"The One"

[Chalice]

I really do learn alot from you Ben! You are very smart! You know they do not tell us this type of stuff in Church, such as time lines and dates and material that pre-dates Biblical stories and so forth, and I would not know where to begin looking for such materials, in fact, I did not even consider that as a possibility, I really thought that Adam and Even, and Noah were pretty much the "first" stories. I know I interupted your thread and I do appologize, but I can't help myself. I read along and that makes me have a question, and so I ask. One think that I don't get to do much in Church is ask questions - they get offended if you ask something they have to explain things, and they want you to "just believe" which I am willing to do, but I do want to have my questions answered as well.

I want to know something: If you are a pagan, are you forbidden from believing the Noah (or other Biblical) stories? Do you know why the Noah and other ancient Biblical stories developed? I have heard that Moses borrowed Babylonian laws and re-wrote them as the 10 commandments, but when I saw the "hammurabbi" law here, I didn't think that was possible, as Hammurabbi is way to long. And the other thing is, do you really think the pagan deities are actually real? The only way I can feel real about them is in the context of the Noah story, which I already explained to you, (them coming from the "Sons of God" at some point) which makes them real for me..

I also want to know if you think magic is just like prayer but with props...or are you gaining special access to divine energy or something? I have created little spells and gotten results. But I can't help but wonder if the spells would have worked out the same way with praying. Did the spells super-power the prayer because I presented my problem and my desired outcome more efficiently, and the divine world was able to generate an answer faster because of this?...What do you think about this.

[bgruagach]

There are many books out there that explore the origins of Christianity. I would recommend reading as many, by as many different authors (and from different publishers) as you can. This way you'll get a more rounded view of the topic and can make up your mind what seems to make most sense.

Limiting your source of information to just what a particular preacher or church tells you means you will necessarily have a limited exposure to the information available. Personally, I think if an argument is to hold up then it should hold up when you have full access to all the information -- anyone can be convincing if they are able to control your access to information!

As we've mentioned in the Paganism & Christianity thread (as well as in other threads I expect) Paganism is a broad and very generic grouping which includes a huge amount of diversity. Different groups have different rules, different philosophies, different ways of doing things. There are probably some Pagan groups that do attempt to limit what information their followers have access to (such as forbidding their followers to read the Christian Bible, for instance) but to be honest I don't know of any off the top of my head. On the contrary, most Pagans I'm aware of today (in real life and through online interaction) tend to read widely on many different topics and tend to encourage investigation of what other groups have to say in their scriptures and texts.

I'd like to encourage anyone who is looking for primary sources from a variety of spiritual paths to check out the excellent free online collection at Sacred-texts.com. All the material there is in the public domain so it's perfectly legal. For newer published material you should check your local public library as they are not restricted to carrying only public-domain stuff.

The topic of magick is another whole can of worms that, like the definition of Pagan and witch, has a lot of different meanings depending on who you talk to. Defining magick, Pagan, witch, and even Wiccan are the "perennial topics" that appear over and over again in the Pagan community and I don't think they will ever be resolved. That's a consequence of being a community that is not based on having a single central authority!

[Child of a New Day]

Incase anyone was interested this is the part of the book I was refering to.

Before time was, there was The One; The One was all, and all was The One.
And the vast expanse known as the universe was The One, all wise, all pervading, all powerful, eternally changing.

And space moved. The One moulded energy into twin forms, equal but opposite, fashioning the Goddess and God
from The One and of The One.

The Goddess and God stretched and gave thanks to The One, but darkness surrounded them. They were alone, solitary save for The One.

So they formed energy into gases and gases into suns
and planets and moons; They sprinkled the universe with whirling
globes and so all was given shape by the hands of the Goddess and God.

Light arose and the sky was illuminated by a billion suns.
The Goddess and God, satisfied by their works,
rejoiced and loved, and were one.

From their union sprang the seeds of all life,
and the human race so that we might achieve incarnation upon the Earth.

The Goddess chose the Moon as her symbol,
and the God the Sun as his to remind the inhabitants of Earth of their creators.

All are born, live, die and are reborn beneath the Moon and Sun;
All things come to pass there under, and all occurs
with the blessings of The One, the Goddess and God,
as has been the way of existence since before time was.

[bgruagach]

Originally Posted by Child of a New Day

Incase anyone was interested this is the part of the book I was refering to.

Before time was, there was The One; The One was all, and all was The One.
And the vast expanse known as the universe was The One, all wise, all pervading, all powerful, eternally changing.

Anyone who wants to look it up will find it on page 113 of Scott Cunningham's book, "Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner" (Llewellyn: 1990.)

Cunningham's "Blessing Chant" on page 123 of that same book also refers to "the One" and is very similar to "They Dryghten Prayer" that Patricia Crowther mentions on page 39 of her book, "Witch Blood!" (House of Collectibles, NYC: 1974.) The Dryghten Prayer is also available on the web at http://www.sacred-texts.com/bos/bos302.htm

[Neoplatonist]

A thread titled "The One" and no mention of Plotinus and/or The Enneads!?!

That aint' right!

[Thomas]

"I just finished reading a Cunningham book and he talked about "The One". A diety higher then the Goddess and God."

Hi Neoplatonist -

Yes, I came to this discussion for the same reason!

Seems from a quick reading of the posts that this is just another derivation of Platonism.

Thomas

[seattlegal]

Originally Posted by Child of a New Day

I just finished reading a Cunningham book and he talked about "The One". A diety higher then the Goddess and God. He said the One is the devine source and created the God and Goddess and the God and Goddess created us.

Hmm, this sounds similar to the Taoist concept of the Unmanifest Tao becoming the Monistic Manifest Tao, from which the complimentary dualism of Yin and Yang arise.

Compare the first chapter of the Tao Te Ching with what has been presented here.

The concept of gatthering the scattered shards of light is also found in the Kabbalah and other Jewish beliefs.

Another interesting parallel--the Tao is viewed as water that will naturally flow to the lowest and hidden places. {the scattered shards of light?}

[Pathless]

Originally Posted by Child of a New Day

Incase anyone was interested this is the part of the book I was refering to.

Before time was, there was The One; The One was all, and all was The One.
And the vast expanse known as the universe was The One, all wise, all pervading, all powerful, eternally changing.

And space moved. The One moulded energy into twin forms, equal but opposite, fashioning the Goddess and God
from The One and of The One.

The Goddess and God stretched and gave thanks to The One, but darkness surrounded them. They were alone, solitary save for The One.

So they formed energy into gases and gases into suns
and planets and moons; They sprinkled the universe with whirling
globes and so all was given shape by the hands of the Goddess and God.

Light arose and the sky was illuminated by a billion suns.
The Goddess and God, satisfied by their works,
rejoiced and loved, and were one.

From their union sprang the seeds of all life,
and the human race so that we might achieve incarnation upon the Earth.

The Goddess chose the Moon as her symbol,
and the God the Sun as his to remind the inhabitants of Earth of their creators.

All are born, live, die and are reborn beneath the Moon and Sun;
All things come to pass there under, and all occurs
with the blessings of The One, the Goddess and God,
as has been the way of existence since before time was.

Sounds like a pretty standard creation story, and sounds quite similar to some accounts given in the Bible--Genesis comes to mind, and then whatever part of the Bible that says, "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God..." or something like that. I'm sure I am butchering scripture... apologies. Just wanted to note the similarities.

[gwenwifar23]

God and goddess, where do these words come from?

In ancient teuton language, most nouns where male or female, most nouns where single and plural. But the word god was neither male nor female. And there was no plural form. And in all teuton languages it sounded like good.

According to Andreas Firewolf, this means, that the ancient teutons knew only one god, this god was neither male nor female. God created the universe, and that was good. They had nothing more to say about god. The painter is not in the painting, and the sculpter is not in the sculpture. How can creatures talk or think about that what comes before creation?

The words 'gods', 'goddess' and 'goddesses' were created in christian times. The jews had a desert-deity, and there were other deities. Jews were not allowed to worship them. Christians, influenced by jewish, greek and roman teachings projected their faith upon the teutons and accused them of worshipping many gods. This was a misunderstanding.

The ancient teutons formed aliances with the Aesir (spirit-beings of the wind), Vanir (spirit-beings of the sea and water), Jotun (spirit-beings of the fire) and Hrimthursen (spirit-beings of the ice). They were not considered to be gods of god-like. They were not almighty and/or omnipotent. They were subjected to their weird (word in dutch, urd in icelandic), which was weaved by the weird-sisters or norns: Urd, Rota and Skuld. According to Andreas Firewolf, these powers are the three guna's of the Brahmans.

Why should we pray to the creator of the universe?

Andreas Firewolf made a ridicule story about a biologist and some ants in his book "Cirkels van Licht en Liefde" (Circles of Light and Love, only in dutch). A biologist takes some ants to his lab to study them. These ants find out, that he is feeding them. They start to worship the biologist as their god and bring food-offerings to them. Once the biologist notices this, he concludes that he has influenced his subjects of study and destroyes them.

Personally I see the gods and goddesses as role-models.

Freya is my role-model. She is the deity of love, the spirit-being of sacrifice. When her lover was gone, she searched for him in every town and slept with all men. She is the deity of whores, who where greatly respected by the pre-christian people. Walpurgisnight comes from Val-burg. Val means fallen. Burg means keep, fortress. Freya is also called: Lady Val-burgja. She is a fortress for fallen women, like Odinn is the leader of the men who fall in battle. "Fallen women" should not be interpreted in a christian sense. It goes way back, when some women were warriors, like men. When you go on a spiritual path, you become a warrior. Someday you loose the battle, perhaps against old-age or something. Then you fall down. Warrior-women go to our lady Freya Valburgia, Warrior-men go to Odinn.

When I meditate on Freya as my role-model, I get a good feeling. How can I get such a feeling when I meditate on the creator of the universe. The creator is without manifested qualities. The universe is its expression.

[bgruagach]

It's nice to hear that people have found a spiritual path that truly speaks to them. Teutonic myth and culture has certainly influenced other parts of European and British culture but it is hardly the only source.

The claim that the words "gods" and "goddesses" originated with Christians is quite interesting but is contradicted by pretty much all the history we have available to us. Perhaps the words we use in modern English were coined during Christian times but the ideas of multiple deities and words for multiple deities certainly existed well before Christian times.

Before the Christian era we have many many cultures that worshipped multiple deities and clearly had terms to refer to more than one god or goddess. Just as one example, Greek religions predate Christianity and encompassed the worship of gods such as Zeus, Poseidon, Pan, Dionysus, Hermes, and many more. And while it is true that some believed that all deities were manifestations of a single larger entity (such as the Hindu conception of Brahman) there are many pre-Christian pagan religions that did not believe this and taught that each deity was distinct and separate from the others. That's why the gods and goddesses often fought one another -- why would they fight if they were all just different faces of the same being?

[gwenwifar23]

Yes, there were many deities. But they were not omni-present or omni-potent, like "the One" in this thread. The greek deities were competing with eachother, like in a soap-production. They kept things hidden for eachother and were plotting against eachother.

The lord of the christians is completely different. It is not a simple deity, that lives in the creation, but something above and beyond creation.

I did not state, that all deities were derived from the teutons. I stated, that the word god is an ancient teuton word. According to "Jan de Vries: Nederlands Etymologisch woordenboek" (Dutch etymologic dictionary) the word "god" was without gender. Jan de Vries was a famous authority on teuton language, culture and mythology, author of "Altgermanische religions geschichte".

It would be wrong to compare the deities from the pagans with god as creator of the universe or to compare them with "the One". As soon as you start worshipping "the One", you are no longer a pagan.

Andreas Firewolf wrote in many of his works, that religious wars started with the believe that there is only one god. In short:

If there is only one god (your god)
with a set of rules (your rules)
and another person believes in another deity
with another set of rules
you have a problem.

To this problem there are several solutions:
1. You conclude that you are wrong, so you convert yourself to another god and another set of rules. This does not solve the problem, because sooner or later you meet again somenone with another deity and another set of rules.

2. You conclude, that other people are misguided.
2a. You try to convince the poor misguided people of your superior believe with words and reason.
2b. You ignore the poor misguided people, because they have not evolved to your superior state of evolution.
2c. You force the poor misguided people to believe what you believe. For there own good, offcourse. Those that refuse to change their believe-system should be destroyed. In the 15th and 16th century christians burned eachother at the stake, because they believed that the other christians had the wrong version of the christian lord. They did that for there own good, offcourse. It was to save their soul.

Pagans do not have this kind of problems. Since there are many deities, it is natural that another person has another deity and another set of rules.

[gwenwifar23]

P.s. I wrote:

According to Andreas Firewolf, this means, that the ancient teutons knew only one god, this god was neither male nor female. God created the universe, and that was good. They had nothing more to say about god. The painter is not in the painting, and the sculpter is not in the sculpture. How can creatures talk or think about that what comes before creation?

The words 'gods', 'goddess' and 'goddesses' were created in christian times. The jews had a desert-deity, and there were other deities. Jews were not allowed to worship them. Christians, influenced by jewish, greek and roman teachings projected their faith upon the teutons and accused them of worshipping many gods. This was a misunderstanding.

According to teuton language, there was only one god. But (as I stated above), they revered many deities. They knew the Aesir (like Odin and Thor), the Vanir (like Freya), the Thursar (like Skadi) and the Jotun (like Surtr). But those deities were not "gods".

If one would try to translate the teuton concepts to christian terminology, the teutons had four armies of angels with four arch-angels: Odinn as arch-angel of the Aesir, Freya as arch-angel of the Vanir, Logr or Surtr as arch-angel of the Jotun and Hrae-svelgr as arch-angel of the Thursar.

The translation in the previous paragraph would not be recognised by ancient teutons and is not accurate. It could help christians to understand the teuton concepts.

In reality, Hrae-svelgr is a force that is not quite angelic. She has the form of a black eagle and she is the great-great-mother. She reigns in the depths of Nifl-hal, the most remote area in Nifl-heimar, the ice-root of the tree-of-worlds (Yggdrasil). When people die of old age, illness or starvation, the soul falls down to Hal (the first world in Niflheimar). When the soul is not healed, it sinks deeper and deeper until it falls into Nifl-hal. There the soul is devoured by Hrae-svelgr. Her name means: Gobbler-of-corpses.

The teuton warrior/warrioress is initiated for nine days and nights. On the ninth night, you have to climb the wall of fear in Niflhal and feed yourself to Hrae-svelgr. In her stomach you are desintegrated. Then she relieves herself of you and you fall into the primordial darkness. Finally you rise up until you tower above the universe and you become the creator of your own destiny.

[bgruagach]

Thanks for sharing your understanding of teutonic religion. Very interesting -- and I can think of parallels to some of the things you mentioned in other religions and cultures too. Nothing brings all those elements together in an identical way but a lot of the things exist in other forms in other places.

There is a lot of diversity in how different religious groups express their understanding of the Divine: monotheistic, monotheistic with a hierarchy of beings, polytheistic (in both "soft" and "hard" polytheistic variations), pantheistic, and lots more.

And some religions such as Wicca don't dictate any one model as mandatory, although in Wicca there is a tendencey towards polytheism (either "soft" or "hard") rather than strict monotheism.

[MacMorrighan]

Just thought I would revive an old thread for discussion (gee, long time, no post, huh?):

Originally Posted by gwenwifar23

God and goddess, where do these words come from?

Actually, according to my research, the etymology for the word "God" comes from the Old High German, Gott, which is tracible to the Indo-European root *go, meaning "the bull". While the French term for God, "Dieu" (of Romanic provedence) stems from div, which means "radiant".

Originally Posted by gwenwifar23

In ancient teuton language, most nouns where male or female, most nouns where single and plural. But the word god was neither male nor female.

Personally, I have not heard this theory before. Indeed, what I know of the etymology of he term, itself, it would appear that the gender would be implicately masculine.

Originally Posted by gwenwifar23

The words 'gods', 'goddess' and 'goddesses' were created in christian times.

Gotta' disagree here on not only etymological grounds, but also on the understanding of history. For example, the Romans had a word for "Goddess," which was Dea.

Originally Posted by gwenwifar23

The jews had a desert-deity, and there were other deities. Jews were not allowed to worship them.

Nawe, the tribes in fact had many Gods, and frequently worshipped Them. The largest secret of modern Judaism is that such Gods as Adonai, Elohim, Ba`al, etc.-- or, the God of Moses and the God of Abraham-- were absolutely distinct from the other and referred to tribal Gods in a polytheistic sense, raher than a Monotheistic one. Indeed, Adonai is most often translated in the Old Testament as "Lord," etc.

Originally Posted by gwenwifar23

Christians, influenced by jewish, greek and roman teachings projected their faith upon the teutons and accused them of worshipping many gods. This was a misunderstanding.

But, in fact, it is commonly accepted amongst scholars that the Teutonic tribes did have various Gods, and they they did wrship Them.

Although, speaking of Freyja ["Lady"] (I thought you might find this fascinating), She is a Goddess of "Shamanism", with a male homoerotically-inclined Priesthood, who is also tracible to the Neolithic Bird-Goddess of Marija Gimbutas' "Old Europe". She, of course, taught Her special-brand of Magick to Odinn, which involved sexual penetration on the part of the Magick-User; er go, Odinn was also homoerotically-inclined by definition, and is associated with the Ergi.

Originally Posted by gwenwifar23

Yes, there were many deities. But they were not omni-present or omni-potent, like "the One" in this thread.

While it is true that many Gods and Goddesses were not "omni-present" or "omnipotent," but I have recently come to find that some paleo-pagan Deities certainly were considered to be "omnipresent". Now, at the time, I never thought to make a mental note of the Names or cultures of these Gods so I will have to search through my rather enormous personal Library to discover Them, again.

Thanks for allowing me to share,

All my best,
Wade MacMorrighan

[Therapon]

Originally Posted by Neoplatonist

A thread titled "The One" and no mention of Plotinus and/or The Enneads!?!

That aint' right!

Khairete

It does make one smile

If I may put in my two pence-worth. There have been a lot of posts which seem to go off in all sorts of speculative tangents but for the record and in context.

Theres no mystery here...

The One lies at the very foundation of the Western Tradition and is the underlying unifying principle behind Classical Pagan Philosophy.

The roots of contemporary Wicca and Druidry for that matter, lie in the western esotoric tradidion which emerged during the renaissance. The foundations of which was the reintroduction to the west of the Neoplatonist tradition. The One is the transcendent and ineffable God of Plotinus and the Neoplatonists. The roots of the teaching on the One have been traced back through Plato to Pythagoras. the Golden Chain of Tradition goes further back through Hermes Trismagistus, Orpheus, Dionysos, Apollo, Zeus to Phanes. Such are the legendry origins of its divine beginnings.

The One is if I'm understanding Plotinus correctly the essential transcendent unity of all gods and all beings, the only truly existant reality. This is pure Monism, the underlying philosophy of Polytheism.

For the most sublime exposition of the teaching on the One you could do no better than read the Enneads of Plotinus. They are avaialable on-line.

Erroson Therapon