posted
Long, long ago, I seem to recall seeing a topic about the file "The Wicker Man." To anyone who's interested, the same director (and some of the same cast, as Christopher Lee's in it) are remaking the movie.
You can check it out here. Sean Astin was attached to this move, but no longer.
Jeez---this is all the pagan community needs...another false depiction of how we go about honoring our Gods and Goddesses and celebrating our feasts and festivals.
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posted
Book, When I was first here, there was a "wicca" thread, which turned into a thread on Boston accents. Is that what you mean? Liz
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There was a movie made in the early 70s that takes place on a small Scottish island. A mainland police officer comes to investigate the disapearance of a small child.
While he is looking, he notices that the residents of the island have very pagan customs---phallic topiaries, family names that are the same as tree names, naked outdoor games, and pagan drinking songs. He also has a feeling the residents are hiding the girl.
Well, he finds the girl--who was supposed to be the pagan's sacrifice to the Goddess, but then finds out he is the new sacrifice. They burn him alive, hoping for a good crop, singing songs.
Early pagans did burn an EFFIGY of a man, made of straw, to appease the God and Goddess and to pray for a fruitful crop. Not human sacrifices.
Posts: 463 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
Those early pagans weren't wicca. Wicca is around 50 years old.
However, the various groups (that can be counted as "pagan") in western Europe didn't, as far as I've ever heard, engage in human sacrifice for harvest. Seriously, Amka, asking for proof that they didn't is kinda disingenuous. If someone came here asking for proof that Mormon doctrine didn't follow some outragous and questionable practice, what would you honestly tell them? That is, before telling Kristine and Kathryn and having them banned?
In other words, you may want to re-think your approach to finding out what the practices were all about. The current one is somewhat insulting.
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posted
I'm not sure who qualifies as a "Western European Pagan," but human sacrifice certainly existed amongst religions that the layperson would associate with such a title.
posted
It might be insulting, and I'm sorry for that, but I don't think it is something that someone would be banned for if it were a similar outrageous remark about Mormons and it lead to real discussion. We've had such before.
As far as no human sacrifice in western civilization, why is the concept so very horrifying, but not so terrible if it comes from somewhere else. Because that is who we are descended from idealistically?
[url= http://216.239.53.104/search?q=cache:t0k-Yg9HDGYJ:www.echonyc.com/~onissues/su97goddess.html+%22human+sacrifice%22+%22western+religion%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8]A google cached link[/url]
quote: Consider too the concept of human sacrifice, which was once central in religious cultures as different as the Phoenician, Germanic, Celtic and Mayan, but was eventually replaced by animal sacrifice, before this too was abandoned. The last human sacrifice offered in the capital of civilization, Rome, was in 186 AD, the logic behind it being the hope that the gods would respond by giving victory in battle or an increase in crops if one gave up something of real value in sacrifice. Animals were "obviously" of less value in the deal than humans, but there were also two levels of animal sacrifice, the less powerful one being where the participants ate the meat of the burnt offering. The most powerful form was when the animal was totally destroyed, as if to say, "Look, God, we are giving it all to you. That surely will move you to help us."
Almost every historian agrees that human sacrifice occured in western pagan religion. Just google "human sacrifice" and "western religion". There is plenty of historical evidence for it.
I guess this is my point: Believe what you must, but be REAL. Don't whitewash your religious heritage.
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quote:Almost every historian agrees that human sacrifice occured in western pagan religion. Just google "human sacrifice" and "western religion". There is plenty of historical evidence for it.
And absolutely NONE of that historical evidence is used in such movies as the aforementioned, and in pretty much all the rhetoric against them. I don't even particularly like the religions (not dislike, just not partial), and that much is blazingly apparent to me. Doesn't really take much.
quote:Believe what you must, but be REAL. Don't whitewash your religious heritage.
I'll remember that next time some troll comes here asking misinformed questions about the LDS church's history.
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quote:You really need to just let go, man. This little "prove John wrong" kick you're on is getting lame.
You really need to get a grip. I posted on a thread - what, should I just stay away from threads you post on because for some reason you don't like me?
Do the posts say there were human sacrifices or not? Yes. Did I say you were wrong? No. Did I say the sacrifices were harvest related? No. Did I even say they were western European pagan? No. I said a layperson would likely think so.
I was adding some information to the thread. The links may be "lame" (whatever the hell that means), but I only included ones I could quickly apply some measure of credibility to, based on both the sources and the general tones of the article (especially the part about Roman self-righteousness).
quote:Oh, we are going to narrowly define it as "for harvest".
Why is that aspect important?
Um, because this thread is about a movie?
quote:It wasn't for harvest, so human sacrifice is okay.
Do you really want to get into that debate? I mean, doesn't the LDS church claim to be directly descended from the Jewish church? Is human sacrifice the only "not-okay" practice that a religion could have taken part in throughout its history?
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posted
There are a lot of not okay practices. And there are a lot of them that early Hebrews partook in.
It is about a movie, where the sacrifice was specifically for the harvest, but I don't think that WHAT the sacrifice was for was the salient irritating point of the movie. The irritating point was that it showed pagans sacrificing humans at all.
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I can recall things in a class I took that concerned how such customs and rituals evolve, but doing so would involve the word "meme," which I have heard I am not supposed to say.
[ March 11, 2004, 11:50 PM: Message edited by: Book ]
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posted
John, I have no idea what horrible practice(s) you are (by implication) accusing traditional/historical Judaism of, but there is not (nor was there ever) a "Jewish church." Nor do I understand what you intend the term to mean. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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You know what, forget it. Honestly, I've mostly just gotten a bit frustrated and tired of the one-sided-ness of religious outlook on Hatrack lately. It makes me downright uncomfortable.
You're right, rivka, "Jewish church" is putting it wrong. But I'm not in the right frame of mind to clarify right now. Sorry.
[ March 11, 2004, 11:54 PM: Message edited by: John L ]
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quote:The links may be "lame" (whatever the hell that means)
Dude, you need to get out more.
Anyway, to ease the pain, I say we direct any and all negative, emotional outbursts towards Micheal Jackson.
Posts: 2292 | Registered: Aug 2003
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You are seeing only those whose views differ from yours. There are a lot of people who agree with you. I know, because I have exactly the same response: This board is becoming weighted towards liberal humanism. It is a visceral, emotional reaction that has little basis in what is actually there.
I've often felt very uncomfortable with "Well, someday Mormons will come around, and do or accept X". The implication is that Mormons are bigots, or chauvenists, or something and they'll capitulate eventually to the proper mindset.
The only thing asked to be changed about the Good * OSC thread was the title. Otherwise, it bashed OSC pretty badly, and by extension, the Mormon religion. Was anyone banned because of that thread?
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posted
Now, now, children, behave! Play nice lest I be forced to turn you all into newts!
Jenny-If I thought that it would make it to you okay, I would send you some of Ricks' Beltaine strawberry wine he makes every year. Good stuff. The strawberries he uses to make it with are even better!
posted
Well, the pagans did bring us Christmas, so they're ok in my book.
To say that some pagans sacrificed humans is not offensive to pagans. What is offensive is when pagans are singled out for this practice, when we know many other religions have done much, much worse.
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posted
Starl and all, I was not in any way being disrespectful by my Boston accent comment. there really WAS an offshoot thread that developed based on how a Bostonly-accnted person would say "wicca" as "wicker" if it came before a word that began with a vowel, but would call a wicker shair a "wickah" chair. Sorry if that was taken wrong.
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posted
Starla, you're talking as if we know much of anything about pagan beliefs and practices before the 1950s, when the current teenage girl craze of Wicca (registered trademark) was created.
Why is accusing another religion of having human sacrifice so offensive? Hellllo, Christianity is built on human sacrifice.
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I do make "May Wine" for my revel, with traditional Sweet Woodruff steeped in Rhine wine. It's very tasty, sweet, and light. It helps people get in the mood to braid ribbons around our pole.
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posted
Okay, now that I've calmed down a bit about it:
quote:You are seeing only those whose views differ from yours. There are a lot of people who agree with you. I know, because I have exactly the same response: This board is becoming weighted towards liberal humanism. It is a visceral, emotional reaction that has little basis in what is actually there.
No, it acutally does. I've been paying close attention to new members and the general gist of discussions where religion comes into play, and there is a decidedly Christian POV becoming more evident (not a good or bad thing), with that POV being overwhelmingly LDS. In fact, including the newest of members, there is practically a Mormon for every person of another denomination, faith, or belief system who regularly posts here (regularly meaning at least four times in the last month, to be conservative). I don't think there is any conspiracy or any proselytizing going on, but the amount of "aceptable" critical analyzation that goes on here is quite biased, especially toward non-Christian (and especially non-LDS) discussion here. In fact, allow me to illuminate:
You said:
quote:There are a lot of not okay practices. And there are a lot of them that early Hebrews partook in.
With regard to my questioning of the basis for the LDS church. Yet, you specifically said:
quote:Don't whitewash your religious heritage.
... with regard to talking about past acts. However, you made your statement specifically point out that it was not the LDS church—which has realistically only been around for (around) 150 years (not a precise number)—but something from which the LDS church is derived which may have had questionable practice. Yet, when it comes to this non-Christian faith, you expect that the modern version of what spent centuries as a dead religion to be taken within full context of its predecessor. You're applying a "sins of the predecessor" mentality to the many pagan faiths, while not applying the same to the church you belong to (answering with the "wasn't us, it was the early Hebrews" answer).
And just to address the questioning of the "lame" remark: it's lame because the links are cheap, quick-Googled links that don't show immediately how those centuries-old and mostly dead practices actually apply to the neo-pagan rituals of today. In fact, if we took any religion in a strictly old historical context, we can say that any are brutal, often inhumane faiths that did not value life as much as we do today. However, even within their historical contexts, they are usually fitting for their time (but not usually compared to modern times). It's lame because it lacks proper perspective when applying it to today.
quote:I've often felt very uncomfortable with "Well, someday Mormons will come around, and do or accept X". The implication is that Mormons are bigots, or chauvenists, or something and they'll capitulate eventually to the proper mindset.
You know what? I recently made a thread about the same type of thing in the opposite direction, only larger in scale. In today's world, Christians have a whole lot less to worry about regarding forced capitulation than any other faith or belief system. And in this forum alone, that is magnified, especially with regard to the LDS aspect of it.
quote:The only thing asked to be changed about the Good * OSC thread was the title. Otherwise, it bashed OSC pretty badly, and by extension, the Mormon religion. Was anyone banned because of that thread?
No, but more than one person was reprimanded for their... "resistance to be sympathetic" with regard to certain members' preferences. Oddly, though, I see little of people going out of their way to be sympathetic to faiths that are not at least in the same ballpark as our hosts/mods. That's what disturbs me.
quote:It is about a movie, where the sacrifice was specifically for the harvest, but I don't think that WHAT the sacrifice was for was the salient irritating point of the movie. The irritating point was that it showed pagans sacrificing humans at all.
You are being intentionally obtuse here. From the very start, Starla* made it clear that the movie was distateful for its misleading and poorly-based depictions of the faith. And it wasn't ME who started the specific addressing of the harvest-time ritual, but it was your own questioning of the comment Starla* made quite clearly:
quote:Early pagans did burn an EFFIGY of a man, made of straw, to appease the God and Goddess and to pray for a fruitful crop. Not human sacrifices.
To which you responded:
quote:How do you know? How do you know that the burning of an effigy didn't evolve from actual human sacrifice?
So, you see, everything I addressed was from the premise of the misleading nature of the movie plot and the comments directed at Starla*'s comments. I wasn't the one diverging or demanding a narrow topic, I was staying on the topic of the movie and its false and misleading depiction of the neo-pagan faith.
Now, if you want my honest opinion, I have a lot of skepticism for the neo-pagan faith to begin with. Not because of any validity reasons, though—it's just as valid a belief as any other, as far as I can see. It is, however, in the common misconceptions of its heritage, its longevity, and its practices. You see, there were many different faiths following many different aspects over many different years, and the "pagans" of today are more of an amalgam of all of these miced together than they are representative of any single one. This is why I use the term "neo-pagans" to begin with. This misconception, by the way, isn't something relegated to people who say that they are "pagan" either. In fact, there are many people—I would say that Starla* is included—who have actually done some looking into the origins of the faith itself, even if not the cultural background (though I think she's done a good amount of that as well). Most of the unknowns about neo-paganism are propagated by an ignorant (as in "not knowing"), mostly Christian population, who has only a few things in common with those older faiths and cultures—some holidays, some holiday practices, and (possibly) some genetic lineage—and does not understand the point-of-view from which the newer versions of the faiths are manifest. It's completely foreign to them, and often seems "rather simple" or vague when compared to the much-documented and well-known Christian doctrines (redemption, one god, heaven / hell, etc). A good analogy would be someone walking into a room full of English-speaking-only people, who speaks only Russian, and the English speakers do not know that the person speaks Russian. While they would eventually be able to form a decent level of communication, in most situations it would be from the point-of-view of the Russian speaker having to learn English, not the other way around, and then providing reference points for the English speakers to understand some concepts of Russian sentences, phrases, or words. Not a difficult thing to do at all if there is someone with skills in linguistics present, but if everyone there has little or no skill in that area, Russian will seem quite alien and foreign to the English speakers, even if the Russian were to aquiesce and finally learn English. And this analogy is just talking about the differences in point of view, not the rightness or wrongness of either.
So, approaching the misrepresentation of the movie's plot from the get-go with the "how do you know?" attitude is more than a little unnerving, because it's asking for everything to be placed into your point of view from the start, and that point of view being historically incompatible with the realities of the faith in question.
Feel free to disagree with me emphatically, but my point from the start is that a) the movie is a poor representation and b) looking at the poor representation from an out-of-context point of view from the start is not going to yield any useful answers or information.
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