I’ve been a member of this forum for only a short while, yet long enough to know that some / most of you are way more advanced in these matters than me. Some have peered further behind the veil and have uncovered hidden truths. Some have conversed with demons, entities. Some have travelled astral planes.
So to these people, I’d like to ask these questions:
What is the REAL deal behind Christianity and the Bible?
Is there such an entity as ‘God’? Or, come think of it, ‘the devil’?
If it’s nonsense, why do things ranging from Tarot cards to actual demons still echo elements of the Bible (and not Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.)?
Is there any truth in the Christian message?
I’m well aware of the history of Christianity. I know it started as verbal stories which were only written down years later, and have now been watered down over the centuries. I know some scrolls and gospels were considered to be too contentious for the great unwashed and were not included. I know it started in Galilee yet because it’s focus quickly became politics and power, quickly relocated to Rome. And I’m only too familiar with the hate crimes committed by the Church, ranging from sadistic inquisition torture to witchhunt murders to paedophilia. In other words, Christianity today is not what it was at the time.
Sorry if the above seemed to be a bit garbled. I’m just trying to make sense of it all - I’m not looking for arguments or provoke ill-feeling.
What is the REAL deal behind Christianity and the Bible?
I think you answered your own question And there isn’t only one Christianity, you have a mixture of historical documentation, teaching and morality tales, propaganda, and some of this is mythologized, some symbolic, some garbled and badly mistranslated. Iml the meat if the spirituality was in the discarded books and is why they were discarded, leaving the ethical framework, history and teaching tales.
Depends what you mean by “god”.
If you mean “god” as in the words “el” and “Elohim” (translated to god and gods) then these are physical beings that walked and talked on Earth and were not actually gods as we’d think of them in these modern times - we’d call them ETs if we met them today.
if you mean the intangible spirit in all things that cam be called Source or the universe/cosmos, the All, Great Spirit, or the Tao, then whether you believe in this concept is a personal choice and no one can say for sure what you should thing. This enters the area of belief, which is personal.
It’s not all nonsense. Most if it is useless from a mages perspective, but not to everybody.
If you go back to the original Greek, Hebrew and Arabic (none of the English versions are good) you get more sense of where they were actually coming from, and also if you read the books that were thrown out by Catholic (Jesuit) pop Constantine and forget the old testament which is Judaism not Christianity, many spiritual truths come back and contradictions go away.
It’s less useful to mages because the actual spiritual teachings of Jeshua the Nazorean were destroyed. There’s almost no actual Christianity as a mystery school left in the bible.
Christianity was attacked from the get go as it challenged authority and those authorities polluted it with a lot of crap early on to maintain their power.
As an historical document to get info on past civilization it’s an important academic source, also for linguists.
It’s worth mentioning that a huge utility in the bible is not for mages. It’s unironically for the “unwashed masses” you mention.
Some humans actually prefer to be considered sheep, are proud of being sheep, and WANT to be subservient and told what to to. This shocked me the day I realized it, but I see it everywhere and now I can’t unsee it. There are actually people who cannot think for themselves and don’t want to try, they even have to be told right from wrong: they have no inherent sense of it.
“Jesus take the wheel” is every day for them, except “Jesus” is any authority that will take the burden of personal responsibility from them.
Those sheeple need the structure of a religion to function in society.
I find this kind of … disappointing, but it is what it is, and so, society needs religion to help manage these people and maintain harmony and peace. This makes the bible useful for this purpose. It’s not useful to free thinkers, but it’s sort of essential for the sheep.
Tarot: spot of etymology is wikipedia here: Tarot - Wikipedia
So these are a later invention and came from 14th century Italy, a society that was already Christian, so it’s unsurprising the main religion of the day got into them. The suits seems to have been inspired by Egyptian playing cards. I haven’t researched this but as many kinds of cards decks got used for divination, I suspect the divination part came later, notably by Raider-Waite.
Demons: This is also a circular assumption… you want to believe in “demons” from a source we’re not sure is real? Most of those those demons are other people’s gods, hijacked for political reasons, they are not demons at all. They are gods, Djinn/fae, elementals, astral wildlife and personified powers of nature from many peoples predating the not just the bible, but in some cases the Mesopotamian peoples too.
I don’t use the label "demon: because its so misleading. And I’m not JCI.
I’m not sure what message you mean here. I think there’s a lot of info in there and a lot can be called messages?
And do you mean the messages only from Jeshua, or from his predecessors (he wasn’t the only Christed one in history, there may have been up to 24 that we know of) from his disciples as well, or from the jewish bits like the Moses commandments?
I think there are too many versions of Christianity to figure out what the one singular deal is. Here a hypothesis I’ve been thinking of lately. If you read Genesis and the story of Abraham you see he makes a pact with something. Instead of a pact it is called a covenant. This pact was sealed in blood and animal sacrifice.
The story itself of course is probably not accurate but the point is a pact was made. This pact was for a whole people and could be passed down. After thousands of years there were a lot of disagreements about what was in the pact (do you need to circumcised to be part of it, a particular race, eat certain things, etc) and what the pact was with (a deity, a monotheistic deity, source/universe).
Eventually, a new covenant/pact was created based on the story of Jesus. But after time the same disagreements set in. Being Christian means agreeing to this pact or at least what you think the pact is, usually through the ritual of baptism.
This idea is mostly me trying to reconcile with Christianity. I found myself truly despising Christianity and Christians, so I started thinking of way to look at Christianity that I could be at peace with. This is what I came up with, and I mean seriously the story of Abraham sounds so much like being called to work with a deity and pact making.
So I’d say certain versions of the christian god definitely do not exist, others may or may not, and some I do believe exist. For example I do believe there is a divine source. Some Christians identify that as their God, particularly in esoteric circles. However some would say the same thing is their God but then talk about rebellious spirits, but the source is non-dual and has no opposite, so how could rebellion occur? Another way to see it is that the christian god is a deity and the not necessarily the ultimate principle, in which case that could exist but I’d have to meet them to be sure. There so many other versions and even the ones I presented are oversimplified, I’d need a much more specific definition to make a determination.
For a more scholarly look into origins of the Christian god I recommend This and That also This one
As for the Bible, I’d just point out that if you asked an original Christian what their favorite Bible story was they’d turn around and ask you what the Bible was. Religions do not come solely from singular books and much as modern fundamentalists want people to believe that.
It is a definite maybe. Lol
I assure you that if you summoned Hindu demons they would echo elements of Hinduism. The tarot originated in a christian culture and future versions like the Rider-waite-smith deck are golden dawn. Can I ask you why do the runes echo Nordic culture and religion?
I think the message that I grew up with, that the height of ethics is believing in a particular guy and anyone who didn’t believe in that guy were terrible people that needed to be eliminated, is nonsense. But again there are many versions you would have to be more specific.
Looking at it from the perspective of a pact I would say that would be up the individual. I do not want to be part of it. I also think if I changed my mind I would want to forge my own pact with the particular God instead of joining one that is thousands of years old and no one can agree on. At least I’d know for sure what was in this covenant. But again that’s up to the individual, I’m sure joining a covenant that thousands of years old is would pretty exciting to someone else. Being connected to millions of people in the present, and so many more in the past, I can see why some people are into traditions.
I like this. Seeing a people’s “covenant” with a deity as similar to a pact makes a lot of sense. It also puts the whole baptism and “born again” rituals into a better context. When participating in them, you are essentially renewing the pact.
2 . Yes god exists and there is a lot of evidence to support it
3 . What you mean by that ? what you mean it echos element of the bible i didnt understand that part
Yes there is truth in the Christian message , its the truth , but its a matter of faith and some evidence
but if you are asking this question because you are interested in being saved by god , dont waste time with that , you can only be saved if you were chosen , the predestination by John Calvin is true , if you are doing witchcraft you were not chosen and will go to hell , unless god choose you in the future to do his will even demons know they will go to hell , but if you ask them about that and they say they will not go to hell they are lying , God is tryanical like people here say he only saves those he wants , the others go to hell
I mean THE Christian message, as summarised in John 3v16. I mean the whole thing about eternal damnation for all sinners, except those who choose new live in Jesus.
That stuff. How muc truth is in there?
In my experience, it’s not true at all. Nothing in this Universe is eternal (just God and “change” itself are eternal) so there’s no eternal damnation nor eternal bliss. The Hell thing does exist but it’s kinda complex and more multifaceted than “Heavens” (because they are more than one). What could be the equivalent of Hell described in the Bible would be the Threshold (Umbral) where spirits that are in a heavy emotional state go, some people/ghosts that go there are not “sinners” some have died in a terrifying way or murdered (and because of that they can become Vengeful Spirits, just like in the Japanese urban legends), some in that place are psychopaths, others are people heavily addicted to something, some there have “ceased” themselves, etc…
But the thing is even in that place it’s not eternal, you can get out of that by yourself and sheer will, by the help of your Faith (Jesus, Shiva, whoever you believe), by the help of deities and spirits that go there to rescue people (the Exus people, familiars of Hecate or Hermes, Anubis, etc…). So even if the person somehow goes there are many ways someone can get out of it, it’s not what Christian church make saying that it’s eternal (What type of God would create eternal suffering for it’s own children?).
What could be considered Heaven to humans is the Ancestors City, where you will meet again your parents and ancestors from your family living there, so it’s basically a second life. For what I’ve witnessed and heard about some mediums here in my country is that in this place does not have the Angels in the imaginary of Christian Church, but you as a spirit/ancestor is free to go wherever you want, so some spirits can meet angels, daemons, gods or other beings when they’re walking through the planes and astral.
And when the Universe reach a point of collapse and it breaks (It is even one of the scientific theories of how this Universe can end, if it expands so much to the point Space Time breaks apart), and it’s presumed that when that happens the explosion that it will generate will quick start another Big Bang and create a new Universe.
Please stay on topic and do not interrogate or evangelize to members about their personal beliefs or preach here. The question is about whether there is any realitybehind the collection of documentations called the bible, this is not the place to discuss belief.
2 off topic and preachy posts removed.
@Humility I’m glad you like the responses, but please use the Like button to thank people rather than cluttering the discussion with no-content replies that do not actively add to the conversation.
And there isn’t only one Christianity, you have a mixture of historical documentation, teaching and morality tales, propaganda, and some of this is mythologized, some symbolic, some garbled and badly mistranslated. Iml the meat if the spirituality was in the discarded books and is why they were discarded, leaving the ethical framework, history and teaching tales.