{"id":4024,"date":"2010-08-01T01:10:23","date_gmt":"2010-08-01T06:10:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paganpages.org\/content\/?p=4086"},"modified":"2010-07-30T14:47:00","modified_gmt":"2010-07-30T19:47:00","slug":"principles-of-paganism-lesson-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/2010\/08\/01\/principles-of-paganism-lesson-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Principles of Paganism, Lesson 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lesson 2<\/strong><\/p>\n

Will and Fate<\/strong><\/p>\n

In pagan religion the future is fated, but this should not be understood in a straight-line sense.\u00a0 The mind of Moira, [1]<\/a> the dark goddess of fate in Greek religion, is incredibly complex.\u00a0 She does not prescribe one series of events only, but allows for certain forkings to occur for each person at certain critical moments.\u00a0 When one is born, his or her fate is merely sketched out by Moira; in the course of life one will make decisions, and in response to these she will begin filling in details in the picture of one\u2019s future.<\/p>\n

Will is of the spirit, and spirit, like everything else, is material, though it is subtle matter rather than the gross matter we see and feel every day.\u00a0 Being material, there is only so much of it at any one time or place.\u00a0 When we are born, we have the possibility of many different forking paths, but as we choose first this fork and then another, our possibilities close in on us.\u00a0 This is the same as to say that we gradually use up our will-substance, or, if you prefer, our will-energy (for matter and energy are interchangeable), [2]<\/a> and what we receive is often bound up in habits and so rendered less directly usable.\u00a0 We generally know when these critical junctures come to us, though we may pretend to ourselves, out of habit, that we have no real choice at that moment.\u00a0\u00a0 At one point one is still free to fulfill certain possibilities in his or her life, but if the other fork is taken then those possibilities go away.\u00a0 With respect to those possibilities, one\u2019s fate is then sealed.<\/p>\n

When seers or seeresses foretell the future, they foretell it in terms of those parts of fate that are already sealed, and then add in their knowledge of which critical turning-points lie ahead.\u00a0 A person with a clear mind will see a fork in his or her path and the two fates to which each fork leads, even though he often has a strong disposition to choose one of the alternatives.\u00a0 Thus, Achilles saw clearly that he had the choice to go to the war against Troy or not, and following his warlike heart chose to go, even though it was predicted that he would die young.\u00a0 In going, he chose a short life with renown.\u00a0 [3]<\/a><\/p>\n

Choosing certain forks in the road can gradually seal one\u2019s fate in advance, until all that remains to happen is the event which will trigger the final sealing.\u00a0 Thus,\u00a0 when Hector mortally wounds Patroclus, the latter while dying declares that Hector\u2019s fate to be killed by Achilles now stands over him. [4]<\/a> And indeed, when Achilles is pursuing Hector, Zeus weighs the fates of the two heroes in his scales and the fate of Hector is borne down and departs wailing into Hades, which is another way of saying his fate is sealed. [5]<\/a> Against such the gods themselves strive in vain; but until one\u2019s fate is sealed, they do their best to help us optimize our possibilities within its limits.\u00a0 They also send omens foretelling turning-points to come, so that we can take the better forks in the road with full mental clarity, as Achilles did.\u00a0 They do this for those mortals who treat them with respect and reverence, acting towards them in a friendly manner.<\/p>\n

An omen sometimes tells one that a critical turning-point has just been reached, sealing off certain possibilities which it would be futile to pursue any further.\u00a0 When Leif Ericsson\u2019s expedition to Vinland in North America was ready to sail from the Greenland colony, his father Eric the Red intended to sail with him.\u00a0 However, on his way down to the harbor he slipped and fell, injuring his thigh.\u00a0 Recognizing the omen, he had himself carried back home again, declaring that it was not his fate to discover any more new lands.\u00a0 [6]<\/a><\/p>\n

The gods, for the most part, do not foresee all the future.\u00a0 While Odin\u2019s wife Frigg knew the full future of men and gods, she would not prophesy.\u00a0 [7]<\/a> Odin himself had to consult a seeress, as is told in the Volusp\u00f8 of the Elder Edda.\u00a0 [8]<\/a> Zeus heard a prophecy that, just as he had supplanted his father Kronos, so he in turn would be supplanted by a future god.\u00a0 The titan Prometheus, who had the power of forethought, knew the identity of Zeus\u2019 supplanter but refused to reveal it, even under torture. [9]<\/a> It appears to be a universal pattern in paganism that the few beings who know the full tale of possibilities for the future never reveal all of their knowledge.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, partial glimpses of the future may be had through oracles, omens and dreams.\u00a0 As mentioned above, these are prophecies of fates which are already sealed and only await certain triggering events to become manifest, or else of critical turning-points where one or another fatal course will emerge as the result of a decision taken.\u00a0 It is because will is a function of spirit and spirit, like all forms of matter-energy, is limited, that these turning points and sealings take place.\u00a0 To make a decision is to cut away all other possibilities except the one chosen at that moment.<\/p>\n

Moira operates on many levels, for each cosmos contains smaller cosmoses within it. \u00a0Many pagan cultures recognized this fact, and each person is a cosmos in miniature, with internal gods and spirits serving as counterparts to the greater gods of our common cosmos.\u00a0 Just as our cosmos, often pictured as a great world tree, [10]<\/a> draws its nourishment from an underlying sea of chaos, so each of us draws on a store of vitality from a source beyond our control.\u00a0 And just as a cosmos in decline will gradually receive less \u2018water\u2019 or vital energy from the underlying sea, so each of us is born, develops, reaches a peak of vitality, and then begins to decline towards death, as our own store of vital energy gradually runs out.<\/p>\n

On the highest level, Moira governs the cosmic cycle itself, which worsens in time until she is ready to bring it to an end. \u00a0The v\u00f8lva or seeress in the Volusp\u00f8 described her [11]<\/a> and the end-time thus:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the east sat an old woman in Iron-wood<\/p>\n

and nurtured there offspring of Fenrir;<\/p>\n

a certain one of them in monstrous form<\/p>\n

will be the snatcher of the moon.\u201d [12]<\/a><\/p>\n

Ironwood can mean a tough wood like hornbeam; but it also refers to a type of tree that takes on a rusty hue when it dies; hence this is probably a death symbol.\u00a0 Fenrir\u2019s children were a monstrous brood who would fight the \u00c6sir at Ragnar\u00f8k, the final battle closing that world-cycle.\u00a0 Moira and Urd\u2019s Hindu counterpart was the dark goddess Kali who also brought a cosmic cycle to an end, preserving the gods and other spirits (including the spirits of mortals) in a seed in her womb, until it was time to bring forth a new cycle. [13]<\/a> The archaic Greek poet Hesiod, who seems to have known only one cycle, also represented the cosmos as worsening in the course of four ages of gold, silver, bronze and iron, with an interregnum of demigodlike heroes between the third and fourth ages to account for the heroes of the Iliad and Odyssey. [14]<\/a> He seems to be harmonizing two traditions here.<\/p>\n

Moira sometimes appears as a group of three goddesses, especially when assigning fate to one just born.\u00a0\u00a0 We see later versions of this in fairy tales, where a harsh fate foretold by the older fairies is somewhat ameliorated by the youngest of them. [15]<\/a> The gods, in optimizing our fate, can often draw upon this minor strand to render some fated restriction a little more flexible, or provide the one fated with an unlooked-for compensation or consolation; but it is generally up to us to recognize, grasp and make use of our boon from the youngest fairy.<\/p>\n

Questions for Lesson 2:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. If the future is fated, in what sense do we have free will?<\/li>\n
  2. How do the gods seek to help us within the limits of our fate?\u00a0 Name two ways.<\/li>\n
  3. What are turning-points?\u00a0 Why is it best to recognize them clearly when they arrive?<\/li>\n
  4. What does it mean to say that one\u2019s fate is sealed?\u00a0 Do the results of such a sealing always happen right away?<\/li>\n
  5. Give an example of a triggering event in the case of a sealed fate.<\/li>\n
  6. Why is will limited?\u00a0 How is will self-limiting?<\/li>\n
  7. As we age, we receive less vital energy, including will-energy.\u00a0 In what other way is usable will-energy diminished?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Questions from Lesson 1 with Suggested Answers<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Lesson 1, Part 1:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. One barrier to understanding ancient religion is anachronism, the tendency to read into ancient ideas the meanings of later ideas.\u00a0 What is the other?\u00a0 Give an example of both hurdles.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Deliberate mistranslation.\u00a0 An example of anachronism is the much later idea of creation from nothing, which leads translators to interpolate the word \u2018And\u2019 at the beginning of Gen. 1:2, thus making the account of bringing form into pre-existing matter seem as having taken place after<\/em> the act of creation, instead of describing how<\/em> that creation took place.<\/p>\n

      Examples of deliberate mistranslation are \u2018God\u2019 for \u2018Elohim,\u2019 which means \u2018the gods of the family of El;\u2019 and \u2018void\u2019 for the Hebrew word meaning an abandoned ruin or desolation.<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. Why are the Sumerians unsuitable as a source of information on root paganism?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        The many cities of Sumer all had a common pantheon of gods, suggesting that their religion was already well-established when they arrived in southern Iraq, perhaps c. 4000 BCE; and it was a sophisticated, urbanized religion.\u00a0 Thus we lack information about Sumerian religion in its formative, tribal phase when the people were pastoral.<\/p>\n

          \n
        1. What is meant by root or robust paganism anyway?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          Religion based on personal experience which is open-ended in its development and controlled loosely through tribal custom instead of by urban political forces.<\/p>\n

            \n
          1. Concepts are attempted answers to questions.\u00a0 How does the ancient question about creation differ from the later question?\u00a0 How do the answers differ?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

            The ancient question was something like \u201cHow did local conditions come about?\u201d\u00a0 The later question is \u201cHow did everything come about originally?\u201d The answer to the former differed according to terrain, weather, and other local factors.\u00a0 The answer to the latter depends on philosophical thinking.<\/p>\n

              \n
            1. How can modern scientific knowledge be reconciled with ancient views of the world?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

              The ancients, prior to the advent of philosophy, sought to describe the world as it appeared to the senses.\u00a0 Modern science builds upon sensation with the use of precision instruments and controlled experiments to explain and predict phenomena.\u00a0 Where such explanations and predictions are necessary to our everyday lives, we can draw upon science; but in the moment-by-moment living of our lives our experiences will be enriched by paying attention to the world simply as it appears, with the sun rising in the east in the morning and setting in the west in the evening, and so forth.<\/p>\n

              Lesson 1, Part\u00a0 2:<\/p>\n

              1:\u00a0 Name one way in which cosmos and chaos are relative to each other.<\/p>\n

              Every cosmos contains within it wilder entities that have penetrated its boundaries, and generally lie in peripheral areas out towards those boundaries.\u00a0 Every cosmos is contained within a larger cosmos that is organized more loosely, containing wilder entities and more virulent energies, but which are nevertheless organized after their own fashion, as a wilderness operates by its own laws of kill or be killed and surrounds a settlement in a clearing that enjoys a more ordered existence.<\/p>\n

              2:\u00a0 What does the dark goddess do in favor of chaos?\u00a0 How does she \u00a0 help cosmos?<\/p>\n

              She gradually lets chaotic elements accumulate within a cosmos as it declines, finally letting them overwhelm it at the end of a cycle.\u00a0 She helps preserve cosmic entities in a seed in Her womb between cycles until it is time for a cosmos to be reborn.<\/p>\n

              3: Sometimes chaos within cosmos makes a positive contribution.\u00a0 How \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 does this come about?<\/p>\n

              Trickster gods like Loki or Coyote spike the well-laid plans of the gods of cosmic order, forcing them to develop new methods, often with the help of the trickster god himself, who shows them how to circumvent the harm he has caused by introducing new powers and magical weapons.<\/p>\n

              Bibliography (Suggested Reading):<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

              <\/span><\/p>\n

              HESIOD and THEOGNIS<\/span>, transl. by Dorothea Wender, London and New \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 York, Penguin Books, 1973.<\/p>\n

              HOMER, The Iliad<\/span>, in 2 vols., transl. by A. T. Murray, Cambridge, MA & \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 London, Harvard University Press, 1993,<\/p>\n

              HUNT, Margaret, transl., Household Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm<\/span>, \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 London, George Bell, 1884, 1892, in 2 vols.<\/p>\n

              JONES, Gwyn, transl., Erik the Red\u2019s Saga<\/span>, in The Norse Atlantic Saga<\/span>, \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1986.<\/p>\n

              KERENYI, C., The Heroes of the Greeks<\/span>, London, Thames and Hudson, \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 reprint, 1997.<\/p>\n

              LIND, L. R., ed., Ten Greek Plays<\/span>, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1957.<\/p>\n

              NIKHILANANDA, Swami, transl., The Upanishads<\/span>, vols. 1 \u2013 4,\u00a0 New \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 York, Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1977.<\/p>\n

              POETIC EDDA, The<\/span>, transl. Carolyne Larrington.\u00a0 Oxford, New York, \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Oxford University Press, 1996.<\/p>\n

              Exercise:<\/strong><\/p>\n

              When I was a boy I spent a week out of each summer vacation visiting my cousins, who lived farther out on Long Island, where it was more rural at the time.\u00a0 One evening we were returning from a walk when I noticed that the moon seemed to be following us home.\u00a0 I mentioned this and was told that it was an illusion.\u00a0 I can remember feeling embarrassed when told this.\u00a0 Many years later, when my younger son and I were on a similar evening walk, he pointed to the moon keeping pace with us, and I realized that I had ceased to notice this sensation ever since that time in my boyhood.\u00a0 I said nothing about it being an illusion, and just kept the moon in view out of the corner of my left eye.\u00a0 Including a long-ignored sensation in my attention rendered all my perceptions more vivid, and I felt a sort of energy flowing from the moon into my head.\u00a0 When I turned to face the moon, the flow of energy ceased.\u00a0 Evidently the habit of ignoring the moon following me home was implanted in my frontal vision; but when I fixed my peripheral attention on it again, the energy flow and vividness of sensation resumed.\u00a0 Try this out yourself on the moon.\u00a0 It works on the sun as well, of course, but the sun is too bright and dazzling, and the light of the moon is soothing and stimulates alpha rhythms in the brain.<\/p>\n

              [1]<\/a> For simplicity\u2019s sake, we will refer to fate as the Greek goddess (or Titaness) Moira, except when making specific reference to figures from other traditions, such as the Hindu Kali or Scandinavian Urd.<\/p>\n

              [2]<\/a> The denser the matter, the lower the frequency of energy; the higher the frequency of energy, the subtler the matter.<\/p>\n

              [3]<\/a> Kerenyi, p. 347.<\/p>\n

              [4]<\/a> Iliad XVI: 855.<\/p>\n

              [5]<\/a> Iliad XXII: 210.<\/p>\n

              [6]<\/a> Saga of Erik the Red<\/span>, pp. 207-35.\u00a0 See Jones in bibliography.<\/p>\n

              [7]<\/a> Loki\u2019s Quarrel, 29.\u00a0 See The Poetic Edda<\/span>, p. 89.<\/p>\n

              [8]<\/a> See The Poetic Edda<\/span> in bibliography.\u00a0 Volusp\u00f8 is called \u2018The Seeress\u2019s Prophecy in this edition.<\/p>\n

              [9]<\/a> \u00c6schylus, Prometheus Bound<\/span>.\u00a0 See Lind, Ten Greek Plays<\/span>.<\/p>\n

              [10]<\/a> Volusp\u00f8 19.\u00a0 See The Poetic Edda<\/span>, p. 6.<\/p>\n

              [11]<\/a> In Norse religion Fate is threefold, called the three Norns.\u00a0 The eldest, Urd, is probably meant here.<\/p>\n

              [12]<\/a> Volusp\u00f8 40.\u00a0 See The Poetic Edda<\/span>, p. 9.<\/p>\n

              [13]<\/a> Nikhilananda, vol. 1, pp 67-8.<\/p>\n

              [14]<\/a> Hesiod, Works and Days<\/span> 105 et passim, pp. 62 – 65.\u00a0 See Hesiod in bibliography.<\/p>\n

              [15]<\/a> See for instance \u2018Little Briar-Rose\u2019 in Brothers\u2019 Grimm Household Tales<\/span> (Hunt in Bibliography).\u00a0 There we have 13 wise women, the 13th<\/sup> is left out (because she is from the old lunar calendar) of the baby\u2019s christening and appears, pronouncing her curse of death.\u00a0 The 12th<\/sup> and youngest wise woman cannot undo the curse, but now she speaks her gift changing it to a magic sleep.\u00a0 The milder fate always manifests later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

              Lesson 2 Will and Fate In pagan religion the future is fated, but this should not be understood in a straight-line sense.\u00a0 The mind of Moira, [1] the dark goddess of fate in Greek religion, is incredibly complex.\u00a0 She does not prescribe one series of events only, but allows for certain forkings to occur for each person at certain critical moments.\u00a0 When one is born, his or her fate is merely sketched out by Moira; in the course of life one will make decisions, and in response to these she will begin filling in details in the picture of one\u2019s future. Will is of the spirit, and spirit, like everything else, is material, though it is subtle matter rather than the gross matter we see and feel every day.\u00a0 Being material, there is only so much of it at any one time or place.\u00a0 When we are born, we have the possibility of many different forking paths, but as we choose first this fork and then another, our possibilities close in on us.\u00a0 This is the same as to say that we gradually use up our will-substance, or, if you prefer, our will-energy (for matter and energy are interchangeable), [2] and what we receive is often bound up in habits and so rendered less directly usable.\u00a0 We generally know when these critical junctures come to us, though we may pretend to ourselves, out of habit, that we have no real choice at that moment.\u00a0\u00a0 At one point one is still free to fulfill certain possibilities in his or her life, but if the other fork is taken then those possibilities go away.\u00a0 With respect to those possibilities, one\u2019s fate is then sealed. When seers or seeresses foretell the future, they foretell it in terms of those parts of fate that are already sealed, and then add in their knowledge of which critical turning-points lie ahead.\u00a0 A person with a clear mind will see a fork in his or her path and the two fates to which each fork leads, even though he often has a strong disposition to choose one of the alternatives.\u00a0 Thus, Achilles saw clearly that he had the choice to go to the war against Troy or not, and following his warlike heart chose to go, even though it was predicted that he would die young.\u00a0 In going, he chose a short life with renown.\u00a0 [3] Choosing certain forks in the road can gradually seal one\u2019s fate in advance, until all that remains to happen is the event which will trigger the final sealing.\u00a0 Thus,\u00a0 when Hector mortally wounds Patroclus, the latter while dying declares that Hector\u2019s fate to be killed by Achilles now stands over him. [4] And indeed, when Achilles is pursuing Hector, Zeus weighs the fates of the two heroes in his scales and the fate of Hector is borne down and departs wailing into Hades, which is another way of saying his fate is sealed. [5] Against such the gods themselves strive in vain; but until one\u2019s fate is sealed, they do their best to help us optimize our possibilities within its limits.\u00a0 They also send omens foretelling turning-points to come, so that we can take the better forks in the road with full mental clarity, as Achilles did.\u00a0 They do this for those mortals who treat them with respect and reverence, acting towards them in a friendly manner. An omen sometimes tells one that a critical turning-point has just been reached, sealing off certain possibilities which it would be futile to pursue any further.\u00a0 When Leif Ericsson\u2019s expedition to Vinland in North America was ready to sail from the Greenland colony, his father Eric the Red intended to sail with him.\u00a0 However, on his way down to the harbor he slipped and fell, injuring his thigh.\u00a0 Recognizing the omen, he had himself carried back home again, declaring that it was not his fate to discover any more new lands.\u00a0 [6] The gods, for the most part, do not foresee all the future.\u00a0 While Odin\u2019s wife Frigg knew the full future of men and gods, she would not prophesy.\u00a0 [7] Odin himself had to consult a seeress, as is told in the Volusp\u00f8 of the Elder Edda.\u00a0 [8] Zeus heard a prophecy that, just as he had supplanted his father Kronos, so he in turn would be supplanted by a future god.\u00a0 The titan Prometheus, who had the power of forethought, knew the identity of Zeus\u2019 supplanter but refused to reveal it, even under torture. [9] It appears to be a universal pattern in paganism that the few beings who know the full tale of possibilities for the future never reveal all of their knowledge. Nevertheless, partial glimpses of the future may be had through oracles, omens and dreams.\u00a0 As mentioned above, these are prophecies of fates which are already sealed and only await certain triggering events to become manifest, or else of critical turning-points where one or another fatal course will emerge as the result of a decision taken.\u00a0 It is because will is a function of spirit and spirit, like all forms of matter-energy, is limited, that these turning points and sealings take place.\u00a0 To make a decision is to cut away all other possibilities except the one chosen at that moment. Moira operates on many levels, for each cosmos contains smaller cosmoses within it. \u00a0Many pagan cultures recognized this fact, and each person is a cosmos in miniature, with internal gods and spirits serving as counterparts to the greater gods of our common cosmos.\u00a0 Just as our cosmos, often pictured as a great world tree, [10] draws its nourishment from an underlying sea of chaos, so each of us draws on a store of vitality from a source beyond our control.\u00a0 And just as a cosmos in decline will gradually receive less \u2018water\u2019 or vital energy from the underlying sea, so each of us is born, develops, reaches a peak of vitality, and then begins to decline towards death, as our own store of vital energy gradually runs out. On the highest level, Moira governs the cosmic cycle itself, which worsens in time until she is ready to bring it to an end. \u00a0The v\u00f8lva or seeress in the Volusp\u00f8 described her [11] and the end-time thus: \u201cIn the east sat an old woman in Iron-wood and nurtured there offspring of Fenrir; a certain one of them in monstrous form will be the snatcher of the moon.\u201d [12] Ironwood can mean a tough wood like hornbeam; but it also refers to a type of tree that takes on a rusty hue when it dies; hence this is probably a death symbol.\u00a0 Fenrir\u2019s children were a monstrous brood who would fight the \u00c6sir at Ragnar\u00f8k, the final battle closing that world-cycle.\u00a0 Moira and Urd\u2019s Hindu counterpart was the dark goddess Kali who also brought a cosmic cycle to an end, preserving the gods and other spirits (including the spirits of mortals) in a seed in her womb, until it was time to bring forth a new cycle. [13] The archaic Greek poet Hesiod, who seems to have known only one cycle, also represented the cosmos as worsening in the course of four ages of gold, silver, bronze and iron, with an interregnum of demigodlike heroes between the third and fourth ages to account for the heroes of the Iliad and Odyssey. [14] He seems to be harmonizing two traditions here. Moira sometimes appears as a group of three goddesses, especially when assigning fate to one just born.\u00a0\u00a0 We see later versions of this in fairy tales, where a harsh fate foretold by the older fairies is somewhat ameliorated by the youngest of them. [15] The gods, in optimizing our fate, can often draw upon this minor strand to render some fated restriction a little more flexible, or provide the one fated with an unlooked-for compensation or consolation; but it is generally up to us to recognize, grasp and make use of our boon from the youngest fairy. Questions for Lesson 2: If the future is fated, in what sense do we have free will? How do the gods seek to help us within the limits of our fate?\u00a0 Name two ways. What are turning-points?\u00a0 Why is it best to recognize them clearly when they arrive? What does it mean to say that one\u2019s fate is sealed?\u00a0 Do the results of such a sealing always happen right away? Give an example of a triggering event in the case of a sealed fate. Why is will limited?\u00a0 How is will self-limiting? As we age, we receive less vital energy, including will-energy.\u00a0 In what other way is usable will-energy diminished? Questions from Lesson 1 with Suggested Answers Lesson 1, Part 1: One barrier to understanding ancient religion is anachronism, the tendency to read into ancient ideas the meanings of later ideas.\u00a0 What is the other?\u00a0 Give an example of both hurdles. Deliberate mistranslation.\u00a0 An example of anachronism is the much later idea of creation from nothing, which leads translators to interpolate the word \u2018And\u2019 at the beginning of Gen. 1:2, thus making the account of bringing form into pre-existing matter seem as having taken place after the act of creation, instead of describing how that creation took place. Examples of deliberate mistranslation are \u2018God\u2019 for \u2018Elohim,\u2019 which means \u2018the gods of the family of El;\u2019 and \u2018void\u2019 for the Hebrew word meaning an abandoned ruin or desolation. Why are the Sumerians unsuitable as a source of information on root paganism? The many cities of Sumer all had a common pantheon of gods, suggesting that their religion was already well-established when they arrived in southern Iraq, perhaps c. 4000 BCE; and it was a sophisticated, urbanized religion.\u00a0 Thus we lack information about Sumerian religion in its formative, tribal phase when the people were pastoral. What is meant by root or robust paganism anyway? Religion based on personal experience which is open-ended in its development and controlled loosely through tribal custom instead of by urban political forces. Concepts are attempted answers to questions.\u00a0 How does the ancient question about creation differ from the later question?\u00a0 How do the answers differ? The ancient question was something like \u201cHow did local conditions come about?\u201d\u00a0 The later question is \u201cHow did everything come about originally?\u201d The answer to the former differed according to terrain, weather, and other local factors.\u00a0 The answer to the latter depends on philosophical thinking. How can modern scientific knowledge be reconciled with ancient views of the world? The ancients, prior to the advent of philosophy, sought to describe the world as it appeared to the senses.\u00a0 Modern science builds upon sensation with the use of precision instruments and controlled experiments to explain and predict phenomena.\u00a0 Where such explanations and predictions are necessary to our everyday lives, we can draw upon science; but in the moment-by-moment living of our lives our experiences will be enriched by paying attention to the world simply as it appears, with the sun rising in the east in the morning and setting in the west in the evening, and so forth. Lesson 1, Part\u00a0 2: 1:\u00a0 Name one way in which cosmos and chaos are relative to each other. Every cosmos contains within it wilder entities that have penetrated its boundaries, and generally lie in peripheral areas out towards those boundaries.\u00a0 Every cosmos is contained within a larger cosmos that is organized more loosely, containing wilder entities and more virulent energies, but which are nevertheless organized after their own fashion, as a wilderness operates by its own laws of kill or be killed and surrounds a settlement in a clearing that enjoys a more ordered existence. 2:\u00a0 What does the dark goddess do in favor of chaos?\u00a0 How does she \u00a0 help cosmos? She gradually lets chaotic elements accumulate within a cosmos as it declines, finally letting them overwhelm it at the end of a cycle.\u00a0 She helps preserve cosmic entities in a seed in Her womb between cycles until it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4024\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}