiths came along, they had a tendency to borrow from the previous one(s) either out of necessity to convert or just syncretization with the local culture. It’s all very fascinating to look into!

You’re probably absolutely right! At our core, that’s one of the foundations of human existence! We started out as a simple species with no explanation for how things worked. The Sun and Moon were our gods, the land and weather our spirits and gods, and so on. They still are, of course! But now we have a different perspective as a species.

haha I mean, it’s not impossible, is it? We may never know!

I like the way you explained the syncretizing of different beliefs across regions and cultures. It’s something that still happens today, and it’s even prevalent within polytheism and pagan beliefs! This is where we get practitioners who are comfortable mixing pantheons, in my opinion, or who have their Christian upbringing mixed in with their witchcraft practice. It’s all very fascinating, and if I had infinite time, I’d love to learn all about it!

It did not - it came across as perfectly normal to me! :blush:

This is interesting, too, because it also touches on the ideas of soft polytheism versus hard polytheism! To this day, I’m not sure where I stand with this belief. Some days I’m a hard polytheist. On other days, I’m a soft polytheist! If the Universe just has one divine team that changes their appearance based on the culture of the people they’re interacting with, that would be soft polytheism… and it would be super interesting if that’s the case! I’ve had interactions with a few different deities, and I can tell you that their energies are definitely different. If a divine team can change their appearance and energy, we may all be in for a surprise if it’s just a handful of divine beings :joy:

Welp, time to add another book to my TBR list :joy:

8 Likes
20

I suppose not!

I was also thinking that even if some are the same entity, just interpreted differently by different cultures, I could still work with them as different aspects of the one, anyway. And I could also approach it with an ancestral connection to the part of my family from there specifically, in the case of ones like The Morrigan. But then I decided to slow the heck down, and get there more slowly. :joy:

And then, in a recent discussion about books, I learnt that the Norse gods are from my family’s neck of the woods (according to translation of the Prose Edda I was reading, anyway), so that opens the ancestral stuff up a bit. :scream:

It was super fun to study multiple deities at the same time, because it made it easier to see similarities, but it was also rather mentally taxing and hard to organise my notes. So when I started a new project at work, I didn’t have the extra energy for it. I’m hoping this Black Friday to Christmas period when we freeze all code changes, I’ll have more time.

I have a feeling I’ll dive into learning some ancient languages, though. :joy:

It would be fun to explore how much we can change our own energy, if at all. We’re not going to get millennia of experience for it like a deity would, but sounds fun.

… You know what? I really need to get the blog part of my witchy site up so I can ramble all about this without taking over the whole forum. :joy: Or I can set it up more like a wiki instead, so it can also help me organise my thoughts, and then add a blog part for time-sensitive or hypothesis-exploring content. :thinking:

Well, that’s a project to add to my pile…

Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread. - Bilbo Baggins

I wonder how much butter I can manage. :joy:

Edit: I’ve run out of likes I can hand out for the day. :astonished: RIP.

7 Likes