Let's talk gods

[Galapagos]

Originally Posted by Turtle

no good male god is worth their salt without braggin' on their virility.

The Gita: Chapter 14

And a virile god is worthless without some hot goddesses to chase around!

In ancient Near Eastern religions, Ishtar is a recurring goddess of love, fertility, and war. She headed a cult of Holy Whores, ran a place referred to as "town of the sacred courtesans", and earned herself the title "courtesan of the gods".
According to our buddy Gilgamesh, she was even down with bestiality:

Originally Posted by wiki

Listen to me while I tell the tale of your lovers. There was Tammuz, the lover of your youth, for him you decreed wailing, year after year. You loved the many-coloured roller, but still you struck and broke his wing [...] You have loved the lion tremendous in strength: seven pits you dug for him, and seven. You have loved the stallion magnificent in battle, and for him you decreed the whip and spur and a thong [...] You have loved the shepherd of the flock; he made meal-cake for you day after day, he killed kids for your sake. You struck and turned him into a wolf; now his own herd-boys chase him away, his own hounds worry his flanks."

Another important goddess was the Hindu Kali. Kali has been the goddess of many things to many; from the goddess of destruction, corpses, and war, to the goddess of benevolence, motherly creation, and Brahman("ultimate reality").
She also knew how to party like a true god(dess), as this excerpt from the wiki shows:

Originally Posted by wiki

In her most famous pose as Daksinakali, it is said that Kali, becoming drunk on the blood of her victims on the battlefield, dances with destructive frenzy. In her fury she fails to see the body of her husband Shiva who lies among the corpses on the battlefield.[21] Ultimately the cries of Shiva attract Kali's attention, calming her fury. As a sign of her shame at having disrespected her husband in such a fashion, Kali sticks out her tongue.

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by Galapagos

And a virile god is worthless without some hot goddesses to chase around!

Apparently Yaweh had him a hot goddess too. She went by Asherah. >> Asherah - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the Ugaritic texts (before 1200 BC) Athirat is three times called ʼaṯrt ym, ʼAṯirat yammi, 'Athirat of the Sea' or as more fully translated 'She who treads on the sea', the name understood by various translators and commentators to be from the Ugaritic root ʼaṯr 'stride' cognate with the Hebrew root ʼšr of the same meaning, and may have been equated with the Milky Way. In those texts, Athirat is the consort of the god El; there is one reference to the 70 sons of Athirat, presumably the same as the 70 sons of El. She is not clearly distinguished from ʿAshtart (better known in English as Astarte), although Ashtart is clearly linked to the Mesopotamian Goddess Ishtar. She is also called Elat ("Goddess", the feminine form of El; compare Allat) and Qodesh 'Holiness'.

Among the Hittites this goddess appears as Asherdu(s) or Asertu(s), the consort of Elkunirsa and mother of either 77 or 88 sons.
...
Figurines of Asherah are strikingly common in the archaeological record, indicating the popularity of her cult from the earliest times[3] to the Babylonian exile. More rarely, inscriptions linking Yahweh and Asherah have been discovered: an 8th century BCE ostracon inscribed "Berakhti et’khem l’YHVH Shomron ul’Asherato" was discovered by Israeli archeologists at Quntilat 'Ajrud (Hebrew "Horvat Teman") in the couse of excavations in the Sinai desert in 1975, prior to the Israeli withdrawal from this area. This translates as: "I have blessed you by YHVH of Samaria and His Asherah", or "...by our guardian and his Asherah", if "Shomron" is to be read "shomrenu". Another inscription, from Khirbet el-Kom near Hebron, reads: "Blessed be Uriyahu by Yahweh and by his Asherah; from his enemies he saved him!".[4]...

[Thunderbird]

Great read guys, I especially liked the story about “rabbit boy”.... Native American Jesus?
After years of reading Castaneda ,Jung and Campbell it seems to me the mythological story and subsequent religions/Gods originated as an evolutionary survival meme. Unlike animals that rely more on genes\instinct to achieve equilibrium with the environment, man needed to evolve a cultural story that unified social ties within a tribe. The plasticity of our brains made us great problem solvers and allowed us to evolve highly complex brains quickly, but as history has shown, all to well, venerable to internal chaos .

Children of the tribe were indoctrinated to the sacred story at the age maximum effect, about 12-13 yrs of age in a ceremony of transition from childhood to adulthood. The cultural meme acted as a cyclical stabilizer reinforced and updated though the generations.
Edited from an earlier thread...
Most all of man’s early history there was one culture, the hunter gather tribe. Out of this culture emerged the first myth told by every father to every son for thousands of generations. Up until the last 5-10 thousand years that is.

Before our resent time of written record and civilization there was only the hunter’s story told to the hunter’s son. The only evidence of that story exist in a few cave paintings from this time and buried at the core of modern belief systems underlying stories we share at the theater, books or in church .

The original archetypal hunters story{ Pure conjecture on my part) was told to every generation and finally adapted and revised to fit with the civilized world of the city state , and would eventually branch out to connect and create all these stories that relate to our place in the complex modern world.

The first story however was a simple cognitive device to give an equilibrium within the hunter gather tribe. A unified collective censuses in a completely hostile environment, one that we as modern man can not even fathom. I really believe the tribes that survived was because they had the best stories.

Personally the most profound story originated from one of Carlos Castaneda’s books, it was like many of his “Tales of Eternity” that always hint at more than they actually say . The story I am about to recount never really happened in the books, not in the way I will present it anyway, but the stories there hints at the first story every told. In essence I have created a more personal modern myth of my own. Its more of the anti-myth myth in its conclusion that says, “Know you’re personal-collective myth, but never take it as the ultimate truth” I have posted the following story before but it seems however the story is only a profound cognitive device to me. LOL...oh well here it is again with a new title .

The riddle of the Gods

This story starts with the old Neolithic sage Don Juan and his apprentice the modern western educated anthropology student Carlos observing some desert creatures as they scurried about in the desert chaparral.

Don Juan commented that a man could survive in the dessert by hunting those animals, But first you would need to study them and know their habits.
He explain how they followed a pattern that could be mapped as a circle around a burrow. Once these feeding cycles are learned snares could be set and escape routes could be routed, so the animals own cyclical behavior became its venerability.
But he warned his apprentice, as you follow these behaviors and set your snares every day in the same way, you also make yourself venerable because you too are being observed.
He said there were predators even more attuned to theses circular patterns of the dessert, so some day something could be waiting for you along one of your well worn paths.

He went on to say that there existed in nature an ultimate balance between awareness of these cyclical movements in the world and a spontaneity of action in ones self, an unpredictability that wells up from the spirit.
Once this balance is achieved the hunter becomes a “Magical Warrior.”
“A magical warrior can never be trapped” don Juan said or “ be caught without an escape route,” because he can never be reduced to behaviors .

This “warrior’s path” are no longer connected to cycles of the world, but of the spirit, thus he can always “see” what is coming without being seen himself. If this state can be achieved the man would never die. Death itself the recorder of all life, the supreme predator would acknowledge that the man was no longer of the world but the spirit so death was not death only another force to be utilized as an ally.

Also, he said there existed in the world animals “magical creatures.” that have achieved this balance. The average hunter would never cross the path of a magical creature, but the magical warrior may in time,.. If he was worthy. At this supreme moment in a warrior life the immortal creature would divulge the answerer to the riddle of life. The actual relationship the Gods have with mankind. Big big stuff.

Don Juan recounted that he had achieved this state as a young man and became a magical warrior, and seemed to always know instinctively what to do in any situation, until one day he was hunting on a heavily forested ridge top. He remembered hearing a strange sound that sent shivers though his body.

He knew instinctively that he was to about to have an encounter with a magical creature, and for the first time since he had reached this state he had no clue what to do.

The shivering became terror as he heard soft steps coming from behind. The terror then became shame. He suddenly understood that he was only a child in this world and he was about to encounter a king of the earth, old as the mountains. He finally then gave into his instincts and found himself doing a most inexplicable thing. He stood on his head and began to cry. After some time he felt something breathing in his ear, he fell over in a sitting position and looked up at the most beautiful deer that he had ever seen. It glowed with a light of a fierce nobility, and then it spoke “ Why are you crying ?” the deer inquired "Because I'm not worthy" the warrior replied . Then he remembered the deer lowered his head and said very clearly “ So ? ” and then ambled away....
__________________

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by Thunderbird

Great read guys, I especially liked the story about “rabbit boy”....

Excellent! Perhaps I can interest you in a Spider Woman?


Excerpts: >>

Originally Posted by Hopi & Dr. LaMay

The dominance of Spider Woman, the female creative principle, befits a culture that remains to this day matrilineal. The Hopi creation myth uses many familiar motifs: the creative female principle itself, associated with the Earth; the more mysterious divine spirit, the sun god Tawa; the division of the divine parents into new creative forms; and creation by thought, a motif common to many Native American mythologies. An interesting development is the notion of creation by song, an innovation that seems to owe something to Anasazi-Hopi ritual song-dances.
...
The Spider Woman spoke to them thus: "The woman of the clan shall build the house, and the family name shall descend through her. She shall be house builder and homemaker. She shall mold the jars for the storing of food and water. She shall grind the grain for food and tenderly rear and teach the young. The man of the clan shall build kivas of stone under the ground. In these kivas the man shall make sand pictures as altars. Of colored sand shall he make them, and they shall be called 'ponya.' The man too shall weave the clan blankets with their proper symbols. The man shall fashion himself weapons and furnish his family with game."

Stooping down, she gathered some sand in her hand, letting it run out in a thin, continuous stream. "See the movement of the sand? That is the life that will cause all things therein to grow. The Great Plumed Serpent, Lightning, will rear and strike the earth to fertilize it; Rain Cloud will pour down waters, and Tawa will smile upon it so that green things will spring up to feed my children." ...

Full article: >> Hopi Creation Story

[Galapagos]

In Egypt, the goddess Isis was an important god, and incidentally the also the beer goddess. Understandably, she was a popular gal and the Isis meme spread to and persisted in the Graeco-Roman world until the Christians decided to eliminate all the competing gods.
Isis was seen as a model wife and mother, and cared about everyone, wealthy, poor, saints, sinners, bums, and rulers. She was so devoted to her husband(Osiris, also her brother!?), she cried him the entire Nile river every year after he died.
The mythology of Isis is also said to have heavily influenced the worship of the Blessed Virgin Mary:
BBC - Religion & Ethics - Mary: A central figure

When Christianity was spreading across the Empire, it's clear that it deliberately took images from the pagan world in which it lived and into which it spread and used those images. Old holy wells and shrines were turned into Christian shrines. In Egypt a shrine of Isis was deliberately and self-consciously re-created as a shrine of Mary.

Interesting devotional website, covering the many other godesses associated with Mary:
Mary Queen of Heaven, Goddess & Saint
A website in which a few interesting cases of pareidolia can be observed:
Our Lady Of Guadalupe | The Mystery of the Eyes | www.sancta.org
On this website you can read messages from the Holy Mother herself(!) as channeled to the village visionary Marija in Bosnia:
The Medjugorje Web - Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Medjugorje
The Monthly Message - English

Catholics claim that the Blessed Virgin is to be venerated, not worshiped, but I think a strong case can be made that many people worship her as a goddess. The Litany of Loretto contains a bunch of names given to Mary, which is similar to the 99 names of Allah in Islam, imo:
Litany of Loreto

Originally Posted by Litany of Loretto

[...]
Holy Mother of God, pray for us.
Holy Virgin of Virgins, [etc.]
Mother of Christ,
Mother of divine grace,
Mother most pure,
Mother most chaste,
Mother inviolate,
Mother undefiled,
Mother most amiable,
Mother most admirable,
Mother of good Counsel,
Mother of our Creator,
Mother of our Savior,
Virgin most prudent,
Virgin most venerable,
Virgin most renowned,
Virgin most powerful,
Virgin most merciful,
Virgin most faithful,
Mirror of justice,
Seat of wisdom,
Cause of our joy,
Spiritual vessel,
Vessel of honor,
Singular vessel of devotion,
Mystical rose,
Tower of David,
Tower of ivory,
House of gold,
Ark of the covenant,
Gate of heaven,
Morning star,
Health of the sick,
Refuge of sinners,
Comforter of the afflicted,
Help of Christians,
Queen of Angels,
Queen of Patriarchs,
Queen of Prophets,
Queen of Apostles,
Queen of Martyrs,
Queen of Confessors,
Queen of Virgins,
Queen of all Saints,
Queen conceived without original sin,
Queen assumed into heaven,
Queen of the most holy Rosary,
Queen of peace,
[...]

edit- also, I always see a giant church on the side of the highway when I head downtown-- "Mary, Queen Of The Universe", and it always makes me grin.

[Turtle]

The tribe native to my locale is the Cathlapotle, a Chinookian sub-group, and here is their creation story.

Originally Posted by Chinook

Long, long ago, when Old Man South Wind was traveling north, he met an old woman who was a giant.
"Will you give me some food?" asked South Wind. "I am very hungry."
"I have no food," answered the giantess, "but here is a net. You can catch some fish for yourself if you wish."
So Old Man South Wind dragged the net down to the ocean and with it caught a little whale. Taking out his knife, he was about to cut the whale and take out the blubber.
But the old giantess cried out, "Do not cut it crossways. Take a sharp knife and split it down the back."
But South Wind did not take to heart what the old woman was saying. He cut the fish crossways and began to take off some blubber.
He was startled to see the fish change into a huge bird. It was so big that when it flew into the air, it hid the sun, and the noise of its wings shook the earth. It was Thunderbird.
Thunderbird flew to the north and lit on the top of the Saddleback Mountain, near the mouth of the Columbia River. There it laid a nest full of eggs.
The old giantess followed the bird until she found its nest. She broke one egg, but it was not good. She threw it down the mountainside.
Before the egg reached the valley, it became an Indian.
The old giantess broke some other eggs and then threw them down the mountainside. They too became Indians. Each of Thunderbird's eggs became an Indian. ...

The Creation of Chinook Indians -Native American Indian Tribes - Over 2,000 articles on native american indians, their culture & traditions.

[HydrogenBond]

If you look at this genesis story, presented by Turtle, it sounds just like a dream. Many of these stories came from special dreams that were spontaneously created in a natural way. This dream is full of symbols, which is the language of the unconscious mind. It tells about the birth of the modern human mind as it left natural instinct.

Let me try to interpret these symbols, like a dream. Based on the psychology of Jung, there are three levels of brain software or archetypes. This is a male's dream by the nature of the symbols. The lowest level in a man appear as animal symbols and is connected to instincts. The middle level are connected to relationship and appears as a female in the male. The highest level are connected to meaning and are often personified as a wise old man.

The Old man south wind is connected to the highest level archetypes of meaning. He is hungry meaning he needs food for thought to create meaning. The giant woman is bigger than life and symbolized the collective relationships of nature that are larger than the individual. She is sort of like mother nature for the modern. This is not a personal dream but is done for the collective or tribal psyche. She can not give him food. In other words, the relationships that are known have little meaning to the tribe. For example, they can see animals migrating and know enough to hunt them but this still has no explanation or meaning. It just happens.

She gives him a net to feed himself. This particular person is developing meaning from scratch catching ideas or fish in the sea or unconscious mind, that are spontaneously appearing, placing them into memory. It is a creative brain storming process that is feeding his need for meaning.

The little whale is a large fish but it is small. This is an important concept of meaning that will grow bigger but it is just starting out. The vertical or axial cut preferred over the cross cut has to do with how to prepare this idea. Vertical has a connection between meaning and instinct (grounded). The horizontal is connected to the two arms or mind and emotion. The first will place the food (meaning) in contact with a sense of relationship with nature and natural instinct. The second would be more connected to a cultural subjectivity such as dogma ideas backed by emotion. It was meant to be a fluid system that can adapt like instinct and not a fixed procedure. But he choses the procedure. This is similar to the tree of knowledge instead of tree of life.

Because of this choice, the fish changes into a huge bird. Instead of being grounded in natural instinct, the idea become more in the air. It blocks the sun. The sun is the symbol of the inner self or the core of the brain. The interpretation of this new meaning separates from the grounding of instincts. It blocks the sun or that natural connection to the core. This appears to symbolize the separation of the ego, with the influence of the inner self darkened (unconscious).

The giant woman takes the eggs and breaks them open and each was not good but they become an indian. The giant woman is collective relationships sort of mother nature. The eggs are not part of nature, which is why they are not good. Or the new human was detached from the original order of the rest of nature. It was the new human who had broken its connection to instinct. Coming down the mountain sort of shows the affect first in the mind and then becoming reality. Or it began in the imagination of what will be, and gradually comes into tangible existence. The result are sort of the new type of animal not fully part of nature but more part of culture (two arms).

Adam and Eve is a similar story where they start in paradise or where the pre-humans are connected to nature in a natural way. Eve than adam eating knowledge of good and evil, is human subjective knowledge instead of building on instinct. Death comes into the world because, as history shows human knowledge is constantly subject to revision. Instincts are not constantly revised by nature but new behavior is simply added onto this strong foundation. If he had cut vertical the indians would have formed from good eggs. But it appears humans all formed from bad eggs. These myths give us insight into the very beginning of the transition.

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by HydrogenBond

If you look at this genesis story, presented by Turtle, it sounds just like a dream. Many of these stories came from special dreams that were spontaneously created in a natural way. This dream is full of symbols, which is the language of the unconscious mind. It tells about the birth of the modern human mind as it left natural instinct.

Let me try to interpret these symbols, like a dream. ...

Nicely written exegesis Hydrog! If you haven't run across Joseph Campbells The Power of Myth, I think you will find it interesting.

Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth 1

Additional Source: >> Joseph Campbell Foundation

[HydrogenBond]

Thanks for the link. I watched it. It brought me back to my studies of collective symbolism many years ago. What I had learned back then was there are common themes to almost all mythology. The details may be different but the gist is the same. Jung formulated his theory of the collective unconscious from the similarity in symbolism and myth even in cultures that had no contact with one another. The collective unconscious generated the myths and could then be used to affect the collective unconscious in the group. I modernize this calling it personality software that is part of the operating system of the brain.

Mythology shows how this software interacts or should interact to upgrade the operating system for that time in history. Myths linger as long as this update version has some use.

For example; Little Red Riding Hood. She personifies the archetype of relationship in a man. She is a sweet girl so this means a good hearted young man. She is bringing food to her sick grandma. Her grandma represents a feedforward affect connected to the anticipated state of the young man's heart affecting its future state. In other words, if one is angry as a young person this can stick and make the man an angry old man. Grandma is sick because something is changing his good heart and the brain is time projecting this future state.

The big bad wolf is software just below the shadow due to the animal symbolism. He is not a good animal which shows his connection to the shadow. He dresses up like grandma to eat LRRH. If you ever wondered why he didn't eat grandma while he had a chance, it is because the future was not yet defined. It depended on the choices that would soon be made. If he ate LRRH, grandma would be next. The wolf in grandma clothes symbolizes a modified animal urge that is generating emotion. An example is if you are really hungry anything tastes good. If you are not hungry the emotion changes for many of the same things. The instinct can create an irrational amplification of feeling that is not in line with reasonable emotion. The affect is two different object relationships. This is the lure that the young heart is about to face that could disillusion him for the rest of their life.

But luckily for LRRH, there is a woodman nearby who hears her cries for help. He is the archetype of meaning which sort of makes sense of its all. It could be common sense that preserves the present and helps to set the future. Grandma gets well and they live happily ever after.

To a child it is a fun story. But it was also a line of programming this is inserted into the operating system. To the mind of the past, the affect was sort of a like a Window's Update which would be run on all the brain computers in the culture.

[Moontanman]

Originally Posted by HydrogenBond

For example; Little Red Riding Hood. She personifies the archetype of relationship in a man. She is a sweet girl so this means a good hearted young man. She is bringing food to her sick grandma. Her grandma represents a feedforward affect connected to the anticipated state of the young man's heart affecting its future state. In other words, if one is angry as a young person this can stick and make the man an angry old man. Grandma is sick because something is changing his good heart and the brain is time projecting this future state.

The big bad wolf is software just below the shadow due to the animal symbolism. He is not a good animal which shows his connection to the shadow. He dresses up like grandma to eat LRRH. If you ever wondered why he didn't eat grandma while he had a chance, it is because the future was not yet defined. It depended on the choices that would soon be made. If he ate LRRH, grandma would be next. The wolf in grandma clothes symbolizes a modified animal urge that is generating emotion. An example is if you are really hungry anything tastes good. If you are not hungry the emotion changes for many of the same things. The instinct can create an irrational amplification of feeling that is not in line with reasonable emotion. The affect is two different object relationships. This is the lure that the young heart is about to face that could disillusion him for the rest of their life.

But luckily for LRRH, there is a woodman nearby who hears her cries for help. He is the archetype of meaning which sort of makes sense of its all. It could be common sense that preserves the present and helps to set the future. Grandma gets well and they live happily ever after.

To a child it is a fun story. But it was also a line of programming this is inserted into the operating system. To the mind of the past, the affect was sort of a like a Window's Update which would be run on all the brain computers in the culture.

HB, are you sure you read the original story? The wolf does indeed eat grandma, LRRH is a girl not a good man and the woodsman cuts grandma out of the BBW. I'm not to sure about your interpretation but I guess you can read what ever you want into this.