Polytheism vs. Monotheism

I came across this cool essay that describes more eloquently than I am able to do so the truths of Polytheism.

I’m interested in everyone’s ideas.

http://www.joanannlansberry.com/julia/polygods.html

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Shallow and not thought out.

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What are some other essays or books that have a more in depth and reasoned argument.

To be honest it doesn’t seem like that fellow was ever a real Christian. Real Christianity begins when you start a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Post ascension Christ is a ruler but send his spirit to us. From the book of John, “In the beginning was the word(Christ). And the word was with God and the word was God.”

I think too many people get caught up with the concept of ‘God’ and miss Jesus Christ. I myself have experienced multiple centers. So for me the idea of three bodies being the same person is natural. I’m also a huge ghost in the shell fan. One ghost can control more than one bodies including operating a cyborg and digital form at the same time. So the xtian trinity is somewhat similar. Each body of the godhead exists on a different dimension or different bands of dimensions.

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As a human I can get a direct sense of my transcendent self. I am the universe that my current identity is built out of. I am a unique person, but this person is the prescise result of everything that is not this person. I am everything and so are you.

Lots of people can dig that kind of thinking, so imagine how good the gods are. How deep does Hermes get when he meditates on the oneness of all creation? I bet they’re really really good at it.

I can also be different people. Everybody does that, so imagine how creative and nuanced the different selves of the UltimateAlphaOmegaGod would be. A mind like that would basically be the entire universe and every concept at the same time so if I know about Zezus, the evil no-beard Jesus from Star Trek doppelganger universe, then so does God.

Tyler knows this because I know this

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Monotheism is kind of ridiculous to me to be honest. I like how Vodoun sees it but I don’t really buy into any of it. I’m more of an animist than anything. I like the idea that everything and everyone has a spirit and consciousness. Some people even think that this might be where science is going too, though I don’t know about that. Science is kind of cucked into materialism (a failed way of thinking). Excuse the rant.

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Forgive slightly updated copy-pasta from an earlier reply I did on why the specific mindset induced by monotheism, and the tiny pissant desert cults that started it, remains so dangerous:


Obviously the key issue here is spiritual slavery, and the kinds of restrictions and outright pathologies that develop when EVERYONE is a slave.

So it’s that I want to address: why do these desert cults have such toxic power compared to the types of magico-religious societies, and beliefs, of the other pantheons (Norse, Greek, Indian, Egyptian, Aztec, etc)?

Simple answer – the statement that there is only one god.

Once you have that in place, you open up a small but critical need for believers to start thought-policing themselves and others, and to start limiting spiritual exploration and experiences, because you cut out the possibility of calling on ANY other entity, which slowly becomes the ancestors, nature spirits, you also get to create social and later, religious/criminal crimes to prosecute anyone whose actual experience is that other spirits exist.

It’s like 2 people trying to hike and follow compass bearings, a teeny 2 degree difference doesn’t seem huge at first, but go 10, 20, 50 miles and you’ve diverged so far that you’re visibly on a different route.

Cut out ancestors, and you replace the sense of identity with that of the Church, its esteemed figures, and the clergy, which – well, we’ve seen how that worked out for the Catholics, and it happens elsewhere even with married clergy.

Remove the right to contact the dead at all, you have people left in dread and fear, which then means you can drive in the wedge of saying “you MUST comply with these rules about everything, or you will burn for all eternity in hellfire and damnation.”

Remove the chance to call on other spirits, suddenly there’s only one go-to god for all your needs, and of course, by this stage you’re happy to burn anyone who does magick, has different beliefs, or sees spirits.

One god means justification for imposing a pre-set belief structure with multiple limitations, ALL of which are disempowering and spiritually enslaving.

Introduce blasphemy and heresy laws, so there’s not only ONE god, but people must believe in “Him” in the exact same way and perform the exact same observances - and bam, you’ve created an immediate justification for killing people you don’t like, something that happens with the (almost always FALSE) accusations against people for dishonouring the Qu’ran in many countries right now, and which led to the deaths of millions across European history.

It also leads to the creation of the concept of thought-crimes, which were more or less unknown prior to this (people were judged on their actions, not for having incorrect beliefs), then you also get the concept found in these religions that all humans are EQUAL, which again looks nice on paper, because who wants to think someone might be better than them, right?

But then you get marxism, the next mutation, which is REALLY big on prosecuting and persecuting people for thoughtcrimes, and which relies upon violence and brutal mass murder of those who dare believe a different system may be better.

So again, you take something that may, to a starving peasant, look reasonable enough, and you end up with over 100 million dead, for having the wrong type of beliefs, a concept that began with the Abrahamic faiths and the steadily tightening noose which it creates through the insistence that first, only one god could be worshipped, and which later became the statement that there is only one god, period.

Only ONE Truth.

My way, or the highway - with us or against us.

This is deadly and does, as the Bible promised, set father against son, mother against daughter, and has set the world on the brink of nuclear war.

And of course, this one “God” smiling merrily on its faithful still creates various requirements to convert or kill those filth who fail to see The Truth™ - something that has gone on forever and been rekindled with more zeal thanks to islam, possibly the nuttiest interpretation of the "there is only one ‘God’ and you must worship him as I do” because, of course, along with jihad in infidel nations, Muslims do also like to kill different kinds of Muslims quite enthusiastically, which is why they then have to flee Muslim nations in such great numbers.

Finally, that people will act in previously unthinkably inhumane ways when they feel the have the sanction of authority was demonstrated in both the Milgram experiment, which was duplicated with similar results on several different occasions, and also the Stanford Prison experiment.

What higher authority can there be than “God” and all the writings and teachings in a society that strives to worship “Him” with the utmost devotion and fervency, in order to avoid eternal torment?

While all societies and belief systems may at times veer into this murky territory, the Abrahamic faiths which rest on having doctrines in a Book which can never be altered, and a whole invested structure to enforce compliance of thought, belief, and practice, open this up to be a normal manner of proceeding in society, instead of a temporary aberration.

This isn’t a “slippery slope” fallacy or warning of something that I fear may happen, but which seems unlikely – this is recorded human history for the last two millenia, and the present day’s main source of political tensions, and in parts of western Europe, massive social upheaval.

So, that’s my analysis of why these faiths are so abhorrent, so opposed to everything magick and ascent stands for, and so fundamentally anti-human from root to tip. :slight_smile:


One thing I want to add, is that I don’t rule out the possibility that the figure we call Jesus was, at first, a person or syncretised group who had taken the high level of magick and what amounted to theogensis (self-identification as not just A god, but THE god - the creative Source) to a point of excellence, which is what the PGM hint at, what can be seen underlying the Mediterranean syncretism that we find in hermetic magick (and explained in full detail in Stephen Flowers’ book of that name, spelled without the K).

So for that reason I don’t find it weird if people want to work with that figure, archetype, whatever.

But the fact his cult became one of the heaviest shackles of oppression, very rapidly, and was the tool by which first Europe and later, other cultures, were culturally genocided and stripped of their native spirituality and ancestral beliefs means I don’t personally want to dabble in it either, because sifting the murk from the entire thing when it has little relevance to my present day life, and when the gods, spirits, and teachings he would have absorbed are available to me in the same way, seems like a regressive step.

But I do grant the possibility of it, based on what I’ve read and on various other patterns that seem to repeath through history, the same way I accept that some of the saints performed miracles, but it’s my contention that they performed them within Xianity because that was literally the only game in town, and NOT because it’s unique in granting powers, especially when you consider that large numbers of Xians on the Protestant side would have been very happy to burn them at the stake, and tear down those who revere them as idolators…

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Thanks you put it so succinctly. I’ve also just read your post about linear time and how spirits instead move with cause and effect which was also illuminating.

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Thanks, I’m trying to share things as I discover them, and update where needed.

This may also interest you, it’s my discovery on why “praying to God” can still yield good effects for some people, when I wrote it I was still buzzing from some work so it’s kind of a rant, but part of the same research: https://forum.becomealivinggod.com/t/so-i-met-god/6415.

i’ll be sharing where i went with that at some unspecified time in the future, because it does go somewhere interesting, need to check stuff and find out what may be relevant to other people, and not just my own reality. :smiley:

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Thanks!!!

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Mistaking the the Truth that all had to originate with 1 as being the exclusive property of the Abrahamic religions is not very scholarly. (And that inherent within the concept of 1 are all other numbers to infinity. That each is part of one and that one is found within each.)

Monotheism predates Abraham and is likely the predominant idea of all polytheism. In that, creation began with a single source and was developed by the various forces, Gods.

Which just so happens to be the written text within the Bible…the ruach elohim created the world. Ruach elohim is a very plural indicating at least 7 forces, Gods, (mighty ones) if you will.

The Bible itself does NOT state that there are no other gods, but that the followers of their religion must follow only the One God. The Bible acknowledges other Gods very clearly many times.

In other words, polytheism is obviously true. Because it is the natural unfolding of a single starting point or Source into its various forces which are essential in creation. Duh…

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Scriptures from any religion.
Nature.
A seed.
The growth of a crystal.
The development of relationships of an infant through their life.
Etc.

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Thanks!!!

It seems to have begun with Akhnaten. If you have an earlier verifiable manifestation of it in the form that first prohibits contacting other gods/spirits, and later denies they exist as anything other than demons, or madness, please share, my research is ongoing and I know other people will be interested. :+1:

But that was dispensed with rapidly:

In Judaism, God is understood to be the absolute one, indivisible, and incomparable being who is the ultimate cause of all existence. Judaism holds that YHWH, the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the national god of the Israelites, delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, and gave them the Law of Moses at biblical Mount Sinai as described in the Torah.
God in Judaism - Wikipedia

Christian statement of faith:

We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God. We believe that there is one God, eternally existent in three persons: Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. … We believe in the spiritual unity of believers in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Islamic statement of faith:

There is no god but God. Muhammad is the messenger of God.

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Making blanket statements about these 3 faiths is like stating all Satanists are theistic or all Democrats are crazies.

We can use the exoteric doctrines of every faith to cast aspersions on them and their adherents, but we as a community have little to do with exoteric dogma. We, LHP, are by definition esoteric.

Every Cabalist understands that the Ruach Elohim is plural. And that the tetragrammaton is a formula, not a name. That the name of the Creator is not a set of letters or numbers but the entire set of numbers which is infinite. That the name of God is unknowable.

There are plenty of Xians, Jews, Sufi’s that believe there are other ways and means to God, that there are other gods or simply God known by other traditions.

And once again, the Hebrew Bible makes many statements that there are other Gods, the most obvious is the 2nd of the 10 commandments: Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

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Thanks for answering my questions

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