Clipmarks | wiccantexan's Religion collection

Nepal's goddesses: religious abuse?

Fri, 26 Jan 2007 22:55:42 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

The Supreme Court will rule on whether a tradition of using children as living goddesses is a crime.

Receiving goddess-treatment in this Himalayan nation is not always as good as it may sound. The tradition of isolating and worshipping prepubescent girls as living goddesses - a practice that dates back centuries among Nepal's Newar community - has recently become controversial.

In a practice that is long believed to support Nepal's king, Buddhist girls as young as 4 years old have been selected in this kingdom to serve as Kumaris, the incarnations of the Hindu goddess Taleju.

But two petitions filed at Nepal's Supreme Court, one against and one in favor of the ritual, have placed Kumaris at the center of a tug of war between religion and human rights.

Tags: goddesses, children, goddess, hindu

Respect For Women Yes, Worship of Goddesses No

Fri, 26 Jan 2007 22:53:47 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: newsweek.washingtonpost.com

Women have fared very badly indeed in religions throughout history, is the short answer. Most large-scale religions, like most aspects of human culture, have been run by men, who have often used them to control and suppress women, in order to make sure that the sons who inherited their stuff were really their sons.

But the goddess feminists are whistling in the dark when they argue, first, that everyone used to worship goddesses (some people did, but many did not) and, second, that this was a Good Thing for women, indeed for everyone, their assumption being that women are more compassionate than men.

Tags: women, woman, goddess, goddesses, rellgion, feminism

Women and the Goddess

Fri, 26 Jan 2007 22:51:28 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: newsweek.washingtonpost.com

Women have not faired well under most religions for the last five thousand years or so. But let’s take the long view: that’s just a blip on the timeline of human history. Before, and concurrently in many indigenous cultures, the divine was and is pictured in female as well as male form, as the Great Mother who was the creative, regenerative power in nature and life.

At the very beginnings of Western civilization, there were early cultures, egalitarian and peaceful, that honored the Goddess and whose arts and religious artifacts reflect their interest in the sacredness of nature and an orientation to life. These societies were long lasting—in places like Catal Huyuk they existed for thousands of years, and they originated agriculture, pottery, weaving, architecture—the arts and skills that were to be the basis of civilizations to come.

But they changed when culture and religion became more and more focused on war. Myths changed—from celebrations of the sacred marriages and sacred images of food, plants—to the imagery of warfare, with Gods as conquerors and Lords of Battle. Law and religion changed as well—and the results are still with us.

Tags: women, woman, goddess, great mother, divine, religion

The Christian Nation Myth

Fri, 26 Jan 2007 03:18:30 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: www.infidels.org

Whenever the Supreme Court makes a decision that in any way restricts the intrusion of religion into the affairs of government, a flood of editorials, articles, and letters protesting the ruling is sure to appear in the newspapers. Many protesters decry these decisions on the grounds that they conflict with the wishes and intents of the "founding fathers."

Such a view of American history is completely contrary to known facts. The primary leaders of the so-called founding fathers of our nation were not Bible-believing Christians; they were deists. Deism was a philosophical belief that was widely accepted by the colonial intelligentsia at the time of the American Revolution. Its major tenets included belief in human reason as a reliable means of solving social and political problems and belief in a supreme deity who created the universe to operate solely by natural laws. The supreme God of the Deists removed himself entirely from the universe after creating it. They believed that he assumed no control over it, exerted no influence on natural phenomena, and gave no supernatural revelation to man. A necessary consequence of these beliefs was a rejection of many doctrines central to the Christian religion. Deists did not believe in the virgin birth, divinity, or resurrection of Jesus, the efficacy of prayer, the miracles of the Bible, or even the divine inspiration of the Bible.

Tags: christian, christianity, christian nation, myth, deist, founding fathers, united states

Flowers and Death

Thu, 14 Sep 2006 01:24:43 GMT

clipped by: clipette

Clip Source: www.bbc.co.uk

Theme: death

The transience of flowers links them with mortality, especially when they are picked in honour and memory of the dead.

The early church, knowing this custom derived from pre-Christian religions and having failed to suppress it, embraced it.

Some Italian Renaissance paintings of the sarcophagus of the Virgin showed scattered roses, and the message of death and resurrection was implicit in paintings of the Virgin and Child surrounded by flowers. When these were red the colour was linked with Christ's sacrificial blood.

The traditional meanings, reinforced by the biblical quotations like 'man's days are as grass' and 'vanity of vanities, all is vanity', lived on in 17th Century flower paintings. This 'vanitas' element included memento mori such as timepieces, skulls, flies and other insects, so there can be little doubt that the gaudy tulips and full-petalled roses contained the message that beauty passes.

Lilies have strong funereal associations, but only became linked with untimely death by the Romantic movement in the 19th Century.

Even Van Gogh's sunflowers, at first glance vibrant with life and sunshine, on closer inspection are nearly dead.

Tags: flowers, mortality, death, art