Its not the biggest religion/s around. But there are enough followers (even if you don't count ass those prison gang skinheads) for me to say it has made a comeback. And there is an actual Norse temple built in Iceland.
So, who is next? Worship of the Greek Gods? That has something of an underground following in Greece right now. Hope that gets bigger.
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>In May 2006 an Athens court granted official recognition to the veneration of the Ancient Greek pantheon. Referring to the ruling, Father Eustathios Kollas, who presides over a community of Greek Orthodox priests, said: "They are a handful of miserable resuscitators of a degenerate dead religion who wish to return to the monstrous dark delusions of the past."[49]
kek
>that butthurt
Honestly, neopaganism is gay as fuck
>Norse/Germanic polytheism
lel, based on fucking what? the eddas, whose existence is owed entirely to christian scholars? "paganism" outside of, say, zoroastrianism, cannot be anything greater than LARP.
Religion cannot be anything greater than LARP, fixed for you.
The Jews, Arabs and Christians at least have their own official DnD rulebooks, neopagans are making crudely put together homebrews that are so obviously Magical Realm they arent even worth playing.
Someone let me know when these fags start worshipping a dead tree again so I can chop it down and drink their salty tears.
Paganism is really controversial in here. But I honestly support paganism. You dont even have to read the eddas, i believe the best start is just respect your ancestors and respect the old faiths of where you live. Polytheism is the answer to me. To respect what you see and feel (sun, wind etc) and have the honor to respect and use traditions that are thousands of years old, even older than we believe.
I also want to add that stupid fat americans are the cancer to paganism. They just seem to be try hards from medieval hippie markets. That is the sad part of todays paganism.
I cant even begin to imagine the absolute anal devastation this caused. Based charlemagne
Hey, if you ever swing by hawaii, how about give the gods here a prayer or two, eh?
What I don't understand about Ancient Greek paganism is that the Olympians were actually the bad guys that overthrew the titans who resided over a Golden Age:
>[Men] lived like gods without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief: miserable age rested not on them; but with legs and arms never failing they made merry with feasting beyond the reach of all devils. When they died, it was as though they were overcome with sleep, and they had all good things; for the fruitful earth unforced bare them fruit abundantly and without stint. They dwelt in ease and peace.
So now these assholes, who also punished the titan who created mankind and stole fire for them, took over keep fucking with humans in tons of ways and people were supposed to venerate and worship them?
When you don't actually believe in the old gods, you shouldn't fucking play that you do
That's not honoring your ancestors, that's digging up their carcass to make mockery of it for some retarded fad
> muh god must be morally good one meme
It isn't like you got a choice, they are force and if you aren't worship them, gods will fuck you up as any other tyrant.
They're basically a divine extortion racket. If you don't worship them, they'll kick your butt. A follower of classical Greek religion had little to no emotional connection to his deity, and the only thing enforced was orthopraxy (ie. a unity of rituals) rather than orthodoxy (unity of mystical teachings).
What's more, the afterlife was a pretty shitty deal, since it's clear from the Odyssey that even the greatest heroes who went to Elysium were quite miserable. Other people who went to regular levels of the afterlife were just shadows.
Obviously this was not always the case, and it's one of the reasons mystery cults sprang out - to give the followers a personal relation with the deity, and a hope of a better fate in afterlife.
It took Christians like 1800 years to reach the level of pseudo-panteistic degeneration where religion has no other intrinsic worth than muh ancestors and muh nature. Neo-pagans already start at that level, and it's not only your post that proves that - there was an interview with an Icelandic Asatru religious leader who basically said that it's all a metaphor and he doesn't actually believe in the gods.
Hell, by most accounts it can't even be classified as an actual religion if there's no hierophany at all.
I think a lot of people here misunderstand paganism because they come from a monotheistic, world rejecting religious tradition.
Paganism, at least people that aren't Tumblr level stupid, is that it isn't about rules or where you end up in the afterlife, and that it is considerably less literalistic than the current major religions. The gods are seen as older siblings, and as having more important things to do than dealing with your personal bullshit (more of community level things) whereas your ancestors are much more likely to help you and deal with you directly.
Historically, paganism was much more organic as well. The same religion (let's use Germanic as an example) varied between tribe to tribe, village to village. Dogma wasn't a thing, there was not really a "right" way to worship pr practise outside of community and family tradition. That's why monotheistic religions tend to sperg out over it not having a special book, since belief matters more than practice to them, whereas to the pagans it was practice over belief.
I can only speak from norse heathenry, which I what I have experience with. Any questions, feel free to ask.
>there was an interview with an Icelandic Asatru religious leader who basically said that it's all a metaphor and he doesn't actually believe in the gods.
I think that with neo-paganism, its all about personal interpertation.
And they tend to err on the side of agnosticism towards things. And you you, there is nothing wrong with that. If someone were to say something like "I believe in nature spirits, but I'm not sure if Odin is real or not", that's a perfectly valid belief.
It's been in Norway for a while. The Åsatru guys. However, it's usually split between racist nationalists and people who just want to create some cultural community, which is why I think it doesn't attract a lot of people, because they might think they need to defend themselves all the time from the media and shit.
Yeah, the shit heads give it a bad name as always.
The Christian butthurt is almost worth it all by itself.
I think that the various flavors of paganism would be much more popular if more people were capable of identifying their Abrahamic baggage.
You can't recapture the virtues of paganism (civic duty, strong public life) just by adopting the religions. Christianity has created a political environment completely opposed to them.
Christians are SO incredibly butthurt that some people would prefer to follow their ancestors instead of dick self-mutilating beduins allahuakbaring in the desert.
All religions are false. What really matters is community and values. Christianity teaches to welcome and suck Arab cock. Paganism doesn't. That is all. Feel welcome to discuss "theology" (that is mere empty words) now.
Roman Hellenism is the best religion.
You know this is a Hellenism thread right, and we do have a good chunk of the texts preserved?
The Titans are personifications of aspects nature, the 12 Olympians are personifications of aspects of Civilization.
The titanomachy is about society taming nature, which although bad for the common people in the short term, is not something you would want to reverse.
There are no 'bad guys'.
Living under the rule of the Titans is anarchy. And its not like the Titans are any less important, they just don't rule anymore.
You've got to remember that the gods are not just powerful dudes, they are personifications of concepts.
Thing is I'm actually starting to believe in the Olympians and co in abstract.
The more I think about it the more it seems to slot into place, I still don't think they are sentient beings, but its making me suspect they had a lot better understanding about the world than we give them credit for.
I mean go and read the creation myth, its eerily similar to what the evidence show if you think of the beings involved as the things they are personifications of rather than as persons.
people will go in droves and flocks and then it will be pushed underground as people inevitably wake up to the fact all greco & roman is shitskin.berber portugal
jesus was white etc.crusades
>their ancestors
>implying their ancestors haven't been christian for a millennia now
For sure. You grew up in a Christian society if you are a westerner, regardless of your actual religion.
...
Dude, give it up. People don't want to worship the eternal Jew anymore. Live and let live.
I whole heartedly endorse the further decentralization of spiritualism. Christianity was in the long run one of the worst things to happen to spiritualism, since it attempted to make spirituality into a single proposition of a true or false nature, and when it was shown to be untrue was immediately taken as false.
Comparative mythology, archeology, secondary sources written by other civilizations, etc. Reconstructionist paganism is more involved than the local Christians paint it out to be.
Do you consider the Jose statues in church God? Or is merely a representation of that? There is no evidence they considered that the actual world tree
Why do Christians around here seem to celebrate Christianity acting like ISIS does today?
Not with Roman Hellenism they wouldn't, because Rome wasn't just the capital, and not all of the gods used the Greek and Italian names, and even if they did primarily it wasn't they're only names.
>When you don't actually believe in the old gods, you shouldn't fucking play that you do
What makes you say they don't?
This is Hellenism thread, all your barbarian memes don't work in here. But our Jew ones do.
As a eclectic heathen fuck the Icelanders they're trying to make themselves be like a pope and figurehead. They have no authority over me and my group. Varg has as much authority as that faggot does
>never built anything of worth
You realize when the local climate changed, that changed pretty damn quickly, right?
>praise mithra
Because they're two flavors of the same barbaric mythos.
And the only good stuff in Christianity came from Hellenism anyway, but they won't let go of the savage Semite shit.
And no If you reply Christcucks I'm not going to reply back, you've got plenty of threads of your own, fuck off back to them.
"Whatever is good about Christianity is not new. Whatever is new is not good." Alain de Benoist.
Nobody genuinely believes its true though
Who precisely is supposed to be fighting who in this image?
My guess would be Spartans and Athenians.
What about Hinduism
The common sense idea of Grego-Roman polytheism is totally stereotyped, as if the particular theology of one poet, say Hesiod, was normative. Polytheism was much more about the family, tribe and local divinities and spirits, home genies and ancestors. An ancient Greek household wouldn't worship the twelve Olympians equally, like some modern Pagan revivalists so cringely do. Also, there were many local versions of myths and gods, somewhat like Catholics do with the virgin Mary: Mary of Guadalupe, Mary of this and Mary of that... Likewise there many Zeus, many Hercules, many Hermes... I think Hinduism is the closest thing we have to how it actually. Many religious traditions associated with a common culture.
>>beaten and converted easily
lol no. That aside, this is mostly a hellenism thread and the greco-romans built large and powerful civilizations long before christianity ever became a thing.
Please don't respond to Christians or else they won't go away.
I contend that this is why the "hurr hurr hurr, all we have are fragments of their religions" isn't as big of a deal as people make it out to be. At least with Germanic polytheism, ancestor worship, nature spirit veneration, and the odd rite to the gods all make perfect sense as a combined belief system.
There was no centralized doctrine, and there were considerable local variations.
So anyway whose interested in getting into Roman Hellenism? Here we'll use the official names, but know that the Celts, Egyptians, Germanics, Greeks ect, would have called them by local names.
The 12 godheads (Called the Olympians by the Greeks) are the main gods, and the Ruling Caste, they are not as old as the universe however, they are mostly third and fourth generation.
>Juno: Goddess of Family.
>Jupiter: Warden of the Sky, God of Leadership
>Minerva: Goddess of Wisdom
>Neptune: Warden of the Sea, God of Cultivation
>Venus: Goddess of Love
>Mars: God of War (for the soldier)
>Dianna: Goddess of Hunting
>Apollo: God of Art
>Vesta: Goddess of Home
>Vulcan: God of Craft
>Ceres: Goddess of Farming
>Mercury: God of Information
These gods also appear in other separate groups as well, for example Jupiter and Neptune are in a trinity with Pluto, God of Wealth who is the third Warden, the Warden of the Underworld, but is not one of the 12 rulers.
Sorry, too busy trying to be as the Tao.
>I think Hinduism is the closest thing we have to how it actually
I think you are right. As a kshatriya hindu my family has its own war goddess we worship and a temple that we built and guarded for 800 years, but this created a lot of fiction as when other families amalgamte to yours that may not dicard their own family gods. The temple along with the fort nearby was sacked by the Zamorin during the calicut cochin war few centiries back because of a branch of our own family betrayed us as they wanted their own goddess to be venerated at the temple. After the portugese intervention amd defeat of the Zamorin the temple and fort were rebuilt and the woo memeber of the extended family who turned traitor were murdered. According to my grandad the women and children were poisoned and the men were beheaded in front of the altar of the goddess. None of the priests or the Temple Keeper speak of it and neither does most of the elder family other than my grandad who married into the clan.
I kinda do, I just don't believe the gods are sentient dudes.
Nice. See pagan wannabes? This is the real deal.
>a few metalheads and autistic white virgins start praising odin
>"""comeback"""
>metalheads
>autistic white virgins
redundant much
So when are we gonna get slavery back?
Polytheism sustains a world views which positions people in a heirarchy as oppose to "we are all the same under god" of judeo christian religions.
polytheism is definately a step back.
Do you believe the gods are sentient people, or do you think the avatars are just symbols/personifications of the concept, the concept being the real god?
Dubs speak the truth.
pagan neckbeards detected
Already a thing
You have no experience with paganism because we know fuck all about it in reality you LARPing faggot. Everything you just said was pulled out of your ass.
I must also add that the Temple also formed a sort of unity amongst the local populace agaionst a common foe.
When Tipu Sultan invaded Malabar in 1789 and advanced on Cochin, the Travancore army under the advisement of the EIC moved up a small force of men to halt the advance while the English in the Northern Deccan mustered to invade Mysore.
Tipu Sultan was stalled a few miles away from my hereditary home town due to the local militias letting the Allied Travancore general know of a ditch that can be made into a trench line and defence works this , then drew tipu further south west into the area by telling them of a rich temple that can be looted, Tipu advanced into a engineered flood when the dams up river were broken, I think a few thousand were swept away with that and their gunpowder became wet, this forced the Mysorean invasion to consolidate existing positions driving back the Tranvacorean forces temporarily, but before long they had to retreat because Mysore was attacked by the EIC.
There were a lot of local Muslims(Mapilla) who joined with the Mysoreans and began to attack hindus, none of the muslims survived and the skulls of their chieftans and captains still hang in the understorage of the Temple. There were some 4000 mapilla muslims before the invasion, twenty were left after it.
equality is a meme
I actually think its the exact opposite. Under monotheism everyone is a slave, and any decent is heresy. Heirarchy is extremely rigid, to the point of being brittle.
Under Polytheism everyone is an individual, and free. People are not what they are born into, they are what they achieve.
Well the old ones from the senpai see it as the conglomeration of divine power and the goddess as the representative of the divine power that permeates everything. I dont see it anything other than a racket to clinch change from your pocket. I mean the temple is standing because people were murdered in its name and makes false promises to its visitors.
I do believe in a higher power but the organization of religion is a bit of a extortion racket.
jewlover detected
Greeks called the God "Ho Theos" and gods (small g) theos, or something like that. The uncaused causer/unmoved mover of Thomas Aquinas (and non Christian monotheists) is the latter. The former (gods) are contigent beings. Likewise, some Hindus view Brahman in the same basic way Abrahamics view big-G God
Medieval Europe was extremely inegalitarian. Still got rid of slavery.
>People don't want to worship the eternal Jew anymore
There are two billion Christians in the world
There are, like, five actual pagans. Discounting people who use it as some sort of weird racist identity thing, people who use it as a form of rebellion against their parents, and people who just want a religion with no obligations that they don't have to change their lifestyle to suit.
> I just don't believe the gods are sentient dudes.
So you don't actually believe it's true in other words.
You know fuck all about history if you think that's the case.
>he doesnt know what judiasm is. Practic is so important that they cut parts of their kid's dicks as a ritualistic entry into the tribe.
19th and 20th century philosophy and sicnece simply undermined some christian dogma and popularized it.
Now morons adopt some old shit that seems exotic and hasnt been undermined by centuries of studying and criticising it.
Sad but plebs do retarded shit all the time so im not surprised.
Slavery is mostly about cheap labor, and we already have that, so why would slavery come back again?
>>Says the christard autist.
But hey, those darn pagan larpers are getting the way of your christard larping so nevermind right? :^)
No, polytheism was used to strengthen aristocrats and rulers. People are to worship gods but the gods own nothing to people much like a ruler is to be worshipped without expectign anything back.
This is exactly what you need for slave societies and this is why polytheims and slave societies went hand in hand.
Christinaity calls for a unification of all under one set of rules and rewards and punishes people based on their actions towards one another.
The monotheistic god is the supreme creator nature universe existence under which we are all equal as people and the ideals of which we must all strive to.
Polytheism divides society into two the rulers who have their own fun and games which includes abusing and playing with their human slaves and lower class.
Then you crown yourself a living god like a pharoah for example and everyone must do as you say even if it is cruel and despicable.
Yes good point. The retards here who are calling for polytheistic ideals might simpyl be a by product of an ever increasing inequality and the echo chambers that the internet creates.
Well, polytheism only entranches inequality and heirarchies between people.
Lets all break up into many differen ttiny parts and let the systems of governance and social structure rule over us uninhibited.
>The Titans are personifications of aspects nature, the 12 Olympians are personifications of aspects of Civilization.
>The titanomachy is about society taming nature, which although bad for the common people in the short term, is not something you would want to reverse.
>There are no 'bad guys'.
>Living under the rule of the Titans is anarchy. And its not like the Titans are any less important, they just don't rule anymore.
>You've got to remember that the gods are not just powerful dudes, they are personifications of concepts.
That's deep as fuck. Do you think the ancient Romans understood that humans were created by Nature?
Also, can you post a link to any texts on the subject?
What do you mean?
Mediterranean paganism evolved into Christianity, there is nothing to "go back" to unlike the barbarian celts/Germans/Slavs
I don't have to, it isn't necessary.
Its a misunderstanding to think of them as dudes sitting on a mountain controlling things anyway. That isn't what the gods are.
And Christians have to right far more off as a metaphor to fit modern knowledge, because if their god isn't literal than the whole theology collapses, but the likes of Jupiter not being an actual sentient man on a mountain doesn't particularly matter.
Though I've only just started to persuade myself that this might be true.
Then why is it that Hellenism had democracies and republics and Christianity calls for autocracy. It is fluid, and it grows.
What you need for a slave society is not alternate viewpoints, that's retarded, what you need is a centralized power that can do no wrong. And it is brittle, and it does fracture.
Call a slave a serf, hell call him a fucking lord, he's still a slave if he's in bondage.
I'm too bored to explain to you how what you said is retarded so, just do your research
>what is divine right
this
You can believe in gods, spirits, and etc, AND a lord in heaven above all.
Like, for native americans, there is a 'mother Earth', and 'great Creator' figures. Those two must be of a different classification that of the gods and spirits they may also believe in or not.
I think the biggest aspect of paganism by far is animism. Any belief in polytheistic gods would be in addition to that. Like say, a Japanese person might believe that spirits and souls exist, but is agnostic towards named specific Kami, like say, Amaterasu.
Like, isn't that the whole thing about Mythology, that the ancients would say that myths are things that may or may not be true. As oppose to what people say myths are today, (ie always false)?
>democracies and republics
Are you retarded or did you simply not bother to think about your post at all before writing it?
What do you think that natuer of those democracies and republics was? They wereslave owners and the people who made descisoons were the elite.
Honestly I feel there is a lot of work to do if European paganism is to be revived, and most neopagans are going in entirely the wrong direction.
They need to look to existing pagan traditions, Hinduism being the best example side it has a historical relation to European faiths and seeing how spirituality effects every aspect of their lives can inform neopagans how to approach their own faith.
The most well developed neopagans imo are wiccans, even though Wicca is a huge mash of different ideas it emulated te pagan mindset better than more historically accurate reconstructions.
The rich men voted and were people of leuisure who had slaves ot tend for their needs.
Much like, guess who?
Right, they should look to the past for inspiration, and to contemporary polytheists today, rather than just trying to recreate the past in a petri dish.
worshipping pagan gods makes no sense. its literally kitsch as a religion.
Ancient people worshiped and did rituals thinking that they were making a difference because they did not know al lwe know of reality now.
Sure, you can fantasize about the god demon of cancer but just like ancient people did, we should worship the god of cancer using our current knowledge, as in through chemotherapy and surgery.
Why did you just make a circular reply. That's stupid.
Well it wasn't fucking polytheism. And anyway, its better to have and underclass of slaves who could potentially become free from a variety of ways then everyone be slaves to Big Brother the Deity who talks bullshit but you can't argue with.
Catholicism is far closer to roman paganism than any neopagans efforts, mainly because it literally is roman paganism with a new paint job.
The amount of different traditions and ideas within Catholicism is massive even if they all profess the same faith.
first line meant for
see and I'm going to ignore Christcucks now, because you do have your own fucking threads and plenty of them.
I'm interested keep posting
Sure, but judeo-christian dogma asserts a lot of things that paganism was never about. Myths are there to convey truths, they are the paper skin that covers religion. Even so, there has been surprisingly exhaustive research on the topic, and if you let me sober up I'll give you a full list, but some decent started are:
Culture of the Teutons by Vilhelm Gronbech
Tacitus's Germania
Gesta Danorum
The Eddas
We Are Our Deeds by Eric Wodening
This is a big thing
Odin and the like were not immortal or eternal, they were like the most powerful spirits on the block.
Same with the likes of the Greek gods and demigod humans who were uplifte to Godhood.
The Greeks revered all these multitude of big and small spirits like how Shinto Japanese do, but they recognized some greater Godhead as well.
You are just a young fedora looking for something exotic. Once you learn some history and philosphy and grow a bit older and have a somewhat broader perspective you iwll realize its all nonesensical and that precisely the richness of christianity is what is important, as in all that has been created and written in relation and in light of christiniaty.
Christianity also creates a slave society, where everyone is equally a slave and part of the herd