Mad Hamish posted:

Imgur and my SA account / Awful app aren't co-operating for some reason so I can't post a photo but: tonight I led a public ritual where we called on Isis and made offerings, kickin' rad. It is good to burn incense unto the Queen of Heaven! I last did this ritual two years ago and after the incredibly lovely week I've had (I got held up at work! Dudes pointed guns at me and tied me up! I am physically ok though!) I really needed a chance to be active in my faith and it's community.

The people who came out to ritual really seemed to enjoy it, which is always the most important part. Bad ritual is never a good time and people can always tell when you don't bring your A-game. I highly value my community and the people in it and I always try to make sure that when I do ritual it is engaging and interesting and worthwhile, because to do otherwise would be disrespecting my community, my gods, and myself.

I can still smell the incense smoke in my hair. Feels good, man.

LITERALLY A BIRD posted:

Prurient Squid, I was looking through my Kindle app to figure out what to read on my lunch break and was reminded that I have a book on ancient Egyptian metaphysics called Temple of the Cosmos which I haven't read since 2022/might not have finished reading in the first place. The chapter I skipped to was good and I thought that given our recent exchanges you might like it too. It is called "Sacred Words," about the anima of language, and comes right after the chapter that details the way the Egyptian religious/magical mind perceived a model or an image of something to functionally be whatever it is that is represented there. Ce n'est pas un pipe? Non! It is a pipe. And that painting-of-a-pipe-which-is-a-pipe is, by being a pipe, a functioning conduit to the spiritual essence of "pipe," the true and absolute reality of Pipe; so to that image or model of a pipe the spiritual reality of Pipe, Pipeness Itself, is attracted and magnetically pulled.

Words work the same way.

Now before anyone has a chuckle over this mention of eating Divine substances or representations of Divine substances for fun or worship, please first consider: Communion

Nessus posted:

Bob is a parishoner at the church Nom has been going to, of goodly report in this thread.

Thirteen Orphans posted:

Bob is also an archetype of someone who receives someone new into the community and helps them transition into said community and feel welcome and appreciated. We all deserve a Bob.

Nessus posted:

I would put myself nearer to love but I would add a second axis

However, I am not sure what that axis would be since it isn't just flat ritual vs. mystical connection. This religion stuff is a pretty tough tattle. I got to take stock.

Nessus posted:

Perhaps something like Duty vs. Passion? I suppose looking at it Love vs. Fear just feel kind of irrelevant to my religious perspective. I am confident Shakyamuni and the bodhisattvas had engulfing loving-kindness that extends to me but I would not say that I feel as if Buddhism "loves me." It also does not provide me with fear, despite the presence of the Hells and so on; basically none of that poo poo is any worse than what I could have observed directly or picked up from ambient American Christianity.

Prurient Squid posted:

I had a weird experience in bed last night where my heart opened and I realised I am sincere. That I really do want what's best for humanity or something like that. Rather than say, the Ego decieving me.

Prurient Squid posted:

Oh wow, that's amazing. Some kind of rising conciousness going on in this thread.

Prurient Squid posted:

Also, I've been playing a lot of 999 by Kotaro Uchikoshi. It's a visual novel that has a lot of references both to Egypt and to the number 9. So there's some more synchronicity.

dildo sample pack posted:

I love God!!!

Killingyouguy! posted:

II love four armed Jesus and also the strange unicorn demon man

Prurient Squid posted:

For the first time I actually took the workbook exercise seriously today and followed it to the letter. I meditated using the mantra "I am sustained by the Love of God" for 10m in the morning and then for another 10m in the evening.

I enjoyed the fact that I was engaging with the text throughout the day. It's like making friends with the book.

Killingyouguy! posted:

I also had no idea until really recently that tarot is a card game! I had associated the cards strictly with fortune telling lol

Killingyouguy! posted:

tarot cards considered harmful as building materials

Killingyouguy! posted:

carpenters, mostly

Killingyouguy! posted:

My dad says you couldn't, so I guess we're gonna have to have our dads fight

Gaius Marius posted:

My dream job is proselytizing aliens. Can't wait for them to show up for real.

Nessus posted:

I have objective* proof that aliens are a. buddhists and b. extremely large and pretty

Source: https://www.wisdomlib.org/buddhism/book/the-lotus-sutra/d/doc62800.html/

* if lotus sutra not infallable how come soka gakkai? checkmate shingonists

quote:

Thereupon, the Buddha Śākyamuni emitted a ray of light from his topknot (uṣṇīṣa), the mark of a great person, and also from the tuft of white hair between his eyebrows (ūrṇā), thus illuminating all the buddha worlds

Pershing posted:

If anyone can, please pray for me and mine today. Just feeling low down and hopeless and resigned. Thank you.

Prurient Squid posted:

LITERALLY A BIRD posted:

Finished "The Origin of Satan" and started reading "The Gnostic Gospels." Pagels repeatedly pointing out orthodox Christianity developed the way it did to serve the interests of the governing institutions isn't new information to me, but pointing out how many of the titular gospels emphasize personal spiritual development and finding truths within yourself as the path to becoming "like Christ" (that is to say, becoming spiritually/Divinely awakened just as the Christ was; much more literal than "Christlike" is generally taken to mean) in combination with pointing out Tertullian etc's insistence that Christians should not be investigating their own faith too deeply or questioning their leaders makes me wonder if Christianity started out on the right path for human spiritual evolution and then promptly went wrong.

Like, if Gnostic Christianity had triumphed over orthodox Christianity, and the dominant western religion emphasized a search for gnosis and developing the personal connection to the Divine as opposed to "obey the church" would we all have achieved reconciliation by now

Nessus posted:

How would you distinguish between your local church and your local commune, assuming we are starting from scratch and before Church got its various complex associations?

Nessus posted:

But they both precede the existence of the modern concept of the state!

Deteriorata posted:

Yeah, but Apostolic succession was the only legitimacy of the faith. The authority of the Apostles was all there was. They were not about to tolerate people just making poo poo up out of whole cloth and trying to pass it off as something valid.

There had not yet been any systematic theology or attempts at expanding on the Apostolic message. That's all there was and it was completely reasonable to stick to that.

She tries to portray it as a negative thing, but there really wasn't any other path.

Nessus posted:

Do you get the same holiness quotient if you just refuse to pay taxes?

It WOULD assist with martyrdom...

Josef bugman posted:

That and, ultimately, the idea of the material as being made wrong on purpose by someone who is a bit of a dick seems to make more sense than the idea that it was made by an omnipotence who wants us all to be happy but [insert problems here] keeps happening because [insert which answer you want to the problem of evil you want here]

Josef bugman posted:

Surely that is Materialism though, not nominalism? Nominalism implies that something named is true/not true?

Some people do and want to know why the suffering is more personal and like the idea of the deity suffering with them. The problem is the idea that 1) This much and 2) But that doesn't explain X.

Nessus posted:

Shinran Shonin had a relevant aphorism: "Do not cultivate a taste for poison because you have an antidote."

Killingyouguy! posted:

How do the different Christian denominations approach how one should feel about nature?

It was always weird to me that there was so much focus on being in church, that is, indoors, in a man made environment, when the outdoors is already there and God made that one. But I guess in the book God does instruct pretty closely on at least one building, so that blurs the line a bit.

I would hear sometimes about going outside and "appreciating gods creation". But also the world is "fallen" and Christians aren't "of the world" and should not be "worldly" I guess?

Ohtori Akio posted:

stewardship means consumption to exhaustion, and thats the most important takeaway of the imminence of the world to come

Civilized Fishbot posted:

I took some time to think this over - thinking on Saturday, writing this very long post today. The ideas are still somewhat half-baked.

Valiantman posted:

Yes and no.

The usual read of the part in question is that people are responsible for the nature. That includes the permission to use what is available while simultaneously nurturing and protecting it. Like a steward taking care of their employer's lands.

Some people are not so big on responsibility and more into making as much money as possible so you can guess how they read it.

Bongo Bill posted:

The quoted post used sarcasm.

OscarDiggs posted:

I've been shifting between Buddhism and Daoism recently in light of some personal tragedies and a desire to reconcile myself.

Unfortunately, as a result of a youth of reddit atheism and a whole lifetime of being a white westerner, I'm finding it hard to engage with the written texts in a useful way. The ideas and concepts seem right up my alley when presented on YouTube or Wikipedia, but that feels very shallow.

Can anyone recommend ways and techniques to better grapple with works like the Tao Te Ching?

Mad Hamish posted:

Having just experienced a total solar eclipse and seen the sky literally go dark at 3:18 in the afternoon: good Lord, I can absolutely understand why the ancient Egyptians thought that was Ap🔪ep swallowing Re and the Boat of Millions of Years. If you didn't know what was going on that would be absolutely terrifying.

They had an actual book of spells and charms to be worked during this sort of thing, the Book of Overthrowing Ap🔪ep, which had ritual activities such as treading a drawing of it (in green ink! Very specific) under the left foot, spitting on it, and setting it on fire, with accompanying conjurations:

(knives added for reasons, if you know, you know)

I went out with a drawing of a snake (drawn on a post-it) and did some of these during totality, because I am a very weird vaguely dual-observant sort of person, and I got an odd look from someone passing by the parking lot. But hey, the lovely worm spat Re out, so it worked. Grinding a bad drawing of a snake underfoot: surprisingly effective.

Josef bugman posted:

If people could please offer prayers or invoke something for me and my Mrs. The government of my country may be banning trans stuff and she is really going through it because of it.

Edit: Not teams stuff, trans stuff, sorry everyone.

LITERALLY A BIRD posted:

posting Tillich in multiple threads today like a freak