FourWinds
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Re: 21 senses
Sep 23, 2003, 21:03
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My granddad pissed it all up the wall. It all went on wine, women and song (the women did not include my Gran!)
I never saw a penny of it ... none of our family did. I think it got distributed around Dudley :-)
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FourWinds
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Re: shit
Sep 23, 2003, 21:06
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It was not for lack of eloquence on your part, more due to lack of poetesqueness on mine.
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TomBo
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splitting hairs?
Sep 24, 2003, 01:43
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"Gods and goddesses grew from people personifying experiences and places (and both combined). First there was probably 'spirit of place'. As tribal people intermingled they must have realised that they all had the same idea about places as everyone else. These eventually became the gods."
Which bit of Graves do you mean? What's the difference between a god and one of these spirits of place? Does everyone have to realise that they share the same symbols of place (and experience) before the spirits become gods? The symbols themselves are the same both before and after this recognition, surely, and fulfil the same role for people. And this bit about tribal people intermingling - was there ever a time when tribal people weren't intermingling and migrating? The whole world is African, or so Black Uhuru say.
>vanishes in a flash of perplexity<
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FourWinds
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Re: splitting hairs?
Sep 24, 2003, 06:51
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Gods & goddesses have personification. The magic of a well/spring doesn't.
Do I have to re-read the White Goddess again to find the passage? Give me 'til the weekend and I'll do so ...
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Hob
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Re: Electric Monk
Sep 24, 2003, 13:07
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He was pupose built to be able to absolutely believe up to 13 completely contradictory ideas at any one time.
You don't get role models like that any more.
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morfe
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Re: Electric Monk
Sep 24, 2003, 13:17
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Hob, please tell me where I've been contradictory, I'm not offended (admittedly I'm often poor at writing), but disappointed that I've failed to make my point :-(
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TomBo
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you don't have to!
Sep 24, 2003, 13:43
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It's the White Goddess you're referring to, though, eh?
So you think that the earliest spirits of place weren't symbolised in human form? How were they symbolised then? Because our whole thought process relies on symbols, doesn't it? Is it possible to think about something without giving it a symbolic token? Perhaps it is possible to think of these things in an abstract way, though I know I can't. Or are you talking about the "feeling" of a place?
I'm not sure I understand what you mean, FW. I thought the implication of what you were saying here was that gods "grew out of people personifying experience/place" (ie. that what were originally "mere" personifications eventually grew to the stature of deities), though it now seems you're saying that they don't become gods until they are personified.
>Interested, but still perplexed<
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FourWinds
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Re: you don't have to!
Sep 24, 2003, 14:39
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"though it now seems you're saying that they don't become gods until they are personified."
That is exactly what I believe - I phrased it badly first time around. You can revere and respect something, but that does not make it a god. Offerings can be made to a place. You can leave offerings for the pixies that look after a spring or the nymphs that live in it. One day one of these 'spirits' gets a name as top-nymph and becomes a god(dess).
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TomBo
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Re: you don't have to!
Sep 24, 2003, 14:56
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"Offerings can be made to a place"
Okay, I can understand that and there's no human form involved, no personification. But I don't see much evidence for that being what happened in the past - all cultures personify, it is a basic part of being human.
"You can leave offerings for the pixies that look after a spring or the nymphs that live in it."
This is where my confusion creeps in - pixies and nymphs are human forms, personifications. And if you're leaving offerings to the pixies/nymphs then you're treating them as god(esse)s, to all intents and purposes. That's the crux of my argument (I think!) - that the pixies/nymphs were to their time what the gods were to later times.
"One day one of these 'spirits' gets a name as top-nymph and becomes a god(dess)."
That seems to me a monotheistic way of thought that would hold true only for the process whereby pantheons become monotheisms. Prehistoric people were animists/pantheists. There was no one god/goddess on top of the heap. All were important.
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FourWinds
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Re: you don't have to!
Sep 24, 2003, 15:13
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<all cultures personify, it is a basic part of being human.>
Not sure *all* cultures do or always have done. You are assuming a lot. Did they before fairly advanced language?
< ... if you're leaving offerings to the pixies/nymphs then you're treating them as god(esse)s, to all intents and purposes. >
No. You're honouring them, but not necessarily worshiping them.
<That seems to me a monotheistic way of thought that would hold true only for the process whereby pantheons become monotheisms. Prehistoric people were animists/pantheists. There was no one god/goddess on top of the heap. All were important.>
No. One sun god. One wind god. One water god. I'm saying one nymph at a well became top-nymph of the nymphs at the well, not of all nymphs everywhere.
****************
I am talking about when 'awareness' first came to 'mankind'. I'm not talking 10, 000 years ago here, I'm going way further back than that.
Imagine. One person comes across a cave whilst wandering around. As he enters the cave the wind whistles past another entrance and the person here's a roar from within. He's firghtened and thinks that something wants him to stay out, some animal or spirit, so he leaves food to say sorry for intruding and leaves. Is this thing then a god because an offering has been made? Not yet. He tells a story back at camp and then takes them there the next day. Nothing happens. The food offering worked. Now we have a spirit of the cave in place that can be placated, but it's still not a god.
One day, if the offerings are made regularly etc. it may become a god.
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