Like witch doctors or elders. Anyone with mental illness should try to avoid such drugs. Not worth losing your mind over. EDIT: Saying that, in my country they are trialling Psilocybin with people with mental illness, PTSD mainly, in controlled environments and with positive results. So I'm probably half wrong.
Personally I find it odd that people use psychoactive drugs to explore their "spiritual" side. To me, the profound effects introducing a chemical into the brain can induce confirms that what we call mind is a physical/chemical process. Nothing spiritual about it. YMMV
I've read a lil bit. His work was pretty influential on some Neopagans in the 1970s, and is still used by some Atheopagans. But it's not super relevant to devotional polytheists, who see the gods as fully real beings, not archetypes that we tap into. It's a matter of degree. You can certainly feel the breadth of a god, and the narrowness of a spirit. Though this may be subjective. I wouldn't say so. It depends on how broadly you define it. I've channeled, which I think of as being semi-conscious for, but letting the other entity's words flow through me. I think of possession as more knock-out powerful, complete hijacking of one's consciousness. I have seen other be possessed, though. Consistent sensory differences that are otherwise unexplainable. Which are, nevertheless, consistent with Dionysos experiences of others I know. Consistent without any kind of confirmation bias.
Could you put into words what this feels like? I remember punching someone and having no control over my arm, I watched it swing in slow motion as if something else was doing it, I couldn't stop it. Does that sound like possession? It sounds like a very interesting life you lead. Is it Greek gods only? Apologies if you stated this elsewhere, I might of missed it.
It's very difficult to. Most would describe such things as ineffable, as something experiential rather than discursive. I can try to put it into words, but most of that is going to be just...different sensory inputs that mark out a given spirit or god. For instance, Dionysus' presence feels like the woozy feeling of being tipsy, overlaid with a certain warmth of the chest...it's almost as if the back of your mind feels like how it feels in your throat when you swallow a sip of wine, and the buzz that follows. But this doesn't really convey the full feeling, the overwhelming suchness of his presence, only the slightest of sensory markers. And even then, the words fail to really illustrate the vividness of it, how strange it is and your own awareness of that strangeness, an eminent awareness of an Other. Sounds more like a reflex. But it's up to you to interpret your own experiences. No, I've had mystical interactions with a few Roman deities, local spirits, nymphs, and at least one Celtic god. But my practice is focused on Greek deities, so I'm more apt to come across their presences.
Sounds about right for Dionysus, she is related to wine. My spiritual experience. Woke up at about 4am on a Sunday and felt a presence hovering about two foot above me. It felt like pure unconditional love. It communicated with me directly and said "ask anything" telepathically... "Can I win the lottery" was my first thought! Then I couldn't really think I was simply blown away with the feelings from this "spirit". I had one question about my New Testament bible(I was agnostic). "Is the New Testament true?" I got the feeling that the gospels were, except possibly for Matthew, it wasn't a clear answer, or rather I wasn't knowledgeable enough about the bible to understand the answer properly, revelations was not true was quite clear. I wanted to test if this was a real experience I was experiencing so I asked, "will you wait for me if I go in the living room for a cigarette?" It said "Yes". So I went for a cigarette and pondered the whole thing. I went back to my bedroom lay down and it was still there. It left a song in my head, which I happened to own on CD(no YouTube then). Then it bid farewell, I looked out of the window and a small flock of seagulls(I think) just flew away. The song made perfect sense of the whole experience to me. It felt like a Holy spirit. I was in an amazing mood all Sunday after that, as if God told me no matter what happens it will be there for me. The spirit felt feminine. I had no motive to punch this guy, he was a friend of sorts. But it was a kind of reflex I suppose. Strange world we live in, that's for sure. Thanks for the reply.
For what it's worth, I don't think your experience is improbable. As a polytheist, I'm not in the business of telling other people that their gods don't exist, or that their experiences aren't true. I believe in a multiplicity of spiritual experiencies that they can all exist harmoniously. Even if they're contradictory on a surface-level reading, if we can accept that our interpretations are limited by human conceptual language, we can also accept that the truth transcends our immediate attempts to make it all fit logically in boxes.
What I have often wondered was that "Did I experience The Holy Spirit" or was it a "goddess"... I told one person who happened to be Christian and they said it was the Holy Spirit, but she would say that. It felt amazing just pure unconditional love. Any goddess fit that description? Maybe Aphrodite? Motive? Would a goddess put her neck on the line and say she would never forsake me?
Inasmuch as there is a feminine counterpart of the Jewish God, it might be Asherah. But Aphrodite is also possible, she is the goddess of love in all its forms-- romantic and erotic, yes, but also self-love and unconditional love. Or it could be Eros, for that matter, who has male and female aspects, and in some cosmologies is the first god and prime mover. Branching from that-- most deities don't have a hard-set gender the way that we often think of them through myth. Most, if not all, are gender-ambivalent beings, since they probably do not have bodies in any intelligible sense. Even the most "masculine" of gods has a "feminine" aspect of them. Zeus is a macho sovereign of the gods...but he also gives birth-- twice! To say nothing of Dionysus, whose genderfluidity is a core part of their cult. So, say it was a feminine divine presence; that doesn't necessarily mean it's not Yahweh reaching out to you. And apropos of nothing, Hellenistic Greeks often conflated Yahweh with Dionysus (and some early Christian converts compared Jesus with Orpheus, Apollo, and Dionysus). Like I said, I don't think that deity doesn't exist; I just think that their fanclub overshot the adulation a bit, and that monotheism is a mistaken interpretation. Gods in general don't lie or have reason to. Trickster gods might play fast and loose with the truth, but that's usually to teach a lesson or part of a larger web of fate. I have no reason to think they would forsake you, or lie about it. Though I don't think they're putting "her neck on the line". They're immortal, after all. I'm not sure what you meant by that.
Interesting, I've never heard of her. despite reading the bible, just forgot. I'll look into it. I was confused by the whole affair, Holy Spirit(even though I had never read the bible, I've always known the Lords prayer however) was my gut reaction, but now it all slips my mind it happened nearly 20 years ago. I've never thought of Zeus having a femine aspect, he give birth out of his head, can't remember more than one birth of Zeus. In Christianity Yahweh and the Holy Spirit are one, but separate persons. I'm not sure if the Holy Spirit has a gender. Perhaps. I do feel a connection to Zeus however. Zeus could be the biblical Yahweh. Neck on the line regards bad/good decisions. Reputation.
That's completely untrue. Archaelogy shows that Asherah was the bride of Yahweh, through inscription evidence and cult icons. The original Israelite religion was henotheistic and framed around the two as the king and queen of heaven. It's only in the post-exilic period that Yahwish took a turn towards monotheistic theology, and even this was a slow process in fits and starts. It isn't even really clear if it was fully solidified until the Hellenistic period, considering how Hellenistic Jews conflated Yahweh with Poseidon, Zeus, and Dionysus at various times. I don't think it's impossible to be that. The Romans had a term, numen, meaning the spiritual presence of a deity, especially a lingering presence over a place. It's where we get the word numinous. In a certain sense, every god has a "holy spirit", in the sense of an emanation of themselves that interfaces directly with people. So, hey, maybe it was the numinous presence of Yahweh in one of his more loving moods. He sewed Dionysos' fetal form into his thigh or groin, from which he arose in birth some time later. And that's just in mainstream Greek myth. In at least one version of the Orphic cosmogony, Zeus consumed the phallus or entirety of Phanes/Eros, and birthed all of the other gods from his groin too. Which may be among the older versions of theogony, even older than Hesiod's, since it has strong parallels there to the Hittite theogony. Ah I see. Yeah...the gods from what I've experienced don't really have reputations to risk for things like that. They don't really lose in honor over plans not panning out. In part because the boundaries between one and another is a bit blurry. My opinion is that on a fundamental level, the seem to share awareness or knowledge, being that they don't have bodies to containerize that sort of thing.
I'll try and find the time to look into this, I'm just going off a verse in Micah 5 of the bible. I think Asherah was a Canaanite goddess? It's all a bit hazy. I seen a documentary of scholars/experts say that Zeus may have indeed created monotheism. There was some archaeology evidence for this. All evidence in the bible is Abram was the founder of monotheism. Being a Christian with an open mind due to experiences I trust the bible. But many Christians believe genesis was allegory, so did Abram exist? He did according to the rest of the bible based on the spine of the bible the genealogies. Interesting, "lingering" is exactly what I experienced. I believe in the trinity. I think you're referring to Yahweh as the so called Father of the trinity essence. The Holy Spirit is a messenger of sorts, not an angel though. Just a random fact, the Sumerian gods believed in The Most High and that one of his messengers(angels) visited one of their gods. Are the Sumerian gods the oldest gods based on written and archeological evidence? Are you saying that Zeus birthed all the Greek gods? What about the Titans? Agreed. Especially with "is a bit blurry". So in your opinion the gods of Greece have no physical bodies?
This is where an understanding of the Bible's textual history might be useful. It came together over a long period of time, and much of the assertion of monotheism was retroactive, edited into an oral mythological tradition. Israelite religion shifted to monotheism some time in the 500s BCE. Yes. And Yahweh was a Canaanite storm god. The Israelites were a Canaanite ethnic group, a subset of a larger group of Semitic-speaking peoples. It's all a bit hazy. I seen a documentary of scholars/experts say that Zeus may have indeed created monotheism.[/quote] That's overselling it. Stoicism maybe gets the closest, in identifying Zeus with the Logos, the rational order-er and demiurge of the universe, but even they don't deny that the other gods exist, just that they all follow the will of Zeus. It's best to look of the Old Testament stories critically, and as a non-literal mythology. Pretty much every Biblical patriarch and important figure up until Isaiah were either fictitious, or highly exaggerated to tell a story. I would be skeptical that Abraham was a real person, as are most Biblical scholars. But that doesn't make the myths surrounding him less important-- it poetically justifies a set of rituals and traditions that are the foundation of Jewish culture. I have...complicated views on cosmology and theogony, inasmuch as what gods came technically "first", or which First Principles were personified before others. But suffice it to say, I don't think that gods are only as old as their cultures. I think most gods are pretty close to the same age, at least as far as being distinct persons, and are all eternal as they emanate from a universal source. I don't necessarily believe that, and it wasn't universally accepted even in Orphism, to say nothing of Greek poetry in general-- which seemed to concur with Hesiod's genealogy. But it was a belief in at least some sect or mystery cult in Greek religion. I bring that to your attention just to illustrate how gender and deity is a complicated subject, and even canonically "male" deities often have feminine aspects. I don't think any god inherently has a physical body. I think that, in their "natural state", they are incorporeal beings of pure spirit. Now, I think they can incarnate physically...whether that's through an avatar that lives as a mortal person, or an incorporeal projection (what the Greeks called an eidolon-- though this was also used in reference to ghosts or phantom images of the dead), or with a fully-realized body of their own. Or through more abstract phenomena, like the daylight sky literally being the body of the Sky Father. But I don't think that those physical forms are necessary for them to exist.
This inspired a little research using Britannica and Worldhistory.org. Interesting, it got me thinking that either the other ancient gods/goddesses are now almost irrelevant due to lack of worship from us humans on this planet and perhaps even the universe. Seems Jehovah climbed the ranks until He was the No.1(like Marduk in Sumerian mythology due to his deeds), as far as this planet is concerned, maybe Zeus(supposed to be the Master of the Universe) is above Him but where has he been for thousands of years? Jesus Christ/Jehovah/HolySpirit and Allah seem to be the main movers now, they actually affect the world. That seems to be the his beginning. Apparently he could of been a desert god. Do you think Zeus has the same power now as he did when he was declared master of the universe? I don't know if you think Jesus Christ is God or was even a real person, but his genealogy leads past Abram to Adam, in the New Testament. I guess you think that is in error... It all makes you think which God created the universe, they all claim to, Greek, Roman, Christian, Islam one of them are right or all of them are wrong. So why call them gods at all? Why worship them? most are blatantly lying... I suspect they were all created(not by the titans for example) but One God, a distant God, and Jesus is His Son. The Sumerian gods believed their was a High God, and they came first, with their flood stories etc. So I guess I'm sounding gnostic in the sense that the God of the old testament, who Jesus believed in wasn't actually Jesus' father, maybe his father was the Most High. The God of the old testament, who is venerated today is an evil God. This is the confusion I have with my experience, if it was not the Holy Spirit then why say the bible is mostly true, including Jesus is God, and that it felt like pure unconditional love is so confusing to me. I've read much of Greek mythology, and all the gods can't be trusted when it comes to human affairs. This entity I experienced wanted nothing from me, it just wanted to let me know that it would always love me no matter what. Nothing required from me, just to live. Doesn't sound like a Greek or any other pagan god, unless you can think of any? I think humans true form is spirit. This is because of personal experiences. I think it's pretty plain to see in Greek mythology, and Sumerian that the gods had physical bodies for some time. I agree. Sorry for being a bit all over the place with the answers, but I do hope you find this dialog fruitful Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
