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Post by ironphoenix on Feb 19, 2015 20:42:04 GMT -6
The biggest difficulty I keep having is feeling like I'm wrong and I don't understand my own thinking. I wasn't raised a strict Christian, I've always believed there was no 'right' religion and it was okay that other people believed different things. But now that I'm starting to practice polytheism, I keep feeling like there's something wrong with what I'm doing. Which leads to all kinds of conflicted feelings when I try to reach out to my deities.
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Post by Allec on Feb 19, 2015 21:28:50 GMT -6
Is your feeling of wrongness spurred from guilt from the Bible, or just that Christianity has a LOT of resources at disposal so any question can be answered, or something else?
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Post by saintfelicity on Feb 24, 2015 21:56:24 GMT -6
I'm not sure if this is quite the same but let me know - I definitely struggled with, and occasionally still struggle with but not so much, wondering if my beliefs are "incorrect" in the sense that they just... are false. I think this comes from being so assured of Catholicism being The Correct Religion when I was a child, that my brain is a little "whooooa wait, so you're saying that maybe that wasn't the right one? are you saying multiple are correct? WHAT ARE YOU DOING" so it's less of a guilt thing for me than just an existential crisis.
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Post by Intaier on Feb 25, 2015 8:17:11 GMT -6
1) About the omniscience and "always-watching" thing : for me this feeling never was a problem; and, as I signed for the service to the God of Knowledge, I would not doubt his "omni"-science, because anyway his knowledge about Everything is almost unlimited. =) And "always watching" thing, I agree that the gods are not always watching over everyone, but as I invited Djehuty to "watch over me" personally, I have a feeling that he does. So it's easier to call for his attention too.
2) Things to unlearn from the monotheistic upbringing:
-- a) Fear of hell, eternal punishment just for holding "wrong/heretical" beliefs -- b) The Good News: the world is NOT going to end anytime soon. Probably, the entire story about the Rapture and Second Coming of Christ, as told in the book of Revelation, should not be taken literally. The "End of the world" is not as near as it's told by some radical preachers. We may enjoy life on this Earth. -- c) The Earth is not a "valley of tears", and there's nothing bad in enjoying good things of life and fruits of Earth. Just enjoy living here at all. Many things that were told by orthodoxal christian churches as "sinful" and "utterly bad", are NOT "sin". Things that are natural part of life. All the teachings about sinful nature of same-sex love relationships, birth control, divorce, family life. Churches have huge baggage of medieval prejudices that could be thrown away. -- d) being resurrected "in the flesh" after Christ second coming. Is that really necessary? May be not so, there are other interesting paths for afterlife journey (I don't want the reincarnation, and the entire resurrection story as told by conservative christians, loses sense too) -- e) The entire story of the Original Sin, and that everyone needs Jesus as "personal savior". I't possible to be a good person, not being a christian. Original sin, Adam & Eve story does not have sense if told literally. We may use it as a mythological parable, perhaps. But stop feeling the personal responsibility for tha fact that millenia ago someone ate a piece of fruit. So, you may accept Jesus as a great teacher, as incarnated messenger of God, but this does not mean that you must be a member of "only one true religion", or you will go to hell. Oh, just entire hell thing. Hell and constant trapping oneself in the feelings of guilt and being unworthy. -- f) Throw away these commandments about "you shall not have other gods before me". =)
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GreenAsSin
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Post by GreenAsSin on Feb 25, 2015 14:28:18 GMT -6
Personally I think the hardest thing for me to get over after I stopped considering myself a Catholic is the idea that polytheism is a modern thing that is very much alive and real.
All throughout school different religions, particularly polytheistic ones, were often treated as something completely different. Things like Greek, Roman, Norse, and Egyptian gods and their stories were all taught in the context of ancient civilizations and were pretty heavily implied as something that were worshiped in the past, rather than as current belief systems. There's a very strong overtone of these religions being sort of like fairy tales and stories that people have outgrown. Because of the huge Catholic influence in society anything other than Catholicism seems to be trivialized and almost treated like a joke. Like those silly people actually though these deities were real things but as educated, modern, god fearing people we know better than them. I mean, everyone knows that Catholicism is the only real, valid religion, duh.
Some of the classes I took were focused on ancient civilizations so it makes sense to learn about them in that context, but whenever modern people were spoken about the professors somehow always managed to omit that these beliefs still exist and often seemed to impy that modern people only see different gods as old ideas rather than actual entities.
Because of this I sometimes feel silly when I try to make connections with different deities and there's still a lingering doubt of what if I'm talking to no one and making a fool out of myself. I know that isn't the case and I have felt very real connections with the gods that have contacted me, but it's still hard to unlearn years of teaching and of people sort of talking down on these beliefs and the people that follow them.
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Windy
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Post by Windy on Feb 25, 2015 16:01:40 GMT -6
I hear you loud and clear about Catholics regarding other religions as silly. I grew up Catholic as well and every time I asked a question about another religion, the answer was always phrased in such a way that made the other religion seem like everyone following it was of limited understanding and reason.
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Skywalker
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Post by Skywalker on Feb 25, 2015 18:08:30 GMT -6
I remember being told that people used to believe in gods like Zeus because they didn't understand the world and didn't know any better and that people are "smarter" now. My father told me all that crap, and I don't know if that's what he really believes or if he just didn't want to get into a religious discussion with a six-year old. I really hope it's the latter. Got the same thing later when I was at class at the church and someone would ask questions about people of different religions. And not even ones considered ancient or extinct. Like Hindus and Buddhists. And the people teaching the class pretty much said that they're stupid and going to hell. They had some scary instructors there. Also gave me a lot of anxiety over other things besides the fact that I was pretty much always polytheistic. So glad I got away from all that.
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Post by saintfelicity on Feb 25, 2015 20:36:14 GMT -6
I'm not sure the best way to phrase this, but as I get more comfortable I've found the concept of hard polytheism way more plausible to me than monotheism of the sort that says no other gods exist.
I never really thought much until this thread how much some religions more than others really hammer at the concept of "everything we say is right and everything else is wrong." I have some Evangelical relatives who believe in other spirits and entities, they think all of them are automatically evil but at least they don't deny their existence.
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ayaad
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Post by ayaad on Feb 26, 2015 12:38:30 GMT -6
Some of these ideas are pretty familiar to me. While Mormons do believe that there are other gods out there, the general attitude is that they're not relevant (and that they're not the other deities that have been worshipped on Earth). I had to unlearn that idea. There is also the idea of the "one true church", which was actually harder for me to get out of my head. I still believe that the church is special and important... to some people. But I also learned that it isn't the best for everyone. I don't believe that there can be any one religion that suits everyone. It's why I'm so uncomfortable with proselytizing as my church does it right now. I keep finding more and more long-held ideas that I need to reevaluate as time goes on.
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Post by Intaier on Feb 27, 2015 12:55:17 GMT -6
Yes, it's like in a simplified version of Civilization game. The school (secular as well) taught us about evolution of religion, placing monotheism to be superior system to polytheism. "These ancient people were so naive, they worshipped natural phenomena and mythological figures". Ancient religions were taught as myths and myths only.
And, monotheism in the modern society is like a default religios option (with not many countries being an exception). If you are raised as atheist or agnostic, and start question religion and spirituality, usually the first question to ask would be "Does God exist or not?", and there are monotheistic religions around, ready to give you answer "Oh yes, indeed God exists! Now learn how to worship him properly in our-and only true-way". And of course, one of the first things you would learn in Christianity, is a story from Bible about Abraham meeting the "true" God, and later, story about Moses, with the Exodus and ten commandements. You may absorb it and it would be difficult to set these stories away.
It's hard to *unlearn* the Exodus story: to start understanding it like a myth, but not literal description of true events that took place in history; to realize that the message of the ten commandements was relevant to very specific group of people in specific moment of history. One need to gain some courage to say "These ten commandements are NOT binding me. The god who dictated them to Moses, did NOT take ME out of Egypt. I don't need to be bound by these commandments "to worship only one very jealous God", and "not to have another gods before him", and "not to make images", such and such. (While the commandements about not killing, not stealing, respecting parents etc., they are pretty much universal rules about being a decent person. But, to be a decent person, one does not have to be "exclusive" monotheist :) Again, it's possible to be a good person and totally non-religious.
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Post by TheModernSouthernPolytheist on Mar 3, 2015 11:42:18 GMT -6
Similarly to Ashley's relatives, I was raised to believe in other entities than YHWH, but that they were all demons or evil spirits. The church and my family told me that the gods others prayed to were really Lucifer's fallen angels trickin humans into worshipping them so they could drag their souls to Hell. It's a really fucked up way to view the world and when I think about things like that, it's no wonder that out of the several thousand people in the youth group I attended, only about 50 still attend the church we grew up in.
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Post by Intaier on Mar 11, 2015 13:53:58 GMT -6
Similarly to Ashley's relatives, I was raised to believe in other entities than YHWH, but that they were all demons or evil spirits. The church and my family told me that the gods others prayed to were really Lucifer's fallen angels trickin humans into worshipping them so they could drag their souls to Hell. It's a really fucked up way to view the world and when I think about things like that, it's no wonder that out of the several thousand people in the youth group I attended, only about 50 still attend the church we grew up in. Mostly russian Orthodox Church does the same explanation. The "other" entities must be demons, driving souls away from "One true God". However, there is a small space for maneuvring, to understand the "other" entities, sometimes, as "misinterpreted angels". This theory (not really promoted within the church) would say that YHWH's angels were sent sometimes to different nations (besides hebrew), for help and guidance, but people misinterpreted them and started worshipping them as gods. This explains that probably there were ancient pagans who worshipped benevolent beings, but anyway they were doing everything wrong, because angels are below God and not to be worshipped. I tried to play with this theory a little, when I refused to believe that all nations except ancient jewish people in "Old Testament" times worshipped only wicked demons and all ancient religions except OT-Monotheism were totally wrong. This explanation (with angels) worked for a while, but still there is difference between Gods and angels. At least in the terms of their Free Will (Angels' will is totally submitted to YHWH' Will; but polytheistic Gods are not bound to obey him). In fact, the world started to "work" much better for me, when I looked at the Bible Story as just another ancient book of wisdom/religion/mythology, without necessary having all-100%-literal Truth and Ultimate Answers about Everything. Anyway, the problem of recovering from monotheism can be also worded as "Polytheism is wrong, just wrong by definition. Don't dare to worship anything but One God, as other Gods are simply myths (or demons or misunderstood angels)". It's hard to shake this thing off my head, despite all the evidence of Gods' existence I have :) (Polytheism always tasted as forbidden fruit. :) Just accepting the existence and godly status of other entities besides The-Trinity, was "off-limits".
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Post by Intaier on Apr 16, 2015 12:51:46 GMT -6
I wanted to add this interesting note for the “Recovering monotheists” discussion topics too:
another joy of polytheism is that you may give the latria (worship) to any God and, you may become a dedicated devotee, a priest, all things alike, and honor that God first and foremost in your practice, while also worshipping the others (from same pantheon or from different) when in a monotheistic religion, taking Catholic and Orthodox branches of christianity, you are only allowed to worship The Trinity. Angels, saints and Virgin Mary, you can’t worship them. You only venerate them and constantly remind yourself “Only God alone deserves worship”. Then, if you may find yourself closer to Mary or one of the Saints than to Jesus personally, it may cause some emotional struggle. That you are not allowed to give more honor to Mary and Saints, than to Jesus. Logically you can sort it out. But practically, there may be worry “How dare I to love saint NN more than Jesus?” Then, a guilt-tripping culture steps in : that all catholics and orthodox MUST love Jesus, and if you don’t experience that love enough, if you feel more connected to a Saint, or Mary, or Angels, this worm of doubt inside your mind starts biting you that you dare to love someone more than God. And instead of love, you get caught in a trap of self-shame and guilt.
Then, in polytheism, there are many Gods and any of them may be worshiped, and you may make one of them your “first and foremost”, your “fulltrui”, your Beloved, “Ishta Devata” - and they don’t have to be the supreme deity in the pantheon.
More love. No limits.
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Acacia
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Post by Acacia on Jun 17, 2015 2:38:04 GMT -6
Similarly to Ashley's relatives, I was raised to believe in other entities than YHWH, but that they were all demons or evil spirits. The church and my family told me that the gods others prayed to were really Lucifer's fallen angels trickin humans into worshipping them so they could drag their souls to Hell. It's a really fucked up way to view the world and when I think about things like that, it's no wonder that out of the several thousand people in the youth group I attended, only about 50 still attend the church we grew up in. I'm having this issue at the moment, especially considering the fact that the deities knocking at my door are actually specifically called demons or fallen angels in the Bible or other relevant texts. (Biggest example here: Lilith.) I don't really believe that anymore, but there's still this nagging voice in the back of my head that asks, what if you're wrong? Ugh, horrible.
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calluna
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Post by calluna on Jun 17, 2015 13:11:28 GMT -6
Mine's less about struggling with beliefs and more about struggling with people and/or commitments. After my Mum died, my Da took me to church so I would stop saying my Mum was an angel, because not how these things worked. He became very involved in the church through trickery of the pastor at the time, and FAILS at saying no. So he's been runnning this one committee for years, even though he's not good with words, politics, bureaucracy or even talking to others about things.
This means that since I was confirmed, I've pretty much gone along to help. I've left the church (obviously) but I still feel horrible not going to meetings because leaving my Da alone like that is like leaving a bleeding Nemo with non-vegetarian sharks. At the same time, though, I'm expected to read the "devotion" for the meeting and I'm running out of funny secular stories with a moral that do not expressly mention Jesus or God to tell. Luckily we don't have a July meeting, which gives me until this time in August to find something or figure something out.
And I just can't say "sorry, I'm pagan," because if that gets out in my town, I'm going to get killed. I've already been stabbed, punched and molested for being a witch, you throw multiple gods in that and I better have my conceal carry license.
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