Pagans? Wiccans. Do you believe that your deity was created in the image of yourselves as I believe God was created in the image of man as to put a human face of a higher power.
Look at the ancients. The Greeks, Romans. They use human forms and emotions identify with their Gods. God of War, God of Love, God of etc...
Are we not really alone?
2007-06-05 17:53:18 · 6 answers · asked by Doug B 3 in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
*sigh*
Stories are what WE tell. That's the first place to start. In Norse oral and literary traditions, poetic metaphors are described in literal and concrete language, just as in Middle Eastern traditions, hyperbole and poetic imagery are used to express underlying spiritual truths.
The problems come when people either a) take these images literally, or b) dismiss them as "stories primitive people made up to explain what they couldn't understand." Neither approach is adequate.
The stories about Thor and Odhinn and Ingvi-Freyr, like those about Zeus or Jesus or whomever, are not really *meant* to be taken literally, and were understood by their original hearers as expressing spiritual, not literal truth, as as transmitting the values and thews of one's culture. How to act, what was noble, what was not.
In German it's simply called "die Sitte," or "the customary way we do things HERE." What matters is not the specific details of the stories, but the lessons they teach.
Beyond the stories are the godhs themselves, capricious, powerful, ultimately unknowable. But because they are OUR godhs . . . part of OUR culture and OUR community . . . they are part of the fabric of our lives and the stories of our Folk.
2007-06-05 18:07:13 · answer #1 · answered by Boar's Heart 5 · 3⤊ 0⤋
The Greeks and Romans (who pretty much stole their deities from the Greeks) are more of the exception than the rule. If you look at other pagan cultures, you can find deity that took animal or partially animal form. I guess that goes with the territory when you don't think that humans are necessarily above nature, but rather a part of it.
2007-06-06 00:56:40 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 3⤊ 0⤋
I believe that Deity is beyond our comprehension, and that the various Gods of various cultures, religions, and mythologies are man's attempt to put a face on the unknowable in order to be able to interact with, relate to, and understand it. What form that Deity takes is shaped by the culture in which it is identified.
2007-06-06 01:24:14 · answer #3 · answered by Nandina (Bunny Slipper Goddess) 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Actually I'm a pagan and I don't believe in deities at all except as symbols, metaphors, or archetypes. Often they do reflect very human emotions, they symbolize the essence of very powerful feelings and motivations. This is why they are useful, they give us the channel to address and invoke certain types of energy.
2007-06-06 01:06:02 · answer #4 · answered by KC 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
I think that here is something spiritual about the wind blowing in your face. I can say I worship that cause I have asked for it many times and when it comes it makes me happy. The wind has no face, and I still love it.. Same goes for the sun, the moon and the stars.
2007-06-06 00:59:54 · answer #5 · answered by JUDAS RAGE 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋
I think the gods are merely concepts that help the limited mind understand the nature of the universe. That doesn't make them beings, it means our own failings do it.
Why are some people so afraid of being without a god?
2007-06-06 01:11:49 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋