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Dec. 29th, 2009 09:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sorcyressReligion Meme from JoshZed
JoshZed tagged me1 with a meme that involves naming off three religions you find fascinating and explaining why, regardless of your personal participation or lack thereof in them.
This would be an easier proposition if I was at all religiously oriented. It really is just kinda, you know. There. I have my own strange pantheon, and don't really follow with the organized religions for any of them.
But anywho! Three religions I find fascinating:
1) The ancient Greek pantheon. I'm sure there's a proper name for this somewhere, but really, Zeus and the gang are all pretty damn cool. I had a really good book of Greek myths as a child, which I reread many times, giving me a fair idea of the basics of both the well-known and obscure gods (Hello, Hestia!)
Or perhaps a better way to put it is that I read enough myths as a child to be utterly disgusted with Disney's Hercules when I eventually saw it. Hera is a fan of the child? Really? Hades is evil? Really?! Yeah...
I hold some love in my heart for the Nordic as well, though I'm much less well-versed in their tales, either ancient Norse myths, or current Nordic Paganism2
2) Discordianism. One of the only two religions I've actually read the holy book for (the other being Pastafarianism). My clone is a practicing Discordian, which helped spark my interest in finding out more. So far that "more" is pretty much limited to having read the Principa Discordia.
Most of my deep and abiding love for Discordianism comes from the quote The human race will begin solving it's problems on the day that it ceases taking itself so seriously. Not taking oneself particularly seriously has long been one of my favourite themes in life, and is advice I try to keep at the forefront of my mind.
3) Nnnnnn. Um. Damn. Assuming we're keeping to the non-fiction religions, and therefore I can't pick the Shin'a'in worship of the Star-Eyed4, 5 or something, um...um um um....
It's not an actual religion, but I find celebrity/real-people worship interesting. We're talking anything from Beatlemania and Cullenism6 to things like the Church of Greykell7 and the fact that one of the members of my pantheon is my friend Chort8
I've certainly labelled other people as gods as well --Neil Gaimen, I believe, and certainly Randall Munroe. In KoDT9, Weird Pete's entire pantheon is based around dead celebrities, foremost among them Andy Worhol. There is an extent to which humans worship one another, and I find that just fascinating.
This can go as far as things like the ways we look at people who have the bodies we want, or the ways we treat people who are just-that-much too cool for us, and yet we really really want to be our friends. Soyeah, like I said, it's not an actual religion, but it's still something I find particularly neat.
And I'm not tagging anyone. If you'd like to babble about some religions you find interesting, go for it. If not, that's okay too.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: And if you follow that link, you can linkchase straight to the original post, which is a little bit excellent, really. I like the way the internet connects.
2: I don't actually know the proper name of this, but this is what Conor-from-school3 follows --his patron god is Thor, and he wears a hammer and everything.
3: As opposed to Conor-with-short-hair. Hi![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
londo :D
4: From Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books.
5: The Star-Eyed actually exerts considerable sway over my two primary gods, and the ways I interact with them. Many *many* things from that particular fantasy series affected me, this was apparently one of them --When I talk to my goddesses, it is in much the same ways that Tarma talks to hers.
6: I am not making this up.
7: First rule: Hey hey hey, don't be mean. You don't have to be mean. Second rule: I want you to be nice. I want you to be nice until it's time to stop being nice.
8: He earned it by giving me a just marvelous head scritch exactly when I needed such a thing, not to mention taking me out for sushi occasionally, and being one of the best dancers ever, and just generally being quite fantastic. He is also responsible for me owning both my breeches and my regency tailcoat, which is a very good thing indeed.
9: Knights of the Dinner Table, gaming-nerd comic book. Fun and geeky.
JoshZed tagged me1 with a meme that involves naming off three religions you find fascinating and explaining why, regardless of your personal participation or lack thereof in them.
This would be an easier proposition if I was at all religiously oriented. It really is just kinda, you know. There. I have my own strange pantheon, and don't really follow with the organized religions for any of them.
But anywho! Three religions I find fascinating:
1) The ancient Greek pantheon. I'm sure there's a proper name for this somewhere, but really, Zeus and the gang are all pretty damn cool. I had a really good book of Greek myths as a child, which I reread many times, giving me a fair idea of the basics of both the well-known and obscure gods (Hello, Hestia!)
Or perhaps a better way to put it is that I read enough myths as a child to be utterly disgusted with Disney's Hercules when I eventually saw it. Hera is a fan of the child? Really? Hades is evil? Really?! Yeah...
I hold some love in my heart for the Nordic as well, though I'm much less well-versed in their tales, either ancient Norse myths, or current Nordic Paganism2
2) Discordianism. One of the only two religions I've actually read the holy book for (the other being Pastafarianism). My clone is a practicing Discordian, which helped spark my interest in finding out more. So far that "more" is pretty much limited to having read the Principa Discordia.
Most of my deep and abiding love for Discordianism comes from the quote The human race will begin solving it's problems on the day that it ceases taking itself so seriously. Not taking oneself particularly seriously has long been one of my favourite themes in life, and is advice I try to keep at the forefront of my mind.
3) Nnnnnn. Um. Damn. Assuming we're keeping to the non-fiction religions, and therefore I can't pick the Shin'a'in worship of the Star-Eyed4, 5 or something, um...um um um....
It's not an actual religion, but I find celebrity/real-people worship interesting. We're talking anything from Beatlemania and Cullenism6 to things like the Church of Greykell7 and the fact that one of the members of my pantheon is my friend Chort8
I've certainly labelled other people as gods as well --Neil Gaimen, I believe, and certainly Randall Munroe. In KoDT9, Weird Pete's entire pantheon is based around dead celebrities, foremost among them Andy Worhol. There is an extent to which humans worship one another, and I find that just fascinating.
This can go as far as things like the ways we look at people who have the bodies we want, or the ways we treat people who are just-that-much too cool for us, and yet we really really want to be our friends. Soyeah, like I said, it's not an actual religion, but it's still something I find particularly neat.
And I'm not tagging anyone. If you'd like to babble about some religions you find interesting, go for it. If not, that's okay too.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: And if you follow that link, you can linkchase straight to the original post, which is a little bit excellent, really. I like the way the internet connects.
2: I don't actually know the proper name of this, but this is what Conor-from-school3 follows --his patron god is Thor, and he wears a hammer and everything.
3: As opposed to Conor-with-short-hair. Hi
londo :D4: From Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books.
5: The Star-Eyed actually exerts considerable sway over my two primary gods, and the ways I interact with them. Many *many* things from that particular fantasy series affected me, this was apparently one of them --When I talk to my goddesses, it is in much the same ways that Tarma talks to hers.
6: I am not making this up.
7: First rule: Hey hey hey, don't be mean. You don't have to be mean. Second rule: I want you to be nice. I want you to be nice until it's time to stop being nice.
8: He earned it by giving me a just marvelous head scritch exactly when I needed such a thing, not to mention taking me out for sushi occasionally, and being one of the best dancers ever, and just generally being quite fantastic. He is also responsible for me owning both my breeches and my regency tailcoat, which is a very good thing indeed.
9: Knights of the Dinner Table, gaming-nerd comic book. Fun and geeky.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Norse myths
on 2009-12-30 02:27 am (UTC)Then one day in the late 1990s, I let Anna take both of them into her kindergarten classroom. They both made it back into the car, too, because I remember Tigger reading from the Norse book in the back of the car... and then suddenly, sometime after getting back home (with Tigger) we could only find the Greek one. We searched all over the place; no luck, and it has not turned up since.
Guess which of those two books is still in print, and which one can only be found at rare book sites at a price around $100 (http://www.alibris.com/booksearch.detail?invid=8993816777&wquery=D%27Aulaire%27s+Norse&qwork=1497853&qsort=&page=1). *facepalms* (Apparently there is now a reissue, which didn't show up in searches back in 1999-ish even though it claims to have happened in 1986... go figure.)
no subject
on 2009-12-30 06:22 am (UTC)On a semi-related note, I met a Druid the other night, thanks to wearing my cloak. Fortunately, he was the kind who was well aware of the (recent) origins of the current religion, and we had an interesting discussion.
no subject
on 2009-12-30 06:32 am (UTC)