Christians VS Pagans

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Thanks to all those who showed respect…and i’m sorry if some people have been harassed by some “Pagans”. Unluckily, as I said before, there is dumb people in every religion…👍
 
Tantum_ergo said:
It’s always a little dicey to assume that a group (especially such large groups as ‘Christians’ and ‘pagans’) possesses any kind of trait based simply on what any individual person sees, or hears, from a very tiny percentage of self-identified members of a group. Just because I might call myself “Christian” (or pagan, or anything else) does not mean that I practice my faith properly; even if I try my best, I’m still going to fall short sometimes. How do you then know that Mr. X (who says he is Christian, and hates pagans), or Ms. Y (who says she is pagan and hates Christians) actually really ARE members of the faith they claim? How do you know that this hatred is ACCEPTED, let alone ENCOURAGED, by members of the faith? See the problem? So I’d suggest to the OP to take any kind of accusation or assertion that “Christians hate pagans” or “Pagans hate Christians” with a HUGE grain of salt.
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I understand your point and I partially agree.
I personally was harassed by my local parish priest because I am a Pagan, so I believe this is an official representative of the church.
 
Medbh said:
Tand i’m sorry if some people have been harassed by some “Pagans”. Unluckily, as I said before, there is dumb people in every religion
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Yes. I would hate to be held accountable for Mel Gibson’s drunken rantings, for one.
 
I agree:thumbsup:
I know of an ancient proverb saying “the mother of fools is always expecting” 😉 and this works out for all religions;)
 
Medbh said:
Paganism was never completely eradicated. The cult survived in the countrisides in Europe, and was passed over within the family. I know because I have an example in my own family.
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There are pagan practices which were assumed into Christianity. As an Irish American Catholic, I am more than aware of these practices and I could regale you with stories of my great aunt’s practices when I was a child. There are all sorts of pagan practices (largely African but some French) here in Louisiana but religious syncretism does not equate with the full blown genuine article.

You have not described your belief system and I will not push but it seems very much like standard Wiccan to me. Forgive me if I am wrong. I am unaware of any rituals in standard Wiccan practice today which would equal a Samhain ritual near Tara ca. 400 AD or equal the now lost Saxon ritual (when the Saxons were still in Denmark) in which people were sacrificed (choked to death) with horsehair ropes and dumped into a bog or the Norse practice of carving the blood eagle in honor of Woden/Odin. But I can say with certainty that the Mass St. Patrick said on Easter at Tara or the one St. Augustine said for the Anglo-Saxons in Canterbury would be markedly similar to the Mass I attend today.

Please be very careful in what you do. Although you may not think so, you really are in uncharted waters. Not everything in those books published by Llewellyn et al leads to truth and light but opens doors into worlds that bring nothing but grief. You may have the most benign of intentions but end up doing irreparable harm to yourself.
 
Hastrman said:
PS: Ogham was invented by Catholic monks, not the druids. Writing was taboo to the druids, though they did use Greek if they had to, because it weakened the memory.
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Here is a very nice article on ogham from a scholarly site:

csupomona.edu/~jcclark/ogham/

As an anthropology graduate and calligrapher, any Irish ancestors who could have been monks would have used elegant uncial letters developed by the Romans from the time of St. Patrick. There would have been no need for them to use an inelegant and clumsy system such as ogham. I am not aware that the druids in Ireland or Great Britain spoke Greek - Gaelic, yes. Greek no.
 
No, the Irish Druids didn’t write at all, but the Gaulish ones did, and they used Greek. I believe it’s in De Bellico Galliae, somewheres or other.

I saw something about the Irish monks inventing ogham, but now I think about it, I can’t imagine why they would, so I think my source must have been wrong, or I read it wrong (More Likely!). Also, why would they name it after a pagan god of writing, bards, and wrestling?

D’oh. I admit the error. On that. I stand by what I said about the pagans murdering Christians for a thousand years, though. I cordially invite you to read the history of any Western Slavic saint. Not that those were Medbh’s kind of pagan; I doubt she (Medbh’s a girl’s name, so if you’re not female, I’m sorry, but it’s your fault for picking it) can think of any of her beliefs she’d kill for. I do hope she can think of some she’d be willing to die for.

I do apologize for calling pagans dumb; all the neo-pagans I’ve ever met were morons, but I think I may have got a bad batch. It’s generally a bad idea to post on Net forums at 3 AM while drinking mead on an empty stomach; you get indecently disinhibited. (Yes I drink mead; I’m Czech, and it’s almost as Slavic as wodka or plzner, except it tastes good).

A final word: be careful, as brotherhrolf says, about what powers you invoke. Even if you don’t accidentally invoke demons, as I’m sure he meant, the gods, if they exist, are not as kind as you may believe–they’re downright moody. The only god I can think of who can be bargained with is Benjullae, the Bargain God of Jeju island in Korea, and he takes souls in exchange for his services.
 
Hastrman, your point about what the original pagans did is well taken. The only true pagans in today’s world are those who follow their ancestor’s religion whose chain of existence remains unbroken through time. Neo-paganism is at best an inadequate reconstruction through the use of surviving myths and those very few written descriptions that exist from the middle ages. I had many a long conversation with my three “pagan” friends and they freely admitted that they accepted practices as “authentic” because their “studies” “felt” right to them. Unfortunately, all three encountered something that their “studies” did not prepare them for with trajic results for the grieving families of two of them.

I would not classify any of the three as “morons”. All three were well-read and reasonably articulate. Somewhere along the line each one of them, perhaps without knowing, crossed the line between good and evil. I pray for the souls of the two and pray that the third will be touched by the grace of God before it is too late.

I wasn’t thinking about the Gallic druids. Greek makes perfect sense in that context - particularly along the Mediterranean coast. My area of greatest interest during the Early Middle Ages is the British Isles and northern Europe. I wrote a paper in grad school about pre-Christian Celtic religions and was asked specifically why I did not mention ogham. (Answer: never heard of it. Bad answer for a grad student to his major prof :rolleyes: ).
 
I think we should all get together and have a paintball match. Christians vs pagans. It would rock.
 
I will also say that I have never met New Ager who is a Moron, the only thing that is moronic is their inconsiderate attitude that I encountered. Most of them were on the Honor Role in High School. Out of all who I have met, I can say that I have never seen any who fully embrace their spiritualities. I’ve only seen them read Tarot Cards, Rune Stones, and make pentacles out of salt with a stone at each point to harvest positive energy. I have never seen them perform rituals for the rites of the seasons, etc etc. Two even denied the existence of a Divine Being, which puzzled me, because I thought main stream Wicca involved a god and goddess, symbolized by the sun and the moon. Despite how they do not fully embrace their faiths, they sure liked to criticize mine, even though I never criticized them.
 
Psalm45_9 said:
I will also say that I have never met New Ager who is a Moron, the only thing that is moronic is their inconsiderate attitude that I encountered. Most of them were on the Honor Role in High School. Out of all who I have met, I can say that I have never seen any who fully embrace their spiritualities. I’ve only seen them read Tarot Cards, Rune Stones, and make pentacles out of salt with a stone at each point to harvest positive energy. I have never seen them perform rituals for the rites of the seasons, etc etc. Two even denied the existence of a Divine Being, which puzzled me, because I thought main stream Wicca involved a god and goddess, symbolized by the sun and the moon. Despite how they do not fully embrace their faiths, they sure liked to criticize mine, even though I never criticized them.
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Psalm I criticize these people too. New Age is not Paganism. Some Pagans deal with New Age or would define themselves as New Age, but Paganism is not New Age. These people ARE morons in my opinion, they are just a bunch of clowns, and I don’t wonder why they never did any celebration for the Sabbaths.
To them it’s all just a pose, and they really DO NOT have a clue of what they are dealing with.
I don’t have any respect for anyone who regards Faith as a pose, whatever religion he belongs to.
 
Hastrman said:
No, the Irish Druids didn’t write at all, but the Gaulish ones did, and they used Greek. I believe it’s in De Bellico Galliae, somewheres or other.

D’oh. I admit the error. On that. I stand by what I said about the pagans murdering Christians for a thousand years, though. I cordially invite you to read the history of any Western Slavic saint.
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sigh:rolleyes: it’s DE BELLO GALLICO, by Julius Cesar…

Now in regard to Pagans murdering Christians for A THOUSAND YEARS, please provide a source. Because if you want proof of Christians murdering non Christians, if you need sources please let me know.
 
Brotherwolf, you may not regard me as Pagan, but I do, and that is all that matters to me. If you base this on me not following the rituals of the past to the letter, then how can 30,000 Christian sects regard themselves as the true Christians when they differ greatly?

For me God told me to choose this path, just as i believe God told you to choose your own path. If you think God’s will is wrong, that is your problem, but i find no fault in God’s will.
 
Medbh said:
Brotherwolf, you may not regard me as Pagan, but I do, and that is all that matters to me. If you base this on me not following the rituals of the past to the letter, then how can 30,000 Christian sects regard themselves as the true Christians when they differ greatly?

For me God told me to choose this path, just as i believe God told you to choose your own path. If you think God’s will is wrong, that is your problem, but i find no fault in God’s will.
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Medbh, you are the master of your own conscience. (Conscience - from the Latin con “with”, scientia “knowledge”). How can God tell you to choose your path if, by definition, you do not believe in a Supreme Being who made all things?

There may very well be 30,000 Christian sects but there is only one Catholic church founded in 33 AD which continues unbroken through almost two millenia. I am a member of that church. I was baptized as an infant and raised within the church. I was a lapsed Catholic for several years but it never occurred to me to join a protestant church or to explore other faiths even though I have been exposed to countless other belief sytems by virtue of being an anthropology major.

Hastrman’s point about Christians being slaughtered by pagans for a thousand years needs no documentation. Think about it. It being the history of western civilization. Christians for well beyond 1,000 years were martyred by Romans, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Lombards, Celts, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, Norse, Swedes, Rus, Mongols…

I don’t condemn pagans for their choice where that choice is to adopt a complete, intact belief system. Were you to go to the Amazon basin and live with a tribe which has had very little contact with western civilization and be incorporated into that tribe and adopt their religion, I would have no problem accepting your decision.

On the other hand, all religious aspects aside, I simply have an intellectual problem with people who claim to adopt a “religion” whose history can be traced directly back to the musings of Victorian era gentry. My three “pagan” friends could never answer this and I daresay you will not be able to either.

One of the Brothers who taught me once stated, “A faith which cannot be questioned is not faith”. So my question to you is:

“How can God direct you to choose a faith which does not acknowledge Him?”

PS. Hrolf in both Old English and Old Norse does not mean wolf. Wulf does.
 
Raise your hand if the thread title sounds like a b-horror movie.😉
 
Hastrman said:
I can think of three reasons I, personally, am annoyed with “Pagans”. I don’t hate them; they’re not a big enough issue for that, really. But they do annoy.
  1. You’re all posers. Where’s the blood? Where’s the fire? Paganism is not therapy, kiddies, it’s a real religion that demands things of you. If you meant it, you would make Snake Handlers look like Anglicans. I’ve read the real pagans, and you’re wusses. You’re basically play-acting agnostics who like to feel ‘spiritual’.
  2. You tortured us to death for a thousand years, but somehow pretend you’re the victims. Ever hear of St. Vaclav? He was nearly driven mad by his pagan mother, only saved by his Christian grandmother (paternal), and murdered by his pagan cousin. This was about a hundred years after Charlemagne. The history of the Czechs is chock-full of murderous pagans, as is the history of all Eastern Europe. You know how many of our martyrs had to drink molten gold, or be torn apart by wolves? These are your role-models, children.
  3. You’re just damn dumb. Frankly, I can get better philosophy from the bible-thumpers and the atheists than from you, yet the pagans invented philosophy. The Druids were a philosopher caste, akin to the Brahmin, while the bards knew their whole history in great detail; the Roman priests wrote philosophical tracts about as often as Catholic clergy do. But you just spout platitudes unworthy of grunge songs and you want me to treat you with respect?
I don’t hate pagans, just as I don’t hate most idiots, but frankly, you remind me far too strongly of Goths in a Jhonen Vasquez comic (Anne Gwish, for instance).

PS: Ogham was invented by Catholic monks, not the druids. Writing was taboo to the druids, though they did use Greek if they had to, because it weakened the memory.
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I nominate this for joke of the year.:rolleyes:
 
brotherhrolf said:
Medbh, you are the master of your own conscience. (Conscience - from the Latin con “with”, scientia “knowledge”). How can God tell you to choose your path if, by definition, you do not believe in a Supreme Being who made all things?

“How can God direct you to choose a faith which does not acknowledge Him?”

PS. Hrolf in both Old English and Old Norse does not mean wolf. Wulf does.
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Sorry about the “wolf” thing, it was a typo:)

when did I ever say I don’t believe in a Supreme Being who made all things?
 
brotherhrolf said:
I do not find it funny. Two suicides over this question is NOT funny.
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I’m really sorry about your friends. But Paganism doesn’t equal suicide.
I know a good few Christians who suicided.
My aunt suicided a few years ago, and she was a Catholic.
Suicide is not linked to any positive and non- violent relligion.
 
PS. Hrolf in both Old English and Old Norse does not mean wolf. Wulf does.
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Isn’t Hrolf “Ralph,” plus ou moins? “Ulf” also means wolf, as in ulfhedhnar, one of those wolf-themed berserkers (Berserkers liked bears, not wolves).
Suicide is not linked to any positive and non- violent relligion.
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Zen, and Confucianism. Ever hear of hara-kiri? Granted, they’re not really non-violent; Zen’s got the only Buddhist monks who shed blood (they invented gong fu, don’t let’s forget). And it is a form of “compassion” to kill a man before he can do evil. But those are still positive religions, and they approve of suicide. All religions except Christianity value dignity more than life, so suicide is permitted, even encouraged, if it’s to preserve honor.
 
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