FINALLY!!!
I have been trying to explain this for decades (me also being an initiate of several lodges and other initiatory bodies + having recieved the LDS endowment once upon a time).
The few liknesses between (especially) The Royal Arch and the Nauvoo Endowment (LDS Temple Ritual) are smaller than many think and the history where Masonry and Mormonism meets often obscured.
Ps: No obligations are broken in the video and it is not meant as proselytatization. Purely academic comparison).
Dionysus or Dionysos the Greek god of wine, represents not only the intoxicating power of wine, but also its social and beneficial influences. He was also known as Bacchus to the Romans. He is viewed as the promoter of civilization, a lawgiver, and lover of peace - as well as the patron deity of agriculture and the theatre. He was also known as the Liberator (Eleutherios), freeing one from one’s normal self, by madness, ecstasy, or wine. The divine mission of Dionysus was to mingle the music of the flute and to bring an end to care and worry. There is also an aspect of Dionysus on his relationship to the “cult of the souls”, and the scholar Xavier Riu writes that Dionysus presided over communication between the living and the dead.
This material constitutes one of the pieces of the puzzle that needed fleshing out. Here’s the gist: The “Christians” of the first century AD/CE were in reality “CHRESTIANS,” from a cult that had sprung up beginning at least a couple of centuries prior to the common era. There was no “historical” founder of this cult who tromped around Palestine during the first century, doing miracles.
During the second century, this Chrestian cult was co-opted, Judaized and historicized, with the appearance of the canonical gospels as we have them at the end of the second century.
Some of the writing is a bit scattered and difficult to follow, but they also include many interesting and fascinating images, such as this bowl - some may recall this news from a year or two ago - which refers to “Chrestos” (not “Christos”), a popular name/epithet prior to and into the common era.
The ESSWE is a learned society, established in 2005 to advance the academic study of the various manifestations of Western esotericism from late antiquity to the present, and to secure the future development of the field.
Normally I have a lot of respect for Dr. Beard, but I am nowhere near comfortable with the comparison of Elagabalus to Gaddafi.
WTF Dr. Beard.
[originally published on my blog “truth~nature~ and beauty”]
First and foremost: my problem with Druidry should not be confused with anyone else’s problem with Druidry. If you want to call yourself a Druid, fine. If you want to call what you do, Druidry, more power to you.
But one “issue”…
Protohistory refers to a period between prehistory and history, during which a culture or civilization has not yet developed writing, but other cultures have already noted its existence in their own writings. For example, in Europe, the Celts and the Germanic tribes may…
