What ancient religion would you like to see make a comeback?

This. Romans go home.

Bog man = Boogieman ?

At what point could paganism stop being larping in Europe? Lets imagine if for example we collected all the information we could about Celtic paganism and used it to form a new religion which put more emphasis on ancient stuff(having really big festivals/bonfires on oiche shamhna/Beltaine) but also modernizing it a bit and converted all the Celtic countries to it(Ireland and the north of Scotland). After a few generations people would see it like their own religion(just like after a few generations converted Christians saw Christianity as their own)

Wait, nevermind I thought you meant Celtic Christianity.

Yes and? The Abrahamic faiths have their own long history of violent actions committed in their name.

Anyone who makes the LARPer insult has no arguments and is best ignored.

The thing about religion is you actually have to believe in it. If a bunch of people decide to artificially create a religion and follow it then they're about as religious as historical re-enactors are warriors. Unless you got a time machine and brought back some actual pagans who cut practiced human sacrifice then it's LARPing.

I would personally prefer it if greco-roman polytheism made a come back. Of course I would also like it if all the old europolytheisms returned too, but first and foremost the gods and goddesses that the armies of rome at it's most glorious marched under would be my favorite.

People can make themselves believe in things though, that was how a lot of the conversions in post-roman europe worked for the first generation or two.

>>The thing about religion is you actually have to believe in it.
lol no you don't. Why do you think the catholic church still has a presence in the developed world at all? It has little to do with people seriously believing in most of the stuff their priests and bishops say.

The difference is that human sacrifices were intrinsic to pagan religious practice whereas the atrocities committed in the name of Christianity were neither part of its religious rituals nor actually supported by Christian doctrine itself.

There is litterally nothing wrong with human sacrifices

Manichaeism
Zoroastrianism

Intrinsic to how it was practiced at one point maybe, but the romans outlawed it and the greeks made it a point of pride that they never sacrificed humans to their gods and goddesses.

There's no reason to assume that the celts couldn't have either ditched the practice or substituted it for sacrificing animals instead.

The people who converted to Christianity at first probably didn't believe in it they just didn't want to be killed but their grandchildren were believers. Like in The Republic when Plato creates a new origin and religion of men and says it would take 2-3 generations for it to be believed fully. Even then pagan Europeans were different about their religion than Christians were, they saw their faith more as a necessary lie almost for their culture, they didn't go around trying to disprove other faiths and they would often make up new legends(typically based on real events) knowing that they would be beneficial for their society. Also if the Celts had their own native religion again instead of one from the middle east they probably wouldn't feel inclined to rebel against and disprove it since they would see it as part of their own

...

there isn't any evidence for human sacrificing in pagan European religions(certainly not in Ireland)

see

>The people who converted to Christianity at first probably didn't believe in it they just didn't want to be killed.

The people who converted to Christianity were often martyred for their faith, how can you think they didn't believe in it?!

They found one body in a bog of a guy hung in Denmark from two and half thousands years ago, somehow this proves Irish pagans practiced human sacrifice(again no evidence for)

Which martyrs are you talking about? The ones early on in rome were desperate poor people who didn't have much to live for in the first place, perfect targets for what was at the time a doomsday cult. The number of actual martyrs from post roman europe is far lower because the conversion was a gradual process of subversion and destruction of whom and what could not be subverted.

>the romans outlawed it
Yet they still did it at times of crisis.

Only event I can recall war during the second war against carthage, where they buried a couple old people into the foundation of a house or something like that. Few if any mentions after that.

This and this could actually work, you don't need everyone believing it at first, there was a time when the Celts of Ireland decided to create a religion, Europeans saw religion more as a part of their culture than an undoubted truth.

>Only event I can recall being mentioned is during the second war against carthage, where they buried a couple old people into the foundation of a house or something like that. Few if any mentions after that.

fixed

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace

ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-europe/practice-sacrifice-iron-age-britain-002152?nopaging=1

There are countless but here's an article about martyrs during the Anglo-Saxon period if you want something specific:

medievalists.net/2012/11/against-the-heathen-saints-and-martyrs-in-late-anglo-saxon-literature/

Manichaeism
Germanic Paganism
Tengriism

going back to Irish Celtic ism as an example, there isn't any evidence that they did human sacrifices(no remains/altars to indicate such, no mentions of such in writing(if it was true the monks wouldn't miss a chance to write about it)) and since we would bringing the religion back by taking whatever information we know of it(nothing to do human sacrifices) and modernizing it a bit(again no adding any human sacrifices) therefore there wouldn't be any reason as to why there would be human sacrifices.

>medievalists.net/2012/11/against-the-heathen-saints-and-martyrs-in-late-anglo-saxon-literature/
So this is about people who died during viking raids, no that's stretching it too far. Those people didn't die because they were christian, they died because they were in the way of people who wanted claim their lands and wealth.

again finding a dead body in england from three thousand years ago(predating Celtic religions in Ireland and England) that was most likely a murder but 'some 'speculations' of a ritual sacrifice is not evidence of human sacrifices in Ireland. Celtic paganism was practiced in Ireland for thousands of years in Ireland the land of bogs so there should be piles of evidence of ritual sacrifices

sorry I made a typo, there was Celts at that time in England

OK if you want another different example then there is also the Two Ewalds who were Christian missionaries in Saxony and were martyred by the pagans for preaching the Gospel there.

>wahhhhhhh people are making fun of the religion that over a billion people follow wahhhhhhh that means the religion is dead wahhhhhhhhhhhhhh

All I am saying is it is the general scholarly consensus that ritual human sacrifice was part of pagan European practice. If you want to believe you know better than the archaeologists that is your prerogative.

Christianity
>divine right to rule
from the plant

Yeah see that's a better example. However, I would say that those people who are willing to go out and preach their religion in hostile territory are the minority of believers. Most of the people who were converted were not nearly so zealous or so faithful to their cause. I would question how many of these first few generations of converts seriously believed in any christian tenets.

the consensus on human sacrifices in Ireland is that we don't know, and even still as I said we would be modernizing the religion to some extent, to think that all of a sudden we'll start sacrificing people then is clearly irrational and besides we could simply add a legend where a God comes out and says that human sacrificing is forbidden because Celtic blood is sacred and it would be insulting to the Heavens to waste a drop(like how jews added the story with Abraham to stop animal sacrifices). there are many more potential dangers in reinstating Christianity or another Abrahamic religion

We can always question everything but there is good reason to believe they were sincerely converted because they witnessed Christian kingdoms dominating in areas of trade, learning and even warfare so this would have been seen as evidence that the Christian God was superior to the pagan deities.

>to think that all of a sudden we'll start sacrificing people then is clearly irrational

Since when has paganism ever been about being rational?

its been about maintaing the soul and identity of Europeans, there no wonder the more you strip away the pagan elements of Christianity and leave it bare as a jewish middle eastern religion the quicker Europeans give up on the faith(why Protestant countries give up Christianity a lot faster than Catholicism) in favour of agnosticism/atheism (pretty much all the prominent atheist activists have either been jews or originally from Protestant churches)

This topic deserves its own thread

Ritually killing people because of religious command, reason, purpose, or necessity has been a part of EVERY religion's practice in some form. The question is what form. Not every "Human sacrifice" was done in the Aztec manner where the person was explicitly being killed to give the god(s) something. Some forms of "human sacrifice" were akin to Germanic King-Killing or the that espoused by the Laws of Numa which were frankly more akin to "Ritual Execution" because the gods aren't actually getting anything from the killing of the person, they either command it or will do bad things if the person continues to live.

Even Abrahamic religions have people killed in the name of Yahweh, it's just that when someone is killed for him he doesn't explicitly feast on their blood or eat their soul or what not, he just demands they be killed.

Only one correct answer.

How can you claim to be preserving something if you are going to be fundamentally altering it by removing the sacrifice? Furthermore, by your logic the soul and identity of Europeans is tossing people into bogs.

Sacrifice has always been part of religion yes, however we can distinguish between religions by examining what sacrifice is required. In all pagan religions humans are required to sacrifice to the gods and this inevitably results in autistic rituals that are at best futile (in the case of grain offerings and the like) and at worst barbaric (human sacrifice). Christianity however has God sacrificing Himself for the sake of humanity and it is by His unique, singular, once-and-for-all perfect sacrifice that God's people are redeemed for all time. There is no need to repeat any sacrifice because Christ has paid all debts upon the cross and it by this fundamental difference that Christianity proves itself to be the true religion. Humanity is better able to flourish when we live with the understanding that God has already performed the sacrifice and there is no need to obey the priestly charlatans who lead people into bondage by convincing them that more is required.

Hellenic Paganism or a mix of Hellenic Paganism and Orthodoxy would be cool

SOL

Because there isn't any evidence that human sacrificing is part of Irish paganism certainly not towards the later years. If you want to play the moral highgame of 'but you'll have people killed' think about the millions and millions slaughtered in the past and still to this day in the name of Abrahamic religions , they don't compare to finding one body found in a bog 3 thousand years ago

>An expert has stated that the latest bog bodies found in Ireland has proven that belief that the Celts ritually sacrificed their kings to the Gods.

irishcentral.com/roots/history/did-the-ancient-celts-practice-human-sacrifice

Zoroastrianism
Post-Alexandrian Hellenism
Asian Christianity

In other words, make the middle east great (pre-Islamic) again

Manichaeism
they weren't right, but they were on to something

>Irishcentral

nice expert you got there

Nestorianism

This picture triggers me everytime.
This is a later and fucking heretical depiction of the judgement people receive in the afterlife, your heart is weighed against the feather of truth and if its heavier due to your misdeeds then the monster eats you and thats it forever.

But notice the second anubis, tipping the scales? because the priests decided that if you give priests a bunch of cash they'll use it to bribe anubis and you can be a massive cunt and still get into the afterlife.

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Sounds Boring

Not really, the average person in these places knew little about distant places to begin with, all the power of christian kingdoms meant to them at most was that the christian god was just another object of worship. They still continued their old ways too, which is why some important polytheist deities became christian saints.

Christian learning was famous in pagan lands so much so that even their kings sent their sons to be educated by monks! Also to say that the average person didn't know about distant places is to ignore the missionaries who risked life and limb traveling from distant places to share the Gospel with them.

none

>>Christian learning was famous in pagan lands so much so that even their kings sent their sons to be educated by monks!
Which proves that the upper-class was interested in the christian faith for primarily pragmatic reasons, as literate and numerate heirs are more effective rulers then idiots.

>>Also to say that the average person didn't know about distant places is to ignore the missionaries who risked life and limb traveling from distant places to share the Gospel with them.
I said they knew little, and they didn't. Knowing that so-and-so missionary was from some distant land meant little to them on a practical day to day level.

Pragmatic reasons and spiritual reasons were one and the same for medieval people and to suggest that the pagans didn't connect Christian achievements in learning with the strength of their God is to project a post-Enlightenment mentality onto people whose spirituality encompassed every facet of life.

>>Pragmatic reasons and spiritual reasons were one and the same for medieval people
Yeah no, this is just bullshit.

>>and to suggest that the pagans didn't connect Christian achievements in learning with the strength of their God is to project a post-Enlightenment mentality onto people whose spirituality encompassed every facet of life.
Which part of these societies are you talking about? The nobility who traced their descent from deities? The commoners who prayed to both deities and nature spirits so that they would have a good harvest? They may have thought that the christian deity was strong, but their own deities were strong too, and conversion was a gradual process that took hundreds of years and left all sorts of cultural artifacts from polytheist beliefs scattered around and in certain places on the fringes of europe, those beliefs never entirely died out.

oh god-damn it Veeky Forums, you just think if a ginger chick is a pagan she's more likely to sleep with you.

Their deities were defeated before their very eyes; their sacred groves were burned and Donar's Oak was felled. Christian kingdoms were outperforming the pagans by every metric and this demonstrated to the people that Christ was the superior God. Paganism became irrelevant because it literally could not compete with Christianity.

what country are you guys actually talking about?

so...Germany?

Europe.

Do you have any evidence to the contrary

pagan girls are easy so it makes sense

>>Their deities were defeated before their very eyes
No they weren't actually, the proof is in the simple fact that these deities continued to be worshiped after conversion, and the beliefs only gradually waned over time.

>>their sacred groves were burned and Donar's Oak was felled
Yes, christian lack of respect for other faiths and their willingness to murder those who refuse to comply is well known. That doesn't mean anything in the end though, because any sort of religion is more then just some sacred sites. If somebody burned the church of the nativity to the ground, people would not think that means much because buildings can be rebuilt, and the same is true for trees in a way. New trees can be planted and new temples raised.

>>Christian kingdoms were outperforming the pagans by every metric
If by outperforming you mean clinging to whatever scraps were left over from the collapse of the roman empire, sure.

>>and this demonstrated to the people that Christ was the superior God
Nope. Christ did not make the plants grow, the nature deity did, christ did not give you blessings in war, the war deity did, christ did not even give people comfort for lost loved ones, that was the job of the deity related to death and crossing over into the afterlife. Now, to be fair to you all of these functions would be(mostly) gradually subsumed by the christian faith over time, but it did take time and in the first few generations after conversion the peoples of europe were not really christians in the sense that you think. They were polytheists who also worshipped jesus for various reasons.

Any sort of animism. The idea of two sides fighting a war while their respective local gods also fight each other is pretty fucking great.

which part? that human sacrifice is a-ok or that we should resurrect a religion that died out before recorded history? (even though other forms of paganism in Europe lasted virtually into the modern era)

>No they weren't actually, the proof is in the simple fact that these deities continued to be worshiped after conversion

in Ireland? what are you talking about?

Ancient Judaism would be great. Midern day jews are horribke, because they make no sacrifices to G-d and acceot faggots into the religion. If we could do what David, Solomon, and others did that wiukd be great. A good first steo would be to rebuild the temple, and route out the Christians and Muslims from Israel.

>If by outperforming you mean clinging to whatever scraps were left over from the collapse of the roman empire, sure.

Christian Saxony and Denmark where thriving compared to their pagan rivals in Prussia.

And this is why this guy is wrong about the majority of the first few generations of christians having a particularly strong faith. The simply reality is that the conversion of europe took hundreds of years, involved the gradual subversion of polytheist faiths where possible/prudent and the slaughter of those who would not comply. This takes time and does not produce strong belief, not right away anyway.

Look up saint brigid sometime, she was basically a copy of a pagan goddess.

Never said they weren't doing well in comparison.

>Ancient Judaism would be great.

we have it, it's call Islam, it's the second largest religion on earth.

The point is that the beliefs did wane and paganism was forever relegated to being a novelty. And before you even start, there is no continuity between modern neo-paganism and the genuine beliefs of pre-Christian Europe because what we know of the pagan beliefs were written down by Christians! Thank God Europeans outgrew the ludicrous notion that there was a god lurking under every river and tree stump and embraced monotheism.

So just Latin-American Catholicism

>The point is that the beliefs did wane
Never said they didn't.
>and paganism was forever relegated to being a novelty
Not forever, no. As the modern reconstruction movements show.

>>And before you even start, there is no continuity between modern neo-paganism and the genuine beliefs of pre-Christian Europe because what we know of the pagan beliefs were written down by Christians!
As yes, the LARPing argument. Doesn't work I'm afraid, as there are additional sources for what euro polytheists believe and the parts of these christian recordings of what the polytheist peoples of europe believed that are nonsensical are easily detected. Germanic polytheists did not then and do not now believe that Odin/Woden was just a powerful wizard for example.

>>Thank God Europeans outgrew the ludicrous notion that there was a god lurking under every river and tree stump and embraced monotheism
So much wrong with this statement, there is nothing less ludicrous about the idea that some jewish dissident was actually the son of a deity, and the earth as a sacred space populated by many little deities is a perspective the modern world could use more of. Oh and europeans today are rejecting monotheism for either atheism, or some sort of polytheism/pantheism.

>Look up saint brigid sometime, she was basically a copy of a pagan goddess.

that theory was created by a feminist art history professor at Boston College in the 1980s, it's hardly solid considering the reliable documentation around both St Brigid and the ancient Irish religion is pretty sparse.

now many, many European traditions have pre-christian roots but outside of the Baltic States where paganism survived into the modern era a lot of the claims people make regarding European Paganism and it's relationship with Christianity are speculation.

>>blah blah that was first thought of by a stoopid feminist
Yes and? Insults do not equal arguments. Much like your particular religion does not = fact.

There is not a single primary source about Germanic pagan beliefs because they were illiterate people. The fact that you are attempting to overlook this crucial fact tells me that you are not interested in speaking in good faith so our conversation is over now.

>>There is not a single primary source about Germanic pagan beliefs
There doesn't need to be as there are more then enough secondary sources to come to reliable conclusions about the faith in question.

>crucial fact
Nope.

>>speaking good faith
You were never doing this in the first place.

>>our conversation is over now
Good riddance.

em....whom did I insult? she would describe herself as a feminist.

Gaelic and Germanic religions are essentially pre-historic and what documentation we have is seen through the lens of over 1000 years of Christian Civilization. It would be virtually impossible to reconstruct a fully fleshed out modern religion that was reasonably accurate.

The oldest religion of all....atheism.

Christians burned witches, pagans, and Jews because they thought it would appease God.

This is an interesting argument, personally I do think that Europe is in need of religion, Christianity was sufficient for a while because it was embroidered with pagan elements but once they were stripped away the true face of a foreign jewish middle eastern religion was left raw and so we gave the faith up.

Veeky Forums in general uses feminist as an insult. I don't disagree necessarily, but at the same time ad-homs are still ad-homs. If that wasn't what you were doing, my apologies.

>>Gaelic and Germanic religions are essentially pre-historic and what documentation we have is seen through the lens of over 1000 years of Christian Civilization. It would be virtually impossible to reconstruct a fully fleshed out modern religion that was reasonably accurate.
I disagree, as we have more then enough evidence from archaelogy as well to provide a reasonably accurate picture, furthermore the parts of these christian sources about these faiths are really obvious in their biases, so it's not hard to screen for that shit and remove/ignore it. That said, there are certain aspects of these faiths that don't really need to be brought back anyway.