There were some attitudes then that the practice of certain magics to keep the battle in your favor was considered ergi or argr.
Those two words were pejoratives for homosexuals (primarily bottoms...which is strange considering they never once called out those who topped, just saying) but context was important. A bottom was considered without honor and these are honor cultures we're talking about.
In Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, he does describe what an Honor Culture is. Simply put, if your culture raises cattle, then it's an honor culture because, if someone injures, steals or kills a head of your cattle, they've essentially played with yours and your family's financial standing. That had to be answered. Not answering it was considered a sign of weakness and, in settings as harsh and unforgiving as northern Scandinavia, the difference between 17 heads of cattle and 16 could mean the difference between thriving during a harsh and long winter and possibly losing everything if the weather went too sideways for too long.
Bringing it back though, we've come a long way since then. I'm pretty much in agreement with the conclusion. We don't hold those attitudes anymore and it's something to be said for examinations of certain traditions of ours. I do see people out there wanting to go "full trad, bro" and I'm sitting there going, "Are you looking at them honestly?"
In one article you penned, you mentioned the Amish and there is certainly something to be said for the lives they lead without many of the disadvantages of modern life but when we look at traditions, we really should be honest about them and understand that there are some traditions that no longer serve us, they are, indeed antiquated, outdated and serve no prudent purpose and may even hold us all back to some degree or another.
The Aesir gods you write about are nothing more than the angels who fell, aka demons. These beings gave themselves names like Odin, Osiris, and countless others. By accepting worship for themselves from the people they were charged with guiding, they were cast from the grace of God. Their role on this earth ever since has been to deceive and tempt human kind, to turn us from the truth of the One True God. The magic you describe is very real. But the powers and principalities you seek to commune with have very dark and sinister intentions for you, regardless of how they make you feel. They will only lead you to destruction.
As for your Christian references, Gregorian Monks are not trying to conjure anything with their chant, it is prayers to God that are being chanted rather than simply spoken. Also, Christians don't ask their deceased loved ones for guidance. We ask them along with all the Christian souls who've passed before us to pray for us.
I say all of this out of love, not to condemn or insult, but to hopefully educate. I pray that anyone who practices the things written about in this article, they may find the truth and repent.
First, Christianity is a branch of Judaism, who wrote a "New Testament" after a Jewish teacher, who may have also been a con man, named Yeshua of Nazareth turned them from their original faith. This happened thousands of years after the dawn of Odinism and Germanic Tribal Paganism as a whole.
The story of the Garden of Eden (Idun) is ripped off from Germanic Paganism. The resurrection of Christ is the tale of Baldurs death, mixed with a tale of Odins sacrifice on the tree.
Jesus was a combination of tales of Thor, and Baldur. The favored son, the savior of mankind. He was a Carpenter and a Fisherman.
Thor was a builder, had a hammer. He was also an acclaimed fisherman. These tales outdated Jesus by over 1,000 years, and Odin and Idols to him have been found in England that are over 4,000 years old.
Also, hate to twist your knickers, but the "fallen" as you call them, were killed by Odin and the Aesir. They were known as Jotun, or Jotnar. And they were cannibalistic.
You can look anywhere in the world for tales of man eating giants, and you will find them.
This had nothing to do with a desert god of the Arabian peninsula, and Africa. The native Americans in Nevada called them Si Te Cah, in Tennessee and the Carolinas they were called Nahoolo, or Nahulo.Even their tales predate Christianity.
What I don't understand, is the attack you launched.
I said nothing negative about Christianity or any of its thousands of denominations.
Yet I get the whole "Satanic Panic" thing again.
So here's my question to you...
Are all non-Christian gods "Demons" to you?
Is the Muslim prophet Allah a demon?
What about Native American Gods, are they Demons also?
How about the Baltic, Celtic, and Welsh Pagans? Are all of their Gods Evil Demons meant to decieve and harm?
If that is the case, then why have Christians been responsible for more deaths world wide than any other Religion?
The Theodosian Code, Emperor Constantine's "Conversion or Kill" campaign, the crusades, the Witch Hunts, The Spanish Inquisition, the wholesale slaughter of millions of Native Americans.
Let me also ask you this .. which version of Christianity is the right one? If the word of God is supposed to be unadulterated, then why does the Catholic Bible of the Order of Malta have entire books that the "King James" version does not. Plus there is *"Apocrypha" which are removed chapters... Why?
Thanks for the reply, I truly appreciate it, and I’m happy to address all the points you made. Firstly, you called my comment an attack. It was never meant to be an attack on you or to be received in that way. Christ teaches that we are all made in God’s image, that we are to love one another as we love Him. I did not write that comment out of condemnation for you, but rather out of love for my fellow man. My condemnation is reserved for the foul spirits that corrupt our souls and this world. The ones whose purpose is to distract our minds and blur our senses in their attempt to separate us from God.
I guess I’ll begin with demons. Your question was, “Are all non-Christian gods Demons”. My answer is yes, they are. The problem that arises when most people read this, will be their instant thought of some winged monster with pitchfork looking to torture and eat people. But that’s not what demons are. We are told in scripture that a third of the host of angels in Heaven waged war against God and were cast out. Also, we are told of God separating the people of earth into nations and appointing angels over each group to lead them. These “gods” then allowed and convinced the humans under their charge to worship them rather than the one true God. All of these beings fell due to their vanity and their envy of humankind. Now that they are denied the presence of God, their goal is to inflict the same outcome on us. They hate us and want us to share in their misery. They hate God, and this is their only means of revenge, to rob Him of us. And they do this through subtle means. Of course they can make themselves seem to be our benefactors and helpers. What good would it be for them to present themselves to people as terrible evil monsters? That would only scare people away. Rather, all they need to do is gently convince us that we are fine without God, that he doesn’t even exist, and that fueling our own desires is the purpose of our lives.
You assert that the worship of Odin and all of these other gods predates Christianity. I fully agree. It would be foolish to think they wouldn’t. People existed on this Earth long before the coming of Christ. Ancient people weren’t secular. They were deceived from the very beginning by these beings. God chose the Israelites to be his instrument of bringing faith in Him back to mankind. They knew and understood that the gods worshipped by the pagans of their time were real. But they also knew the truth of who these beings really were. This understanding is not new to Christianity but comes from our Jewish history. Christianity is not a branch of Judaism but rather it is the continuation of it. The fact that many of the Israelites chose to ignore the truth in front of them only exemplifies the major character flaw of mankind, that we are weak, ignorant, and corruptible.
Your comparison of Jesus Christ to Thor and Baldur is severely lacking. First, Thor and Baldur are both sons of a god, who was a son of a god, who was a son of a god, all of whom are decedents of Ymir, who himself was a created being. All of them seem quite mortal enough, in all of the stories they all die at some point and some other gods have to take over. The oversimplification of Thor having a hammer and Christ being raised by a carpenter is very weak. Also, Christ wasn’t a fisherman, some of His disciples were. Odin hung on a tree for 9 days in order to gain wisdom for himself, he gave up his eye to gain wisdom for himself. God has no need of gaining wisdom, He is wisdom. Christ is not simply a Son of God, he is God. God exists as a trinity, three essences, Father Son and Holy Spirit. God always was and always will be, no beginning and no end, He is uncreated. The Son, the Logos, is the Word of God. The Logos is referenced since the beginning of the world in the Old Testament. It is He that walks with Adam in the garden of Eden. It is He who appears to Hagar to tell her she would be with child, Abraham to stop him from killing Isaac, and Moses in the burning bush. He is consubstantial with the Father, begotten not made.
Evil cannot exist in the presence of God. When mankind fell from grace, we effectively cut ourselves off from heaven. God, in His mercy and love for mankind, became man and suffered as one of us to purify both humankind and this earth from our corruption, to give us a pathway to His grace. Whatever the Lord touches is cleansed, therefore by becoming man he cleansed all mankind. By His death, He destroyed the power of death over those whose faith is in him. He entered hell after His crucifixion to throw down its gates and gather the souls of the righteous dead who were denied entry to paradise. He ascended bodily into heaven leading those souls with him. And now, because of this, if we choose Him, we are accepted into His presence also.
You call Christ a possible con man. What con did he pull off? What did He stand to gain? Did He preach personal financial gain for His followers? Did He grow rich for His efforts or have a harem of women? He preached self-discipline, self-sacrifice, denial of self. His call is for us to love and follow the Lord, and as we are created in the Lord’s image, to love each other as we love the Lord. For hundreds of years after His death and resurrection, His followers were murdered and tortured for their faith in Him. All for beliefs that granted them no special considerations on this earth but will secure them a place in the life to come. And they are still being murdered today. Seventy Christians were just beheaded by Muslims in the Congo last week.
I agree that countless atrocities have been carried out in the name of Christ. I would say that the people who committed these terrible acts aren’t Christians. They may call themselves that, but in practice they are not. Also, I believe some of your references are misplaced and skewed. I can find no reference to the “Conversion or Kill” campaign you allude to by Constantine. While he did have pagan temples and idols destroyed, and their practices banned, I’ve found no wholesale murder sanctioned by him. The slaughter of the indigenous American people in the United States westward expansion, while terrible, was not an act of Christianity. Rather, it was simply another account of human hate, greed, and ambition. The fact that most of the people involved were members of a Christian denomination does not make it an act sanctioned by Christ. As far as the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades, they are terrible stains on Christendom. They were carried out and approved by the highest heads of the Church at the time, for which I believe they were denied the presence of God when they left this earth. While the end goals of bringing the world under the banner of Christ may be a worthwhile effort, the wholesale slaughter of people is not something that Christ would prescribe for us to do to obtain it.
Lastly, on the subject of Christian denominations, you are correct in your assertion of there being thousands of offshoots of the original church. You are also correct that after the Protestant reformation many books were removed from the bible. The Word of God has not been and cannot be adulterated, it is eternal. But rather, humans in their weak and corrupted state have on one hand, misunderstood some things, and on the other have sought to twist things to serve themselves rather than the glory of God. I believe there is one true church, but that does not mean others outside of that cannot obtain the mercy of God. He is the Lord, and no one knows His motives and plans besides Him. He will inevitably decide the fate of all.
This has been a long write up and I’ll end it there. Again, I hope that you will not take insult from this. My intent is not to shame or humiliate anyone. My goal is simply to spread the love of Jesus Christ. In doing this, if even one person is turned to our Lord, then I’ve accomplished more in this life than I could ever have hoped to achieve. May God bless you, your family, and all the loved ones in your life.
There were some attitudes then that the practice of certain magics to keep the battle in your favor was considered ergi or argr.
Those two words were pejoratives for homosexuals (primarily bottoms...which is strange considering they never once called out those who topped, just saying) but context was important. A bottom was considered without honor and these are honor cultures we're talking about.
In Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, he does describe what an Honor Culture is. Simply put, if your culture raises cattle, then it's an honor culture because, if someone injures, steals or kills a head of your cattle, they've essentially played with yours and your family's financial standing. That had to be answered. Not answering it was considered a sign of weakness and, in settings as harsh and unforgiving as northern Scandinavia, the difference between 17 heads of cattle and 16 could mean the difference between thriving during a harsh and long winter and possibly losing everything if the weather went too sideways for too long.
Bringing it back though, we've come a long way since then. I'm pretty much in agreement with the conclusion. We don't hold those attitudes anymore and it's something to be said for examinations of certain traditions of ours. I do see people out there wanting to go "full trad, bro" and I'm sitting there going, "Are you looking at them honestly?"
In one article you penned, you mentioned the Amish and there is certainly something to be said for the lives they lead without many of the disadvantages of modern life but when we look at traditions, we really should be honest about them and understand that there are some traditions that no longer serve us, they are, indeed antiquated, outdated and serve no prudent purpose and may even hold us all back to some degree or another.
The Aesir gods you write about are nothing more than the angels who fell, aka demons. These beings gave themselves names like Odin, Osiris, and countless others. By accepting worship for themselves from the people they were charged with guiding, they were cast from the grace of God. Their role on this earth ever since has been to deceive and tempt human kind, to turn us from the truth of the One True God. The magic you describe is very real. But the powers and principalities you seek to commune with have very dark and sinister intentions for you, regardless of how they make you feel. They will only lead you to destruction.
As for your Christian references, Gregorian Monks are not trying to conjure anything with their chant, it is prayers to God that are being chanted rather than simply spoken. Also, Christians don't ask their deceased loved ones for guidance. We ask them along with all the Christian souls who've passed before us to pray for us.
I say all of this out of love, not to condemn or insult, but to hopefully educate. I pray that anyone who practices the things written about in this article, they may find the truth and repent.
Unfortunately your theory has a major flaw.
First, Christianity is a branch of Judaism, who wrote a "New Testament" after a Jewish teacher, who may have also been a con man, named Yeshua of Nazareth turned them from their original faith. This happened thousands of years after the dawn of Odinism and Germanic Tribal Paganism as a whole.
The story of the Garden of Eden (Idun) is ripped off from Germanic Paganism. The resurrection of Christ is the tale of Baldurs death, mixed with a tale of Odins sacrifice on the tree.
Jesus was a combination of tales of Thor, and Baldur. The favored son, the savior of mankind. He was a Carpenter and a Fisherman.
Thor was a builder, had a hammer. He was also an acclaimed fisherman. These tales outdated Jesus by over 1,000 years, and Odin and Idols to him have been found in England that are over 4,000 years old.
Also, hate to twist your knickers, but the "fallen" as you call them, were killed by Odin and the Aesir. They were known as Jotun, or Jotnar. And they were cannibalistic.
You can look anywhere in the world for tales of man eating giants, and you will find them.
This had nothing to do with a desert god of the Arabian peninsula, and Africa. The native Americans in Nevada called them Si Te Cah, in Tennessee and the Carolinas they were called Nahoolo, or Nahulo.Even their tales predate Christianity.
What I don't understand, is the attack you launched.
I said nothing negative about Christianity or any of its thousands of denominations.
Yet I get the whole "Satanic Panic" thing again.
So here's my question to you...
Are all non-Christian gods "Demons" to you?
Is the Muslim prophet Allah a demon?
What about Native American Gods, are they Demons also?
How about the Baltic, Celtic, and Welsh Pagans? Are all of their Gods Evil Demons meant to decieve and harm?
If that is the case, then why have Christians been responsible for more deaths world wide than any other Religion?
The Theodosian Code, Emperor Constantine's "Conversion or Kill" campaign, the crusades, the Witch Hunts, The Spanish Inquisition, the wholesale slaughter of millions of Native Americans.
Let me also ask you this .. which version of Christianity is the right one? If the word of God is supposed to be unadulterated, then why does the Catholic Bible of the Order of Malta have entire books that the "King James" version does not. Plus there is *"Apocrypha" which are removed chapters... Why?
Thanks for the reply, I truly appreciate it, and I’m happy to address all the points you made. Firstly, you called my comment an attack. It was never meant to be an attack on you or to be received in that way. Christ teaches that we are all made in God’s image, that we are to love one another as we love Him. I did not write that comment out of condemnation for you, but rather out of love for my fellow man. My condemnation is reserved for the foul spirits that corrupt our souls and this world. The ones whose purpose is to distract our minds and blur our senses in their attempt to separate us from God.
I guess I’ll begin with demons. Your question was, “Are all non-Christian gods Demons”. My answer is yes, they are. The problem that arises when most people read this, will be their instant thought of some winged monster with pitchfork looking to torture and eat people. But that’s not what demons are. We are told in scripture that a third of the host of angels in Heaven waged war against God and were cast out. Also, we are told of God separating the people of earth into nations and appointing angels over each group to lead them. These “gods” then allowed and convinced the humans under their charge to worship them rather than the one true God. All of these beings fell due to their vanity and their envy of humankind. Now that they are denied the presence of God, their goal is to inflict the same outcome on us. They hate us and want us to share in their misery. They hate God, and this is their only means of revenge, to rob Him of us. And they do this through subtle means. Of course they can make themselves seem to be our benefactors and helpers. What good would it be for them to present themselves to people as terrible evil monsters? That would only scare people away. Rather, all they need to do is gently convince us that we are fine without God, that he doesn’t even exist, and that fueling our own desires is the purpose of our lives.
You assert that the worship of Odin and all of these other gods predates Christianity. I fully agree. It would be foolish to think they wouldn’t. People existed on this Earth long before the coming of Christ. Ancient people weren’t secular. They were deceived from the very beginning by these beings. God chose the Israelites to be his instrument of bringing faith in Him back to mankind. They knew and understood that the gods worshipped by the pagans of their time were real. But they also knew the truth of who these beings really were. This understanding is not new to Christianity but comes from our Jewish history. Christianity is not a branch of Judaism but rather it is the continuation of it. The fact that many of the Israelites chose to ignore the truth in front of them only exemplifies the major character flaw of mankind, that we are weak, ignorant, and corruptible.
Your comparison of Jesus Christ to Thor and Baldur is severely lacking. First, Thor and Baldur are both sons of a god, who was a son of a god, who was a son of a god, all of whom are decedents of Ymir, who himself was a created being. All of them seem quite mortal enough, in all of the stories they all die at some point and some other gods have to take over. The oversimplification of Thor having a hammer and Christ being raised by a carpenter is very weak. Also, Christ wasn’t a fisherman, some of His disciples were. Odin hung on a tree for 9 days in order to gain wisdom for himself, he gave up his eye to gain wisdom for himself. God has no need of gaining wisdom, He is wisdom. Christ is not simply a Son of God, he is God. God exists as a trinity, three essences, Father Son and Holy Spirit. God always was and always will be, no beginning and no end, He is uncreated. The Son, the Logos, is the Word of God. The Logos is referenced since the beginning of the world in the Old Testament. It is He that walks with Adam in the garden of Eden. It is He who appears to Hagar to tell her she would be with child, Abraham to stop him from killing Isaac, and Moses in the burning bush. He is consubstantial with the Father, begotten not made.
Evil cannot exist in the presence of God. When mankind fell from grace, we effectively cut ourselves off from heaven. God, in His mercy and love for mankind, became man and suffered as one of us to purify both humankind and this earth from our corruption, to give us a pathway to His grace. Whatever the Lord touches is cleansed, therefore by becoming man he cleansed all mankind. By His death, He destroyed the power of death over those whose faith is in him. He entered hell after His crucifixion to throw down its gates and gather the souls of the righteous dead who were denied entry to paradise. He ascended bodily into heaven leading those souls with him. And now, because of this, if we choose Him, we are accepted into His presence also.
You call Christ a possible con man. What con did he pull off? What did He stand to gain? Did He preach personal financial gain for His followers? Did He grow rich for His efforts or have a harem of women? He preached self-discipline, self-sacrifice, denial of self. His call is for us to love and follow the Lord, and as we are created in the Lord’s image, to love each other as we love the Lord. For hundreds of years after His death and resurrection, His followers were murdered and tortured for their faith in Him. All for beliefs that granted them no special considerations on this earth but will secure them a place in the life to come. And they are still being murdered today. Seventy Christians were just beheaded by Muslims in the Congo last week.
I agree that countless atrocities have been carried out in the name of Christ. I would say that the people who committed these terrible acts aren’t Christians. They may call themselves that, but in practice they are not. Also, I believe some of your references are misplaced and skewed. I can find no reference to the “Conversion or Kill” campaign you allude to by Constantine. While he did have pagan temples and idols destroyed, and their practices banned, I’ve found no wholesale murder sanctioned by him. The slaughter of the indigenous American people in the United States westward expansion, while terrible, was not an act of Christianity. Rather, it was simply another account of human hate, greed, and ambition. The fact that most of the people involved were members of a Christian denomination does not make it an act sanctioned by Christ. As far as the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades, they are terrible stains on Christendom. They were carried out and approved by the highest heads of the Church at the time, for which I believe they were denied the presence of God when they left this earth. While the end goals of bringing the world under the banner of Christ may be a worthwhile effort, the wholesale slaughter of people is not something that Christ would prescribe for us to do to obtain it.
Lastly, on the subject of Christian denominations, you are correct in your assertion of there being thousands of offshoots of the original church. You are also correct that after the Protestant reformation many books were removed from the bible. The Word of God has not been and cannot be adulterated, it is eternal. But rather, humans in their weak and corrupted state have on one hand, misunderstood some things, and on the other have sought to twist things to serve themselves rather than the glory of God. I believe there is one true church, but that does not mean others outside of that cannot obtain the mercy of God. He is the Lord, and no one knows His motives and plans besides Him. He will inevitably decide the fate of all.
This has been a long write up and I’ll end it there. Again, I hope that you will not take insult from this. My intent is not to shame or humiliate anyone. My goal is simply to spread the love of Jesus Christ. In doing this, if even one person is turned to our Lord, then I’ve accomplished more in this life than I could ever have hoped to achieve. May God bless you, your family, and all the loved ones in your life.
This depends upon the culture. So, yes men are capable of the practice of magic and divination.