In the Lokasenna, one of the mythological poems of the Poetic Edda (and mostly made up of Loki insulting the other gods and spilling their secrets), Loki says that Freyja and Freyr slept together. I think that's the main source for the idea of something sexual between Freyja and Freyr. Whether...
Frigga and Freyja are different entities, though some people have fused the two.
Freyja's a maiden archetype? O_o Well, I suppose, if "maidens" are allowed to be sluts... I mean, seriously, she slept with four dwarves to get jewelry.
Frigg is the highest goddess of the Aesir; Freyja is the...
Guitar's Cry mentioned the British Druid Order (is that the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids (OBOD)?). The other big reconstructionist druid group is ADF (Ár nDraíocht Féin); I've been to a number of the rituals of the local ADF grove (it was my introduction to paganism) and...
It depends on which group / culture you're talking about.
Remember, "pagan" can mean anyone who follows a non-Abrahamic religion (something other than Christianity, Judaism, or Islam). More specifically, it usually refers to someone who follows a revived form of a dead religion (such as...
Kemetic belief is that everything, from humans to dogs to trees and rocks, has a ka, a spirit. Only humans (in Kemetic belief) have a ba, however; an eternal core, a soul. The ka goes to the afterlife; the ba either rejoins with Netjer (the All) or reincarnates (depending on your interpretation...
The early Church, apparently. You accept the early Roman Church as qualified to say what books are false/true/legitimate, then? You'll take what that very political organization decided as Truth, and you won't criticize or look at other possibilities? Interesting.
Read up on your Biblical and...
Christianity itself is not anti-growth. However, much of modern Christianity, especially the modern Protestant interpretation (and especially the more fundamentalist Protestant sects) is anti-growth, in my opinion. I think a lot of modern conservative Christian dogma and interpretation...
I adamantly disagree with this.
Most Christians of my experience (which is mostly the first 18 years of my life in southern baptist / supposedly-nondenominational-but-still-rather-s.baptist churches, and all of my life with a Southern Baptist, Southwest Seminary-trained pastor as a father)...
Much of the knowledge of the pre-Christian Celts is lost, too - there's not even really first-hand written records - but that doesn't stop the Celtic Reconstructionists, and they're an amazingly scholarly bunch. ;)
See, this sort of assumption has always puzzled (and somewhat annoyed me) me, because there really aren't that many religions with a moon goddess/sun god dichotomy.
Egyptian myth has Aah, Khonsu, and Djehuty (Thoth), all of which are gods, associated with the moon, while the sun is associated...
...Oh, drat. There goes that idea.
I'd once said I'd love to see a Christian Reconstructionist. But what I meant was something like a Christian version of a Hellenic Reconstructionist, or a Celtic Reconstructionist, or a Kemetic Reconstructionist... someone who tried reconstructing Christianity...
I grew up Southern Baptist, and the very literalist interpretation was quite common. Disturbingly common. Even among the pastor, who'd gone to college and seminary and should have been better educated. "The whole world flooded, it says it and thus it's so, end of story." It sounds to me like the...
A friend of mine who tends to be rather knowledgable about various religious topics mentioned something at one point, quite a while ago, about Mary (mother of Jesus) being referred to (in some translations of the Bible?) as a "tattooed woman", and he said this likely signified that she had...
"What has your God done for you???"
The mother of my ka, Bast-Mut, has given me warmth and sunlight during the darkest time of year. When I nearly succumbed to deep seasonal depression this January, I asked my gods for sunlight - I was almost joking, it was an afterthought - and yet I heard "We...
Yes, -et is a feminine ending. Or rather, -t is; it's uncertain whether or not which vowel comes before the -t (if any). (It's likely, but ... there weren't exactly any vowels in the hieroglyphs. We can only guess through Coptic and a few other clues.)
"Bast" is a combination of the word "bas"...
Agreed, "cult" as a label is often overused for that reason, especially by majority religions. Perhaps one should differentiate between "dangerous cult" - as in, dangerous to one's psychological health - and "alternative religion".
There are a number of cult checklists (for deducing how...
The scales are managed by either Djehuty/Thoth or Yinepu/Anubis, depending on what period of Egypt you're talking about. The heart is weighed against the Feather of Ma'at.
touregypt.net/featurestories/dead1.jpg shows a scene from the Weighing of the Heart. Anubis is clearly doing the weighing...