Now and Then
Oct. 26th, 2010 07:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
frarjohnRunning around the internet as I have, I've run across evidence for the actual existence of Hellenic/Roman neo-pagans. As in, worshipers of Zeus/Jupiter, and the rest of those Olympian assholes.
Hard to believe, I know, but here are a few links:
http://www.cs.utk.edu/~mclennan/OM/
http://www.hellenion.org/index.html
I'm sure if I wanted to actually spend time, I could find more, but you get the idea. Now, you read the "About" section of the Hellenion site, and you'll get some wonderful liberal platitudes such as respect for people without discrimination (forgetting the fact that the Greeks were inveterate discriminators), and a nice, simple moral code based off the aphorisms of Delphi.
Let's take a look at some REAL pagans.
In 363 AD, Julian the Apostate, last pagan Emperor of Rome, and devout devotee to the old rites, went on campaign against the Persians, where he was killed. Here's Theodoret (Ecclesiastical History, Bk. III, ch. 21) with what he did before getting there:
"Julian had left Edessa on his left because it was adorned with the grace of true religion, and while in his vain folly he was journeying through Carræ, he came to the temple honoured by the impious and after going through certain rites with his companions in defilement, he locked and sealed the doors, and stationed sentinels with orders to see that none came in till his return. When news came of his death, and the reign of iniquity was succeeded by one of piety, the shrine was opened, and within was found a proof of the late emperor’s manliness, wisdom, and piety. For there was seen a woman hung up on high by the hairs of her head, and with her hands outstretched. The villain had cut open her belly, and so I suppose learnt from her liver his victory over the Persians.
This was the abomination discovered at Carræ." (emphasis mine)
This was the ancient rite of extispicy, or the reading of the future in entrails. Usually done with animals, sometimes it was performed on women & children of various ages, as this sick episode proves.
I wonder how many "neo-pagans" would practice such magic?
Hard to believe, I know, but here are a few links:
http://www.cs.utk.edu/~mclennan/OM/
http://www.hellenion.org/index.html
I'm sure if I wanted to actually spend time, I could find more, but you get the idea. Now, you read the "About" section of the Hellenion site, and you'll get some wonderful liberal platitudes such as respect for people without discrimination (forgetting the fact that the Greeks were inveterate discriminators), and a nice, simple moral code based off the aphorisms of Delphi.
Let's take a look at some REAL pagans.
In 363 AD, Julian the Apostate, last pagan Emperor of Rome, and devout devotee to the old rites, went on campaign against the Persians, where he was killed. Here's Theodoret (Ecclesiastical History, Bk. III, ch. 21) with what he did before getting there:
"Julian had left Edessa on his left because it was adorned with the grace of true religion, and while in his vain folly he was journeying through Carræ, he came to the temple honoured by the impious and after going through certain rites with his companions in defilement, he locked and sealed the doors, and stationed sentinels with orders to see that none came in till his return. When news came of his death, and the reign of iniquity was succeeded by one of piety, the shrine was opened, and within was found a proof of the late emperor’s manliness, wisdom, and piety. For there was seen a woman hung up on high by the hairs of her head, and with her hands outstretched. The villain had cut open her belly, and so I suppose learnt from her liver his victory over the Persians.
This was the abomination discovered at Carræ." (emphasis mine)
This was the ancient rite of extispicy, or the reading of the future in entrails. Usually done with animals, sometimes it was performed on women & children of various ages, as this sick episode proves.
I wonder how many "neo-pagans" would practice such magic?
