In my humble opinion, polytheism is vastly preferable to monotheism.
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Both books trace the gradual emergence of monotheism from a background of polytheism.
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It is important to recognize that Tonantzin was one of many Earth goddesses, which is typical of polytheism.
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"Beta Samati spans Aksum's official conversion from polytheism to Christianity and the rise of Islam in Arabia," he added.
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"God willing, the knives of Mujahedeen will continue until we cleanse Bangladesh from the wrath of polytheism," the statement said.
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"Our primary focus lies in the war against polytheism and apostasy, and of those, Sufism, sorcery and divination," he said.
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IN THE ANIMISTIC polytheism at the root of Japanese Shinto culture, god resides in everything — from stones to flowers to the wind.
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In the article, the Islamic State acknowledged abducting the elderly man, who they say was sentenced to death because of his embrace of polytheism.
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The Islamic State vowed to escalate its "war on polytheism" — a phrase that, in the Egyptian context, is a thinly veiled reference to Christianity.
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Civ is where I learned what monotheism and polytheism are, the requisite ingredients for gunpowder, and the world-changing effects of the invention of the printing press.
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In so doing, ISIS itself is guilty of polytheism, the gravest sin in Islam, and the same sin the Salafists say the rest of us Muslims are committing.
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"Our focus lies in the war against polytheism and apostasy, and among those Sufism, sorcery and divination," said a spokesman in ISIS' online publication al-Naba a year ago.
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The act of praying to saints and worshiping at their tombs is an example of what extremists refer to as "shirk," or polytheism, according to Brill's Encyclopedia of Islam.
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By Gray's account, they ignore polytheism and animism almost entirely, while insisting on reading verses of Genesis or lines of the Nicene Creed as if they were primitive scientific theories.
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If I were coming to these kind of stories with no preconceptions, I might reach for polytheism or pantheism to explain the variety and diversity of what reaches through the veil.
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"They believe Sufi shrines are the most egregious expression of that [polytheism]," Alexander Knysh, a scholar of Sufism at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, told the New York Times.
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It also said the game contained other elements prohibited by Islamic law, including "polytheism against God by multiplying the number of deities, and gambling, which God has forbidden in the Quran and likened to wine and idols".
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Over and above these more or less tenuous connections to the Abrahamic faiths, there is another worldview which, in the view of Mr Johnson's biographer Andrew Gimson, holds much stronger personal appeal for the new prime minister: the polytheism of ancient Greece and Rome, whose literature he studied at Oxford University.
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A central, main division in modern polytheistic practices is between soft polytheism and hard polytheism. "Hard" polytheism is the belief that gods are distinct, separate, real divine beings, rather than psychological archetypes or personifications of natural forces. Hard polytheists reject the idea that "all gods are one god." "Hard" polytheists do not necessarily consider the gods of all cultures as being equally real, a theological position formally known as integrational polytheism or omnism.
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His contributions to the study of polytheism include the identification of three interdependent aspects in all major debates on the subject since the Renaissance: artistic genius as a compensation for the disenchantment of nature, the idea of polytheism as closer to nature than monotheism, and polytheism as an alternative to the claim of absolute truth.
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The Himyarite kings radically opposed polytheism in favor of Judaism, beginning officially in 380.Robin, Christian Julien, "Arabia and Ethiopia", in The last trace of polytheism in south Arabia, an inscription commemorating a construction project with a polytheistic invocation, and another, mentioning the temple of Ta’lab, all date from just after 380 (the former dating to the rule of the king Dhara’amar Ayman, and the latter dating to the year 401–402). The rejection of polytheism from the public sphere did not mean the extinction of it altogether, as polytheism likely continued in the private sphere.
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Theravada Buddhism has coexisted peacefully since its introduction to the country with the local polytheism.
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Chronicles,de Benoist, Alain (April 1996). "Monotheism vs. Polytheism". Chronicles, pp. 20–23; (July 2003).
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Aztec priests had a panentheistic view of religion but the popular Aztec religion maintained polytheism. Priests saw the different gods as aspects of the singular and transcendent unity of Teotl but the masses were allowed to practice polytheism without understanding the true, unified nature of their Aztec gods.
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"In Praise of Polytheism" has provoked discussion and controversy in Germany. An early critic was Jacob Taubes, who associated its views with far-right politics. Over the years, several humanities scholars and theologians have responded to the essay by questioning its statements about polytheism, the individual and pluralism.
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The native religions of Europe were polytheistic but not homogenous – however, they were similar insofar as they were predominantly Indo-European in origin. Roman religion was similar to but not the same as Hellenic religion – likewise for indigenous Germanic polytheism, Celtic polytheism and Slavic polytheism. Before this time many Europeans from the north, especially Scandinavians, remained polytheistic, though southern Europe was predominantly Christian from the 5th century onwards. Western culture is most strongly influenced by the Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman cultures.
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In Greek polytheism, Tantalus was condemned to Tartarus for eternity for the human sacrifice of his son Pelops.
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I consider that in the first commandment where atheism and polytheism and allotheism are forbidden directly and principally.
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Retrieved on 2013-07-28. however, Hellenism's leaders place that figure at 100,000 followers.Hellenic Religion today: Polytheism in modern Greece.
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Hiroaki Inami, a blogger and professor of philosophy at the University of Tokyo, uses the term "post-monotheism" to describe the religious viewpoints of the writers D. H. Lawrence and Shinobu Orikuchi. Inami interprets Lawrence’s The Escaped Cock (1929) and Orikuchi’s The Book of the Dead (1997) as presenting "a vision and a possibility of a new universal religion, which is, in a sense, a fusion of polytheism and monotheism. But from the viewpoint of a theory of discrete difference, their new religions are post-polytheism and post-monotheism and can be called new polytheism (or super-polytheism)."Inami, Hiroaki; Frontier and Resurrections: D. H. Lawrence’s The Escaped Cock and Shinobu Orikuchi’s The Book of the Dead; Sunday, July 10, 2005.
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Defining paganism is problematic. Understanding the context of its associated terminology is important. Early Christians referred to the diverse array of cults around them as a single group for reasons of convenience and rhetoric. While paganism generally implies polytheism, the primary distinction between classical pagans and Christians was not one of monotheism versus polytheism.
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Otto's ontological approach to polytheism had an impact on a number of scholars and influenced the structuralist study of ancient religions.
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The inhabitants, also, of Ur had fallen into polytheism, or, if we may so speak, allotheism, the worship of other gods.
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A proponent of philosophical hermeneutics and skepticism, Marquards work focuses on aspects of human fallibility, contingency and finitude. He rejected idealist, rationalist and universalist conceptions and defended philosophical particularism and pluralism. His essay "In Praise of Polytheism" provoked discussion and controversy in Germany. In it, he promotes a "disenchanted return of polytheism" as a political theology.
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It argues that the separation of powers has it origin in polytheism, and proposes a political theology based on "enlightened polymythical thinking".
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In this essay, Hume offers a pioneering naturalist account of the causes, effects, and historical development of religious belief. Hume argues that a crude polytheism was the earliest religion of mankind and locates the origins of religion in emotion, particularly hope, fear, and the desire to control the future. He further argues that monotheism arises from competition between religions, as believers seek to distinguish their deities as superior to all rivals, magnifying those deities until they possess all perfections. Though an enlightened monotheism is more rationally defensible than a superstitious polytheism, in practice polytheism has many advantages.
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Bulul statues serve as avatars of rice deities in the Anitist beliefs of the Ifugao in the Philippines. The deities of polytheism are often portrayed as complex personages of greater or lesser status, with individual skills, needs, desires and histories; in many ways similar to humans (anthropomorphic) in their personality traits, but with additional individual powers, abilities, knowledge or perceptions. Polytheism cannot be cleanly separated from the animist beliefs prevalent in most folk religions. The gods of polytheism are in many cases the highest order of a continuum of supernatural beings or spirits, which may include ancestors, demons, wights and others.
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Richard Faber, a sociologist working in the tradition of the Frankfurt School, critiqued "In Praise of Polytheism" in 2007. He compared it to Blumenberg's book Work on Myth (1979) and wrote that Marquard, by openly embracing polytheism as political pluralism, "explicates what Blumenberg only implies". Taubes and Faber rejected the idea that polytheism is the seed to the individual and the separation of powers. Taubes pointed to the neo-Kantian philosopher Hermann Cohen, who argued that the ego or soul originated with a development away from the "mythico-tragic view", something that can be seen in Ezekiel 18.
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In the context of political theology, the philosopher Odo Marquard has argued that the separation of powers is a "disenchanted return of polytheism". His 1979 essay on the subject, "In Praise of Polytheism", provoked controversy among German scholars. Contrary to Marquard, the philosopher Jacob Taubes—who defended a secularized version of apocalyptic eschatology—argued that the secularized, political version of paganism is totalitarianism.
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The Anglo-Saxons in England had also started to convert from Anglo-Saxon polytheism after the arrival of Christian missionaries around the year 600.
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In Romano-British culture and Germanic polytheism, the Alaisiagae (possibly "dispatching terrors" or "all-victorious") were a pair of Celtic and Germanic goddesses deifying victory.
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Halima Sadia, Muhammad's wet nurse, belonged to this tribe. They migrated on the order of Prophet Muhammad to Subcontinent, Africa and Europe to fight against Polytheism.
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1, p. 277; Parker, Polytheism and Society at Athens, p. 409. The festival of Prometheus was the Prometheia. The wreaths worn symbolised the chains of Prometheus.
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None of these nations was considered to be adherents to polytheism, otherwise, they would have been treated in the same way as the Idolaters of Arabia.
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Some of the poems notably lament the historical replacement of European Paganism by Christianity, creating ambiguity about the exact view of the Hymns on Christianity and polytheism.
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Under Theodosius I (r. 379–395), Christianity became the Empire's official state religion and others such as Roman polytheism were proscribed. And finally, under the reign of Heraclius (r.
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Celtic mythology is the mythology of Celtic polytheism, the religion of the Iron Age Celts.Cunliffe, Barry, (1997) The Ancient Celts. Oxford, Oxford University Press , pp. 183 (religion), 202, 204–8.
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In polytheism, that which is loved by the gods (τὸ θεοφιλές) was identified as the virtuous or pious. Socrates famously asked whether this identification is a tautology (see Euthyphro dilemma).
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New York: NYU Press, 2001. . Traditional Chinese Taoist schools accept polytheism, but there are differences in the composition of their pantheon.Segal, Robert Alan. The Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion.
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But we should not forget that the world was yet too young to have arrived at the rigid and sharply-defined systems of polytheism or allotheism to which we are accustomed.
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He thought it was crucial to recognise human finitude, promoted philosophical scepticism and pluralism, and opposed the absolutism found in German idealism. He believed a lack of meaning in the modern world had resulted in cultural and intellectual decay, and that the solution was to rediscover systems of meaning from the ancient world, notably polytheism. His intellectual combination of modernity and polytheism was preceded by the sociologist Max Weber, who in the 1910s had written that life in the modern world, with its different choices and ultimate subordination to fate, could be understood as a form of disenchanted polytheism. Weber wrote that this situation made ancient Greece a suitable place to look for models for a modern way of life.
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From a Christian perspective, the Roman Catholic theologian Alois Halbmayr wrote his 1998 doctoral dissertation as a response to Marquard's writings about polytheism and monotheism. Halbmayr argued that the separation of powers that Marquard requests can be found in the Christian concept of the Trinity, and that Marquard engages in wishful thinking when he presents polytheism as a guarantee for freedom. With that in mind, Halbmayr called for resumed critical discussions about hope and ethics within the theology and philosophy of history. The Lutheran theologian Klaus Koch wrote that "In Praise of Polytheism" is written in a "noble-philosophical diction" with the effect that "you don't know to what extent the matter is meant as serious", or if Marquard had been inebriated when he conceived it.
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He also forbade the tradition of grave pilgrimages, selametan, and doing a talqin for a body. He said that setbacks suffered by Muslims were caused by their weak beliefs and egoism, and that to fix these problems, Muslims should base their lives on the Quran and Hadiths. In his work Risalah Tawhid dan Sjirik (Treatise of Monotheism and Polytheism) he stated that another cause of Muslims' weakness was interference in Islamic thought and practices from polytheism.
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In Celtic polytheism, divination was performed by the priestly caste, either the druids or the vates. This is reflected in the role of "seers" in Dark Age Wales (dryw) and Ireland (fáith).
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Religious symbols in clock- wise order: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Baháʼí Faith, Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Slavic neopaganism, Celtic polytheism, Heathenism (German paganism), Semitic neopaganism, Wicca, Kemetism (Egyptian paganism), Hellenism, Italo-Roman neopaganism.
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She is a practising witch and her lyrics typically address pagan and mythological themes. She has publicly spoken about her belief in polytheism, and her lyrics have been used in Wiccan ritual.
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Together with polytheism and homicide, infanticide is regarded as a grave sin (see and ). Infanticide is also implicitly denounced in the story of Pharaoh's slaughter of the male children of Israelites (see ; ; ; ; ; ).
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"In Praise of Polytheism" has been at the centre of discussion and controversy in Germany. According to Burkhard Gladigow, the opposition it faced became intense because Marquard specifically proposed polytheism as a political solution. Gladigow also wrote that the strong reaction to the subject resulted from a eurocentric and academic perspective, because among the world's population, only a minority adheres to nominally monotheistic religions. Within even those religions, monotheism is only one of several elements that inform the religious practice.
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Syncretism, for example, plays a much wider role in non-monotheistic (and particularly, non-scriptural) religion. The prevailing governing norm within polytheism is often orthopraxy ('right practice') rather than the "right belief" of orthodoxy.
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Smaller bodied wasps pass through age polytheism and are kept in the nest longer because they seem to have a higher social position in the colony, while the larger bodied wasps are viewed as subordinates.
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The Roman polytheism also known as Religio Romana (Roman religion) in Latin or the Roman Way to the Gods (in Italian 'Via romana agli Déi') is alive in small communities and loosely related organizations, mainly in Italy.
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David Hume. David Hume (1711-1776) argues that monotheism is less pluralistic and thus less tolerant than polytheism, because monotheism stipulates that people pigeonhole their beliefs into one tenet. "David Hume argued that unlike monotheism, polytheism is pluralistic in nature, unbound by doctrine, and therefore far more tolerant than monotheism, which tends to force people to believe in one faith." In the same vein, Auguste Comte argues, "Monotheism is irreconcilable with the existence in our nature of the instincts of benevolence" because it compels followers to devote themselves to a single Creator.
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The Akilam-based theology is not a constant one since it deals with the whole events right from the creation to the end. It undergoes different theologies from polytheism to monotheism and monism, though monism is the final and overall focus point for the present yuga. It is viewed closely to the mythical events that take place at various ages and so it changes often. Monism in the beginning (creation), polytheism till the end of Dvapara Yuga, then some sort of henotheism till the advent of Vaikundar; and then on monism again.
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Until about the fourth century, almost all inhabitants of Arabia practiced polytheistic religions. Although significant Jewish and Christian minorities developed, polytheism remained the dominant belief system in pre- Islamic Arabia. The contemporary sources of information regarding the pre- Islamic Arabian religion and pantheon include a small number of inscriptions and carvings, pre-Islamic poetry, external sources such as Jewish and Greek accounts, as well as the Muslim tradition, such as the Qur'an and Islamic writings. Nevertheless, information is limited. One early attestation of Arabian polytheism was in Esarhaddon’s Annals, mentioning Atarsamain, Nukhay, Ruldaiu, and Atarquruma.
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Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. Muslim scholars differ as to whether they refer to the believing women of this world or a separate creation, with the majority opting for the latter. Houris are analogous to nymphs in Greek polytheism.
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He has stressed the advantages of polytheism, harmony with the laws of nature, the ability to find holiness in many places, the view of humans as part of nature, and how the runes can teach people about nondualism.Sonne Hagal. Funprox.
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Ezourvedam is a French text in the form of a dialogue between two Vedic sages, one monotheist and one polytheist, they conclude the monotheism of 'pristine Hinduism' points to Christian truth and Hinduism is monotheism masquerading as polytheism concealing monotheism.
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He considers that it was necessary for polytheism to decline in line with human progress. The more humans progress in their understanding, the more beneficial the effects of theism.Constant. Polythéisme romain, II, p.312 Belief in a god has itself evolved.
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Rising from a roundel, the sculpture represents a priestess who intercedes with the sun goddess on behalf of the donor, Rathadum Religion in pre-Islamic Arabia included polytheism, Christianity, Judaism, and Iranian religions. Arabian polytheism, the dominant form of religion in pre-Islamic Arabia, was based on veneration of deities and spirits. Worship was directed to various gods and goddesses, including Hubal and the goddesses al-Lāt, Al-‘Uzzá and Manāt, at local shrines and temples such as the Kaaba in Mecca. Deities were venerated and invoked through a variety of rituals, including pilgrimages and divination, as well as ritual sacrifice.
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Besides the traditional worship of these entities, Confucianism, Taoism and formal thinkers in general give theological interpretations affirming a monistic essence of divinity. "Polytheism" and "monotheism" are categories derived from Western religion and do not fit Chinese religion, which has never conceived the two things as opposites. Since all gods are considered manifestations of qì, the "power" or pneuma of Heaven, some scholars have employed the term "polypneumatism" or "(poly)pneumatolatry", first coined by Walter Medhurst (1796–1857), to describe the practice of Chinese polytheism. In the theology of the classic texts and Confucianism, "Heaven is the lord of the hundreds of deities".
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IV, coll. 1221 e 1367. He (probably) did not sign the condemnation of Arius.Edward Gibbons "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", Chapter 21, (1776–88)Jonathan Kirsch, "God Against the Gods: The History of the War Between Monotheism and Polytheism", 2004.
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The Mother Goddess is a widely recognized archetype in psychoanalysis,Erich Neumann The Great Mother and worship of mother earth and sky goddesses is known from numerous religious traditions of historical polytheism, especially in classical civilizations, when temples were built to many Goddesses.
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In classical Celtic polytheism, Annea Clivana was the name given to a goddess or female spirit worshipped in Canale in Veneto in the territory of the Cenomani Celts in Italy.L'Arbre Celtique She was identified with the Roman goddess JunoJ. A. MacCulloch (1911). ‘Chapter III.
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Various Neopagan movements are active in Ireland, especially Wicca, Neo-druidry and Celtic Polytheism. Ireland is also a significant point of reference for various kinds of Celtic and other neo-pagan spirituality and religious practice around the world, such as the Fellowship of Isis.
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Another precursor was the Christian theologian Erik Peterson, who had discussed the possibility of polytheism as a political theology in his essay "Monotheism as a Political Problem" (1935). Marquard adopted Friedrich Nietzsche's view that the end of religious monotheism marked the beginning of modernity.
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EL Wheeler, Stratagem and the Vocabulary of Military Trickery, BRILL, 1988, . He is also known as the friendliest to man, cunning,R Parker, Polytheism and Society at Athens, Oxford University Press, 2007, . treacherous,Athenaeus, The learned banqueters, Harvard University Press, 2008. and a schemer.
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According to Jewish, Christian and Islamic tradition, monotheism was the original religion of humanity; this original religion is sometimes referred to as "the Adamic religion", or, in the terms of Andrew Lang, the "Urreligion". Scholars of religion largely abandoned that view in the 19th century in favour of an evolutionary progression from animism via polytheism to monotheism, but by 1974 this theory was less widely held, and a modified view similar to Lang's became more prominent. Austrian anthropologist Wilhelm Schmidt had postulated an Urmonotheismus, "original" or "primitive monotheism" in the 1910s. It was objected that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam had grown up in opposition to polytheism as had Greek philosophical monotheism.
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The term shirk—"polytheism" in conventional Islamic theology—has a wider use in Ibadi doctrine, where it is used to describe all forms of religious error beyond polytheism alone. Classical Ibadi theologians have stated that only the will go to paradise, and that all sinning Ibadis as well as all non-Ibadis will burn in hell forever. Ibadis traditionally reject Sunni beliefs that all Muslims in hell will eventually enter paradise, and hold that hell is eternal and inescapable for all humans who were not righteous Ibadis in life. The notions of walaya "affiliation" and bara'a "disassociation" are central to the theology of Ibadi relations with non-Ibadi people.
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In the historical novel genre, Vidal recreated the imperial world of Julian the Apostate (r. AD 361–63) in Julian (1964). Julian was the Roman emperor who used religious tolerance to re- establish pagan polytheism to counter the political subversion of Christian monotheism.Hornblower, Simon & Spawforth, Editors.
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Kemetic Orthodoxy is a denomination of Kemetism, a reform reconstruction of Egyptian polytheism for modern followers. It claims to derive a spiritual lineage from the Ancient Egyptian religion. There are organizations of Slavic Native Faith (Rodnovery) which characterize the religion as Orthodoxy, and by other terms.
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Aeschylus, Suppliants frg. 202, as cited by Parker, Polytheism and Society at Athens, p. 142. There is a pattern of resemblances between Hephaistos and Prometheus. Although the classical tradition is that Hephaistos split Zeus's head to allow Athene's birth, that story has also been told of Prometheus.
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Eratosthenes called it a metropolis. It was an important cult centre as well. At first the religion was South Arabian polytheism, distinguished by the worship of the Babylonian moon god Sin. By the sixth century the monotheistic cult of Raḥmān was followed in the local temple.
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In folk religion and folklore, trees are often said to be the homes of tree spirits. Germanic mythology as well as Celtic polytheism both appear to have involved cultic practice in sacred groves, especially grove of oak.Taylor, John W. (1979). Tree Worship, in Mankind Quarterly, Sept.
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Concepts about deity are diverse among UUs. Some have no belief in any gods (atheism); others believe in many gods (polytheism). Some believe the question of the existence of any god is most likely unascertainable or unknowable (agnosticism). Some believe God is a metaphor for a transcendent reality.
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Some varieties of Animism, totemism, religions of indigenous peoples, paganism and many polytheism hold the belief that animals are spiritual beings, people practicing these belief systems have great respect towards the right to life of animals.Harvey, G. (2006). Animism: respecting the living world. New York: Columbia University Press.
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During the Iron Age, Celtic polytheism was the predominant religion in the area now known as England. Neo- Druidism grew out of the Celtic revival in 18th century Romanticism. A 2012 Druid analysis estimates that there are roughly 11,000 Druids in Britain.UK 2011 Census publishes figures for Druids , druidry.
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No consensus has been reached by academics on the origins of monotheism in ancient Israel, but "Yahweh clearly came out of the world of the gods of the Ancient Near East." The worship of multiple gods (polytheism) and the concept of God having multiple persons (as in the doctrine of Trinity) are equally unimaginable in Judaism. The idea of God as a duality or trinity is heretical in Judaism – it is considered akin to polytheism. Since, according to the mystical conception, all of existence emanates from God, whose ultimate existence is not dependent on anything else, some Jewish sages perceived God as interpenetrating the universe, which itself has been thought to be a manifestation of God's existence.
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Another active organization based in Greece, the (, ) religious community was founded in 2008. Labrys has focused primarily on the religious aspects of Hellenism or Hellenic polytheism, avoiding anti-Christian rhetoric and politics, establishing weekly public rituals and engaging in other aspects of practical promotion of polytheism like theater and music. Labrys has also promoted among Hellenes worldwide the need to actively practice household worship and the idea that family and community should be the starting points of religious practice. The community has been organizing since 2008 the largest festival in Athens and also actively participates and supports the religious aspects of the oldest Hellenic festival in Greece, Prometheia which is held every year on Mount Olympus.
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Watt, The Cambridge History of Islam (1977), p. 36 According to Ibn Saad, opposition in Mecca started when Muhammad delivered verses that condemned idol worship and the polytheism practiced by the Meccan forefathers.F.E. Peters (1994), p. 169 However, the Quranic exegesis maintains that it began as Muhammad started public preaching.
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He has been accused by his opponents of plotting to assassinate Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Al-Hassan claims that Shia Muslims are being "deceived" by the Marja'. He claims that imitating a scholar is not obligatory for Muslims, and it is considered Shirk (polytheism) to blindly follow a scholar.
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Neer and Kurke, p. 540; "Altar of the Twelve Gods sees the light", 2/17/2011. ekathimerini.com. Retrieved on 2011-02-21. Once the Altar was exposed, archaeologists and a group promoting the revival of ancient Greek polytheism filed legal injunctions to prevent replacement of the tracks of the Athens- Piraeus Railway.
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The Gathas, hymns of Zoroaster's Avesta, brought monotheistic ideas to Persia, while through the Yashts and Yasna, mentions are made to Polytheism and earlier creeds. The Vedas and the Avesta have both served researchers as important resources in discovering early Aryan beliefs and ideas.Jahangir Oshidri (1997), Mazdisna encyclopedia , Markaz Publishers , 1st publish..
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IV, coll. 1221 e 1367.Edward Gibbons "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", Chapter 21, (1776–88)Jonathan Kirsch, "God Against the Gods: The History of the War Between Monotheism and Polytheism", 2004.Charles Freeman, The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason, 2002.
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For example, over-lapping caste system, age-depended polytheism. Moreover, this subfamily gut composed with bacterial community, rather than flagellates. These fungus growers might be encoded with natural antibiotics because colony does not shows infections so far. There are 14 genera which extended to 350 plus species so far in the subfamily.
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However, while the Devas may be referred to as gods, they are not immortal, omniscient, nor omnipotent, and they do not act as creators or judges at death, so they are notably very distinct from the monotheistic Western concept of God, although they are very similar to the gods of most European polytheism.
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Wicca is a duotheistic faith created by Gerald Gardner that allows for polytheism. Wiccans specifically worship the Lord and Lady of the Isles (their names are oathbound). It is an orthopraxic mystery religion that requires initiation to the priesthood in order to consider oneself Wiccan. Wicca emphasizes duality and the cycle of nature.
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Glassé, The New Encyclopedia of Islam, p. 185 The claim draws on historical secular scholarship about the origins of the Islamic view of Allah and the polytheism of pre-Islamic Arabia, which date back to the nineteenth century. These concern the evolution and etymology of "Allah" and the mythological identity of Hubal.
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The Caribs, indigenous people of Puerto Rico, were believed to have practiced polytheism. As the Spanish began to colonise the Caribbean area, they wanted to convert the natives to Catholicism.Menhinick, Kevin, "The Caribs in Dominica" The Caribs destroyed a church of Franciscans in Aguada, and killed five of its members, in 1579.
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Ancient Semitic religion encompasses the polytheistic religions of the Semitic peoples from the ancient Near East and Northeast Africa. Since the term Semitic itself represents a rough category when referring to cultures, as opposed to languages, the definitive bounds of the term "ancient Semitic religion" are only approximate. Semitic traditions and their pantheons fall into regional categories: Canaanite religions of the Levant, the Sumerian tradition–inspired Assyro-Babylonian religion of Mesopotamia, the ancient Hebrew religion of the Israelites, and Arabian polytheism. Semitic polytheism possibly transitioned into Abrahamic monotheism by way of the god El, whose name "El", or elah אלה is a word for "god" in Hebrew, cognate to Arabic ʼilāh إله, and its definitive pronoun form الله Allāh, "(The) God".
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Candidus was a "candid spirit" that accompanied the healing god Borvo in Lusitanian and Celtic polytheism. This association is demonstrated in Nièvre at Entrains-sur-Nohain. He has been described as "a minor deity in Apollo’s train who calls to mind Apollo Virotutis ‘truth’ and Apollo's role as revealer of the truth through oracles".
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The Caribs are believed to have practiced polytheism. As the Spanish began to colonise the Caribbean area, they wanted to convert the natives to Catholicism.Menhinick, Kevin, "The Caribs in Dominica" , Copyright © Delphis Ltd. 1997–2011. The Caribs destroyed a church of Franciscans in Aguada, Puerto Rico and killed five of its members, in 1579.
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So this would be an example of disproof by begging the question. Finally, Hume provides many possible "unintended consequences" of the argument; for instance, given that objects such as watches are often the result of the labor of groups of individuals, the reasoning employed by the teleological argument would seem to lend support to polytheism.
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The Byzantine philosopher Gemistus Pletho (c. 1355/1360 – 1452/1454) secretly advocated polytheism in his book Nomoi, which he only circulated among close friends. After his death it came into the hands of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Gennadius II, who eventually burned it, although Gennadius' summary of its content survives in a letter.
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Dersniku (near Klina) was one of these major cities mentioned in the time of the Roman ruling in Peja District. The accessibility to the Roman culture consequently increased the influence of the new religion in the region. Afterwards the Albanian predecessors—the Illyrians—abandoned polytheism and embraced monotheistic religions, more specifically Christianity.Shetuni, Spiro J (2011).
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Vestal Virgin priestess of Ancient Rome. Roman soldiers murdering druids and burning their groves on Anglesey, as described by Tacitus. In historical polytheism, a priest administers the sacrifice to a deity, often in highly elaborate ritual. In the Ancient Near East, the priesthood also acted on behalf of the deities in managing their property.
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At Mecca, Abu Bakr presided at the Hajj ceremony, and Ali read the proclamation on behalf of Muhammad. The main points of the proclamation were: #Henceforward the non-Muslims were not to be allowed to visit the Kaaba or perform the pilgrimage. #No one should circumambulate the Kaaba naked. #Polytheism was not to be tolerated.
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Theistic vs non-theistic is a common way of sorting the different types of religions.see the whole structure of 'Yandell, 2002.' There are also several philosophical positions with regard to the existence of God that one might take including various forms of theism (such as monotheism and polytheism), agnosticism and different forms of atheism.
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The term "mazoku" was used to describe the asura and yaksha in Hindu mythology, as well as Zoroastrianism's daeva. It is a general term for devils, demons and evil beings. In Japanese polytheism, it is an antonym of 神族 (shinzoku), "the tribe of gods". A maō is a king or ruler over mazoku.
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For instance, in Bible translations, Satan is a maō. In polytheism, the counterpart of maō is 神王 (shin'ō), "the king of gods". The Japanese feudal lord Oda Nobunaga also called himself a maō in a letter to Takeda Shingen, signing it with 第六天魔王 ("the demon king of the sixth sky").
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During the Middle Ages of Indian history, many faiths and sects sprang up in religious and social spheres of Hindu society. Their practitioners slowly migrated away from the teachings of the Vedas attaching greater significance to their founders and their preachings. From then onwards polytheism commenced. Great differences developed among the different sects and divided and weakened Hindu society.
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He reports on several old myths of ancient antisemitism (including that of the donkey's head in the Holy of Holies), but the key to his view that Jews "regard the rest of mankind with all the hatred of enemies" is his analysis of the extreme differences between monotheistic Judaism and the polytheism common throughout the Roman world.
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Lyngvild is homosexual and married his husband Morten in 2007. The couple live in their 400 square meter "viking castle" Ravnsborg in southwestern Funen. Lyngvild adheres to Scandinavian polytheism, asatro, and says that the faith is an important part of his life. He designed and built the religious building Manheim close to his home in 2016.
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Ibn al-Azraq led many of them to Ahvaz, denouncing the townsmen as "polytheists". Ibn Ibāḍ remained in Basra. Ibn Ibāḍ wrote a defence of those Kharijites who stayed behind. By defending the Basrans against the charge of polytheism and accusing them of no more than "ingratitude", he justified the decision of true Muslims to live among them.
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According to Strabo, who traveled to the region in the 1st century BC, the local tribes practiced polytheism. Among the worshiped deities, Strabo names the gods of the sun, the sky, and above all, the moon, and equates them to the Greek gods Helios, Zeus, and Selene respectively.Strabo. Geography. (translated into Russian by G.Stratanovsky). St. Petersburg: 1964. Vol.
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The combined narrative is a critique of the Mesopotamian theology of creation: Genesis affirms monotheism and denies polytheism. Robert Alter described the combined narrative as "compelling in its archetypal character, its adaptation of myth to monotheistic ends". In recent centuries, some believers have used this narrative as evidence of literal creationism, leading them to subsequently deny evolution.
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Augustine, Divers. Quaest. 83. Alternate terms in Christian texts for the same group were hellene, gentile, and heathen. Ritual sacrifice was an integral part of ancient Graeco-Roman religion and was regarded as an indication of whether a person was pagan or Christian. Paganism was originally a pejorative and derogatory term for polytheism, implying its inferiority.
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The Gauls mixed with Roman settlers and eventually adopted Roman culture and Roman speech (Latin, from which the French language evolved). The Roman polytheism merged with the Gallic paganism into the same syncretism. From the 250s to the 280s AD, Roman Gaul suffered a serious crisis with its fortified borders being attacked on several occasions by barbarians.Carpentier et al.
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This does not mean though that the universe is God, or that a creature (like a tree or an animal) is God, because those would be respectively pantheism, which is a heresy in traditional Islam, and the worst heresy in Islam, shirk (polytheism). God is separated by His creation but His creation can not survive without Him.
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In the P. occidentalis species, a social dominance hierarchy exists. The queens are at the top and produce the brood and the workers right below them build the nests. Smaller wasps are higher up in social hierarchy. These smaller wasps seem to have more social interaction, which influences a division of labor and of age polytheism.
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Some historians wanted to prove the beauty of ancient polytheism and even started creating new aspects of Lithuanian mythology. One of the most famous of these was Theodor Narbutt who edited Ancient Greek myths and created new Lithuanian ones.Barr (2010), p. 179. In the beginning of the 20th century, ancient pagan traditions were still continued in folklore and customs.
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The extraordinary defeat of Sennacherib which McNeill suggests, by disease which was as yet not understood, would have proven YHWH superior to the gods of the most powerful nation then known to the Jews, Assyria. McNeill concludes that if Sennacherib had taken the city, the Jews may have adopted polytheism, and consequently, the Abrahamic religions would not exist.
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"A Goddess Arrives". Gnosis Fall 1988: 20–29. There are exceptions to polytheism in Paganism, as seen for instance in the form of Ukrainian Paganism promoted by Lev Sylenko, which is devoted to a monotheistic veneration of the god Dazhbog. As noted above, Pagans with naturalistic worldviews may not believe in or work with deities at all.
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When parents believed their child to be nereid-struck, they would pray to Saint Artemidos."Heathen Artemis yielded her functions to her own genitive case transformed into Saint Artemidos", as Terrot Reaveley Glover phrased it in discussing the "practical polytheism in the worship of the saints", in Progress in Religion to the Christian Era 1922:107.
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Lesiv recorded one RUNVira member who related that "we cannot believe in various forest, field and water spirits today. Yes, our ancestors believed in these things but we should not any longer". For RUNVira members, polytheism is regarded as backward. Some polytheist Rodnovers have regarded the approach adopted by Sylenko's followers as an inauthentic approach to the religion.
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"Sit with the Guru" was a song recorded and released by Strawberry Alarm Clock in 1968. It was included on the band's second album, Wake Up...It's Tomorrow. The song is about polytheism. The band re-recorded a much longer version of this song for their 2012 studio album Wake Up Where You Are, including more significant sitar.
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Formerly, Keshab had rejected idolatry, but under the influence of Ramakrishna he accepted Hindu polytheism and established the "New Dispensation" (Nava Vidhan) religious movement, based on Ramakrishna's principles—"Worship of God as Mother", "All religions as true" and "Assimilation of Hindu polytheism into Brahmoism". Keshab also publicised Ramakrishna's teachings in the journals of New Dispensation over a period of several years, which was instrumental in bringing Ramakrishna to the attention of a wider audience, especially the Bhadralok (English-educated classes of Bengal) and the Europeans residing in India. Following Keshab, other Brahmos such as Vijaykrishna Goswami started to admire Ramakrishna, propagate his ideals and reorient their socio-religious outlook. Many prominent people of Kolkata—Pratap Chandra Mazumdar, Shivanath Shastri and Trailokyanath Sanyal—began visiting him during this time (1871–1885).
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While the most well-known deity of the sea is the god Manannán, and his father Lir mostly considered as god of the ocean. Nodens is associated with healing, the sea, hunting and dogs. In Lusitanian and Celtic polytheism, Borvo (also Bormo, Bormanus, Bormanicus, Borbanus, Boruoboendua, Vabusoa, Labbonus or Borus) was a healing deity associated with bubbling spring water. Digitized at sacred-texts.com.
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There were 10 temples in Shipai, of which only Yu Hsu Palace and Tin Hau Temple/Niang Ma Temple() survive the political commotions. Worshiping in temples, once very popular among villagers, is now giving way to domestic worshiping. Despite, Niang Ma Temple attracts worshippers every day from local villagers to exotic renters, which suggests a breakthrough of polytheism beyond region.
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In plural, it designates a host of evil spirits; demons. Also applied to evil humans and evil jinn. ; (الشيعة) :A branch of Islam who believe in Imam Ali and his sons (Hassan and Hussayn) as custodians of Islam by the will of Mohammed. ;Shirk (شرك) : idolatry; polytheism; the sin of believing in any divinity except God and of associating other gods with God.
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The "Monotheism vs. Polytheism" debate featuring Ron Sparks and Sean Cullen won the 2010 Canadian Comedy Award for Best Program or Clip. The "William Shatner is Canada's Greatest Actor" debate featuring Cullen and Eric Peterson also won the same award, in 2015. That episode is also one of the only double length debates (just one debate for the entire episode).
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The diptych form, at least originally, served as a pair of covers for wax writing tablets. The work as a whole has been interpreted as a study in nostalgia. Just as the majority of the Roman world had rejected polytheism in favor of Christianity, so too it left behind the techniques of proportion and perspective that characterised the art of its forebears.Kitzinger, 34.
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The term Urmonotheismus (German for "primeval monotheism") or primitive monotheism expresses the hypothesis of a monotheistic Urreligion, from which non-monotheistic religions degenerated. This evolutionary view of religious development is diametrically opposed to another evolutionary view of religion: the hypothesis that religion progressed from simple forms to complex: first pre-animism, then animism, totemism, polytheism and finally monotheism (see Anthropology of religion).
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Artapanus’ theology is an issue of extreme contention among the scholarly community. Some scholars take him to be a polytheistic Jew. John Barclay, for example, sees Artapanus’ acceptance of the Egyptian animal cults and his depiction of Moses as divine as signs of his polytheism. Others observe that his fascination with the miraculous powers of Moses are reminiscent of Hellenistic paganism.
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During the Iron Age, Celtic polytheism was the predominant religion in the area now known as England. Neo-Druidism grew out of the Celtic revival in 18th-century Romanticism. The 2011 census states there are 4,189 Druids in England and Wales. A 2012 analysis by the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids estimates that there are between 6,000 and 11,000 Druids in Britain.
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By having Herakles boldly deny the existence of the gods as the Greeks know them, Euripides may be offering his own atheistic beliefs. During his time, the religion of polytheism is still widely accepted though there is an intellectual strain questioning the validity and reliability of everything. By penning this play, Euripides joins this intellectual debate and casts doubt on the divine.
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Inscription to Sirona, found in Bordeaux (France) In Celtic polytheism, Sirona was a goddess worshipped predominantly in East Central Gaul and along the Danubian limes. A healing deity, she was associated with healing springs; her attributes were snakes and eggs. She was sometimes depicted with Apollo Grannus or Apollo Borvo. She was particularly worshipped by the Treveri in the Moselle Valley.
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Animist religions are common among oral societies, many of which still exist in the 21st century. Typically, natural forces and shaman spiritual guides feature in these religions, rather than fully-fledged personal divinities with established personalities. It is in polytheism that such deities are found. Animist religions often, but not always, attribute gender to spirits considered to permeate the world and its events.
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He wrote more than 15 books, famously his commentary Tafsir al-Qummi. He is said to have been one of the most important Imami Quran commentators. His other works include Akhbār Al-Qurʾan, Nawadir al-Qurʾan, al-Nasikh wa al-Mansukh (Abrogator and Abrogated books), al-Sharā'i' (Laws or Revealed religions), and al-Tawhid wa al-Shirk (Monotheism and Polytheism).
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Sered used this term in a way that would encompass polytheism, rather than exclude much of it, as she intended to capture both polytheistic systems and nontheistic systems that assert the influence of "spirits or ancestors". This use of the term, however, does not accord with the historical misuse of deism as a concept to describe an absent creator god.
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Church service, Yerevan. The Etchmiadzin Cathedral, the mother church of the Armenian Apostolic Church, was established in 301 AD. Ancient Tatev Monastery. Before Christianity, Armenians adhered to Armenian Indo-European native religion: a type of indigenous polytheism that pre-dated the Urartu period but which subsequently adopted several Greco-Roman and Iranian religious characteristics.The Cambridge Ancient History. vol. 12, p. 486.
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Roman Freund, Karaites and Dejudaization (Acta Universitas Stockholmiensis. 1991. – №30). In the mid 1930s, he began to create a theory describing the Altai-Turkic origin of the Karaim and the pagan roots of Karaite religious teaching (worship of sacred oaks, polytheism, led by the god Tengri, the Sacrifice). Shapshal's doctrine is still a topic of critical research and public debate.
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During the Iron Age, Celtic polytheism was the predominant religion in the area now known as England. Neo-Druidism grew out of the Celtic revival in 18th century Romanticism. Its first organised group was the Ancient Order of Druids, founded in London in 1781 along Masonic lines as a mutual benefit society and still extant today. It is not a neo-Pagan group.
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After Constantine made Christianity acceptable, polytheism in the Late antique Roman empire declined, and there are two views on why. According to the Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity (OHLA), scholars of Antiquity fall into two categories, holding either the "catastrophic" view, or the "long and slow" view of polytheism's decline and end.The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity. United Kingdom, Oxford University Press, 2015.
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Prohibited techniques often utilize shirk, which is found in practices that prepare amulets or talismans. This is prohibited because shirk is the sin of practicing idolatry or polytheism i.e. the deification or worship of anyone or anything besides the singular God. Many times Qur'anic verses are added throughout the recitation when using these objects in order to 'mask' their shirk.
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The core Adi-Dharma doctrinal beliefs differing from Brahmanical Hinduism include: #There is only One "Supreme Spirit", Author and Preserver of Existence. (... Beyond description, immanent, transcendent, eternal, formless, infinite, powerful, radiant, loving, light in the darkness, ruling principle of existence .... Polytheism is denounced. Idolatry i.e. worship of images is opposed.) #There is no salvation and no way to achieve it.
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The Obsequies of an Egyptian Cat, by John Reinhard Weguelin (1886). Ancient Egyptian religion was characterized by polytheism, the belief in multiple deities. Prior to the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, there were a tremendous number of these deities, each representative of a different element of the natural world. After the great unification, a more limited list of deities developed.
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Different Hindu sects have a variety of beliefs about the nature and identity of god, believing variously in monotheism, polytheism, pantheism, and panentheism. According to the Upanishads, the Mahabharata, and some Puranas, Narayana is the supreme deity. The Vaishnavite sect considers Vishnu or Krishna to be the supreme god,, SB 1.3.28 while Shaivites consider Shiva to be the supreme god.
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No cult to Hermes Dolios existed in Attica, and so this form of Hermes seems to have existed in speech only.I Polinskaya, citing Robert Parker (2003): I Polinskaya, A Local History of Greek Polytheism: Gods, People and the Land of Aigina, 800–400 BCE (p. 103), BRILL, 2013, . An universal history, from the earliest accounts to the present time – Volume 5 (p.
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Canterbury Cathedral is the seat of the Primate of All England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the most senior bishop of the Church of England (it was the property of the Roman Catholic Church before the English Reformation) The Lady Chapel of Wells Cathedral Christianity became the dominant religion in England in the 7th century. Polytheistic Indo-European religions, often referred to as paganism, were practised before Christianity took hold. The most notable of these religions were Celtic polytheism, Roman polytheism and Anglo-Saxon paganism, which was the religion of the early English people, or Anglo-Saxons, and which was in many ways very similar to the closely related Norse paganism practised by the Scandinavian peoples and that would later be introduced to England by the Danes. Christianity was first established in Britain by the Roman Empire.
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Marquard argues that this countermovement never will offer a solution, because it merely submits exotic mythology to the monomyth of progress and thereby confirms its domination. Marquard proclaims the true solution is "enlightened polymythical thinking": the modern world began when monotheism was disenchanted, which also led to the "disenchanted return of polytheism" in the form of the political separation of powers and the reemergence of the individual; the latter had existed under the separation of powers of ancient polytheism, before it was formulated under the threat from monotheism. Marquard believes when people recognise that myths are stories, it becomes possible to identify modern polymythical thinking, which exists in fields like the scientific study of history and in novels. For philosophy to break with the monomyth, he argues, it must allow dissent and tell stories again, defying charges of relativism and scepticism.
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The concept of God varies in Hinduism, it being a diverse system of thought with beliefs spanning henotheism, monotheism, polytheism, panentheism, pantheism and monism among others. In the ancient Vedic texts of Hinduism, a deity is often referred to as Deva (god) or Devi (goddess). The root of these terms mean "heavenly, divine, anything of excellence". Deva is masculine, and the related feminine equivalent is devi.
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The relics of the old polytheistic religion were already interwoven with songs, tales and other mythic stories. Gradually Lithuanian polytheism customs and songs merged with the Christian tradition. In the beginning of the 20th century Michał Pius Römer noted - "Lithuanian folklore culture having its sources in heathenism is in complete concord with Christianity". It is not easy to reconstruct the Lithuanian mythology in its full form.
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Deities are impersonated creative and ruling powers. Even if they are anthropomorphised, the qualities of the deities are always in the foreground. In the Turkic belief system, there was no pantheon of deities as in Roman or Greek polytheism. Many deities could be thought of as angels in the modern Western usage, or spirits, who travel between humans or their settlement among higher deities such as Kayra.
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Yeong-Hi 33. He was imprisoned until 1948 and then retreated into obscurity, with his wife and children, and died in 1980. He wrote a dozen books promoting a kind of Germanism, in which he proposed that ancient Germanic polytheism had been destroyed by Christian missionaries, particularly Saint Boniface, whose destruction of the Donar Oak was the subject of his Die Donar Eiche: Geschichte eines Heiligtums.
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The earliest monuments in Artsakh relate to the pre-Christian era when polytheism was the most widespread form of religion.Jean-Michel Thierry. Eglises et Couvents du Karabagh, Antelais: Lebanon, 1991, p. 11 The most curious art form from that time period is, perhaps, large anthropomorphic stone idols that are found in the eastern lowlands of the northern counties of Jraberd (Armenian: Ջրաբերդ) and Khachen (Armenian: Խաչեն).
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Canto XCVIII reintroduces Ocellus, a fictional character whose name derives from the Latin word for "eye." Ocellus is first introduced in Canto LXXXVII, "Y Yin, Ocellus, Erigena." This tripling is crucial to an understanding of Pound's motivations. Here, he combines Confucianism with Neo-Platonism—Y Yin was a Chinese minister famous for his justice, while Erigena refers to the Irish Neo-Platonist who emphasized regeneration and polytheism.
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Today, most of the Tai Nua people live in China, where they are classified with related Tai peoples as the Dai people, one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China. The number is estimated at be around 540,000 in China (2001 census), around 700,000 in total including other countries. The Tai Nua people are Buddhist, but mixed with animism and polytheism.
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Since the religions of the Greco-Roman world were not dogmatic, and polytheism lent itself to multiplicity, the concept of "deity" was often expansive, permitting multiple and even contradictory functions within a single divinity, and overlapping powers and functions among the diverse figures of each pantheon. These tendencies extended to cross-cultural identifications.Koch, "Interpretatio romana," in Celtic Culture, pp. 974–975; Assmann, Moses the Egyptian, p. 45.
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It is also known as the Shekhinah. For the Kabbalist, God is a single oneness, not separate "gods". The teaching avoids polytheism by insisting that the sephirot are not to be prayed to, but rather, to be meditated on and experienced as manifestations of how God acts in the world. They are envisioned as arranged in three columns, in a pattern called the Tree of Life.
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For hard polytheists, gods are individual and not only different names for the same being. This is often contrasted with "soft" polytheism, which holds that different gods may be aspects of only one god, that the pantheons of other cultures are representative of one single pantheon, psychological archetypes or personifications of natural forces. In this way, gods may be interchangeable for one another across cultures.
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In Celtic polytheism, Belisama (epigraphically ) was a goddess worshipped in Gaul. She is identified with Minerva in the interpretatio romana. The etymology of her name has been taken to translate to "brightest one", i.e. containing a superlative suffix -isama attached to the root bel "bright"; based on this she has also been speculatively claimed as companion of Belenus, whose name seems to contain the same root.
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One of the Low Countries' earliest literary figures is the blind poet Bernlef, from , who sang both Christian psalms and pagan verses. Bernlef is representative of the coexistence of Christianity and Germanic polytheism in this time period. The earliest examples of written literature include the Wachtendonck Psalms, a collection of twenty five psalms that originated in the Moselle-Frankish region around the middle of the 9th century.
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This myth emerged in the mid-18th century philosophy of history and turned "histories" into the singular "history". Marquard calls it the second end of polymythical thinking; the first was the end of religious polytheism. Although the Christian Trinity may be polytheistic, the salvation story is monotheistic and ends in nominalistic "storylessness". The emancipation story, writes Marquard, emerged as a failed attempt to secularise the salvation story.
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Marquard continued his arguments in the text "Aufgeklärter Polytheismus—auch eine politische Theologie?" () which was published in a 1983 anthology about the legacy of Schmitt. He discussed his views on polytheism as a requisite for freedom and individuality in the 1988 essay "Sola divisione individuum—Betrachtung über Individuum und Gewaltenteilung" (), which was presented at the 13th colloquium of the research group Poetik und Hermeneutik.
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According to some "evolutionistic" theories of religion, especially that of Edward Burnett Tylor, cultures naturally progress from animism and polytheism to monotheism.Eliade, "The Quest for the 'Origins' of Religion", p.157, 161 According to this view, more advanced cultures should be more monotheistic, and more primitive cultures should be more polytheistic. However, many of the most "primitive", pre-agricultural societies believe in a supreme sky-god.
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The Fates were a common motif in European polytheism, most frequently represented as a group of three mythological goddesses (although their number differed in certain eras and cultures). They were often depicted as weavers of a tapestry on a loom, with the tapestry dictating the destinies of humans. According to Greek Mythology, the three Fates possess the loom. Only they, or another immortal, can alter it.
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In modern day Yemen, the Ancient Himyarite Kingdom appears to have abandoned polytheism and converted to Judaism around the year 380. Accompanied with a strong military prowess, they proved to be a matching force to the Christian empires of Byzantium and Axum for 200 years. After having conquered a major part of the Arabic peninsula, the Himyarite Empire has been annexed by the Kingdom of Axum.
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The Homeric Gods is Otto's most famous work and together with Dionysus his only work that scholars of classics still read with some regularity. With this and other books, Otto influenced a number of scholars and students, notably Károly Kerényi. The ontological approach had an influence on the structuralist study of ancient polytheism and can be seen as a precursor to later ontological turns in anthropology.
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Hashdi tribesmen rebelled against them, however, and regained Sana'a in around 180. It was not until 275 that Shammar Yahri'sh conquered Hadramout and Najran and Tihama, thus unifying Yemen and consolidating Himyarite rule. The Himyarites rejected polytheism and adhered to a consensual form of monotheism called Rahmanism. In 354, Roman Emperor Constantius II sent an embassy headed by Theophilos the Indian to convert the Himyarites to Christianity.
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It is an annual publication named after Tyr, the Germanic god. The magazine states that it "celebrates the traditional myths, culture, and social institutions of pre- Christian, pre-modern Europe." The first issue was published in 2002 under the ULTRA imprint in Atlanta, Georgia. The magazine largely focuses on topics relating to Germanic neopaganism and Germanic paganism with an amount of content regarding Celtic polytheism as well.
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Ishmael. Abraham cast into fire by Nimrod. From Zubdat-al Tawarikh, a 1583 Ottoman Turkish manuscript. A confrontation between Nimrod and Abraham is said to have taken place, according to several Jewish and Islamic traditions. Some stories bring them both together in a cataclysmic collision, seen as a symbol of the confrontation between Good and Evil, and/or as a symbol of monotheism against polytheism.
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Cathedral of St Andrew in St Andrews, Fife Early Pictish religion is presumed to have resembled Celtic polytheism in general. The date at which Pictish kings converted to Christianity is uncertain, but there are traditions which place Saint Palladius in Pictland after leaving Ireland, and link Abernethy with Saints Brigid and Darlugdach of Kildare.Clancy, "'Nennian recension'", pp. 95–96, Smyth, Warlords and Holy Men, pp. 82–83.
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Statue of Hercules in Augusta Raurica In the course of Romanization, the Celtic polytheism of the local tribes was merged – syncretized – with the Roman religion. The Celtic deities came to be worshiped under the names of their Roman counterparts. Thus Lugus was replaced by Mercury, Belenus by Apollo, Taranis by Jupiter and so forth, in a practice called interpretatio romana by Caesar, who pioneered it.Ducrey, p. 96.
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Entrance to the cave of the Ibini Ukpabi oracle at Arochukwu, 1900s. Odinani could loosely be described as a monotheistic and panentheistic faith with a strong central spiritual force at its head from which all things are believed to spring; however, the contextual diversity of the system may encompass theistic perspectives that derive from a variety of beliefs held within the religion.Benjamin Ray says of the position of African religions: > But as we have seen, there are other elements [besides monotheistic ones] > which tend towards polytheism or pantheism. What, we may ask, accounts for > these different tendencies? As Evans-Pritchard and Peel suggest, they do not > derive so much from different observers' standpoints as from the different > standpoints within the religious systems themselves This, of course, does > not mean that African religions consist of conflicting “systems” > (monotheism, polytheism, pantheism, totemism), which lack any inherent > unity.
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Lithuanian mythology () is the mythology of Lithuanian polytheism, the religion of pre-Christian Lithuanians. Like other Indo-Europeans, ancient Lithuanians maintained a polytheistic mythology and religious structure. In pre-Christian Lithuania, mythology was a part of polytheistic religion; after Christianisation mythology survived mostly in folklore, customs and festive rituals. Lithuanian mythology is very close to the mythology of other Baltic nations – Prussians, Latvians, and is considered a part of Baltic mythology.
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The starting-point of Tatian's theology is a strict monotheism which becomes the source of the moral life. Originally, the human soul possessed faith in one God, but lost it with the fall. In consequence, under the rule of demons, man sank into the abominable error of polytheism. By monotheistic faith, the soul is delivered from the material world and from demonic rule and is united with God.
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To a query, whether Kanti criticised Hindu Dharam also former editor replied that we criticised very little and never made such criticism a formal topic. 'It was not appropriate in the early phase of Dawah'. Islam's fundamental teachings were introduced in a positive way, polytheism was mildly criticised. If reverse was done, it could have caused a riot and then nobody would have heard our message, he explained.
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The Himyarite kings appear to have abandoned polytheism and converted to Judaism around the year 380, several decades after the conversion of the Ethiopian Kingdom of Aksum to Christianity (328). No changes occurred in the people's script, calendar, or language (unlike at Aksum after its conversion).Christian Julien Robin, "Arabia and Ethiopia," in Scott Johnson (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity, Oxford University Press 2012 pp.247-333, p.279.
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While early empires could be described as henotheistic, i.e. dominated by a single god of the ruling elite (as Marduk in the Babylonian empire, Assur in the Assyrian empire, etc.), or more directly by deifying the ruler in an imperial cult, the concept of "Holy War" enters a new phase with the development of monotheism.Jonathan Kirsch God Against The Gods: The History of the War Between Monotheism and Polytheism, Penguin, 2005.
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The tenth century Karaite scholar Jacob Qirqisani believed that rabbinic Judaism was the heresy of Jeroboam of the Kingdom of Israel. He quoted a version of Sanhedrin 38b, which he claimed contained a reference to the "lesser YHVH." Gershom Scholem suggests that the name was deliberately omitted from later copies of the Talmud. However, Qirqisani may have misrepresented the Talmud in order to embarrass his Rabbanite opponents with evidence of polytheism.
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Sabaean inscription listing the gods 'Athtar, Almaqah, Dhat-Himyam, Dhat-Badan and Wadd. Deities formed a part of the polytheistic religious beliefs in pre- Islamic Arabia, with many of the deities' names known. Up until about the fourth century AD, polytheism was the dominant form of religion in Arabia. Deities represented the forces of nature, love, death, and so on, and were interacted to by a variety of rituals.
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Mushrikun (pl. of mushrik) are those who practice shirk, which literally means "association" and refers to accepting other gods and divinities alongside the god of the Muslims - Allah (as God's "associates"). The term is often translated as polytheism. The Quran distinguishes between mushrikun and People of the Book, reserving the former term for idol worshipers, although some classical commentators considered Christian doctrine to be a form of shirk.
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Through his studies, Rhenius came to believe that Hindus had once believed in one supreme god and the current polytheism was a later development. He fashioned his proselytizing method according to the belief - by appealing Hindus to go back to monotheism and the worship of Jesus Christ. He started a school in the Black Town, Madras. When the Hindus in Kanchipuram invited him to start a school, he agreed.
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See Fairweather 2014 pp. 79-87, 341-346 However, the Swedish Kingdom, as a whole, long remained a conservative bastion of traditional Nordic polytheism, defending itself against Christian missions by a law forbidding forcible conversion.Adam of Bremen 2.58. The destruction of its principal cult-centre of Thor, Wodan, and Fricco in Uppsala was not carried out until late in the eleventh century,Hervarar saga, chapter 16, in Tolkien 1960.
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There are several different ways in which this Midrash has been discussed. This Midrash can be interpreted as an example of persecution against those of monotheistic beliefs during a time when polytheism dominated. The Midrash has also been discussed in the contexts of complete, unquestioned faith. This comes from the idea that Abraham did not need proof of God before being cast into the fire, which is why God saved him.
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The Bible describes how the Israelites until the Babylonian captivity repeatedly violated the first commandment's demand of exclusive worship. Not only did common people substitute Canaanite gods and worship for that of the Lord, polytheism and worship of foreign gods became official in both the northern and southern kingdoms despite repeated warnings from the prophets of God.God in the OT, The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol II, 1992. Freedman, David Noel, ed.
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As a legacy of the spread of Islam, the Berbers are now mostly Muslim. The Mozabite Berbers of the Saharan Mozabite Valley and Libyan berbers in Nafusis and Zuwara are primarily adherents of the Ibadi Muslim denomination. In antiquity, the Berber people adhered to the traditional Berber religion, prior to the arrival of Abrahamic faiths into North Africa. This traditional religion heavily emphasized ancestor veneration, polytheism and animism.
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Moses ben Maimon, a Jewish philosopher of the 12th Century, demonstrates the problem of describing God with positive attributes, which would include the attribute of omnipotence or the statement that "God is sovereign." Rather, "the negative attributes of God are the true attributes". Maimonides argues that any statement of a positive attribute implies polytheism and is inadequate. But negative attributes do not create any incorrect notion or deficiency.
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Paganism has broadly connoted the "religion of the peasantry". During and after the Middle Ages, the term paganism was applied to any unfamiliar religion, and the term presumed a belief in false god(s). Most modern pagan religions existing today (Modern or Neopaganism) express a world view that is pantheistic, polytheistic or animistic; but some are monotheistic. The origin of the application of the term pagan to polytheism is debated.
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Other authors have argued for a well developed, sophisticated Old Prussian polytheism with a clearly defined pantheon of gods. The Highest Priest, the Grant Kriwe was to be in permanent connection with the spirits of the dead ancestors. He lived in a sacred grove, the Romove, a place off limit for anyone but elite clergy. Each district was headed by its Kriwe, who also served as lawgiver and judge.
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Roman cast terracotta of ram-horned Jupiter Ammon, a form of Zeus 1st century AD. Gods, could sometimes be transferred or adopted by many civilizations, and then adjusted for local conditions. The rise of civilization corresponded with the institutional sponsorship of belief in gods, supernatural forces and the afterlife. During the Bronze Age, many civilizations adopted their own form of Polytheism. Usually, polytheistic Gods manifested human personalities, strengths and failings.
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However, it also affirms the legitimacy of multiple interpretations of these issues. Atheism, Trinitarian views of God, and polytheism are all ruled out. All forms of relativism, and also of literalism and fundamentalism, are also rejected. It teaches that Jewish law is both still valid and indispensable, but also holds to a more open and flexible view of how law has, and should, develop than the Orthodox view.
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Oxford philosopher and historian of ideas Isaiah Berlin is credited with being the first to popularize a substantial work describing the theory of objective value-pluralism, bringing it to the attention of academia (cf. the Isaiah Berlin Virtual Library). The related idea that fundamental values can and, in some cases, do conflict with each other is prominent in the thought of Max Weber, captured in his notion of "polytheism".
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University of Massachusetts, 1981. Some ancient schools merged into traditions with different names or became extinct, such as Mohism (and many others of the Hundred Schools of Thought), which was largely absorbed into Taoism. East Asian religions include many theological stances, including polytheism, nontheism, henotheism, monotheism, pantheism, panentheism and agnosticism. East Asian religions have many Western adherents, though their interpretations may differ significantly from traditional East Asian religious thought and culture.
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The Ge people practice a combination of traditional religions, along with animism, polytheism and ancestor worship. In the past, they incorporated elements of Daoism and Buddhism into their native religion. According to the traditional animism, they believe that the world is full of demons, ghosts, dragons, angels and spirits, which are representations of the afterlife of their ancestors, animals, and trees. They have shamans to ward off evil spirits.
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Henotheism is defined in the dictionary as adherence to one god out of several. Many scholars believe that before monotheism in ancient Israel came a transitional period in between polytheism and monotheism. In this transitional period many followers of the Israelite religion worshiped the god Yahweh but did not deny the existence of other deities accepted throughout the region. Some scholars attribute this henotheistic period to influences from Mesopotamia.
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Ancient Iranian society had a tradition of polytheism and pederasty, which came into sharp conflict during the Achaemenid period. Iranian pederasty and its origins were debated even in ancient times – for example, Herodotus claimed they had learned it from the Greeks: "From the Greeks they have learned to lie with boys."David Grene, Herodotus, p.156, 1987 However, Plutarch asserts that the Iranians used eunuch boys to that end long before contact between the cultures.
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Blackwell compared the early Jewish world view with contemporary Near Eastern cosmographies, analysing the account of creation in the Book of Genesis along with ancient Phoenician texts transmitted through Sanchuniathon to trace the transformation of Chaldean monotheism into polytheism as the stars began to be worshiped as lesser deities. Throughout this wide-ranging study Blackwell insisted that the past was not a foreign country but perfectly coherent and intelligible when viewed in its own terms.
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Modern revival movements of these religions include Heathenism, Rodnovery, Romuva, Druidry, Wicca, and others. Smaller religions include the Dharmic religions, Judaism, and some East Asian religions, which are found in their largest groups in Britain, France, and Kalmykia. Little is known about the prehistoric religion of Neolithic Europe. Bronze and Iron Age religion in Europe as elsewhere was predominantly polytheistic (Ancient Greek religion, Ancient Roman religion, Basque mythology, Finnish paganism, Celtic polytheism, Germanic paganism, etc.).
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An Oglala Lakota Ghost Dance at Pine Ridge. Illustration by Frederic Remington While there are some similarities among linguistic and regional groups, different tribes have their own cosmologies and world views. Some of these are animist in nature, with aspects of polytheism, while others tend more towards monotheism or panentheism. Prayer is a regular part of daily life, for regular individuals as well as spiritual leaders, alone and as part of group ceremonies.
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The independent Free Apostolic Church of Pentecost is the biggest Protestant denomination in Greece with 120 churches. There are no official statistics about Free Apostolic Church of Pentecost, but the Orthodox Church estimates the followers as 20,000. The Jehovah's Witnesses report having 28,874 active members. Since 2017, Hellenic Polytheism, or Helenism has been legally recognised as an actively practiced religion in Greece, with estimates of 2,000 active practitioners and an additional 100,000 "sympathisers".
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This is the third and highest stage of development, the relation of the finite and the infinite. As philosophy is but the highest expression of humanity, these three moments will be represented in its history. The East typifies the infinite, Greece the finite or reflective epoch, the modern era the stage of relation or correlation of infinite and finite. In theology, the dominant philosophical idea of each of these epochs results in pantheism, polytheism, theism.
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After witnessing the reign of two emperors bent on supporting the Church and stamping out paganism, it is understandable that pagans simply did not embrace Julian's idea of proclaiming their devotion to polytheism and their rejection of Christianity. Many chose to adopt a practical approach and not support Julian's public reforms actively for fear of a Christian revival. However, this apathetic attitude forced the emperor to shift central aspects of pagan worship.
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In Hinduism, the concept of god is complex and depends on the particular tradition. The concept spans conceptions from absolute monism to henotheism, monotheism and polytheism. In vedic period monotheistic god Concept culminated in the semi abstract semi personified form of creative soul dwelling in all god such as Vishvakarman, Purusha, and Prajapathy. In majority of Vaishnavism traditions, He is Vishnu, god, and the text identifies this being as Krishna, sometimes referred as svayam bhagavan.
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Though he never completed the translation, portions were later published. The most important was his version of the Gita, published in 1785 as Bhagvat-geeta, or Dialogues of Kreeshna and Arjoon (London: Nourse, 1785). In his preface Wilkins argued that the Gita was written to encourage a form of monotheist "unitarianism" and to draw Hinduism away from the polytheism he ascribed to the Vedas. He had a hobby to learn about other religions.
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Both conclusions were largely ignored by the king,Crișan, p. 14 although conversion from polytheism is traceable to the 13th century, which sees the first mentions of Cumans with Christian names.Hévizi, p. 19 There is no suggestion that Cuman settlers were required to sedentarize: the first records of Cuman towns appear in Angevin Hungary, some two centuries after the colonization, and toponymy shows that they were all founded by chieftains, and named after them.
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On the association of the cults of Prometheus and Hephaestus, see also Scholiast to Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus 56, as cited by Robert Parker, Polytheism and Society at Athens (Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 472. The race then travelled to the heart of the city, where it kindled the sacrificial fire on the altar of Athena on the Acropolis to conclude the festival.Pausanias 1.30.2; Scholiast to Plato, Phaedrus 231e; Dougherty, Prometheus, p.
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In the book's final essay, Mill explores a number of arguments for the existence of God, using a methodology based on evidence. He argues that religion should be "reviewed as a strictly scientific question" and should be tested in the same way that other questions in science are examined. Based on his approach, Mill argues that monotheism is better than polytheism, although this does not necessarily mean that monotheism is more correct.
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Drawing of golden bees or flies that was discovered in the tomb of Childeric I Echoes of Frankish paganism can be found in the primary sources, but their meaning is not always clear. Interpretations by modern scholars differ greatly, but it is likely that Frankish paganism shared most of the characteristics of other varieties of Germanic paganism. The mythology of the Franks was probably a form of Germanic polytheism. It was highly ritualistic.
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In classical Celtic polytheism, Abgatiacus was a theonym referring to a Gallo- Roman deity. The theonym is known only from a single inscription found with a representation of the god discovered at Noviomagus Trevirorum, now Neumagen- Dhron in Germany.Abgatiacus - 4043 - L'encyclopédie - L'Arbre Celtique The god bearing the name was assimilated to Mercury and is depicted in the company of Rosmerta. He holds the caduceus in his hand and at his feet is a rooster.
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It is perhaps mere accident that we hear nothing of the Clementines from 330 until 360. But about 360–410 they are interpolated, they are revised and abridged in H, yet more revised and abridged in R, translated into Latin, translated into Syriac, and frequently cited. It seems, therefore, that it was the policy of Julian which drew them from obscurity. They were useful weapons against the momentary resurrection of polytheism, mythology, theurgy, and idolatry.
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Several polytheistic religions were practised in Sussex before Christianity was firmly established in Sussex in the 7th century, including Celtic polytheism and Roman religion. Christianity was practised during part of the Romano-British period, but was replaced in the 5th century by the polytheistic religion of the South Saxons. According to Bede, it was the last area of what was to become England to be converted.Armstrong. A History of Sussex. pp. 38-40Bede.
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That also was in the polytheism of the times. Zeus was the very personification of supreme mind, dominating all the subordinate manifestations. From Thales on, however, philosophers had a tendency to depersonify or objectify mind, as though it were the substance of animation per se and not actually a god like the other gods. The end result was a total removal of mind from substance, opening the door to a non-divine principle of action.
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In his view, Atenism was an extreme outgrowth of this trend. It equated the single deity with the sun and dismissed all other gods. Then, in the backlash against Atenism, priestly theologians described the universal god in a different way, one that coexisted with traditional polytheism. The one god was believed to transcend the world and all the other deities, while at the same time, the multiple gods were aspects of the one.
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God forgave and resurrected them and they continued on their journey. In the Islamic view, the calf-worshipers' sin had been shirk (), the sin of idolatry or polytheism. Shirk is the deification or worship of anyone or anything other than Allah, or more literally the establishment of "partners" placed beside God, a most serious and unforgivable sin, with the calf-worshipers' being ultimately forgiven being a mark of special forbearance by Allah.
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Ducrey, p. 83. In the course of Romanization, the Celtic polytheism of the Helvetians was syncretized with Roman religion. The Celtic deities came to be worshiped under the names of their Roman counterparts, and Roman gods acquired the names of local gods, such as Mars Caturix, Mercurius Cissonius and Jupiter Poeninus. A major cultic center of Gallo-Roman religion, consisting of eight chapels or small temples, was found in Allmendingen near Thun.
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Islam's most fundamental concept is a strict monotheism called tawhid, affirming that God is one and incomparable (wāḥid). The basic creed of Islam, the ShahadaHossein Nasr The Heart of Islam, Enduring Values for Humanity (April., 2003), pp 3, 39, 85, 27–272 (recited under oath to enter the religion), involves (), or "I testify there is no deity other than God." Muslims reject the Christian doctrine of the Trinity and divinity of Jesus, comparing it to polytheism.
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Ganesha is one of the best-known and most worshipped deities in the Hindu pantheon Hindu beliefs are vast and diverse, and thus Hinduism is often referred to as a family of religions rather than a single religion. Within each religion in this family of religions, there are different theologies, practices, and sacred texts. This diversity has led to an array of descriptions for Hinduism. It has been described as henotheism, monism, polytheism, panentheism, and monotheism.
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In the 3rd millennium BC objects of worship were personified and became an expansive cast of divinities with particular functions. The last stages of Mesopotamian polytheism, which developed in the 2nd and 1st millenniums BCE, introduced greater emphasis on personal religion and structured the gods into a monarchical hierarchy with the national god being the head of the pantheon. Mesopotamian religion finally declined with the spread of Iranian religions during the Achaemenid Empire and with the Christianization of Mesopotamia.
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In the fourth major caliphate, the Ottoman Caliphate, the rulers of the Ottoman Empire claimed caliphal authority from 1517. Throughout the history of Islam, a few other Muslim states, almost all hereditary monarchies, such as the Mamluk Sultanate (Cairo) and Ayyubid CaliphateNatho, Kadir I. Circassian History. Pages 150 have claimed to be caliphates. Prior to the rise of Muhammad, Arab tribes followed a pre-Islamic Arab polytheism and lived as self-governing sedentary and nomadic tribal communities.
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Although polytheism had been suppressed by the state since at least the time of Constantine in the 4th century, traditional Greco-Roman culture was still influential in the Eastern empire in the 6th century. Hellenistic philosophy began to be gradually amalgamated into newer Christian philosophy. Philosophers such as John Philoponus drew on neoplatonic ideas in addition to Christian thought and empiricism. Because of active paganism of its professors Justinian closed down the Neoplatonic Academy in 529.
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This is yet another provocative critique of the standard accounts of Indian philosophy and religion. This book brings out a coherent historical account of atheism in India. In fact, according to Chattopadhyaya, "an unbiased survey of the Vedas clearly shows the total absence of religious consciousness in its earlier stage and the Rgveda is full of relics of this stage of thought. Even the world polytheism is misapplied to such an early stage of the Vedic thought".
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The priyayi stream is the traditional bureaucratic elite and was strongly driven by hierarchical Hindu-Javanese tradition. The santri are sometimes referred to as Putihan ("the white ones") as distinct from the 'red' abangan. In general, the religion of the priyayi is closer to the abangan tradition than the santri, because of its combination of Indic polytheism and Islamic monotheism. Public rituals, such as slametan, or the communal feast, are practiced in abangan peasant and priyayi households alike.
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Islam's most fundamental concept is a strict monotheism called tawḥīd. God is described in the Quran as: "Say: He is God, the One; God, the Eternal, the Absolute; He begot no one, nor is He begotten; Nor is there to Him equivalent anyone." Muslims deny the Christian doctrine of the Trinity and divinity of Jesus, comparing it to polytheism. In Islam, God is beyond all comprehension or equal and does not resemble any of his creations in any way.
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Verostonos (or Vernostonus) was a god in ancient Celtic polytheism, worshipped in Roman Britain. His name links him to alder-trees. Altar-stones raised to him have been recovered in the United Kingdom, such as that at Ebchester in County Durham (RIB 1102, DEO VERNOSTONO COCIDIO VIRILIS GER V S L). His association with Cocidius in that inscription suggests that he may have been linked with, or an epithet of, that more widely attested war god.
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A Greek Dryad depicted in a painting In nature worship, a nature deity is a deity in charge of forces of nature such as a water deity, vegetation deity, sky deity, solar deity, fire deity or any other naturally occurring phenomena such as mountains, trees, or volcanoes. Accepted in panentheism, pantheism, deism, polytheism, animism, totemism, shamanism and paganism the deity embodies natural forces and can have characteristics of the mother goddess, Mother Nature or lord of the animals.
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Caucasian Messenger Jaimoukha (2005) adduces comparison with the Circassians, but also more generally with the Iron Age mythology of western Indo-European cultures, especially emphasizing parallels to Celtic polytheism,Jaimoukha, Amjad. The Chechens. Pages 8; 112; 280 such as the worship of certain trees (including, notably, a pine tree on the winter solstice, supposedly related to the modern Christmas tree, reconstructed calendar festivals such as Halloween and Beltane, veneration of fire, and certain ghost related superstitions).
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"In Praise of Polytheism (On Monomythical and Polymythical Thinking)" () is an essay by the German philosopher Odo Marquard, which was held as a lecture at the Technical University of Berlin in 1978. It was first published in 1979 in Philosophie und Mythos. Ein Kolloquium, and was published again in 1981 in Marquard's book Farewell to Matters of Principle (German: ). The essay posits that monotheism and the Enlightenment are based on "monomythical thinking", meaning that they only allow one story.
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Marquard gave "In Praise of Polytheism" as a lecture at the Technical University of Berlin on 31 January 1978. It was published as an essay the year after by Walter de Gruyter in the anthology Philosophie und Mythos. Ein Kolloquium (). It was included in Marquard's essay collection Farewell to Matters of Principle (), which was published in German by Reclam in 1981 and translated into English by Robert M. Wallace in 1989 through the Oxford University Press.
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Adherents rely on pre- Christian, folkloric, and ethnographic sources to a variety of degrees; many follow a spirituality that they accept as entirely modern, while others claim prehistoric beliefs, or else attempt to revive indigenous, ethnic religions as accurately as possible.Adler 2006. pp. 3–4. Academic research has placed the Pagan movement along a spectrum, with eclecticism on one end and polytheistic reconstructionism on the other. Polytheism, animism, and pantheism are common features of Pagan theology.
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The Imperial cult became one of the major ways in which Rome advertised its presence in the provinces and cultivated shared cultural identity and loyalty throughout the Empire. Rejection of the state religion was tantamount to treason. This was the context for Rome's conflict with Christianity, which Romans variously regarded as a form of atheism and novel superstitio. Ultimately, Roman polytheism was brought to an end with the adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the empire.
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While many were reluctant to convert to a foreign faith, those faiths provided intellectual and spiritual reference points, and the old pagan vocabulary of Arabic began to be replaced by Jewish and Christian loanwords from Aramaic everywhere, including Mecca. The distribution of pagan temples supports Gerald Hawting's argument that Arabian polytheism was marginalized in the region and already dying in Mecca on the eve of Islam.Robin, Christian Julien, "Arabia and Ethiopia", in The practice of polytheistic cults was increasingly limited to the steppe and the desert, and in Yathrib (later known as Medina), which included two tribes with polytheistic majorities, the absence of a public pagan temple in the town or its immediate neighborhood indicates that polytheism was confined to the private sphere. Looking at the text of the Quran itself, Hawting has also argued that the criticism of idolaters and polytheists contained in Quran is in fact a hyperbolic reference to other monotheists, in particular the Arab Jews and Arab Christians, whose religious beliefs were considered imperfect.
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Criticism of Christianity has a long history stretching back to the initial formation of the religion during the Roman Empire. Critics have challenged Christian beliefs and teachings as well as Christian actions, from the Crusades to modern terrorism. The intellectual arguments against Christianity include the suppositions that it is a faith of violence, corruption, superstition, polytheism, bigotry, and sectarianism. In the early years of Christianity, the Neoplatonic philosopher Porphyry emerged as one of the major critics with his book Against the Christians.
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Arianism was first put forward early in the 4th century by the Alexandrian presbyter Arius. It held that the Father is uniquely self-existent and immutable: consequently, Christ could not be God. The opponents of Arianism led by Athanasius of Alexandria claimed that the doctrine reduced Jesus to a demigod thus restoring polytheism as Jesus would still be worshipped. Further, it appeared to undermine the concept of redemption as only one who was truly God could reconcile man and God.
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Etruscans were a monogamous society that emphasized pairing. The historical Etruscans had achieved a form of state with remnants of chiefdom and tribal forms. The Etruscan religion was an immanent polytheism, in which all visible phenomena were considered to be a manifestation of divine power, and deities continually acted in the world of men and could, by human action or inaction, be dissuaded against or persuaded in favor of human affairs. Etruscan pendant with swastika symbols, Bolsena, Italy, 700–650 BCE.
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As a member of Brahmo Samaj, he opposed idol worship, polytheism and Ramakrishna's worship of Kali. He even rejected the Advaita Vedanta of "identity with the absolute" as blasphemy and madness, and often ridiculed the idea. Narendra tested Ramakrishna, who faced his arguments patiently: "Try to see the truth from all angles", he replied. Narendra's father's sudden death in 1884 left the family bankrupt; creditors began demanding the repayment of loans, and relatives threatened to evict the family from their ancestral home.
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The term "pagan" (Latin paganus), used by Christians to define those who maintained polytheistic religions, originally meant "rural person, countryfolk, civilian", as a dweller of a pagus (rural district). The more identitary and reconstructionist Pagan movements are the majority and are represented by Celtic Druidry and Germanic Heathenry, while Wicca is an example of a non-identitary Pagan movement. Polytheism, nature worship, animism and pantheism are common features in Pagan theology. Rituals take place in both public and in private domestic settings.
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According to Islamic tradition, over the millennia after Ishmael's death, his progeny and the local tribes who settled around the Zamzam well gradually turned to polytheism and idolatry. Several idols were placed within the Kaaba representing deities of different aspects of nature and different tribes. Several rituals were adopted in the pilgrimage including doing naked circumambulation. A king named Tubba' is considered the first one to have a door be built for the Kaaba according to sayings recorded in Al- Azraqi's Akhbar Makka.
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In 2020, his son Wilfred was baptised Catholic, prompting suggestions that Johnson had returned to Catholicism. Johnson holds ancient Greek statesman and orator Pericles as a personal hero. According to Johnson's biographer, Andrew Gimson, regarding ancient Greek and Roman polytheism: "it is clear that [Johnson] is inspired by the Romans, and even more by the Greeks, and repelled by the early Christians". Johnson views secular humanism positively and sees it as owing more to the classical world than to Christian thinking.
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Mattingly (2006), p.215 From the 2nd century onwards, Eastern mystery cults, centred on a single deity (though not necessarily monotheistic) and based on sacred truths revealed only to the initiated, spread widely in the empire, as polytheism underwent a gradual, and ultimately terminal, decline. One such cult, that of Sol Invictus ("The Invincible Sun"), was designated as the official army-cult by the emperor Aurelian (r. 270-5) and remained such until the time of Constantine I (r. 312-37).
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The rise of Christianity was briefly interrupted on the accession of the emperor Julian in 361, who made a determined effort to restore polytheism throughout the empire and was thus dubbed "Julian the Apostate" by the Church. However, this was reversed when Julian was killed in battle in 363. Theodosius I (379–395) was the last Emperor to rule both the Eastern and Western halves of the Empire. In 391 and 392 he issued a series of edicts essentially banning pagan religion.
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The text goes on to condemn them for their polytheism, and mentions murder. The image initially received a feast day on 18 December, but the date was transferred to 19 May when a rainstorm hit Manila Cathedral in February 1771.(1897). "Novena o Pagsisyam sa Nuestra Senora de Guia", Imprental del Colegio de Santo Tomas, Manila. During the Second World War, the statue was saved by the parish priest of Ermita Church, Fr. Blas de Guernica, and a Justo N. López.
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The Nabataean religion has encompassed both Christendom and an earlier form of Arab polytheism practiced in Nabataea, an ancient Arab nation which was well settled by the third century BCE and lasted until the Roman annexation in 106 CE.Patrich, Joseph. The Formation of Nabataean Art: Prohibition of a Graven Image Among the Nabateans. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1990. Print. The Nabateans were polytheistic and worshipped a wide variety of local gods as well as Baalshamin, Isis, and Greco-Roman gods such as Tyche and Dionysus.
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Most Heathens in the UK take the terms "heathen" and "pagan" to be synonymous to mean any of those indigenous, organic religions prevalent prior to Christianity that subscribed to polytheism and practised religious sacrifices.All About Odinism - Your Questions Answered, publ. by Odinist Fellowship, 2000 Most modern-day heathens operate in small groups or family units, often termed kindreds or hearths. There is a tendency for such groups to develop their own approaches to Heathenry independently, assisted by networking groups and Internet communication.
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According to biblical sources, Cushan-rishathaim ( Ḵūšān Riš‘āṯayim, "twice- evil Kushite") was king of Aram-Naharaim, or Northwest Mesopotamia, and the first oppressor of the Israelites after their settlement in Canaan. In the Book of Judges, God delivers the Israelites into his hand for eight years (Judges 3:8) as a punishment for polytheism. However, when the people of Israel "cried out to the Lord", He saved them through Othniel, son of Kenaz (Judges 3:9). 'Cushan' or 'Chushan' may indicate Cushite origins.
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Romanticized depiction from 1887 showing two Roman women offering a sacrifice to a goddess. Paganism (from classical Latin pāgānus "rural, rustic," later "civilian") is a term first used in the fourth century by early Christians for people in the Roman Empire who practiced polytheism. This was either because they were increasingly rural and provincial relative to the Christian population, or because they were not milites Christi (soldiers of Christ).J. J. O'Donnell (1977), Paganus: Evolution and Use, Classical Folia, 31: 163–69.
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Hinduism is a diverse system of thought with beliefs spanning monotheism, polytheism, panentheism, pantheism, monism, atheism, agnosticism, gnosticism among others; and its concept of God is complex and depends upon each individual and the tradition and philosophy followed. It is sometimes referred to as henotheistic (i.e., involving devotion to a single god while accepting the existence of others), but any such term is an overgeneralization.See and The major worship forms of Shiva temples are for Shiva, Parvathi, Ganesha and Muruga.
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All of the gods had a power. There was, however, a great deal of fluidity as to whom was counted among their number in antiquity. Different cities often worshipped the same deities, sometimes with epithets that distinguished them and specified their local nature. The Hellenic Polytheism extended beyond mainland Greece, to the islands and coasts of Ionia in Asia Minor, to Magna Graecia (Sicily and southern Italy), and to scattered Greek colonies in the Western Mediterranean, such as Massalia (Marseille).
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" This possibly suggests Rhiannon is based on an earlier goddess of Celtic polytheism. W.J. Gruffydd's book Rhiannon (1953) was an attempt to reconstruct the original story. It is mainly focused on the relationship between the males in the story, and rearranges the story elements too liberally for other scholars' preference, though his research is otherwise detailed and helpful. Patrick Ford suggests that the Third Branch "preserves the detritus of a myth wherein the Sea God mated with the Horse Goddess.
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Like Zimmer, Tillich is trying to express a religious notion that is neither theistic nor atheistic. However, the theism that is being transcended in Stoicism according to Tillich is not polytheism as in Jainism, but monotheism, pursuing an ideal of human courage which has emancipated itself from God. > The courage to take meaninglessness into itself presupposes a relation to > the ground of being which we have called "absolute faith." It is without a > special content, yet it is not without content.
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As in Metz' work, the concept of a suffering God is important to Moltmann's theological program. Moltmann's political theology was influenced strongly by the Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch, and both Moltmann and Sölle were influenced heavily by liberation theology, as was Metz. Another early influence was the Frankfurt School of critical theory, especially Walter Benjamin, and the Frankfurt School's broader critique of modernity. Odo Marquard became the center of discussion and controversy with his 1979 essay "In Praise of Polytheism".
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Much of Roman society embraced polytheism, in which multiple deities were believed to exist and were worshipped. Judaism and Christianity embraced monotheism, the belief that there is a single God. The belief in a single God ran contrary to subsequent claims that Roman Emperors were gods, with Roman persecution of those who held monotheistic beliefs following. The Christian creed "Jesus is Lord" became widespread among Christians during persecution by the Roman empire and has continued to be proclaimed enthusiastically among Christians throughout history.
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Sámi drum in the Arctikum museum, in Rovaniemi, Finland Traditional Sámi spiritual practices and beliefs are based on a type of animism, polytheism, and what anthropologists may consider shamanism. The religious traditions can vary considerably from region to region within Sápmi. Traditional Sámi religion is generally considered to be Animism. The Sámi belief that all significant natural objects (such as animals, plants, rocks, etc.) possess a soul, and from a polytheistic perspective, traditional Sámi beliefs include a multitude of spirits.
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Julian used the term to describe traditional Graeco-Roman religion. Additionally, subgroups within Hellenism have used a variety of names to distinguish branches focusing on specific schools of thought, or various different modern traditions. Hellenic religion and Hellenic polytheism are often used interchangeably to refer to the religion. The phrase Hellenic Polytheistic Reconstructionism refers specifically to the methodology used by some practitioners to recreate the religion based on academic sources, rather than the religion itself, and not all Hellenic Polytheists are reconstructionists.
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One principle of the Pagan movement is polytheism, the belief in and veneration of multiple gods or goddesses. Within the Pagan movement, there can be found many deities, both male and female, who have various associations and embody forces of nature, aspects of culture, and facets of human psychology. These deities are typically depicted in human form, and are viewed as having human faults. They are therefore not seen as perfect, but rather are venerated as being wise and powerful.
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The history of Christian thought demonstrates that Christianity has included concepts of both inclusivity and exclusivity from its beginnings. It has emphasized these ideas differently, in different ages, and this has led to practices of both persecution and toleration. Early Christian thought established Christian identity, defined heresy, separated itself from polytheism and Judaism and invented supersessionism. In the early 300s, Christian thought entered an age of "triumphalism" which saw Constantine's conversion as proof the battle against paganism had been won in Heaven.
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Many of the orthodox Muslims thought that the Hindus were guilty of two of the greatest sins, polytheism and idolatry.Andrea; Overfield: “A Muslim’s Description of Hindu Beliefs and Practices,” “The Human Record,” page 61. On the topic of idolatry, Abu’l Fazl says that the symbols and images that the Hindus carry are not idols but merely are there to keep their minds from wandering. He writes that only serving and worshipping God is required.Fazl, A: “Akbarnama,” Andrea; Overfield: “The Human Record,” page 62.
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The sanctity of family relations and the improvement in the status of womanhood were striven for while at the same time the importance of rites and rituals, of fasts and pilgrimages was reduced. It encouraged learning and contemplation of God by means of love and faith. The excesses of polytheism were deplored and the idea of monotheism was encouraged. The movement tended, in many ways, to raise the nation generally to a higher level of capacity both in thought and action.
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In 1840 he moved back to Lincoln, where he ran a boarding school. Boole immediately became involved in the Lincoln Topographical Society, serving as a member of the committee, and presenting a paper entitled "On the origin, progress, and tendencies of polytheism", especially amongst the ancient Egyptians and Persians, and in modern India.A Selection of Papers relative to the County of Lincoln, read before the Lincolnshire Topographical Society, 1841–1842. Printed by W. and B. Brooke, High-Street, Lincoln, 1843.
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The Stoics were interested in Heraclitus' treatment of fire. The earliest surviving Stoic work, the Hymn to Zeus of Cleanthes, a work transitional from pagan polytheism to the modern religions and philosophies, though not explicitly referencing Heraclitus, adopts what appears to be the Heraclitean logos modified. Zeus rules the universe with law (nomos) wielding on its behalf the "forked servant", the "fire" of the "ever-living lightning." So far nothing has been said that differs from the Zeus of Homer.
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Euonymeia declined in medieval times together with Athens after Christian reforms brought on the Decline of Greco-Roman polytheism. At some point during this time the settlement's name changed to the village of Trachones. Nonetheless, it retained urban settlement throughout the Early Christian and Byzantine eras as testified by the ruins of the Paleochristian Basilica of the Holy Apostles (ca. 7th-9th centuries CE) that can be found North of Euonymos Theater in the courtyard of the contemporary Church of the Life-giving Spring of Trachones.
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Weber also proposed a socio-evolutionary model of religious change, showing that in general, societies have moved from magic to polytheism, then to pantheism, monotheism and finally, ethical monotheism. According to Weber, this evolution occurred as the growing economic stability allowed professionalisation and the evolution of ever more sophisticated priesthood. As societies grew more complex and encompassed different groups, a hierarchy of gods developed and as power in the society became more centralised, the concept of a single, universal God became more popular and desirable.
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Some academics regard some texts as inaccurate misunderstandings or even fabrications. In addition, many sources list many different names and different spellings, thus sometimes it is not clear if they are referring to the same thing. noted Lithuania became Christianized between the end of the 14th century and the beginning of the 15th century, but Lithuanian polytheism survived for another two centuries, gradually losing influence and coherence as religion. The last conceptions of the old religion survived approximately until the beginning of the 19th century.
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The dichotomy between the two classifications is not bridgeable, even though they have the same methods, because each excludes the data of the other. The functionalists and some of the later essentialists (among others E. E. Evans- Pritchard) have criticized the substantive view as neglecting social aspects of religion. Such critics go so far as to brand Tylor's and Frazer's views on the origin of religion as unverifiable speculation. The view of monotheism as more evolved than polytheism represents a mere preconception, they assert.
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After his following on Galactica is attacked by a polytheism group, Baltar (with the encouragement of his Head Six) disrupts a religious ceremony of one of the polytheist denominations in the fleet. Later, President Roslin meets with the imprisoned Baltar to pressure him to avoid stirring up more trouble in the future. After he is released, Baltar is prevented from returning to his home by government soldiers acting under new legislation approved by the President. The legislation restricts the right to assembly specifically for Baltar's movement.
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In practice, Islamic law offers differing interpretations of Qur’anic justice, but this is done largely by ensuring there is a separation between legal and divine justice. This essentially means the notion of justice regarding non-Muslims is one of how non-Muslims will be punished or rewarded in the afterlife. In common Muslim understanding, it is certain that disbelievers, including atheists and polytheists, will go to jahannam. This is seen as just, as Allah does not accept polytheism or anyone to be associated with Him.
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Monotheism and Polytheism, Encyclopædia Britannica (2014) Another term related to henotheism is "equitheism", referring to the belief that all gods are equal. The Vedic era conceptualization of the divine or the One, states Jeaneane Fowler, is more abstract than a monotheistic God, it is the Reality behind and of the phenomenal universe. The Vedic hymns treat it as "limitless, indescribable, absolute principle", thus the Vedic divine is something of a panentheism rather than simple henotheism. In late Vedic era, around the start of Upanishadic age (c.
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David Leeming, The Oxford Companion to World Mythology (Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 13; Robert Parker, Polytheism and Society at Athens (Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 422. In another myth, the cornucopia was created when Heracles (Roman Hercules) wrestled with the river god Achelous and ripped off one of his horns; river gods were sometimes depicted as horned.Ovid, Metamorphoses 9.87–88, as cited by J. Rufus Fears, "The Cult of Virtues and Roman Imperial Ideology," Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.17.2 (1981), p. 821.
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The two books of Kings are part of the Deuteronomistic history, compiled more than two hundred years after the death of Jezebel. Finkelstein states that these accounts are "obviously influenced by the theology of the seventh century BCE writers". The compilers of the biblical accounts of Jezebel and her family were writing in the southern kingdom of Judah centuries after the events and from a perspective of strict monolatry. These writers considered the polytheism of the members of the Omride dynasty to be sinful.
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Attar narrates in his Memorial of the Saints that Maruf converted to Islam at a young age at the hands of Ali ibn Musa, after rejecting all forms of polytheism. Tradition recounts that he immediately went and told his father and mother, who rejoiced at his decision and became Muslims themselves. After accepting Islam, Maruf became a student of Dawud Ta'i, and underwent a severe trial of his discipleship. Maruf, however, remained steadfast and proved himself so devout that his righteousness became locally famous.
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For Jews and Muslims, the idea of God as a trinity is heretical– it is considered akin to polytheism. Christians overwhelmingly assert that monotheism is central to the Christian faith, as the very Nicene Creed (among others) which gives the orthodox Christian definition of the Trinity does begin with: "I believe in one God". In the 3rd century, Tertullian claimed that God exists as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—the three personae of one and the same substance.Critical Terms for Religious Studies.
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They both provide the bottom line for believers in terms of what is acceptable behavior in the faith. The actions themselves differ most of the major crimes in Islam relate to subservience to Allah. Any form of polytheism is seen to be the most severe offense in the religion and all of the other transgressions are in some form of association with Allah. Witchcraft, for example, is the taking on of supernatural powers in order to make the practitioner a being above the normal human.
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Shariatullah's Faraizi movement focused on reforming the priorities of Bengali Muslims based on the Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence. It called for Muslims to recognise and partake in their compulsory duties (fard); one example being the five daily prayers. He instructed his followers to assimilate every religious duty required by the Quran and Sunnah. He called for observance of the five pillars, the complete acceptance and observance of tawhid and prohibited all digressions from the original doctrines of Islam such as shirk (polytheism) and bidʻah (innovation).
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Many traditional and folk religions including African traditional religions and Native American religions can be seen as pantheistic, or a mixture of pantheism and other doctrines such as polytheism and animism. According to pantheists, there are elements of pantheism in some forms of Christianity. Ideas resembling pantheism existed in East/South Asian religions before the 18th century (notably Sikhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, and Taoism). Although there is no evidence that these influenced Spinoza's work, there is such evidence regarding other contemporary philosophers, such as Leibniz, and later Voltaire.
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Age polytheism is the system that wasps perform different tasks as they age. In P. occidentals, it refers to the age at which the wasps begin work outside of the nest. The larger wasps are sped up in this process and they work outside of the nest long before the smaller wasps take on these outside tasks. This implies that the larger wasps are removed from the direct reproduction tasks, while the smaller wasps are kept in the nest to be a part of reproduction.
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The Myths and Gods of India: The Classic Work on Hindu Polytheism from the Princeton Bollingen Series, pp. 141–142. Inner Traditions / Bear & Co. . The asuras (anti-gods) were depicted to have become proud, vain, to have stopped performing sacrifices, to violate sacred laws, not visit holy places, not cleanse themselves from sin, to be envious of devas, torturous of living beings, creating confusion in everything and challenging the devas. Alain Daniélou states that the concept of asuras evolved with changing socio-political dynamics in ancient India.
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Marquard's essay "In Praise of Polytheism" argues that human consciousness has never undergone a process of demythologisation. The author fundamentally agrees with Claude Lévi-Strauss', Blumenberg's and Leszek Kołakowski's positions on myths, and writes that the story of demythologisation is itself a myth. Marquard argues that myths are stories, and not primitive precursors to knowledge; knowledge is about finding truths, and storytelling is how humans engage with known truths in their lifeworld. From this he concludes that new knowledge will only lead to new myths.
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Also available: Full text and Liberty Fund edition. This still meant that he could be very critical of the Catholic Church, dismissing it with the standard Protestant accusations of superstition and idolatry, as well as dismissing as idolatry what his compatriots saw as uncivilised beliefs. He also considered extreme Protestant sects, the members of which he called "enthusiasts", to be corrupters of religion. By contrast, in "The Natural History of Religion", Hume presents arguments suggesting that polytheism had much to commend it over monotheism.
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Some religious symbols in clock-wise order from top: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Baháʼí Faith, Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Slavic neopaganism, Celtic polytheism, Heathenism (Germanic paganism), Semitic neopaganism, Wicca, Kemetism (Egyptian paganism), Hellenism (Greek paganism), Italo-Roman neopaganism. A religion is a system of behaviors and practices, that relate to supernatural, transcendental, or spiritual elements, but the precise definition is debated. A religious worldview is one grounded in a religion, either an organized religion or something less codified. So followers of an Abrahamic religion (e.g.
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Paul has been criticized by some modern Muslim thinkers. Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas wrote that Paul misrepresented the message of Jesus, and Rashid Rida accused Paul of introducing shirk (polytheism) into Christianity. Mohammad Ali Jouhar quoted Adolf von Harnack's critical writings of Paul. In Sunni Muslim polemics, Paul plays the same role (of deliberately corrupting the early teachings of Jesus) as a later Jew, Abdullah ibn Saba', would play in seeking to destroy the message of Islam from within (by introducing proto-Shi'ite beliefs).
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The good is the right relation between all that exists, and this exists in the mind of the Divine, or some heavenly realm. The good is the harmony of a just political community, love, friendship, the ordered human soul of virtues, and the right relation to the Divine and to Nature. The characters in Plato's dialogues mention the many virtues of a philosopher, or a lover of wisdom. A theist is a person who believes that the Supreme Being exists or gods exist (monotheism or polytheism).
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Dost thou forbid us the worship of what our fathers worshiped? But we are really in suspicious (disquieting) doubt as to that to which thou invitest us."" He was chosen by God as a Messenger and sent preach against the selfishness of the wealthy and to condemn the practice of Shirk (Idolatry or Polytheism). Although Saleh preached the message for a sustained period of time, the people for Thamud refused to hear his warning and instead began to ask Saleh to perform a miracle for them.
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Its Latinity is not of the specifically Christian type. If the doctrines of the Divine unity, the resurrection, and future rewards and punishments are left out of the account, the work has less the character of an exposition of Christianity than of a philosophical and ethical polemic against the absurdities of polytheism. While it thus has much in common with the Greek Apologies it is full of the strong common sense that marks the Latin mind. Its ultimate appeal is to the fruits of faith.
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While Greek and Roman religion began as polytheism, during the Classical period, under the influence of philosophy, differing conceptions emerged. Often Zeus (or Jupiter) was considered the supreme, all-powerful and all-knowing, king and father of the Olympian gods. According to Maijastina Kahlos "monotheism was pervasive in the educated circles in Late Antiquity" and "all divinities were interpreted as aspects, particles or epithets of one supreme God".Maijastina Kahlos, Debate and Dialogue: Christian and Pagan Cultures C. 360-430, Ashgate Publishing, 2007, p.
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It applies to all > systems which are opposed to theism. It includes, therefore, atheism, but > short of atheism, there are anti-theistic theories. Polytheism is not > atheism, for it does not deny that there is a deity; but it is anti-theistic > since it denies that there is only one. Pantheism is not atheism, for it > asserts that there is a god; but it is anti-theism, for it denies that God > is a being distinct from creation and possessed of such attributes as > wisdom, and holiness, and love.
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A derived term with similar meaning is mentioned in the Qur'an at 3:7.Qur'ān, Chapter 3, Verse 7 > It is He Who has sent down to you the Book. In it are Verses that are > entirely clear, they are the foundations of the Book; and others not > entirely clear. So as for those in whose hearts there is a deviation (from > the truth) they follow that which is not entirely clear thereof, seeking Al- > Fitnah (polytheism and trials, etc.), and seeking for its hidden meanings, > but none knows its hidden meanings save Allâh.
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Some groups that take a Celtic Reconstructionist approach to ancient Gaelic polytheism call themselves "Gaelic Traditionalists". Preservation of the living traditions in modern Gaelic (and other modern Celtic) communities has always been a priority in Celtic Reconstructionism. However, according to The CR FAQ there has been some controversy around the use of the term "Gaelic Traditionalists" by groups outside of the Gaeltacht and Gàidhealtachd areas of Ireland, Scotland and Nova Scotia. In the opinion of Isaac Bonewits this is partly because "Gaelic Traditionalists" is a term used almost exclusively by Celtic Christians.
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302 . Hegel seemed to have an ambivalent relationship with magic, myth and Paganism. He formulated an early philosophical example of a disenchantment narrative, arguing that Judaism was responsible both for realizing the existence of Geist and, by extension, for separating nature from ideas of spiritual and magical forces and challenging polytheism. However, Hegel's manuscript "The Oldest Systematic Program of German Idealism" suggests that Hegel was concerned about the perceived decline in myth and enchantment in his age, and he therefore called for a "new myth" to fill the cultural vacuum.
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But Karl Marx turned Bauer's reference into a "syncretism between Mosaic monotheism and Babylonian polytheism". His answer was antisemitic, as far as it was antisemitic that his family was forced to leave their religious tradition for very existential reasons. He hardly foresaw that the rhetorical use of Judaism as a metaphor of capitalism (originally a satirical construction of Heinrich Heine, talking about the "prophet Rothschild") will be constantly repeated in a completely unsatirical way in the history of socialism. Karl Marx used these words in a less satirical than in an antihumanistic way.
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Jethro's Tomb in Tiberias, Israel Druzism is a highly distinguished sect of Ismāʿīli Shi'a Islam, practiced by the Druze community. Most Druze consider themselves Muslims, however most non-Druze Muslims (most Sunnis and many Shi'as) do not regard the Druze as practicing Islam – and may even condemn their beliefs as shirk (polytheism). The Nabi Shu'ayb, or Tomb of Jethro, near Tiberias in Israel is the most important religious site for the Druze. They have held religious festivals there for centuries and it has been a place of annual pilgrimage.
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The Quran distinguishes between mushrikun and People of the Book, reserving the former term for idol worshipers, although some classical commentators considered Christian doctrine to be a form of shirk. In modern times, kafir is sometimes used as a derogatory term, particularly by members of Islamist movements.Emmanuel M. Ekwo Racism and Terrorism: Aftermath of 9/11 Author House 2010 page 143 Unbelief is called kufr. Kafir is sometimes used interchangeably with mushrik (, those who commit polytheism), another type of religious wrongdoer mentioned frequently in the Quran and other Islamic works.
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KNM, led the foundation of renaissance from the corrupted practices of the Sunni orthodoxy, including false beliefs, polytheism etc, and introduced true Islamic practices to the Muslim community in Kerala which had until then been severely lacking in crucial aspects of religious and socio-civic knowledge. The social, cultural, educational, and religious activities of Kerala Nadvathul Mujahideen enhanced the Islamic renaissance, and enabled the state's Muslims to create their own characteristics and peculiarities that distinguished them from other Muslim communities in India by achieving high rates of literacy and a prestigious status in Kerala society.
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There is particularly controversy over the meaning of the word "Sabians". The long presence of Islam in South Asia, however, has engendered many debates about the status of Hindus, which has run the whole gamut between a more standard dismissal of Hinduism as shirk, or polytheism, to some Muslims, such as Mirza Mazhar Jan-e-JanaanMirza Mazhar Jan-e-Janaan Biography , Biography of Urdu Writers even going so far as to recognize Rama and Krishna as Prophets of Islam not explicitly mentioned in Muslim scripture – thereby making Hindus equivalent to Christians or Jews.
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In it, he claimed blasphemy as an appropriate response to human suffering, using the book of Job and the Holocaust as a models. Critics suggested that Penchansky’s approach ignored the larger context of biblical passages, portraying the Bible as a mass of conflicting theological positions. His subsequent publications have considered the negative sides of God, and the polytheistic underpinnings of ancient Israelite religion. His book Twilight of the Gods: Polytheism in the Hebrew Bible claims to show how certain biblical texts portray a complex interplay of monotheistic and polytheistic ideas.
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Chai seen in Jewitchery The notion of historical Israelite or Jewish polytheism was popularized in the United States during the 1960s by Raphael Patai in The Hebrew Goddess, focusing on the cult of female goddesses such as the cult of Asherah in Solomon's Temple. During the growth of Neopaganism in the United States throughout the 1970s, a number of minor Canaanite or Israelite oriented groups emerged. Most contained syncretistic elements from Western esotericism. Forms of witchcraft religions inspired by the Semitic milieu, such as Jewitchery, may also be enclosed within the Semitic neopagan movement.
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The animistic nature of folk beliefs is an anthropological cultural universal. The belief in ghosts and spirits animating the natural world and the practice of ancestor worship is universally present in the world's cultures and re-emerges in monotheistic or materialistic societies as "superstition", belief in demons, tutelary saints, fairies or extraterrestrials. The presence of a full polytheistic religion, complete with a ritual cult conducted by a priestly caste, requires a higher level of organization and is not present in every culture. In Eurasia, the Kalash are one of very few instances of surviving polytheism.
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Reconstructionist polytheists apply scholarly disciplines such as history, archaeology and language study to revive ancient, traditional religions that have been fragmented, damaged or even destroyed, such as Norse Paganism, Greek Paganism, Celtic polytheism and others. A reconstructionist endeavours to revive and reconstruct an authentic practice, based on the ways of the ancestors but workable in contemporary life. These polytheists sharply differ from neopagans in that they consider their religion not only inspired by the religions of antiquity but often as an actual continuation or revival of those religions.
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In Celtic polytheism, Andarta was a goddess worshiped in southern Gaul. Inscriptions to her have been found in southern France and in Bern, Switzerland. The name has traditionally be translated as "Great/Big Bear", but a more critical analysis of the name in 2018 by linguist Blanca María Prósper offers the translation "Well-fixed, Staying firm", Prósper, Blanca María, "The Venetic Inscription from Monte Manicola and Three termini publici from Padua: A Reappraisal", in: Journal of Indo-European Studies 46, Number 1 & 2, Spring/Summer 2018, pp. 1-61 (p. 12).
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Both as novelist and nonfiction writer, Gover has explored themes of pseudoscience and the occult. Voodoo Contra: Contradictory Meanings of the Word, deals with African-American polytheism as a serious and very ancient religion. In Time and Money: The Economy and the Planets, Gover claims evidence for a recurring planetary pattern that has coincided with great depressions, and predicts a very difficult economy and economic changes during the second decade of the 21st Century. Gover lived most of his life in California but later moved to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
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Actions by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which occupied the area in mid-2014, have been a major threat to Hatra. In early 2015 they announced their intention to destroy many artifacts, claiming that such "graven images" were un-Islamic, encouraged shirk (or polytheism), and could not be permitted to exist, despite the preservation of the site for 1,400 years by various Islamic regimes. ISIL militants pledged to destroy the remaining artifacts. Shortly thereafter, they released a video showing the destruction of some artifacts from Hatra.
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In Persia regime change took place from Parthian Empire to the more centralized Sassanian Empire. The land based Silk Road continued to deliver profits in trade but came under continual assault by nomads all on the northern frontiers of Eurasian nations. Safer sea routes began to gain preference in the early centuries AD Proselytizing religions began to replace polytheism and folk religions in many areas. Christianity gained a wide following in the Roman Empire, Zoroastrianism became the state enforced religion of Iran and Buddhism spread to East Asia from South Asia.
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Folketro (Danish, Norwegian) or folktro (Swedish) is the North Germanic for "folk religion", referring to Scandinavian folklore in particular. In the Scandinavian Heathen discourse, the term is used for a religion that consists of a folklore that is believed to be the descendant of historical Norse paganism. Folketro is considered a living tradition and that does not include the use of reconstructionism in any way, nor the use of historical sources such as the Edda or notation of folklore. The term is in conscious contrast to Asatru, the reconstructionist revival of medieval Norse polytheism.
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Until about the fourth century, almost all Arabs practised polytheistic religions. Although significant Jewish and Christian minorities developed, polytheism remained the dominant belief system in pre-Islamic Arabia. The religious beliefs and practices of the nomadic bedouin were distinct from those of the settled tribes of towns such as Mecca. Nomadic religious belief systems and practices are believed to have included fetishism, totemism and veneration of the dead but were connected principally with immediate concerns and problems and did not consider larger philosophical questions such as the afterlife.
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Vulcans once practiced a form of polytheism; this can be seen in gods of war, peace, and death depicted on the Stone of Gol relic in the TNG episode, "Gambit (Star Trek: The Next Generation)". The DVD commentary for "Amok Time" says that TOS writer D. C. Fontana named the Vulcan god of death "Shariel", a bust of whom is seen in Spock's quarters. Vulcan civilization is ancient. In "Amok Time", Spock says that the place of "Koon-ut-kal-if-fee" has been held by his family for 2,000 years.
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Some, such as Dianic Wicca, exclusively worship female deities, while others do not. Belief systems range from monotheistic to polytheism to pantheistic, encompassing a range of theological variety similar to that in the broader neopagan community. Common pluralistic belief means that a self-identified Goddess worshiper could theoretically worship any number of different goddesses from cultures all over the world. Based on its characteristics, the Goddess movement is also referred to as a form of cultural religiosity that is increasingly diverse, geographically widespread, eclectic, and more dynamic in process.
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In Ukraine, there has been a debate as to whether the religion should be monotheistic or polytheistic. In keeping with the pre-Christian belief systems of the region, the groups who inherit Volodymyr Shaian's tradition, among others, espouse polytheism. Conversely, Lev Sylenko's Native Ukrainian National Faith (RUNVira for short, called "Sylenkoism" in some academic scholarship) regards itself as monotheistic and focuses its worship upon a single God whom they identify by the name Dazhbog. For members of this group, Dazhbog is regarded as the life-giving energy of the cosmos.
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The story uses historical fiction to highlight the relationship between religion and science at the time amidst the decline of Greco-Roman polytheism and the Christianization of the Roman Empire. The title of the film takes its name from the agora, a public gathering place in ancient Greece, similar to the Roman forum. The film was produced by Fernando Bovaira and shot on the island of Malta from March to June 2008. Justin Pollard, co-author of The Rise and Fall of Alexandria (2007), was the historical adviser for the film.
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In the Hebrew texts this word is interpreted as being semantically singular for "god" by biblical commentators.For example: However the documentary hypothesis developed originally in the 1870s, identifies these that different authors – the Jahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist, and the Priestly source – were responsible for editing stories from a polytheistic religion into those of a monotheistic religion. Inconsistencies that arise between monotheism and polytheism in the texts are reflective of this hypothesis. The stem ʾl is found prominently in the earliest strata of east Semitic, northwest Semitic, and south Semitic groups.
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This testament is in contrast to a funeral oration about Anna given by her contemporary, Georgios Tornikes. In his oration he said that she had to read ancient poetry, such as the Odyssey, in secret because her parents disapproved of its dealing with polytheism and other "dangerous exploits," which were considered "dangerous" for men and "excessively insidious" for women. Tornikes went on to say that Anna "braced the weakness of her soul" and studied the poetry "taking care not to be detected by her parents."Browning 1990, pp. 404–405.
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The Enûma Eliš contains numerous parallels with passages of the Old Testament, which has led some researchers to conclude that these were based on the Mesopotamian work. Overarching similarities include: reference to a watery chaos before creation; a separation of the chaos into heaven and earth; different types of waters and their separation; as well as the numerical similarity between the seven tablets of the epic and the seven days of creation. However, another analysis notes many differences, including polytheism vs. monotheism, and personification of forces and qualities in the Babylonian myth vs.
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Very little is known about religion in Scotland before the arrival of Christianity. The lack of native written sources among the Picts means that it can only be judged from parallels elsewhere, occasional surviving archaeological evidence and hostile accounts of later Christian writers. It is generally presumed to have resembled Celtic polytheism. The names of more than two hundred Celtic deities have been noted, some of which, like Lugh, The Dagda and The Morrigan, come from later Irish mythology, whilst others, like Teutatis, Taranis and Cernunnos, come from evidence from Gaul.
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Pagan Dawn is a quarterly magazine featuring articles, reviews and research on polytheism, pantheism, cultural history and nature-based spirituality, published by the Pagan Federation in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1968 (thus pre-dating the Pagan Federation by three years) the journal was originally called The Wiccan until the name was changed in 1994 "to reflect the growing number of non-Wiccan members of the Pagan Federation". Pagan Dawn is based in London. Articles cover all aspects of modern and historic paganism, from Germanic neopaganism to wicca, shamanism, druidry, and esoterica.
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Akindynos having died in 1348, Nicephorus Gregoras became the chief opponent of Hesychasm. When Isidore I died in 1349, the Hesychasts replaced him by one of their monks, Callistus I. In May 1351, a patriarchal council was held. Kantakouzenos opened the first session on 27 May expressing a desire for peace and harmony but only on the condition that the Palamite dogmas be accepted. Gregoras, speaking for the anti-Palamites, rejected Kantakouzenos' terms and insisted that it was necessary to expel the polytheism of Palamas from the Church.
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Faery Wicca, or Fairy Wicca, is any tradition of modern Wicca that places an emphasis on the Fae (goblins, elves, faeries, sprites, etc.), their lore, and their relation to the natural world. "Faery Wicca" also refer to a specific tradition of Wicca, recently founded by author Kisma Stepanich. Adherents of Stepanich's Faery Wicca claim that it recovers the traditions of the Tuatha De Danaan, the mythological precursors to the Celtic people;Stepanich, Kisma K., The Irish American Faery-Faith Tradition however, this is disputed by those familiar with ancient Celtic polytheism and mythology.Hautin-Mayer, Joanna.
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In 1992, Gérard created and became the editor of the journal Antaios, intended as a continuation of the magazine of the same name edited by Mircea Eliade and Ernst Jünger from 1959 to 1971. The new Antaios existed until 2001 and became the publication of the Société d'Etudes Polythéistes, "Society for the Study of Polytheism", founded in 1998. Gérard has written a French translation of Emperor Julian's Against the Galilaeans, published in 1995. He lays out his approach to faith and ethics in the books Parcours païen (2000) and La Source pérenne (2007).
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ISIL justifies the destruction of cultural heritage sites with its following of Salafism, which, according to its followers, places "great importance on establishing tawhid (monotheism)", and "eliminating shirk (polytheism)." While it is often assumed that the group's actions are mindless acts of vandalism, there is an ideological underpinning to their destruction of Islamic, non-Islamic, historical and cultural heritage sites. ISIL views its actions in sites like Palmyra and Nimrud as being in accordance with Sunni Islamic tradition. Beyond the ideological aspects of the destruction, there are other, more practical, reasons behind ISIL's destruction of historic sites.
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In the line of John Wansbrough, Hawting concentrated on the question for the religious milieu in which Islam came into being. He analyzed all available sources about the religions on the Arabian peninsula in the time before Islam in detail. According to Hawting, Islam did not develop within a world of polytheism as is reported by the traditional Islamic traditions which were written 150 to 200 years after Muhammad. Instead, Islam came into being on the basis of a conflict among various types of monotheists which considered each other to fail in living a perfect monotheism, and considering each other to practice idolatry.
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Gardner's explanation aside, individual interpretations of the exact natures of the gods differ significantly, since priests and priestesses develop their own relationships with the gods through intense personal work and revelation. Many have a duotheistic conception of deity as a Goddess (of Moon, Earth and sea) and a God (of forest, hunting and the animal realm). This concept is often extended into a kind of polytheism by the belief that the gods and goddesses of all cultures are aspects of this pair (or of the Goddess alone). Others hold the various gods and goddesses to be separate and distinct.
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Genres like epic poetry, pastoral verse, and the endless use of characters and themes from Greek mythology left a deep mark on Western literature. In architecture, there have been several Greek Revivals, which seem more inspired in retrospect by Roman architecture than Greek. Washington, DC is filled with large marble buildings with facades made out to look like Greek temples, with columns constructed in the classical orders of architecture. In philosophy, the efforts of St Thomas Aquinas were derived largely from the thought of Aristotle, despite the intervening change in religion from Hellenic Polytheism to Christianity.
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A significant part of Pettazzoni's work was devoted to refuting the theory of primordial monotheism (Urmonotheismus) developed by Schmidt and the study of the conceptions of the Supreme Being in primitive religions. He found evidence of monotheism in so-called primitive societies, and that all societies recognize the Supreme Being as a non-exclusive spiritual entity which is paramount by also opposed by other spiritual entities. He challenged Schmidt's concept of a Supreme Being as necessarily entailing monotheism. Rather, Pettazzoni writes that monotheism is a recent religious development over the course of a slow revolution in polytheism and perhaps henotheism.
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The family was one of the most prominent Plebeian families during late antiquity, producing several consuls, plebeian tribunes, provincial governors, urban prefects (or "mayors" of the city of Rome), and scholarly men of letters.Joseph Hilarius Eckhel, Doctrina Numorum Veterum, v. p. 147.Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, Editor. Despite being most notable for their defense of Roman polytheism and traditional Roman culture (especially by Quintus Aurelius Symmachus) during the Theodosian persecution of paganism, the family also had several distinguished Christian members during the Ante-Nicene Period, including an early pope, Symmachus.
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Merrifield 1987. pp. 59-82. The fourth chapter, "From Paganism to Christianity", explores the continuing practice of ritual in Christian Europe. Discussing the early Roman Catholic Church's demonisation of pagan deities, Merrifield states that the Church continued propagating a form of polytheism through the "cult of the blessed dead", the veneration of saints and martyrs, throughout the Middle Ages. Discussing the ritual use of Christian relics, he also looks at votive offerings that were presented in a Christian context at shrines and churches, paying particular reference to the tradition of offering bent coins to shrines in Late Medieval England.
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Landscape of Afghanistan with a T-62 in the foreground. In early 19th century, the Sikh Empire expanded under Ranjit Singh in the northwest as far as the Hindu Kush range. The last polytheistic stronghold remained in the region until 1896, called "Kafiristan" whose people practised a form of polytheism (or were possibly nondenominational Muslims) until invasion and conversion at the hands of Afghans under Amir Abdur Rahman Khan. The Hindu Kush served as a geographical barrier to the British empire, leading to paucity of information and scarce direct interaction between the British colonial officials and Central Asian peoples.
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A detail from alt=A stone with various engravings upon it The historian of religion Mattias Gardell noted that there is "no unanimously accepted theology" within the Heathen movement. Several early Heathens like Guido von List found the polytheistic nature of pre-Christian religion embarrassing, and argued that in reality it had been monotheistic. Since the 1970s, such negative attitudes towards polytheism have changed. Today Heathenry is usually characterised as being polytheistic, exhibiting a theological structure which includes a pantheon of gods and goddesses, with adherents offering their allegiance and worship to some or all of them.
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''''' (; also transliterated as ' or '; literally "association") is a term used in Jewish sources for the worship of God in a manner which Judaism does not deem to be purely monotheistic. The term connotes a theology that is not outright polytheistic, but also should not be seen as purely monotheistic. The term is primarily used in reference to the Christian Trinity by Jewish legal authorities who wish to distinguish Christianity from full-blown polytheism. Though a Jew would be forbidden from maintaining a shituf theology, non-Jews would, in some form, be permitted such a theology without being regarded as idolaters by Jews.
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Wellhausen's placing of P after D, so that the sequence of sources was JEDP, was crucial to the view of the development of Israelite religion from original polytheism to Judaic monotheism; Friedman's reordering of the sources is thus his major challenge to Wellhausen's model, as it undermines Wellhausen's thesis that the Priestly Code represents the final development of a priest-centred religious practice. Friedman's dating of J to the time of the divided kingdom - Wellhausen put it in the 10th century BC rather than the 8th - is also novel, but less so than his ordering of the sources.
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The "Cernunnos" type antlered figure on the Gundestrup Cauldron found in Denmark Very little is known about religion in Scotland before the arrival of Christianity. The lack of native written sources among the Picts means that it can only be judged from parallels elsewhere, occasional surviving archaeological evidence and hostile accounts of later Christian writers. It is generally presumed to have resembled Celtic polytheism. The names of more than two hundred Celtic deities have been noted, some of which, like Lugh, The Dagda and The Morrigan, come from later Irish mythology, whilst others, like Teutatis, Taranis and Cernunnos, come from evidence from Gaul.
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Sometime during his second exile, Photius composed On the Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit, in which he sharply criticized the Western tradition of using the filioque. In the Mystagogy, he attacks those who "accept impious and spurious doctrines...that the Holy Spirit is distant and mediated." By believing that the Holy Spirit proceeds not from the Father alone but also from the Son, he says, one "alienate[s] the Holy Spirit from the Father's hypostasis." The error is equivalent to polytheism, because it creates three gods which are distinct from one another, rather than being consubstantial.
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Because the government noticed that Lahu Christians generally did not smoke opium, beginning in 1992 the Chinese government facilitated the spread of Christianity among the Lahu. By 1993, it was reported that there were about 50,000 Lahu Christians in China and 24 churches. There has also been spread as some villages noticed the positive economic and health effects Christianity has had on other villages where they had relatives. The willingness of the government to facilitate such conversion is in part due to the ideological belief that monotheism is a natural stepping-stone from polytheism to Communism.
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The Eshmun Temple was improved during the early Roman Empire with a colonnade street, but declined after earthquakes and fell into oblivion as Christianity replaced polytheism and its large limestone blocks were used to build later structures. The temple site was rediscovered in 1900 by local treasure hunters who stirred the curiosity of international scholars. Maurice Dunand, a French archaeologist, thoroughly excavated the site from 1963 until the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975. After the end of the hostilities and the retreat of Israel from Southern Lebanon, the site was rehabilitated and inscribed to the World Heritage Site tentative list.
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The idea of God as a duality or trinity is heretical in Judaism - it is considered akin to polytheism. God is conceived of as eternal, the creator of the universe, and the source of morality. The term God thus corresponds to an actual ontological reality, and is not merely a projection of the human psyche. Maimonides describes God in this fashion: Traditional interpretations of Judaism generally emphasize that God is personal and able to intervene in the world, while some interpretations of Judaism emphasize that God is an impersonal force or ideal rather than a being who intervenes in the world.
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In ancient Celtic polytheism, Verbeia was a goddess worshipped in Roman Britain. She is known from a single altar-stone dedicated to her at Ilkley (RIB 635). She is considered to have been a deification of the River Wharfe.Dictionary of Celtic Myth and Legend, Miranda J. Green, Thames and Hudson Ltd, 1997 An image of a woman (also from Ilkley) may represent the goddess: she is depicted with an overlarge head and schematic features; she wears a long, pleated robe and she has two large snakes, represented as geometric zig-zags, which she grasps, one in each hand.
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Ancient monoliths in Mawphlang sacred grove, India A sacred grove or sacred woods are any grove of trees that are of special religious importance to a particular culture. Sacred groves feature in various cultures throughout the world. They were important features of the mythological landscape and cult practice of Celtic, Estonian, Baltic, Germanic, ancient Greek, Near Eastern, Roman, and Slavic polytheism, and continue to occur in locations such as India, Japan, and West Africa. Examples of sacred groves include the Greco- Roman temenos, various Germanic words for sacred groves, and the Celtic nemeton, which was largely but not exclusively associated with Druidic practice.
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The yuga-dharma for the Kali yuga is 'Preaching the Gospel of Vaikundar' , says Akilam, making it to move further from the mainstream Hinduism. Apart from this the list of Primary Avatars provided by Akilam is different from that of the Hindu scriptures. Also Vaikundar is considered supreme to all others in Akilam; Socialogically, Monotheism is advocated varrying extremely from the Hindu Polytheism. The 'Ultimate refuge to Almighty' - the worship form in Ayyavazhi which replaces the domination of ritual importance in Hindu form of worship, is advocated in Akilam as the best way to attain the personal liberation.
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Based on the utmost philosophy of Akilam, Ayyavazhi is viewed also as a Hindu Renaissance. It constructs a typical and unique mythical-story line which includes enormous quantity of events from the Hindu mythology including Ramayana and Mahabharata which are independent to one another. Philosophically Akilam gives space for all - from the deep-rooted polytheism (in the Hindu society) to the supreme monism of an intellectual Hindu. It also deals with the Siva-dominant Saivite ideology, Vishnu-dominant Vaishnava, Shakti dominant Saktism, and Smartism where all the Siva, Brahma and Vishnu gains equal status, though with limited time spans.
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One of the clans who remained in the Sarat was the Qasr. In Muhammad's last years, a Qasri chieftain, Jarir ibn Abd Allah al-Bajali, led a delegation of 150 of his tribesmen and converted to Islam in the prophet's presence. They were subsequently dispatched to demolish the Dhul Khalasa sanctuary, which the polytheistic Bajila and Khath'am tribes had worshiped until then. Many Bajila clans, namely those inhabiting southern Arabia, reverted to polytheism following Muhammad’s death in 632, but returned to Muslim authority after the punitive campaigns of their kinsmen Jarir, who remained loyal to the Muslims.
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Mosaic of St Perpetua, Croatia The Roman Imperial cult was based on a general polytheism that, by combining veneration for the paterfamilias and for the ancestor, developed a public celebration of the reigning Emperor as a father and divine leader. From time to time compulsory displays of loyalty or patriotism were required; those refusing the state cult might face a painful death.Joyce E. Salisbury, Perpetua's Passion. The Death and Memory of a Young Roman Woman (London: Routledge 1997) at 15–22 (state cult), at 22 (persecution order of Lucius Septimius Severus (r. 193–211) issued in 202).
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Kelly, J.N.D. Early Christian Doctrines A&C; Black (1965) pp. 87,88 Jordan Paper, a Western scholar and self-described polytheist, considers polytheism to be the normal state in human culture. He argues that "Even the Catholic Church shows polytheistic aspects with the 'worshipping' of the saints." On the other hand, he complains, monotheistic missionaries and scholars were eager to see a proto-monotheism or at least henotheism in polytheistic religions, for example, when taking from the Chinese pair of Sky and Earth only one part and calling it the King of Heaven, as Matteo Ricci did.
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In his book, William Dever describes archaeological findings in ancient Israel that have produced female figurines, representing female goddesses. Dever, claiming that the biblical authors never refer or allude to such archaeological facts of contemporary life, writes that the biblical authors “did not wish to acknowledge the popularity and the powerful influence of these images" (pg. 184). Benjamin D. Sommer has criticized Dever on this point, saying that "[i]n fact, however, biblical authors constantly acknowledge the widespread polytheism of Israelites, and they mention Israelite goddess worship specifically on a number of occasions (e.g., Jeremiah 7.18, 44.17–19).
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The good for humans lies in the understanding and acceptance of this combined with actions directed towards the good. The Stoics attempted to incorporate traditional polytheism into their philosophy. Not only was the primitive substance God, the one supreme being, but divinity could be ascribed to the manifestations—to the heavenly bodies, to the forces of nature, even to deified persons; and thus the world was peopled with divine agencies. Prayers are of little avail in a rationally ordered cosmos, and surviving examples of Stoic prayers appear to be more like types of self-meditation than appeals for divine intervention.
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Edward Gibbons "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", Chapter 21, (1776–88), Jonathan Kirsch, "God Against the Gods: The History of the War Between Monotheism and Polytheism", 2004, and Charles Freeman, The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason, 2002. At the First Synod of Tyre in AD 335, they brought accusations against Athanasius, now bishop of Alexandria, the primary opponent of Arius. After this, Constantine had Athanasius banished since he considered him an impediment to reconciliation. In the same year, the Synod of Jerusalem under Constantine's direction readmitted Arius to communion in 336.
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In the 1860s and 1870s, the linguist Martin Haug interpreted Zoroastrian scripture in Christian terms, and compared the yazatas to the angels of Christianity. In this scheme, the Amesha Spentas are the arch-angel retinue of Ahura Mazda, with the hamkars as the supporting host of lesser angels. At the time Haug wrote his translations, the Parsi (i.e. Indian Zoroastrian) community was under intense pressure from English and American missionaries, who severely criticized the Zoroastrians for--as John Wilson portrayed it in 1843--"polytheism", which the missionaries argued was much less worth than their own "monotheism".
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The fifteenth-century Trinity Altarpiece by Flemish artist Hugo van der Goes The history of popular religion in Scotland includes all forms of h the formal theology and structures of institutional religion,Richard W. Santana, Gregory Erickson, Religion and Popular Culture: Rescripting the Sacred (London: McFarland, 2008), , p. 4. between the earliest times of human occupation of what is now Scotland and the present day. Very little is known about religion in Scotland before the arrival of Christianity. It is generally presumed to have resembled Celtic polytheism and there is evidence of the worship of spirits and wells.
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The "Cernunnos" type antlered figure on the Gundestrup Cauldron found in Denmark Very little is known about religion in Scotland before the arrival of Christianity. The lack of native written sources among the Picts means that it can only be judged from parallels elsewhere, occasional surviving archaeological evidence and hostile accounts of later Christian writers. It is generally presumed to have resembled Celtic polytheism. The names of more than two hundred Celtic deities have been noted, some of which, like Lugh, The Dagda and The Morrigan, come from later Irish mythology, whilst others, like Teutatis, Taranis and Cernunnos, come from evidence from Gaul.
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Catholics preferred to avoid it, due to compromises with the local authority in order to do their missions, as well as fear such translation may associate the Christian God to Chinese polytheism. Nowadays, through the secular Chinese-language media, the Chinese word of "Shangdi" and "Tian" are frequently used to as a translation for the singular universal deity with minimal religious attachment to the Christian idea of God, while Confucians and intellectuals in contemporary mainland China and Taiwan attempt to realign the term to its original meaning. The Catholics officially use the term Tianzhu, while Evangelicals typically use Shangdi and/or Shen (, "God").
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Due to the growing influence of Taputapuatea - one can characterize it as a type of central pilgrimage site - Oro gained more political power and religious influence within the Polynesian pantheon. On the neighboring island of Tahiti the veneration of Oro grew in importance during the late proto-historical or early historical period and can be seen as a clear step from Polytheism to Monotheism. This development was substantially driven by the influential secret society of Arioi, who were of great religious and political importance. From within their ranks came the upper echelons of the nobility and the priesthood.
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It also posits that the separation of powers and the individual have their origin in polytheism, and argues that people should embrace what Marquard calls "enlightened polymythical thinking"—the recognition of several stories in the modern world. Marquard was a professor of philosophy and proponent of scepticism and pluralism. He belonged to a part of German philosophy that viewed the issues of modernity through the concept of political theology, which associates modern political concepts with theological concepts. Some of the points in the essay have precursors in the writings of Max Weber, Erik Peterson and Friedrich Nietzsche.
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Despite the rise of Christianity across the Roman Empire, the oracle remained a religious centre throughout the 4th century, and the Pythian Games continued to be held at least until 424 CE; however, the decline continued. The attempt of Emperor Julian to revive polytheism did not survive his reign. Excavations have revealed a large three-aisled basilica in the city, as well as traces of a church building in the sanctuary's gymnasium. The site was abandoned in the 6th or 7th centuries, although a single bishop of Delphi is attested in an episcopal list of the late 8th and early 9th centuries.
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His son King Solomon constructed the first magnificent Temple at Jerusalem for the worship of God. The Jews rejected the polytheism common to that age and would worship only Yahweh, whose Ten Commandments instructed them on morality. These Ten Commandments remain influential in the West and prohibited theft, lying and adultery; call for the worship of only one God; and for respect and honour for parents and neighbours. The Jews observed Sabbath as a "day of rest" (called "one of the first wide-ranging laws of social-welfare in the world" by the historian Geoffrey Blainey).
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Slavic Native Faith (Rodnovery) has a theology that is generally monistic, consisting in the vision of an absolute, supreme God (Rod) who begets the universe and lives as the universe (pantheism and panentheism), present in all its phenomena. Polytheism, that is the worship of the gods or spirits, and ancestors, the facets of the supreme Rod generating all phenomena, is an integral part of Rodnovers' beliefs and practices. The swastika-like kolovrat is the symbol of Rodnovery. According to the studies of Boris Rybakov, whirl and wheel symbols, which also include patterns like the "six-petaled rose inside a circle" (e.g.
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Padberg 1998, 52 That a commander-in-chief would attribute his victory to the Christian God is a recurring motive since the Constantinian shift. Although the New Testament nowhere mentions that divine battle aid could be gained from Christ,Padberg 1998:48> the Christian cross was known as a trophy to bestow victory since Constantine I and the Battle of the Milvian Bridge. However, that a pagan like Clovis, could ask Christ for help also shows the adaptability of the Germanic polytheism. In the Germanic tradition, if Odin failed, one absolutely could try it with Christ for once.
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I am called upon to demonstrate spirituality which lies buried > under egoistic darkness. It is for me to demonstrate by practice, and not by > words alone, the Divine powers which penetrate into a human being and are > manifested through prayer or attention. Above all, it ismy task to re- > establish in people’s hearts the eternal plant of the pure and shining Unity > of God which is free from every impurity of polytheism, and which has now > completely disappeared. All this will be accomplished, not through my power, > but through the power of the Almighty God, Who is the God of heaven and > earth.
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In 630, Ali recited to a large gathering of pilgrims in Mecca a portion of the Quran that declared Muhammad and the Islamic community no longer bound by agreements made earlier with Arab polytheists. During the Conquest of Mecca in 630, Muhammad asked Ali to guarantee that the conquest would be bloodless. He ordered Ali to break all the idols worshiped by the Banu Aus, Banu Khazraj, Tayy, and those in the Kaaba to purify it after its defilement by the polytheism of old times. Ali was sent to Yemen one year later to spread the teachings of Islam.
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Abreha sought to promote Christianity in the predominantly Jewish kingdom while also attempting to antagonize the Kaaba in Mecca, a major religious centre for the adherents of Arab polytheism. Abreha, therefore, ordered the construction of the Al–Qalis Church (also known as Al–Qulays and Al–Qullays, from the Greek Ekklesia) in Sana'a. Letters were sent to both Aksum and the Byzantine Empire, requesting marble, craftsmen and mosaics. The absence of mosaic making tradition in Pre-Islamic Arabia and Ethiopia at the time, along with the frequent use of mosaicists by the Byzantines to achieve diplomatic objectives corroborates that the Byzantines complied.
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In Rabi 'al-Awwal 1279 AH (1862 CE) he went back to Batavia after 22 years of journey to seek knowledge and settled in Petamburan, Tanah Abang area. Over there, he wrote and compiled books, especially about amalil Yaum (daily remembrances) and books about sins, unbelieving, polytheism and things that contrary to Aqidah. In his life, he has written about 116 books. One of the books he authored, al-Qawānin al- Syar'iyyah li ahli al-Majālisi al-Hukmiyati wal ‘Iftiayati, was even used as a reference in the religious courts system in Indonesia at least until the 1950s.
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Johann Christoph Strodtmann (1717–1756) was a German author, writing on theology, philology, classical studies, history of law and history of scholarship, active during the reign of Frederick II. Strodtmann was born in Wehlau (now Znamensk), East Prussia. He was a teacher and school headmaster, from 1750 until his death in 1756 at Osnabrück. He published a study of comparative religion in 1755, proposing that Germanic polytheism and the Israelite religion of the Hebrew Bible shared essential parallels (compare Urreligion). His Idioticon Osnabrugense, a glossary of the Westphalian dialect of Osnabrück, is a pioneering work of the dialectology of German.
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The term astro-theology is used in the context of 18th- to 19th-century scholarship aiming at the discovery of the original religion, particularly primitive monotheism. Unlike astrolatry, which usually implies polytheism, frowned upon as idolatrous by Christian authors since Eusebius, astrotheology is any "religious system founded upon the observation of the heavens",OED, citing Derham (1714) as the first attestation of the term. and in particular, may be monotheistic. Gods, goddesses, and demons may also be considered personifications of astronomical phenomena such as lunar eclipses, planetary alignments, and apparent interactions of planetary bodies with stars.
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The school of religious history called the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule, a late 19th-century German school of thought, originated the systematic study of religion as a socio- cultural phenomenon. It depicted religion as evolving with human culture, from primitive polytheism to ethical monotheism. The Religionsgeschichtliche Schule emerged at a time when scholarly study of the Bible and of church history flourished in Germany and elsewhere (see higher criticism, also called the historical-critical method). The study of religion is important: religion and similar concepts have often shaped civilizations' law and moral codes, social structure, art and music.
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When Ramakrishna met him, Keshub had accepted Christianity, and had separated from the Brahmo Samaj. Formerly, Keshub had rejected idolatry practised by his family, but after coming under Ramakrishna's influence he again accepted Hindu polytheism and established the "New Dispensation" (Nava Vidhan) religious movement, which was based on Ramakrishna's principles—"Worship of God as Mother", "All religions as true". His acceptance of idolatry created factions within his organisation. He also publicised Ramakrishna's teachings in the New Dispensation journal over a period of several years, which was instrumental in bringing Ramakrishna to the attention of a wider audience, especially the Bhadralok and the Europeans residing in India.
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In the lectures, Hegel claims that cultural awareness of Geist originated in ancient Judaism; he thus ties his history of Geist to a narrative of disenchantment and a decline in pagan polytheism. Another important theme of the text is the focus on world history, rather than regional or state history. Thinkers such as Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) and Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) had written on the concept and importance of world history and nationalism, and Hegel's philosophy continues this trend, while breaking away from an emphasis on nationalism and striving rather to grasp the full sweep of human cultural and intellectual history as a manifestation of spirit.
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The twenty-one Jewish local communities are affiliated with the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, which counts 25,000 members. According to CESNUR, in 2017 in Italy there were about 3,200 adherents to pre-Christian, neo-pagan or neo-shamanic indigenous religions. Modern forms of native polytheism is represented by Roman Polytheistic Reconstructionism, which includes organizations such as Nova Roma, the Associazione Tradizionale Pietas, Communitas Populi Romani, the Movimento Tradizionale Romano, and the Societas Hesperiana pro Culto Deorum. There are also pagans belonging to other European religions, such as Heathenism, to which the Comunità Odinista and the Tempio del Lupo belong; Druidism, Hellenism and Wicca.
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While the regions under Roman rule adopted Christianity along with the rest of the Roman empire, unconquered areas of Ireland and Scotland began to move from Celtic polytheism to Christianity in the 5th century. Ireland was converted by missionaries from Britain, such as Saint Patrick. Later missionaries from Ireland were a major source of missionary work in Scotland, Anglo-Saxon parts of Britain, and central Europe (see Hiberno-Scottish mission). Celtic Christianity, the forms of Christianity that took hold in Britain and Ireland at this time, had for some centuries only limited and intermittent contact with Rome and continental Christianity, as well as some contacts with Coptic Christianity.
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An example of an extremely rich royal grave of the Iron Age is the Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang. In the sphere of the Roman Empire, early Christian graves lack grave goods, and grave goods tend to disappear with the decline of Greco-Roman polytheism in the 5th and 6th centuries. Similarly, the presence of grave goods in the Early Middle Ages in Europe has often been taken as evidence of paganism, although during the period of conversion in Anglo-Saxon England and the Frankish Empire (7th century), the situation may be more complicated.Helen Geake, The use of grave- goods in conversion-period England, c.600-c.
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Pound's main focus was on Cavalcanti's philosophy of love and light, which he viewed as a continuing expression of a pagan, neo-platonic tradition stretching back through the troubadours and early medieval Latin lyrics to the world of pre- Christian polytheism. Pound also composed a three-act opera titled Cavalcanti at the request of Archie Harding, a producer at the BBC. Though never performed in his lifetime, excerpts are available on audio CD. Pound's friend and fellow modernist T. S. Eliot used an adaptation of the opening line of Perch'i' no spero di tornar giammai ("Because I do not hope to turn again") to open his 1930 poem Ash Wednesday.
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He is also regarded as a Saint within the framework of their respective doctrine by the Anglican Communion and the Lutheran Churches. The dates of Patrick's life cannot be fixed with certainty, but there is broad agreement that he was active as a missionary in Ireland during the fifth century. Nevertheless, as the most recent biography on Patrick shows, a late fourth-century date for the saint is not impossible.See Early medieval tradition credits him with being the first bishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland, and regards him as the founder of Christianity in Ireland, converting a society practising a form of Celtic polytheism.
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The Council of Nicea happened soon after the Roman emperor Constantine had become the patron of Christianity in 312. It was triggered by a public disagreement between Alexander bishop of Alexandria and his presbyter Arius whose clear formulation of the relationship between Jesus and God, following the pattern of Origen and Eusebius of Caesarea, placed Jesus in an inferior position, seeing this as the only way to avoid formal polytheism. When Alexander excommunicated him, he sought the protection of Eusebius and Eusebius of Nicomedia who both had the ear of the emperor. Eventually Constantine invoked a council to settle what he considered "these small and very insignificant questions".
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The conflict began in 1338 and ended only in 1368, with the solemn canonization of Palamas and the official recognition of his heresies. He was declared the 'holy doctor' and 'one of the greatest among the Fathers of the Church', and his writings were proclaimed 'the infallible guide of the Christian Faith'. Thirty years of incessant controversy and discordant councils ended with a resurrection of polytheism" Further, the associated practice of hesychasm used to achieve theosis was characterized as "magic"."No doubt the leaders of the party held aloof from these vulgar practices of the more ignorant monks, but on the other hand they scattered broadcast perilous theological theories.
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People have conceived of "Celtic Christianity" in different ways at different times. Writings on the topic frequently say more about the time in which they originate than about the historical state of Christianity in the early medieval Celtic-speaking world, and many notions are now discredited in modern academic discourse. One particularly prominent feature ascribed to Celtic Christianity is that it is supposedly inherently distinct from – and generally opposed to – the Catholic Church. Other common claims include that Celtic Christianity denied the authority of the Pope, was less authoritarian than the Catholic Church, more spiritual, friendlier to women, more connected with nature, and more comfortable dealing with Celtic polytheism.
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Interpretatio graeca may also describe non-Greeks' interpretation of their own belief systems by comparison or assimilation with Greek models, as when Romans adapt Greek myths and iconography under the names of their own gods. Interpretatio romana is comparative discourse in reference to ancient Roman religion and myth, as in the formation of a distinctive Gallo-Roman religion. Both the Romans and the Gauls reinterpreted Gallic religious traditions in relation to Roman models, particularly Imperial cult. Jan Assmann considers the polytheistic approach to internationalizing gods as a form of "intercultural translation": > The great achievement of polytheism is the articulation of a common semantic > universe.
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Odin the Wanderer (1896) by Georg von Rosen List promoted a religion termed "Wotanism", which he saw as the exoteric, outer form of pre-Christian Germanic religion, while "Armanism" was the term he applied to what he believed were the esoteric, secret teachings of this ancient belief system. He believed that while Wotanism expounded polytheism for the wider population, those who were members of the Armanist elite were aware of the reality of monotheism. List's Armanism would later be classified as a form of "Ariosophy", a term which was coined by Lanz von Liebenfels in 1915. Goodrick-Clarke considered List's ideas to be a "unique amalgam of nationalist mythology and esotericism".
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The argument from consciousness claims that human consciousness cannot be explained by the physical mechanisms of the human body and brain, therefore, asserting that there must be non-physical aspects to human consciousness. This is held as indirect evidence of God, given that notions about souls and the afterlife in Christianity and Islam would be consistent with such a claim. Critics point out that non-physical aspects of consciousness could exist in a universe without any gods; for example, some religions that believe in reincarnation are compatible with atheism, monotheism, and polytheism. The notion of the soul was created before modern understanding of neural networks and the physiology of the brain.
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For Frazer, magic "constrains or coerces" these spirits while religion focuses on "conciliating or propitiating them". He acknowledged that their common ground resulted in a cross-over of magical and religious elements in various instances; for instance he claimed that the sacred marriage was a fertility ritual which combined elements from both world-views. Some scholars retained the evolutionary framework used by Frazer but changed the order of its stages; the German ethnologist Wilhelm Schmidt argued that religion—by which he meant monotheism—was the first stage of human belief, which later degenerated into both magic and polytheism. Others rejected the evolutionary framework entirely.
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They consider God to be a triune entity, called the Trinity, comprising the three "Persons"; God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, described as being "of the same substance" (). The true nature of an infinite God, however, is commonly described as beyond definition, and the word 'person' is an imperfect expression of the idea. Some critics contend that because of the adoption of a tripartite conception of deity, Christianity is a form of tritheism or polytheism. This concept dates from Arian teachings which claimed that Jesus, having appeared later in the Bible than his Father, had to be a secondary, lesser, and therefore distinct god.
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In the following years, several Tunisians who adopted al-Hazimi's views joined ISIS. During the group's infighting with the Al-Nusra Front, the Tunisians remained loyal and were rewarded with senior administrative and religious posts. With increasing influence, however, their belief in takfir al-‘adhir became a source of concern for ISIS leadership. Bahraini scholar Turki al-Binali, who led the group's Office of Research and Studies, prepared a series of lectures and pamphlets against the doctrine. He argued that while al-‘udhr bi’l-jahl was invalid in instances of greater polytheism and disbelief, this does not necessarily mean that those who make excuses are disbelievers.
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Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab considered his movement an effort to purify Islam by returning Muslims to what, he believed, were the original principles of that religion. He taught that the primary doctrine of Islam was the uniqueness and unity of God (Tawhid). He also denounced popular beliefs as polytheism (shirk), rejected much of the medieval law of the scholars (ulema) and called for a new interpretation of Islam. The "core" of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab's teaching is found in Kitab al-Tawhid, a short essay which draws from material in the Quran and the recorded doings and sayings (hadith) of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
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Traditionally, both Judaism and Christianity believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, for Jews the God of the Tanakh, for Christians the God of the Old Testament, the creator of the universe. Judaism and major sects of Christianity reject the view that God is entirely immanent (although some see this as the concept of the Holy Ghost) and within the world as a physical presence, (although Christians believe in the incarnation of God). Both religions reject the view that God is entirely transcendent, and thus separate from the world, as the pre-Christian Greek Unknown God. Both religions reject atheism on one hand and polytheism on the other.
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Philotheus was an advocate of Hesychasm, and aided the cause of the Hesychasts in 1368 by supporting the canonization of Gregory Palamas at a local synod. One notable example of the campaign to enforce the orthodoxy of the Palamist doctrine was the action taken by patriarch Philotheos to crack down on Demetrios and Prochorus Cydones. With the support of his younger brother Prochoros, Demetrios Kydones opposed as polytheistic or pantheistic the Palamites and their system of Hesychasm. Applying Aristotelian logic to the Neoplatonic character of Hesychasm, the Kydones brothers accused Palamas of Pantheism or Polytheism, only to be condemned themselves by three successive Palamite synods that also canonized Palamas and Hesychasm.
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Muhammad is persecuted by the Meccans after attacking their idols, during which time a group of Muslims seeks refuge in Abyssinia. After the cessation of this first round of persecution (fitna) they return home, but soon a second round begins. No compelling reason is provided for the caesura of persecution, though, unlike in the incident of the satanic verses, where it is the (temporary) fruit of Muhammad's accommodation to Meccan polytheism. Another version attributed to 'Urwa has only one round of fitna, which begins after Muhammad has converted the entire population of Mecca, so that the Muslims are too numerous to perform ritual prostration (sūjud) all together.
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Minerva and the Triumph of Jupiter by René-Antoine Houasse (1706), showing the goddess Athena sitting at the right hand of her father Zeus while the goddess Demeter sits in the background holding a scythe Goddess Spirituality characteristically shows diversity: no central body defines its dogma. Yet there is evolving consensus on some issues including: the Goddess in relation to polytheism and monotheism; immanence, transcendence and other ways to understand the nature of the Goddess. There is also the emerging agreement that the Goddess fulfills the basic functions of empowering women and fostering ethical and harmonious relationships among different peoples as well as between humans, animals, and nature.
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A common artifact found in Late Prehistoric or Protohistoric components is a serpent figurine made of copper; in early Historic times these may be made from imported European copper. In general, the Prehistoric Native American religious system was based on animism and polytheism. Objects were thought to have magical qualities; using them in ceremonies would help to appease or get the support of deities or totem animals; and putting them in graves may assist the deceased into the afterlife. Sometimes the bones of certain totem animals such as heron, bald eagle, crane, otter, or beaver were included in the grave, possibly as part of “medicine bundles”.
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The traditional "catastrophic" view has been the established view for 200 years; it says polytheism declined rapidly in the fourth century, with a violent death in the fifth, as a result of determined anti-pagan opposition from Christians, particularly Christian emperors. Contemporary scholarship espouses the "long slow" view, which says anti- paganism was not a primary concern of Christians in antiquity because Christians believed the conversion of Constantine showed Christianity had already triumphed. Salzman indicates that, as a result of this "triumphalism," heresy was a higher priority for Christians in the fourth and fifth centuries than was paganism. This produced less real conflict between Christians and pagans than was previously thought.
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Linzie (2004) enumerates the difference between modern reconstructionist polytheism, such as modern Hellenismos, and "classical" paganism as found in eighteenth to mid-twentieth century movements, including Germanic mysticism, early Neodruidism and Wicca. Aspects of the former, not found in the latter, are as follows: # There is no attempt to recreate a combined pan-European Paganism. # Researchers attempt to stay within research guidelines developed over the course of the past century for handling documentation generated in the time periods that they are studying. # A multi-disciplinary approach is utilized capitalizing on results from various fields as historical literary research, anthropology, religious history, political history, archaeology, forensic anthropology, historical sociology, etc.
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Ay performing the opening of the mouth ceremony for Tutankhamun, scene from Tutankhamun's tomb. Ay's reign was preceded by that of Tutankhamun, who ascended to the throne at the age of eight or nine, at a time of great tension between the new monotheism and the old polytheism. He was assisted in his kingly duties by his predecessor's two closest advisors: Grand Vizier Ay and General of the Armies Horemheb. Tutankhamun's nine-year reign, largely under Ay's direction, saw the return of the old gods - and, with that, the restoration of the power of the Amun priesthood, who had lost their influence over Egypt under Akhenaten.
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The book The Two Babylons (1853), by the Christian minister Alexander Hislop, depicted Nimrod as the son and consort of Queen Semiramis, whom Hislop associated with the Whore of Babylon. Hislop attributed to Semiramis and Nimrod the invention of polytheism and, with it, goddess worship, and that their incestuous male offering was Tammuz. He also claimed that the Catholic Church was a millennia-old secret conspiracy, founded by Semiramis and Nimrod to propagate the pagan religion of ancient Babylon. Grabbe and others have rejected the book's arguments as based on a flawed understanding of the texts, but variations of them are accepted among some groups of evangelical Protestants.
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The Etruscan system of belief was an immanent polytheism; that is, all visible phenomena were considered to be a manifestation of divine power and that power was subdivided into deities that acted continually on the world of man and could be dissuaded or persuaded in favour of human affairs. How to understand the will of deities, and how to behave, had been revealed to the Etruscans by two initiators, Tages, a childlike figure born from tilled land and immediately gifted with prescience, and Vegoia, a female figure. Their teachings were kept in a series of sacred books. Three layers of deities are evident in the extensive Etruscan art motifs.
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In a series of public gatherings across India in 1944, he made the claim that he was the ‘Promised Son’ foretold by his father Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. He explained in a number of meetings held in various places in India that this claim was based on revelations and dreams. He clarified that he wasn't the only Promised Son, and other 'Promised Sons' would appear in accordance with prophecies, some even after centuries. He also prophesied that he would, as it were, return in the form of another Promised Son for the reform of the world at a time when shirrk (polytheism) would have become widespread.
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Initially, the Portuguese developed the concept of the fetish to refer to the objects used in religious practices by West African natives. The contemporary Portuguese feitiço may refer to more neutral terms such as charm, enchantment, or abracadabra, or more potentially offensive terms such as juju, witchcraft, witchery, conjuration or bewitchment. The concept was popularized in Europe circa 1757, when Charles de Brosses used it in comparing West African religion to the magical aspects of ancient Egyptian religion. Later, Auguste Comte employed the concept in his theory of the evolution of religion, wherein he posited fetishism as the earliest (most primitive) stage, followed by polytheism and monotheism.
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In their view, affirming an ontological essence-energies distinction in God contradicted the teaching of the First Council of Nicaea on divine unity. According to Adrian Fortescue, the Scholastic theory that God is pure actuality prevented Palamism from having much influence in the West, and it was from Western Scholasticism that hesychasm's philosophical opponents in the East borrowed their weapons. In the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1909, Simon Vailhé accused Palamas's teachings that humans could achieve a corporal perception of the divinity, and his distinction between God's essence and his energies, as "monstrous errors" and "perilous theological theories". He further characterized the Eastern canonization of Palamas's teachings as a "resurrection of polytheism".
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Alabaster votive figurines from Yemen, now in the National Museum of Oriental Art, Rome Religion in pre-Islamic Arabia included indigenous animistic- polytheistic beliefs, as well as Christianity, Judaism, Mandaeism, and Iranian religions of Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, and Manichaeism. Arabian polytheism, the dominant form of religion in pre-Islamic Arabia, was based on veneration of deities and spirits. Worship was directed to various gods and goddesses, including Hubal and the goddesses al-Lāt, al-‘Uzzā, and Manāt, at local shrines and temples such as the Kaaba in Mecca. Deities were venerated and invoked through a variety of rituals, including pilgrimages and divination, as well as ritual sacrifice.
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The initial decline of Greco-Roman polytheism was due in part to its syncretic nature, assimilating beliefs and practices from a variety of foreign religious traditions as the Roman Empire expanded. Graeco- Roman philosophical schools incorporated elements of Judaism and Early Christianity, and mystery religions like Christianity and Mithraism also became increasingly popular. Constantine I became the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity, and the Edict of Milan in 313 AD enacted official tolerance for Christianity within the Empire. Still, in Greece and elsewhere, there is evidence that pagan and Christian communities remained essentially segregated from each other, with little cultural influence flowing between the two.
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The battle was the last serious attempt to contest the Christianization of the empire; its outcome decided the outcome of Christianity in the western Empire, and the final decline of Greco-Roman polytheism in favour of Christianity over the following century. The defeat of Eugenius and his commander, the Frankish magister militum Arbogast, put the whole empire back in the hands of a single emperor for the last time until the final collapse of the Western Roman Empire (not considering the purely nominal claim of Zeno in 480). Theodosius passed the rule of the Western Empire to his younger son Honorius in the following year (with general Stilicho as regent while Honorius was underage).
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Sports clubs and teams select their image or mascot based on any number of factors, including choosing an image based on a desire to pick a symbol that will attempt to convey the assets the clubs and teams aim to display, such as strength, courage, aggression, and endurance. Scholars have drawn connections between desires such as these and the religious totems found in polytheism, where visual representations of animals serve as symbols to express the physical and spiritual qualities of community. Adoration of a mascot by a school or company can be seen as religiously significant. However, economic factors also come into play, as both schools and sports-franchise owners want to make money.
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Reverential inclusion of Shaiva ideas and iconography are very common in major Vaishnava temples, such as Dakshinamurti symbolism of Shaiva thought is often enshrined on the southern wall of the main temple of major Vaishnava temples in peninsular India. Harihara temples in and outside the Indian subcontinent have historically combined Shiva and Vishnu, such as at the Lingaraj Mahaprabhu temple in Bhubaneshwar, Odisha. According to Julius Lipner, Vaishnavism traditions such as Sri Vaishnavism embrace Shiva, Ganesha and others, not as distinct deities of polytheism, but as polymorphic manifestation of the same supreme divine principle, providing the devotee a polycentric access to the spiritual. Similarly, Shaiva traditions have reverentially embraced other gods and goddesses as manifestation of the same divine.
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According to Walter Burkert, both Hera and Demeter have many characteristic attributes of Pre-Greek Great Goddesses."The goddesses of Greek polytheism, so different and complementary"; Greek mythology scholar Walter Burkert has observed, in Homo Necans (1972) 1983:79f, "are nonetheless, consistently similar at an earlier stage, with one or the other simply becoming dominant in a sanctuary or city. Each is the Great Goddess presiding over a male society; each is depicted in her attire as Potnia Theron "Mistress of the Beasts", and Mistress of the Sacrifice, even Hera and Demeter." In the same vein, British scholar Charles Francis Keary suggests that Hera had some sort of "Earth Goddess" worship in ancient times,Keary, Charles Francis.
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It is also possible that the images on the pot have nothing to do with the inscription at all. Yahwism was the historic monolatristic/henotheistic worship of Yahweh in the ancient Israelite kingdoms of Judah and Israel (Samaria), Yahweh being one of the many gods and goddesses of the pantheon of gods of the Land of Canaan, the southern portion of which would later come to be called the Land of Israel. Yahwism thus evolved from Canaanite polytheism, which in turn makes Yahwism the monolatristic primitive predecessor stage of Judaism in Judaism‘s evolution into a monotheistic religion. Despite modern Judaism and Yahwism both being the veneration of Yahweh, the distinctions between the two belief systems are quite clear.
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Julian the Apostate presiding at a conference of sectarians, by Edward Armitage, 1875 After gaining the purple, Julian started a religious reformation of the empire, which was intended to restore the lost strength of the Roman state. He supported the restoration of Hellenistic polytheism as the state religion. His laws tended to target wealthy and educated Christians, and his aim was not to destroy Christianity but to drive the religion out of "the governing classes of the empire — much as Chinese Buddhism was driven back into the lower classes by a revived Confucian mandarinate in 13th century China."Brown, Peter, The World of Late Antiquity, W. W. Norton, New York, 1971, p. 93.
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That said, whether Christianity is shituf or formal polytheism remains a debate in Jewish philosophy. Shituf is first mentioned in the commentary of Tosafot on the Babylonian Talmud,Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 63b in a passage concluding with a lenient ruling regarding non-Jews. Later authorities are divided between those who view Tosfot as permitting non-Jews to swear by the name of God even if they associate other deities with that name,Noda B'Yehuda, YD 148 and those who view Tosfot as permitting non-Jews to actually worship such deities. Though shituf is primarily used as a means of determining how to relate to Christians, it is applied to other religions as well.
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Augustine of Hippo, who converted from Manichaeism to Christianity, criticised the Manichaeans for polytheism and paganism, stating that Manichaeans, due to their dual cosmology, believe in two different deities. The Manichaean bishop Faustus of Mileve defends Manichaeism by stating that Catholics erroneously assume that the Prince of Darkness had a divine essence, while in fact, the Prince of Darkness does not share any attributes with the Divine, thus Manichaeism would not worship multiple gods, but rather one true god.Johannes van Oort Augustine and Manichaean Christianity: Selected Papers from the First South African Conference on Augustine of Hippo, University of Pretoria, 24–26 April 2012 BRILL 2013 p. 210 They are both two different principles: although eternally existing, clearly distinct.
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Rubik Since the early 4th century AD, Christianity had become the established religion in the Roman Empire, supplanting pagan polytheism and eclipsing for the most part the humanistic world outlook and institutions inherited from the Greek and Roman civilizations. Ecclesiastical records during the Slavic invasions are slim. Though the country was in the fold of Byzantium, Christians in the region remained under the jurisdiction of the Roman pope until 732. In that year the iconoclast Byzantine emperor Leo III, angered by archbishops of the region because they had supported Rome in the Iconoclastic Controversy, detached the church of the province from the Roman pope and placed it under the patriarch of Constantinople.
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610–641), the Empire's military and administration were restructured and adopted Greek for official use instead of Latin. Thus, although it continued the Roman state and maintained Roman state traditions, modern historians distinguish Byzantium from ancient Rome insofar as it was oriented towards Greek rather than Latin culture, and characterised by Orthodox Christianity rather than Roman polytheism. The borders of the Empire evolved significantly over its existence, as it went through several cycles of decline and recovery. During the reign of Justinian I (r. 527–565), the Empire reached its greatest extent after reconquering much of the historically Roman western Mediterranean coast, including north Africa, Italy, and Rome itself, which it held for two more centuries.
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Gilt bronze head from the cult statue of Sulis Minerva from the Temple at Bath, found in Stall Street in 1727 and now displayed at the Roman Baths (Bath). In the localised Celtic polytheism practised in Great Britain, Sulis was a deity worshiped at the thermal spring of Bath (now in Somerset). She was worshiped by the Romano-British as Sulis Minerva, whose votive objects and inscribed lead tablets suggest that she was conceived of both as a nourishing, life-giving mother goddess and as an effective agent of curses wished by her votaries.Joyce Reynolds and Terence Volk, "Review: Gifts, Curses, Cult and Society at Bath", reviewing The Temple of Sulis Minerva at Bath: vol.
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Before the advent of Christianity, the Netherlands were populated by Celtic tribes in the South, which adhered to Celtic polytheism, and Germanic tribes in the North, which adhered to Germanic paganism. After the Roman Empire occupied the later southern Netherlands, Roman mythology became important there, as well as religions from the Middle East, including relics from Egyptian mythology, Judaism, Mithraism and later Christianity. The oldest data on the profession of religion by the inhabitants of the regions that are now the "Netherlands" were passed down by the Romans. Contrary to what ancient sources seem to suggest, the Rhine, which clearly formed the boundary of the Roman Empire, did not form the boundary between residential areas of Celts and Germans.
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Shortly thereafter, Nihang Sikhs began influencing the movement, followed by a sustained campaign by Tat Khalsa. The Sanatan Sikh was opposed by these predominant groups in the Panth, particularly those who held Khalsa beliefs, who through access to education and employment, had reached a position to challenge the Sanatan faction, forming the Tat Khalsa faction, or "true Khalsa", in 1879, headed by Gurmukh Singh, Harsha Singh Arora, Jawahir Singh and Giani Ditt Singh. They formed the Lahore Singh Sabha. The Tat Khalsa's monotheism, iconoclastic sentiments, egalitarian social values and notion of a standardized Sikh identity did not blend well with the polytheism, idol worship, caste distinctions, and diversity of rites espoused by the Sanatan faction.
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Classicism is a recurrent tendency in the Late Antique period, and had a major revival in Carolingian and Ottonian art. There was another, more durable revival in the Italian renaissance when the fall of Byzantium and rising trade with the Islamic cultures brought a flood of knowledge about, and from, the antiquity of Europe. Until that time, the identification with antiquity had been seen as a continuous history of Christendom from the conversion of Roman Emperor Constantine I. Renaissance classicism introduced a host of elements into European culture, including the application of mathematics and empiricism into art, humanism, literary and depictive realism, and formalism. Importantly it also introduced Polytheism, or "paganism", and the juxtaposition of ancient and modern.
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344–345 Michael Martin challenges the argument from conscience with a naturalistic account of conscience, arguing that naturalism provides an adequate explanation for the conscience without the need for God's existence. He uses the example of the internalization by humans of social pressures, which leads to the fear of going against these norms. Even if a supernatural cause is required, he argues, it could be something other than God; this would mean that the phenomenon of the conscience is no more supportive of monotheism than polytheism. C. S. Lewis argues for the existence of God in a similar way in his book Mere Christianity, but he does not directly refer to it as the argument from morality.
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Faber described the polytheism of ancient Greece as a self-destructive "oligotheism" that was destined to fail, and wrote that "pluralism has long become integralism (or rather: corporatism)". In 2016, Stefanie von Schnurbein grouped Marquard's essay with texts written by Botho Strauß and Martin Walser in the 1990s. She wrote that the three authors share a "post-modern, post-structuralist and post-colonial impulse, which posits a logic of difference against a unifying, colonializing logic of sameness". Due to the nationalist implications of Strauß' and Walser's texts, Schnurbein wrote that "Taubes' early critique of Marquard is not as far-fetched or one-sided as it might have seemed at the moment of its publication in 1983".
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The light or Nur which links the two together is represented by Ali. Alevis feel no difficulty in speaking about God as a unity of heart, mind and spirit but believe that the term Hak- Muhammed-Ali aşkına (for the love of God-Muhammad-Ali) has nothing to do with a tritheistic polytheism and is misinterpreted by outsiders. According to them it's a short way to refer to Allah as the only One to be worshipped, Muhammad as the Rasul and Ali as wali along with the Twelve Imams in Alevism. Just like Shia Muslims Alevis say: "La ilahe ilallah, Muhammadden Resulullah, Aliyyen Veliyullah" (There is no god but God, Muhammad is His messenger, Ali is His wali).
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Symbol used by Hellenism followers. Hellenism (, , ), the Hellenic ethnic religion (), also commonly known as Hellenismos, Hellenic Polytheism, and occasionally Dodekatheism (), comprises various religious movements which revive or reconstruct ancient Greek religious practices, and which have publicly emerged since the 1990s. The Hellenic religion builds on traditional religion and on a traditional way of life, revolving around the Greek gods, and primarily focused on the Twelve Olympians and embracing ancient Hellenic values and virtues. In 2017, Greek governmental authorities legally recognized Hellenic Ethnic Religion (Hellenism) as a "known religion" in Greece, granting it certain religious freedoms in that country, including the freedom to open houses of worship and for clergy to officiate at weddings.
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All the books contain a romantic ethic of fame, fate and eternal recurrence, in which the supreme value is chivalry, both in the sense of heroism and in the sense of idealization of women.Flieger, Verlyn (Summer 1989) "The Ouroboros Principle: Time and Love in Zimiamvia" Mythlore 15(4):43-46. (No. 58) In Mistress of Mistresses the underlying philosophy is explained: a Spinozistic pantheism mysteriously combined with polytheism (characters routinely swear by "the Gods"). There are both a supreme male God, named as Zeus in The Mezentian Gate, whose avatars include Duke Barganax and Lessingham, and a supreme Goddess, identified with the eternal feminine and with Aphrodite, and temporarily incarnated in the two queens whom Lessingham serves.
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Klages, like Nietzeche, was critical of Christianity as well as what they both saw as its roots in Judaism. "On one level, it is possible to see in Klages a call for a return to polytheism or pantheism, inasmuch [as] there are significant affinities between his outlook and the cosmogony of the ancient Greeks, who saw each individual part of the world in pantheist and pagan terms", writes contemporary scholar Bishop; he concludes however, that Klages' religious views in this regard "must remain an open question". Other sources, such as by Josephson-Storm, have more directly regarded Klages as a neo-pagan. Klages has largely been identified as apolitical, with resemblances to deep ecology, feminism, and antimilitarism.
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John Wilson led various missionary campaigns in India against the Parsi community, disparaging the Parsis for their "dualism" and "polytheism" and as having unnecessary rituals while declaring the Avesta to not be "divinely inspired". This caused mass dismay in the relatively uneducated Parsi community, which blamed its priests and led to some conversions towards Christianity. The arrival of the German orientalist and philologist Martin Haug led to a rallied defense of the faith through Haug's reinterpretation of the Avesta through Christianized and European orientalist lens. Haug postulated that Zoroastrianism was solely monotheistic with all other divinities reduced to the status of angels while Ahura Mazda became both omnipotent and the source of evil as well as good.
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120 Eugenius was at least publicly a Christian, and therefore was reluctant to accept a program of imperial support to Polytheism. His men, however, convinced Eugenius to use public money to fund pagan projects, such as the rededication of the Temple of Venus and Rome and the restoration of the Altar of Victory within the Curia (removed by Emperor Gratian). This religious policy created tension with pro-Christian figures, such as Emperor Theodosius and the powerful and influential Bishop Ambrose, who left his see in Milan when the imperial court of Eugenius arrived. Eugenius was also successful in the military field, notably in the renovation of old alliances with Alamanni and Franks.
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Similar acts of resistance were seen in the metropolitan sees that were governed by the Latins as well as in some autonomous ecclesiastical regions, such as the Church of Cyprus. One notable example of the campaign to enforce the orthodoxy of the Palamist doctrine was the action taken by patriarch Philotheos I to crack down on the brothers Demetrios Kydones and Prochoros Kydones. With the support of his younger brother Prochoros, Demetrios Kydones opposed as polytheistic or pantheistic the Palamites and their system of Hesychasm. Applying Aristotelian logic to the Neoplatonic character of Hesychasm, the Kydones brothers accused Palamas of Pantheism or Polytheism, only to be condemned themselves by three successive Palamite synods that also canonized Palamas and Hesychasm.
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Professor Böwering was an author of articles in the Encyclopaedia of the Quran including Chronology and the Quran and God and his Attributes Böwering, Gerhard. "God and His Attributes", Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, Brill, 2007 Sahih Bukhari Hadith recorded that Abu Hurairah reported that God has ninety-nine names (99 Attributes of Allah). Böwering refers to Chapter 17 of the Quran (al isrāʼ) (17:110) as the locus classicus to which explicit lists of the names used to be attached in Qur'anic exegesis (tafsir). According to Böwering, According to Böwering, in contrast with pre-Islamic Arabian polytheism, God in Islam does not have associates and companions, nor is there any kinship between God (Allah) and jinn.
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Muslim sources regarding Arabian polytheism include the eight-century Book of Idols by Hisham ibn al-Kalbi, which F.E. Peters argued to be the most substantial treatment of the religious practices of pre-Islamic Arabia, as well as the writings of the Yemeni historian al-Hasan al-Hamdani on south Arabian religious beliefs.Robin, Christian Julien, "South Arabia, Religions in Pre-Islamic", in According to the Book of Idols, descendants of the son of Abraham (Ishmael) who had settled in Mecca migrated to other lands. They carried holy stones from the Kaaba with them, erected them, and circumambulated them like the Kaaba. This, according to al-Kalbi led to the rise of idol worship.
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A mosaic of the Kasta Tomb in Amphipolis depicting the abduction of Persephone by Pluto, 4thcenturyBC The Lion of Amphipolis in Amphipolis, northern Greece, a 4th-centuryBC marble tomb sculpture. erected in honor of Laomedon of Mytilene, a general who served under Alexander the Great By the 5th century BC, the Macedonians and the southern Greeks worshiped more or less the same deities of the Greek pantheon.; see also for ways in which Macedonian religious beliefs diverged from mainstream Greek polytheism, although the latter was hardly "monolithic" throughout the Classical Greek and Hellenistic world and Macedonians were "linguistically and culturally Greek" according to Christesen and Murray. . In Macedonia, political and religious offices were often intertwined.
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Harry A. Ironside ("Except Ye Repent", American Tract Society, 1937) and Lewis Sperry Chafer (Systematic Theology, completed 1947), among others, returned to consider the fundamental meaning of the Greek word metanoia (repentance), which simply means "to change one's mind." In biblical passages concerning eternal salvation, the object of repentance was often seen simply as Jesus Christ, making repentance equivalent to faith in Christ. Passages identifying a more specific object of repentance were understood to focus on man's need to change his mind from a system of self-justification by works to trusting in Christ alone for salvation, or a change in mind from polytheism to a belief in Jesus Christ as the true living God. Further exposition came from various free grace authors,.E.g.
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Until the 1890s, the country's Nuristan region was known as Kafiristan (land of the kafirs or "infidels") because of its inhabitants: the Nuristani, an ethnically distinctive people who practiced animism, polytheism and shamanism. praying at the Blue Mosque (or Shrine of Ali) in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif The 1979 Soviet invasion in support of a communist government triggered a major intervention of religion into Afghan political conflict, and Islam united the multi-ethnic political opposition. Once the Soviet-backed Marxist-style regime came to power in Afghanistan, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) moved to reduce the influence of Islam. The "atheistic" and "infidel" communist PDPA imprisoned, tortured and murdered many members of the religious establishment.
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Tagore also brought this "neo-Hinduism" closer in line with western esotericism, a development which was furthered by Keshubchandra Sen. Sen was influenced by Transcendentalism, an American philosophical-religious movement strongly connected with Unitarianism, which emphasized personal religious experience over mere reasoning and theology. Sen strived to "an accessible, non-renunciatory, everyman type of spirituality", introducing "lay systems of spiritual practice" which can be regarded as prototypes of the kind of Yoga-exercises which Vivekananda populurized in the west. The theology of the Brahmo Samaj was called "neo-Vedanta" by Christian commentators, who "partly admired [the Brahmos] for their courage in abandoning traditions of polytheism and image worship, but whom they also scorned for having proffered to other Hindus a viable alternative to conversion".
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Misotheism is the "hatred of God" or "hatred of the gods" (from the Greek adjective () "hating the gods" or "God-hating" – a compound of, , "hatred" and, , "god"). In some varieties of polytheism, it was considered possible to inflict punishment on gods by ceasing to worship them. Thus, Hrafnkell, protagonist of the eponymous Hrafnkels saga set in the 10th century, as his temple to Freyr is burnt and he is enslaved, states that "I think it is folly to have faith in gods", never performing another blót (sacrifice), a position described in the sagas as , "godless". Jacob Grimm in his Teutonic Mythology observes that: In monotheism, the sentiment arises in the context of theodicy (the problem of evil, the Euthyphro dilemma).
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In August 1820 Surkhay-khan II left for Persia to Fat′h Ali-shah. Surkhay-khan II gave many battles of which the largest were at Tiflis, Derbent, Khosrekh, Chirakh, Kurakh, Kartukh, Alazani, Quba, Akhaltsikhe, Akhalkalaki, Kartli, Kakheti, fortress Surkhayli in Cherkessia, Ganja, Yerevan, Kars, Ardagan and Erzurum. After the capture of the Gazi-Kumukh Khanate, Sufism as the teachings of Qizilbashes, had spread in Dagestan, that had been prevented by the war of Surkhay-khan II.Sufism, as a sect of Shia, spread in the Sunni world in the 10th century. Unlike Muslims, Shites and Sufis in the worship of Allah profess the cult of imams, sheikhs, ustazes and other leaders, whom they put as intermediaries between God and themselves, which is polytheism.
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Later, the Eastern Orthodox ascetic and archbishop of Thessaloniki, (Saint) Gregory Palamas argued in defense of hesychast spirituality, the uncreated character of the light of the Transfiguration, and the distinction between God's essence and energies. His teaching unfolded over the course of three major controversies, (1) with the Italo-Greek Barlaam between 1336 and 1341, (2) with the monk Gregory Akindynos between 1341 and 1347, and (3) with the philosopher Gregoras, from 1348 to 1355. His theological contributions are sometimes referred to as Palamism, and his followers as Palamites. Historically Latin Christianity has tended to reject Palamism, especially the essence-energies distinction, some times characterizing it as a heretical introduction of an unacceptable division in the Trinity and suggestive of polytheism.
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Israel Finkelstein's The Bible Unearthed presents a very different picture of the Omrides, making them responsible for the great empire, magnificent palaces, wealth, and peace in Israel and Judah that the Bible credits to the much earlier kings David and Solomon. According to Finkelstein, the reason for this discrepancy is the religious bias of the Biblical authors against the Omrides for their polytheism, and in particular their support for elements of the Canaanite religion.Israel Finkelstein, The Bible Unearthed : Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts, New York: The Free Press, 2001. . Finkelstein maintains that the writers of the Book of Kings may have omitted possible widespread public construction that both Omri and his son Ahab commissioned during their reigns.
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The Etruscan system of belief was an immanent polytheism; that is, all visible phenomena were considered to be manifestations of divine power, and that power was embodied in deities who acted continually on the world but could be dissuaded or persuaded by mortal men. Long after the assimilation of the Etruscans, Seneca the Younger said that the difference between the Romans and the Etruscans was that > Whereas we believe lightning to be released as a result of the collision of > clouds, they believe that the clouds collide so as to release lightning: for > as they attribute all to deity, they are led to believe not that things have > a meaning insofar as they occur, but rather that they occur because they > must have a meaning.
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Many modern Islamic reformers oppose the building (and sometimes the visitation of) tomb shrines, viewing it as a deviation from true Islam. This mainly includes followers of the Wahhabi and Salafi movements, which believe that shrines over graves encourage idolatry/polytheism (shirk) and that there is a risk of worshipping other than God (the dead). The founder of the Wahhabi movement, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab derived the prohibition to build mosques over graves from a hadith attributed to the Prophet Muhammad in which he said "May God curse the Jews and Christians who make the graves of their prophets into places of worship; do not imitate them." Additionally, he commanded leveling of the graves (taswiyat al-qubur), which the scholar Imam Al-Shafi'i supported.
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Since the 1st and 2nd century, Christianity had become the established religion in most of the eastern Roman Empire, supplanting pagan polytheism. But, though the country was in the fold of Byzantium, Christians in the region remained under the jurisdiction of the Pope of Rome until 732. In that year the iconoclast Byzantine emperor Leo III the Isaurian, angered by archbishops of the region because they had supported Rome in the Iconoclastic Controversy, detached the church of the province from the Roman pope and placed it under the patriarch of Constantinople. When the Christian church split in 1054 between the East and Rome, the region of southern Albania retained its ties to Constantinople while the north reverted to the jurisdiction of Rome.
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When a son was given his portion of the inheritance, either before or after his father had died, he was said to have formed a new oikos. Therefore, new oikoi were formed every generation and would continue to be perpetuated through marriage and childbirth.Parker, R "Polytheism and Society at Athens" The relationship between father and son was bound intrinsically to the transfer of family property: a legitimate son could expect to inherit the property of his father and, in return, was legally obligated to provide for his father in his old age.See Rubinstein, Lene Adoption in IV Century Athens If a son failed to care for his parents he could be prosecuted and a conviction would result in the loss of his citizen rights.
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An early 20th- century depiction of Saint Columba's miracle at the gate of King Bridei's fortress, described in Adomnán's late 7th-century Vita Columbae Animal head from St Ninian's Isle Treasure, found in Shetland Early Pictish religion is presumed to have resembled Celtic polytheism in general, although only place names remain from the pre-Christian era. When the Pictish elite converted to Christianity is uncertain, but traditions place Saint Palladius in Pictland after he left Ireland, and link Abernethy with Saint Brigid of Kildare., Saint Patrick refers to "apostate Picts", while the poem Y Gododdin does not remark on the Picts as pagans.. Bede wrote that Saint Ninian (confused by some with Saint Finnian of Moville, who died c. 589), had converted the southern Picts.
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Al-'Uzzá was one of the three chief goddesses of a pagan Arabian religion Al-Lat was the god of Arabs before Islam; It was found in Ta'if Arab polytheism was the dominant religion in pre-Islamic Arabia. Gods and goddesses, including Hubal and the goddesses al-Lāt, Al-'Uzzá and Manāt, were worshipped at local shrines, such as the Kaaba in Mecca, whilst Arabs in the south, in what is today's Yemen, worshipped various gods, some of which represented the Sun or Moon. Different theories have been proposed regarding the role of Allah in Meccan religion. Many of the physical descriptions of the pre-Islamic gods are traced to idols, especially near the Kaaba, which is said to have contained up to 360 of them.
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Aedesius founded a school of philosophy at Pergamon, which emphasized theurgy and the revival of polytheism, and where he numbered among his pupils Eusebius of Myndus, Maximus of Ephesus, and the Roman emperor Julian. After the accession of the latter to the imperial purple he invited Aedesius to continue his instructions, but the declining strength of the sage being unequal to the task, two of his most learned disciples, Chrysanthius and the aforementioned Eusebius, were by his own desire appointed to supply his place.Eunapius, Vita Aedesius None of his writings have survived, but there is an extant biography by Eunapius, a Greek sophist and historian of the 4th century who wrote a collection of biographies titled Lives of the Sophists.
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"The mild saviour arose as a battle-god, a chivalrous leader of the heavenly host, who found greatest pleasure in combat and the noise of battle; his humble apostles were imagined as proud Paladins" (Der milde Heiland erhob sich zum Schlachtengott, zu einem ritterlichen Führer himmlischer Heerscharen, der das grösste Gefallen fand an Kampf und Waffenlärm; seine demütigen Apostel wurden als stolze Paladine gedacht Alwin Schultz, cited after Otto Zarek, Die geschichte Ungarns (1938), p. 98)Padberg 1998, 87 In the Battle of Tolbiac he prayed to Christ for victory. Clovis was victorious, and afterward he had himself instructed in the Christian faith by Saint Remigius.Padberg 1998, 52 That a pagan like Clovis could ask Christ for help shows the adaptability of Germanic polytheism.
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"Rodnovery" is a widely accepted self-descriptor within the community, although there are Rodnover organisations which further characterise the religion as Vedism, Orthodoxy, and Old Belief. Many Rodnovers regard their religion as a faithful continuation of ancient beliefs that survived as folk religion or as conscious "double belief" following the Christianisation of the Slavs in the Middle Ages. Rodnovery draws upon surviving historical and archaeological sources and folk religion, often integrating them with non-Slavic sources such as Hinduism (as they are believed to be coming from the same Proto-Indo-European source). Rodnover theology and cosmology may be described as pantheism and polytheism—worship of the supreme God of the universe and of the multiple gods, ancestors and spirits of nature identified through Slavic culture.
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Nature worship or naturismOxford English Dictionary is any of a variety of religious, spiritual and devotional practices that focus on the worship of the nature spirits considered to be behind the natural phenomena visible throughout nature.A Dictionary of Religion and Ethics edited by Shailer Mathews, Gerald Birney Smith, p 305 A nature deity can be in charge of nature, a place, a biotope, the biosphere, the cosmos, or the universe. Nature worship is often considered the primitive source of modern religious beliefs and can be found in theism, panentheism, pantheism, deism, polytheism, animism, totemism, shamanism, paganism and sarnaism. Common to most forms of nature worship is a spiritual focus on the individual's connection and influence on some aspects of the natural world and reverence towards it.
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In the Gathas, Ahura Mazda is noted as working through emanations known as the Amesha Spenta and with the help of "other ahuras", of which Sraosha is the only one explicitly named of the latter category. Scholars and theologians have long debated on the nature of Zoroastrianism, with dualism, monotheism, and polytheism being the main terms applied to the religion. Some scholars assert that Zoroastrianism's concept of divinity covers both being and mind as immanent entities, describing Zoroastrianism as having a belief in an immanent self-creating universe with consciousness as its special attribute, thereby putting Zoroastrianism in the pantheistic fold sharing its origin with Indian Brahmanism.François Lenormant and E. Chevallier The Student's Manual of Oriental History: Medes and Persians, Phœnicians, and Arabians, p.
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For this reason, they are sometimes referred to as the "Great Goddess" and the "Great Horned God", with the adjective "great" connoting a deity that contains many other deities within their own nature. Some Wiccans refer to the goddess deity as the "Lady" and the god deity as the "Lord"; in this context, when "lord" and "lady" are used as adjectives, it is another way of referring to them as a divine figure. These two deities are sometimes viewed as facets of a greater pantheistic divinity, which is regarded as an impersonal force or process rather than a personal deity. While duotheism or bitheism is traditional in Wicca, broader Wiccan beliefs range from polytheism to pantheism or monism, even to Goddess monotheism.
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Stunned, he calls off the search, barring Lucius and his men from finding Yeshua and the apostles. That night, another Roman raid, led by Lucius and Pilate, attacks the building that Clavius had forbidden them from entering, and finds it empty, save a note from Clavius, who has decided to continue the investigation on his own. Having abandoned Roman polytheism and the god Mars, Clavius, at first distrustful of the group, soon joins Yeshua and his followers on a journey to determine the validity of his mortal rejuvenation, during which he talks to and befriends both Yeshua and the apostle Peter. Pilate deduces that Clavius has apparently betrayed him, and dispatches a contingent of Roman troops, led by a promoted Lucius, to pursue him and Yeshua.
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Urban pagans continued to utilize the civic centers and temple complexes, while Christians set up their own, new places of worship in suburban areas of cities. Contrary to some older scholarship, newly converted Christians did not simply continue worshiping in converted temples; rather, new Christian communities were formed as older pagan communities declined and were eventually suppressed and disbanded.Gregory, T. (1986). The Survival of Paganism in Christian Greece: A Critical Essay. The American Journal of Philology, 107(2), 229-242. doi:10.2307/294605 The Roman Emperor Julian, a nephew of Constantine who had been raised Christian, initiated an effort to end the suppression of non-Christian religions and re-organize a syncretic version of Graeco-Roman polytheism which he termed "Hellenism".
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In six months they acquired proficiency in the Biblical language and a strong inclination toward Judaism. They resolved to go to Amsterdam, which was one of the few places in Europe at that time where a Christian could openly embrace Judaism. But Potocki first went to Rome, whence, after convincing himself that he could no longer remain a Catholic, he went to Amsterdam and took upon himself the covenant of Abraham, assuming the name of Avraham ben Avraham ("Abraham the son of Abraham"; "the son of Abraham" is the traditional styling of a convert to Judaism, as Abraham was the first who converted to Judaism from polytheism). Potocki's parents got word of his leave from the seminary in Paris and the rumors that he had converted to Judaism and began searching for him.
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In the book Milhamoth HaShem, one finds that possibly the most fundamental issue the Dor Daim had (and have) with the popularly accepted understanding of Kabbalah concerns the absolute transcendent Singularity/Oneness of the Creator and the laws against avodah zarah (forbidden forms of devotion/idolatry). The Dor Daim believe that the popular forms of Kabbalah prevalent today are contrary to the absolute and incomparable Unity of the Creator and violate various laws against idolatry and polytheism, in particular the prohibition against Ribbuy Reshuyoth (worshipping or conceiving of a multiplicity of reigns) referred to by Maimonides in his Mishneh Torah. The issue is not the existence of Kabbalah as such. The word "Kabbalah" is used in older Jewish sources and by Maimonides to simply mean "tradition" and need not refer to mysticism of any kind.
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For long, Palamism won almost no following in the West,. and the distrustful attitude of Barlaam in its regard prevailed among Western theologians, surviving into the early 20th century, as shown in Adrian Fortescue's article on hesychasm in the 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia. In the same period, Siméon Vailhé described some aspects of the teaching of Palamas as "monstrous errors", "heresies" and "a resurrection of polytheism", and called the hesychast method for arriving at perfect contemplation "no more than a crude form of auto-suggestion" The 20th century saw a remarkable change in the attitude of Roman Catholic theologians to Palamas, a "rehabilitation" of him that has led to increasing parts of the Western Church considering him a saint, even if uncanonized.John Meyendorff (editor),Gregory Palamas - The Triads, p.
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A piece of ethnographic evidence which has been invoked to support the belief that the Bulgars worshipped Tengri/Tangra is the relative similarity of the name "Tengri" to "Tură", the name of the supreme deity of the traditional religion of the Chuvash people, who are traditionally regarded as descendants of the Volga Bulgars. Nevertheless, the Chuvash religion today is markedly different from Tengrism and can be described as a local form of polytheism, due to pagan beliefs of the forest dwellers of Finno-Ugric origin, who lived in their vicinity, with some elements borrowed from Islam. Paganism was closely connected with the old clan system, and the remains of totemism and shamanism were preserved even after the crossing of Danube. The Shumen plate in the archaeological literature is often associated with shamanism.
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Muhammad's earliest teachings were marked by his insistence on the oneness of God (Quran ), the denunciation of polytheism (Quran ), belief in the Last judgment and its recompense (Quran ), and social and economic justice (Quran ). In a broader sense, Muhammad preached that he had been sent as God's messenger;Campo (2009), "Muhammad", Encyclopedia of Islam, p. 492. that God is One who is all-powerful, creator and controller of this universe (Quran , Quran ), and merciful towards his creations (Quran ); that worship should be made only to God; that ascribing partnership to God is a major sin (Quran ); that men would be accountable, for their deeds, to God on last judgment day, and would be assigned to heaven or hell (Quran ); and that God expects man to be generous with their wealth and not miserly (Quran ).
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Yet, they espouse Russian nationalism, ancestrality and ecology, and oppose Christianity (but not folk Orthodoxy, which is regarded as a continuation of Russian indigenous religion) and the Western "technocratic civilisation". Koliada Viatichey is theologically dualistic, giving prominence to the complementary principles of Belobog and Chernobog, respectively governing spirit and matter, a polar duality which reflects itself in humanity as the soul and the body. Polytheism is accepted for its ability to "account for the complexity of the world with its multiple good and evil forces", and particularly emphasised is the popular Russian belief in the great goddess of the Earth (Mokosh or Mat Syra Zemlya). Speransky has adopted the concept of Darna from Lithuanian Romuva, explaining it as ordered life "in accordance with the Earth and with the ancestors".
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Qizilbash and Bektashi tariqah shared common religious beliefs and practices becoming intermingled as Alevis in spite of many local variations. Isolated from both the Sunni Ottomans and the Twelver Shi`a Safavids, Qizilbash and Bektashi developed traditions, practices, and doctrines by the early 17th century which marked them as a closed autonomous religious community. As a result of the immense pressures to conform to Sunni Islam, all members of Alevism developed a tradition of opposition (ibāḥa) to all forms of external religion. The doctrine of Qizilbashism is well explained in the following poem written by the Shaykh of Safaviyya tariqah Ismail I: The lines of poetry above may easily be judged as an act of "Shirk" (polytheism) by the Sunni Ulama, but they have a bāṭenī taʾwīl (inner explanation) in Qizilbashism.
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Saint Ambrose barring Theodosius from Milan Cathedral, Anthony van Dyck, c. 1620 The persecution of pagans under Theodosius I began in 381, after the first couple of years of his reign in the Eastern Roman Empire. In the 380s, Theodosius I reiterated Constantine's ban on some practices of Roman religion, prohibited haruspicy on pain of death, decreed magistrates who did not enforce laws against polytheism were subject to criminal prosecution, broke up some pagan associations and tolerated attacks on Roman temples. Between 389–392 he promulgated the Theodosian decrees (instituting a major change in his religious policies), which removed non-Nicene Christians from church office and abolished the last remaining expressions of Roman religion by making its holidays into workdays, banning blood sacrifices, closing Roman temples, confiscating Temple endowments and disbanding the Vestal Virgins.
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In the 1970s, Dianic Wiccan groups developed which were devoted to a singular, monotheistic Goddess; this approach was often criticised by members of British Traditional Wiccan groups, who lambasted such Goddess monotheism as an inverted imitation of Christian theology. As in other forms of Wicca, some Goddess monotheists have expressed the view that the Goddess is not an entity with a literal existence, but rather a Jungian archetype. As well as pantheism and duotheism, many Wiccans accept the concept of polytheism, thereby believing that there are many different deities. Some accept the view espoused by the occultist Dion Fortune that "all gods are one god, and all goddesses are one goddess" – that is that the gods and goddesses of all cultures are, respectively, aspects of one supernal God and Goddess.
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The Ottomans were probably the first to adopt this practice, and in any case the institution of ghazw reaches back to the beginnings of their state: : By early Ottoman times it had become a title of honor and a claim to leadership. In an inscription of 1337 [concerning the building of the Bursa mosque], Orhan, second ruler of the Ottoman line, describes himself as "Sultan, son of the Sultan of the Gazis, Gazi son of Gazi… frontier lord of the horizons." Ottoman historian Ahmedi in his work explain the meaning of Ghazi:Paul Wittek, (2013), The Rise of the Ottoman Empire: Studies in the History of Turkey, thirteenth–fifteenth Centuries Royal Asiatic Society Books, p. 44 > A Ghazi is the instrument of the religion of Allah, a servant of God who > purifies the earth from the filth of polytheism.
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When the Athenians allied with Demetrius Poliorcetes, eighteen years after the deification of Alexander, they lodged him in the Parthenon with Athena, and sang a hymn extolling him as a present god, who heard them, as the other gods did not.Athenaeus, 6.63 Books.Google.com Euhemerus, a contemporary of Alexander, wrote a fictitious history of the world, which showed Zeus and the other established gods of Greece as mortal men, who had made themselves into gods in the same way; Ennius appears to have translated this into Latin some two centuries later, in Scipio Africanus' time. The Ptolemies of Egypt and the Seleucids claimed godhood as long as they lasted; they may have been influenced in this by the Persian and Egyptian traditions of divine kings – although the Ptolemies had separate cults in Egyptian polytheism, as Pharaoh, and in the Greek.
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The concept of ahl al-fatrah is not universally accepted among Islamic scholars, and there is debate concerning the extent of salvation available for active practitioners of polytheism, though the majority of scholars have come to agree with it and disregard the ahadith stating that Muhammad's parents were condemned to hell. While a work attributed to Abu Hanifa, an early Sunni scholar, stated that both Aminah and Abdullah died upon their innate nature (mata 'ala al-fitra), some later authors of mawlid texts related a tradition in which Aminah and Abdullah were temporarily revived and embraced Islam. Scholars like Ibn Taymiyya stated that this was a lie, though al-Qurtubi stated that the concept did not disagree with Islamic theology. According to Ali al-Qari, the preferred view is that both the parents of Muhammad were Muslims.
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The concept of ahl al-fatrah is not universally accepted among Islamic scholars, and there is debate concerning the extent of salvation available for active practitioners of polytheism, though the majority of scholars have come to agree with it and disregard the ahadith stating that Muhammad's parents were condemned to hell. While a work attributed to Abu Hanifa, an early Sunni scholar, stated that both Aminah and Abdullah died upon their innate nature (mata 'ala al-fitra), some later authors of mawlid texts related a tradition in which Aminah and Abdullah were temporarily revived and embraced Islam. Scholars like Ibn Taymiyya stated that this was a lie, though al-Qurtubi stated that the concept did not disagree with Islamic theology. According to Ali al-Qari, the preferred view is that both the parents of Muhammad were Muslims.
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Trinitarians sometimes describe the modern binitarian view as "ditheist" or "dualist" instead of binitarian because in their misunderstanding of binitarianism some claim it posits that God is multiple beings, analogous to a human family; as all humans are also called "Man", after their first father, so in the Father's family, all born into his family are called "God". This is considered a form of polytheism in the traditional trinitarian view as well as in the unitarian or monotheistic point of view. Semi-Arian binitarians do not believe that Jesus "was fully human and fully God", which is the position held by trinitarians. They believe that Jesus was God (the Word) prior to His incarnation, that He became fully human (finite) yet he was not fully God during the pre-resurrection incarnation as He did not have the powers etc.
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In the field of religions he wrote Brahmanism, a work directed against the writings of the Englishmen Z. Howell and Alexander Dow. Others of his writings were on Indian polytheism, Indian asceticism, the religion of the Parsees, Islam, the relation of these religions to one another, etc. His writings in the department of the natural sciences are: astronomical observations on the sunspots and Zodiacal light, studies on Hindu astronomy, astrology, and cosmology, and descriptions and observations of the flora and fauna of India. He also wrote in Latin on the origin of Hindus and of their religion, an account in German of the expeditions of Nadir Shah to India, the deeds of the Mughal Shah Alam in Persian, and in French in incursions of the Afghans and the conquest of Delhi, and the contemporary history of India, 1757–64.
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The consideration of Ayyavazhi as a separate religion by itself is made based on the ideological deviation it takes from the existing so called 'Sanathana Dharma' , that is obviously exposed by Akilam centering Vaikundar. The supremacy of Vaikundar is highly portrayed since the 'formless absolute' or the 'supreme self' Ekam is that which came in the form of him which was ever first through the ages. And so the beliefs, ideology and philosophy of Ayyavazhi are viewed with the activities of Vaikundar as the epi-center, which in turn contrasts with the inclusionistic nature of the existing Sanathana. The philosophy of Ayyavazhi starts with the monism during creation and evolved as polytheism till the end of Dvapara Yuga, further evolved to henotheism till the incarnation of Vaikundar and then onwards turns panentheistic highlighting Vaikundar as the overall supreme, making it unique.
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Central to Hazimism is the doctrine of takfir al-‘adhir ("excommunication of the excuser"). For the third "nullifier" in his treatise Nullifiers of Islam, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab - the founder of Wahhabism - writes that those who do not takfir unbelievers are themselves, unbelievers, whether that is because they doubt their disbelief or otherwise. However, those who are deemed "ignorant" are shielded from takfir by a principle known as al-‘udhr bi’l-jahl ("excusing on the basis of ignorance"). Al-Hazimi rejects al-‘udhr bi’l-jahl for matters he considers to be of "greater polytheism" (al-shirk al-akbar) and "greater disbelief" (al-kufr al-akbar), such as voting in elections. In these scenarios, al-Hazimi states that those who refuse to pronounce takfir by citing al-‘udhr bi’l-jahl are unbelievers as per the third nullifier.
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With the support of his younger brother Prochoros, Demetrios opposed as polytheistic or pantheistic the Palamites' commitment to hesychasm (Greek, silence or stillness), at the time a controversial practice of mystical contemplation through uninterrupted prayer, taught by the Orthodox monks of Mount Athos and articulated by the 14th-century ascetic theologian Gregory Palamas. Applying Aristotelian logic to hesychasm (sometimes claimed by Latin critics to be rooted in Platonism),biblewiki.be/ the Kydones brothers accused Palamas of promoting pantheism or polytheism, only to be condemned themselves by three successive synods that concurred with Palamas' theology and affirmed hesychastic practice. He is the author of the moral philosophical essay De contemnenda morte ("On Despising Death"), an Apologia for his conversion to Catholicism, and a voluminous collection of 447 letters, valuable for the history of Byzantine relations with the West.
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The nave would be kept clear for liturgical processions by the clergy, with the laity in the galleries and aisles to either side. The function of Christian churches was similar to that of the civic basilicas but very different from temples in contemporary Graeco-Roman polytheism: while pagan temples were entered mainly by priests and thus had their splendour visible from without, within Christian basilicas the main ornamentation was visible to the congregants admitted inside. Christian priests did not interact with attendees during the rituals which took place at determined intervals, whereas pagan priests were required to perform individuals' sacrifices in the more chaotic environment of the temple precinct, with the temple's facade as backdrop. In basilicas constructed for Christian uses, the interior was often decorated with frescoes, but these buildings' wooden-roof often decayed and failed to preserve the fragile frescoes within.
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The beliefs of the Native Polish Church are on one hand based on the concept of henotheism, and a mixture of pantheism (or even panentheism) and polytheism on the other – i.e. the belief that fate is decided by a cosmic force known as the Highest God (identified by many Polish Native Church rodnovers as the Multiverse), whose various aspects (incarnations) are manifested in the form of other, minor gods. While officially the Polish Native Church recognises the highest god to be Świętowit, other names from the highest circles of the Slavic pantheon are commonly used (such as Perun or Swaróg); members of the Polish Native Church assume that the Highest God will always remain the highest deity irrespective of the name used. The god's true name (should there be such a name) will always remain beyond human perception.
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In many respects, the writers of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire chose to avoid innovation in favor of imitating the great Greek authors. Virgil's Aeneid, in many ways, emulated Homer's Iliad; Plautus, a comic playwright, followed in the footsteps of Aristophanes; Tacitus' Annals and Germania follow essentially the same historical approaches that Thucydides devised (the Christian historian Eusebius does also, although far more influenced by his religion than either Tacitus or Thucydides had been by Greek and Roman polytheism); Ovid and his Metamorphoses explore the same Greek myths again in new ways. It can be argued, and has been, that the Roman authors, far from being mindless copycats, improved on the genres already established by their Greek predecessors. For example, Ovid's Metamorphoses creates a form which is a clear predecessor of the stream of consciousness genre.
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The scholar and critic Patrick Curry argued that Tolkien felt the need for a magical cosmology combining polytheism and animism with Christian values like compassion and humility, to counter modernity's "war against mystery and magic". He believed that Tolkien considered magic as something negative, associated with modern science and machinery, as in his essay On Fairy-Stories: a means of "power ... [and] domination of things and wills" that corrupts those who use it, for example, trapping the wizard Saruman in his desire for ultimate knowledge and order. Such magic contrasts with the enchantment in early drafts of Tolkien's fictional elvish lands, which he saw as a form of pure art and an appreciation of the wonders of the world. It might seem that witchcraft would always be evil, but in Tolkien's view this was not so.
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This problem is compounded in the teachings of Isaac Luria as found in the writings of Ḥayim Vital, where it is held that as a result of some catastrophe in Heaven, the Sefirot vessels have fractured and their channels re-formed into a variously stated number of inter-relating personalised aspects within God's Manifestation known as Partzufim (from Greek πρόσωπα, faces), teaching that the purpose of each religious observance is to assist their unification. This is felt as being uncomfortably close to polytheism. The original Dor Daim, such as Yiḥyah Qafiḥ, condemned the Zohar as an outright forgery and as filled with idolatry. Some of today's Dor Daim take a somewhat more moderate stance, allowing that the Zohar may contain elements of authentic Midrash together with a great deal of later interpolation, while considering the Zohar in its present form to be an unsafe guide, both to theology and to practice.
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Christian writers against paganism and Judaism, had to explain the truths of natural religion, such as God, the soul, creation, immortality, and freedom of the will; at the same time they had to defend the chief mysteries of the Christian faith, as the Trinity, Incarnation, etc., and had to prove their sublimity, beauty, and conformity to reason. The list of those against pagan polytheism is long: Justin, Athenagoras, Tatian, Theophilus of Antioch, Hermias, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Cyprian, Minucius Felix, Commodianus, Arnobius, Lactantius, Prudentius, Firmicius Maternus, Eusebius of Cæsarea, Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzus, Cyril of Alexandria, Nilus, Theodoret, Orosius, and Augustine of Hippo. The most prominent writers against Judaism were: Justin, Tertullian, Hippolytus of Rome, Cyprian, Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, Epiphanius of Salamis, Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, Isidore of Seville, with attacks on Jews who refused to recognize the prophetic Christian interpretation of the Old Testament.
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The Iraqis attacked again on 28 January 1985; they were defeated, and the Iranians retaliated on 11 March 1985 with a major offensive directed against the Baghdad-Basra highway (one of the few major offensives conducted in 1985), codenamed Operation Badr (after the Battle of Badr, Muhammad's first military victory in Mecca). Ayatollah Khomeini urged Iranians on, declaring: > It is our belief that Saddam wishes to return Islam to blasphemy and > polytheism...if America becomes victorious...and grants victory to Saddam, > Islam will receive such a blow that it will not be able to raise its head > for a long time...The issue is one of Islam versus blasphemy, and not of > Iran versus Iraq.A speech on 4 April 1985 by Ruhollah Khomeini in Persian > quoted in This operation was similar to Operation Kheibar, though it invoked more planning. Iran used 100,000 troops, with 60,000 more in reserve.
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Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (1974) art. "Monotheism" which believes in a God revealed in three different persons, namely the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This is the position of some Jews and Muslims who contend that because of the adoption of a Triune conception of deity, Christianity is actually a form of Tritheism or Polytheism, for example see Shituf or Tawhid. However, the central doctrine of Christianity is that "one God exists in Three Persons and One Substance".Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (1974) art. "Trinity, Doctrine of the" Strictly speaking, the doctrine is a revealed mystery which while above reason is not contrary to it. The word 'person' is an imperfect translation of the original term "hypostasis". In everyday speech "person" denotes a separate rational and moral individual, possessed of self- consciousness, and aware of individual identity despite changes.
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In 325, the First Council of Nicaea defined the persons of the Godhead and their relationship with one another, decisions which were ratified at the First Council of Constantinople in 381. The language used was that the one God exists in three persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit); in particular, it was affirmed that the Son was homoousios (of the same being) as the Father. The Nicene Creed declared the full divinity and full humanity of Jesus.Jonathan Kirsch, God Against the Gods: The History of the War Between Monotheism and Polytheism (2004)Charles Freeman, The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason (2002)Edward Gibbons, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–88), 21 After the First Council of Nicaea in 325 the Logos and the second Person of the Trinity were being used interchangeably.
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Nathan Katz in Buddhist and Western Philosophy (1981, p. 446) points out that the term "transpolytheistic" would be more accurate, since it entails that the polytheistic gods are not denied or rejected even after the development of a notion of the Absolute that transcends them, but criticizes the classification as characterizing the mainstream by the periphery: "like categorizing Roman Catholicism as a good example of non-Nestorianism". The term is indeed informed by the fact that the corresponding development in the West, the development of monotheism, did not attempt to "transcend" polytheism, but to abolish it, while in the mainstream of the Indian religions, the notion of "gods" (deva) was never elevated to the status of "God" or Ishvara, or the impersonal Absolute Brahman, but adopted roles comparable to Western angels. "Transtheism", according to the criticism of Katz, is then an artifact of comparative religion.
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Jacob Taubes likened the views in the essay to those of the Kosmiker group (depicted from left to right: Karl Wolfskehl, Alfred Schuler, Ludwig Klages, Stefan George and Albert Verwey). In 1983, Taubes published a response to "In Praise of Polytheism" where he wrote that Marquard should ask himself if he had not outlined a "philosophical choreography" for present-day "Kosmiker"; with this he referred to a group of mystics and neopagans with blood and soil tendencies, active in Munich at the turn of the 20th century. Taubes said the essay produces a "mythical state of mind" instead of describing one, and that "recourses to myth post Christum are really just repetitions of Julian's apostasy". He connected Marquard's project to Alain de Benoist's book On Being a Pagan (1981) and thereby associated it with the neopaganism of the far-right Nouvelle Droite movement in France.
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In Natural History of Religion (1757) he contends that polytheism, not monotheism, was "the first and most ancient religion of mankind" and that the psychological basis of religion is not reason, but fear of the unknown. “The primary religion of mankind arises chiefly from an anxious fear of future events; and what ideas will naturally be entertained of invisible, unknown powers, while men lie under dismal apprehensions of any kind, may easily be conceived. Every image of vengeance, severity, cruelty, and malice must occur, and must augment the ghastliness and horror which oppresses the amazed religionist. .. And no idea of perverse wickedness can be framed, which those terrified devotees do not readily, without scruple, apply to their deity.” (Section XIII) Hume's account of ignorance and fear as the motivations for primitive religious belief was a severe blow to the deist's rosy picture of prelapsarian humanity basking in priestcraft-free innocence.
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Therefore, Hannah Adams's early encyclopedia, for example, had its name changed from An Alphabetical Compendium of the Various Sects... to A Dictionary of All Religions and Religious Denominations.Masuzawa 2005. pp. 49–61 In 1838, the four-way division of Christianity, Judaism, Mahommedanism (archaic terminology for Islam) and Paganism was multiplied considerably by Josiah Conder's Analytical and Comparative View of All Religions Now Extant among Mankind. Conder's work still adhered to the four- way classification, but in his eye for detail he puts together much historical work to create something resembling the modern Western image: he includes Druze, Yezidis, Mandeans, and Elamites under a list of possibly monotheistic groups, and under the final category, of "polytheism and pantheism," he listed Zoroastrianism, "Vedas, Puranas, Tantras, Reformed sects" of India as well as "Brahminical idolatry," Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Lamaism, "religion of China and Japan," and "illiterate superstitions" as others.
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The first evidence of human presence in Ireland may date to about 12,500 years ago. The receding of the ice after the Younger Dryas cold phase of the Quaternary around 9700 BC, heralds the beginning of Prehistoric Ireland, which includes the archaeological periods known as the Mesolithic, the Neolithic from about 4000 BC, the Copper and Bronze Age from about 2300 BC and Iron Age beginning about 600 BC. Ireland's bronze age begins with the emergence of "protohistoric" Gaelic Ireland in the 2nd Millennium BC and ends with arrival of Celtic la Tène culture by central Europe By the late 4th century AD Christianity had begun to gradually subsume or replace the earlier Celtic polytheism. By the end of the 6th century it had introduced writing along with a predominantly monastic Celtic Christian church, profoundly altering Irish society. Viking raids and settlement from the late 8th century AD resulted in extensive cultural interchange, as well as innovation in military and transport technology.
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Wahhabies assume the intercession of God on the Day of Resurrection as positive, and that of the Prophets and other awliya as negative. In order to get closer to God, Wahhabis argue, it is a kind of polytheism to abandons the "nearer means" (God) and resorts to a "remote means" (other than God). They quote the following verse to prove that one should not resort to intercession of other than God even if he is the prophet of Islam, since, they say, the requisite of Tawhid is that one should ask only God for help: In response to this objection it is said that "beside Allah" in this verse refers to the idols not human beings. According to Tabataba'i the reality of seeking intercession is nothing more than the request for prayers from the intercessor, an examples of which, as related in the Quran, is the story of the sons of Jacob when they asked their father to implore God's forgiveness of them.
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According to Halbfass, the terms "Neo-Vedanta" and "Neo-Hinduism" refer to "the adoption of Western concepts and standards and the readiness to reinterpret traditional ideas in light of these new, imported and imposed modes of thought". Prominent in Neo-Vedanta is Vivekananda, who's theology, according to Madaio, is often characterised in earlier scholarship as "a rupture from 'traditional' or 'classical' Hindusim, particularly the 'orthodox' Advaita Vedanta of the eight century Shankara." The term "Neo-Vedanta" appears to have arisen in Bengal in the 19th century, where it was used by both Indians and Europeans. Brian Hatcher wrote that "the term neo-Vedanta was first coined by Christian commentators, some of whom were firsthand observers of developments in Brahmo theology... engaged in open, sometimes acrimonious debates with the Brahmos, whom they partly admired for their courage in abandoning traditions of polytheism and image worship but whom they also scorned for having proffered to other Hindus a viable alternative to conversion".
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Scottish anthropologist Andrew Lang concluded in 1898 that the idea of the Supreme Being, the "high God" or "All Father" existed among some of the simplest of contemporary tribes prior to Western contact, and that Urmonotheism (primitive monotheism or henotheism) that worshipped God, as opposed to a pantheon of polytheistic gods, was the original religion of mankind. Urmonotheism was then defended by Wilhelm Schmidt (1868–1954), in his Der Ursprung der Gottesidee appearing from 1912, opposing the "Revolutionary Monotheism" approach that traces the emergence of monotheistic thought as a gradual process spanning the Bronze and Iron Age Religions of the Ancient Near East and Classical Antiquity. Alleged traces of primitive monotheism were located in the Assyrian deities Ashur and Marduk, and Hebrew YHWH. Monotheism in Schmidt's view is the "natural" form of theism, which was later overlaid and "degraded" by polytheism after deceased ancestors' veneration became worship, and personified natural forces became worshipped as well as gods.
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The core of the book lies in chapters 5, "Archaeological Evidence for Folk Religions in Ancient Israel", 6 "The Goddess Asherah and Her Cult", and 7 "Asherah, Women's Cults, and 'Official Yahwism'". These chapters describe polytheistic religion in ancient Israel, which, Dever points out, was the reality in the religious lives of most people. The last two chapters (chapter 8: "From Polytheism to Monotheism" and chapter 9: "What Does the Goddess Do to Help") sum up the book, concluding that biblical monotheism is an artificial phenomenon, the product of the elite, nationalist parties who wrote and edited the Hebrew Bible during the Babylonian exile as a response to the trauma of the conquest, and subsequently enforced it in their homeland during the early Persian period. Dever also notes that folk religion and the role of the goddess did not disappear under official monotheistic Yahwism, but instead went underground, to find a home in the magic and mysticism of later Judaism.
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His work has been defined by Suzanne Hudson as, > "Nicola Verlato retains a kind of classicism that has traditionally implied > conservatism, upholding a neorealist style evocative of Old Master painting, > which he puts to use in near-apocalyptic, largely allegorical scenes of > soldiers and bodies leaping from crashing vehicles. Verlato appropriates the > campy, exaggerated violence common to the High Baroque and contemporary > video games to comment on the clash of civilizations played out between > polytheism and monotheism, and to underline its consequences for > representation: cults of idols (figuration) versus prohibitions on graven > images (abstraction). This is an important reminder of the different > histories of form and the ideologies that underpin them, whose use depends > on local context and other factors." ー "Painting Now" by Suzanne Hudson, > Thames & Hudson 2015, pg 128-129 Nicola Verlato has shown alongside artists such as Erwin Olaf, Santiago Sierra, Shepard Fairey, Kehinde Wiley, Ronald Ophuis, José Lerma, Mark Ryden, and Robert Williams.
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Constantine the Great, a sculpture by Philip Jackson in York The Religious policies of Constantine the great have been called "ambiguous and elusive." Born in 273 during the Crisis of the Third Century (AD 235–284), he was thirty at the time of the Great Persecution, saw his father become Augustus of the West and then shortly die, spent his life in the military warring with much of his extended family, and converted to Christianity sometime around 40 years of age. His religious policies, formed from these experiences, comprised increasing toleration of Christianity, limited regulations against Roman polytheism with toleration, participation in resolving religious disputes such as schism with the Donatists, and the calling of councils including the Council of Nicaea concerning Arianism.Peter Brown, The Rise of Christendom 2nd edition (Oxford, Blackwell Publishing, 2003) John Kaye characterizes the conversion of Constantine, and the council of Nicea that Constantine called, as two of the most important things to ever happen to the Christian church.
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Al- Baqi' mausoleum reportedly contained the bodies of Hasan ibn Ali (a grandson of Muhammad) and Fatimah (the daughter of Muhammad). In 1801 and 1802, the Saudi Wahhabis under Abdul Aziz ibn Muhammad ibn Saud attacked and captured the Shia cities of Karbala and Najaf in Iraq and destroyed the tombs of Husayn ibn Ali, who is the grandson of Muhammad, and Ali (Ali bin Abu Talib), the son-in-law of Muhammad (see: Saudi sponsorship mentioned previously). In 1803 and 1804 the Saudis captured Mecca and Madinah and demolished various tombs of Ahl al-Bayt and Sahabah, ancient monuments, ruins according to Wahhabis, they "removed a number of what were seen as sources or possible gateways to polytheism or shirk" – such as the tomb of Fatimah, the daughter of Muhammad. In 1998 the Saudis bulldozed and poured petroleum over the grave of Aminah bint Wahb, the mother of Muhammad, causing resentment throughout the Muslim World.
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The documentary hypothesis can be used to further understand the layers of this narrative: it is plausible that the earliest story of the golden calf was preserved by E (Israel source) and originated in the Northern kingdom. When E and J (Judah source) were combined after the fall of northern kingdom, "the narrative was reworked to portray the northern kingdom in a negative light," and the worship of the calf was depicted as "polytheism, with the suggestion of a sexual orgy" (see Exodus 32:6). When compiling the narratives, P (a later Priest source from Jerusalem) may have minimized Aaron's guilt in the matter, but preserved the negativity associated with the calf. Alternatively it could be said that there is no golden calf story in the J source, and if it is correct that the Jeroboam story was the original as stated by Friedman, then it is unlikely that the golden calf events as described in Exodus occurred at all.
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Pertaining to Chinese religion the most common term is miào graphically meaning a "shrine" or "sacred enclosure"; it is the general Chinese term that is translated with the general Western "temple", and is used for temples of any of the deities of polytheism. Other terms include diàn which indicates the "house" of a god, enshrining one specific god, usually a chapel within a larger temple or sacred enclosure; and tán which means "altar" and refers to any indoor or outdoor altars, majestic outdoor altars being those for the worship of Heaven and Earth and other gods of the environment. Gōng, originally referring to imperial palaces, became associated to temples of representations of the universal God or the highest gods and consorts, such as the Queen of Heaven. Another group of words is used for the temples of ancestral religion: cí (either "temple" or "shrine", meaning a sacred enclosure) or zōngcí ("ancestor shrine").
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Researcher Samuel Fort noted additional parallels, to include the cult's focus on mystic and typically nocturnal rites, its female dominated membership, the sacrifice of other animals (to include horses and mules), a focus on the mystical properties of roads and portals, and an emphasis on death, healing, and resurrection.Cult of the Great Eleven, Samuel Fort, 2014, 320 pages. ASIN B00OALI9O4 As a "goddess of witchcraft", Hecate has been incorporated in various systems of modern witchcraft, Wicca, and neopaganism,e.g.Sabina Magliocco, Witching Culture: Folklore and Neopaganism in America, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004, p79 in some cases associated with the Wild Hunt of Germanic tradition,James R. Lewis, Witchcraft Today: An Encyclopedia of Wiccan and Neopagan Traditions, 1999, pp 303–304; For a 'Moon magick' reference to Hecate as "Lady of the Wild Hunt and witchcraft" see: D. J. Conway, Moon Magick: Myth & Magic, Crafts & Recipes, Rituals & Spells, Llewellyn, 1995, p157 in others as part of a reconstruction of specifically Greek polytheism, in English also known as "Hellenismos".
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Iraqi commanders discussing strategy on the battlefront (1986) The Iraqis attacked again on 28 January 1985; they were defeated, and the Iranians retaliated on 11 March 1985 with a major offensive directed against the Baghdad-Basra highway (one of the few major offensives conducted in 1985), codenamed Operation Badr (after the Battle of Badr, Muhammad's first military victory in Mecca). Ayatollah Khomeini urged Iranians on, declaring: > It is our belief that Saddam wishes to return Islam to blasphemy and > polytheism...if America becomes victorious...and grants victory to Saddam, > Islam will receive such a blow that it will not be able to raise its head > for a long time...The issue is one of Islam versus blasphemy, and not of > Iran versus Iraq.A speech on 4 April 1985 by Ruhollah Khomeini in Persian > quoted in This operation was similar to Operation Kheibar, though it invoked more planning. Iran used 100,000 troops, with 60,000 more in reserve.
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In any case, the author, whether he was a sophist commissioned by Phocas to attack the monks, or some professor who hoped to profit by singing the imperial praises, represents the views of the patriotic (as the title shows) as opposed to the unpatriotic party. According to another view, which assigns the dialogue to the time of Heraclius (610-641), the author was a Christian fanatic, whose object was to make known the existence of a conventicle of belated pagans, the enemies alike of the Christian faith and the empire; it is doubtful, however, whether such a pagan community, sufficiently numerous to be of importance, actually existed at that date. The object of the first and longer portion of the dialogue was to combat the humanism of the period, which threatened a revival of polytheism as a rival of Christianity. In 1982, The Date and Purpose of the Philopatris, by Barry Baldwin was published in Later Greek Literature, Volume 27, with arguments that effectively overturned the Byzantine dating.
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John Wilson attacked the Zoroastrian reverence of the Amesha Spenta and Yazatas as a form of polytheism, although the Parsis at the time immediately refuted this allegation and insisted that he had in fact addressed the Bundahishn, a text whose relevance to their practice was remote. Critics also commonly claim that Zoroastrians are worshipers of other deities and elements of nature, such as of fire—with one prayer, the Litany to the fire (Atesh Niyaesh), stating: "I invite, I perform (the worship) of you, the Fire, O son of Ahura Mazdā together with all fires"—and Mithra. Some critics have charged Zoroastrians with being followers of dualism, who only claimed to be followers of monotheism in modern times to confront the powerful influence of Christian and Western thought which "hailed monotheism as the highest category of theology." Critics insist that the monotheistic reformist view is seen to contradict the conservative (or traditional) view of a dualistic worldview most evident in the relationship between Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu.
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In the same period, Edward Pace's article on quietism indicated that, while in the strictest sense quietism is a 17th-century doctrine proposed by Miguel de Molinos, the term is also used more broadly to cover both Indian religions and what Edward Pace called "the vagaries of Hesychasm", thus betraying the same prejudices as Fortescue with regard to hesychasm; and, again in the same period, Siméon Vailhé described some aspects of the teaching of Palamas as "monstrous errors", "heresies" and "a resurrection of polytheism", and called the hesychast method for arriving at perfect contemplation "no more than a crude form of auto-suggestion". Different concepts of "natural contemplation" existed in the East and in the medieval West. The twentieth century saw a remarkable change in the attitude of Roman Catholic theologians to Palamas, a "rehabilitation" of him that has led to increasing parts of the Western Church considering him a saint, even if uncanonized. Some Western scholars maintain that there is no conflict between Palamas's teaching and Roman Catholic thought.
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Jeffrey Brodd (2003), World Religions: A Voyage of Discovery, Saint Mary's Press, , page 43Christopher John Fuller (2004), The Camphor Flame: Popular Hinduism and Society in India, Princeton University Press, , pages 30-31, Quote: "Crucial in Hindu polytheism is the relationship between the deities and humanity. Unlike Jewish, Christian and Islamic monotheism, predicated on the otherness of God and either his total separation from man and his singular incarnation, Hinduism postulates no absolute distinction between deities and human beings. The idea that all deities are truly one is, moreover, easily extended to proclaim that all human beings are in reality also forms of one supreme deity - Brahman, the Absolute of philosophical Hinduism. In practice, this abstract monist doctrine rarely belongs to an ordinary Hindu's statements, but examples of permeability between the divine and human can be easily found in popular Hinduism in many unremarkable contexts".. Parallels between Allah in Islam or Ein Sof in Kabbalah and Brahman has been drawn by my scholars in past and more so in recent.
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Anciently, the religion of the Cornish Britons was Celtic polytheism, a pagan, animistic faith, assumed to be led by Druids in full or in part.. Early Christianity is thought to have existed in Cornwall during the 1st century, but limited to individual travellers and visitors, possibly including Priscillian, a Galician theologian who may have been exiled to the Isles of Scilly. Celtic Christianity was introduced to Cornwall in the year 520 by Saint Petroc, a Brython from the kingdom of Glywysing, and other missionaries from Wales, as well as by Gaelic monks and holy women from Ireland; this "formative period" has left a legacy of granite high cross monuments throughout Cornwall. Dedications to many different Cornish saints can also be traced to this period. In the Middle Ages, Roman Catholicism was dominant in Cornwall, and even in the 17th century the Cornish were "fervently Roman Catholic", slow to accept the Protestant Reformation, according to some scholars.. The adoption of Anglicanism was, eventually, near-universal in Cornwall and facilitated the anglicisation of the Cornish people.
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According to Hans Pohlsander, Professor Emeritus of History at the University at Albany, SUNY, Constantine's conversion was just another instrument of Realpolitik in his hands meant to serve his political interest in keeping the Empire united under his control: The Emperor and Neoplatonic philosopher Julian the Apostate made a short-lived attempt to restore traditional religion and Paganism, and to reaffirm the special status of Judaism, but in 391, under Theodosius I, Nicene Christianity became the official State church of the Roman Empire to the exclusion of all other Christian churches and Hellenistic religions, including Roman religion itself. Pleas for religious tolerance from traditionalists such as the senator Symmachus (d. 402) were rejected, and Christian monotheism became a feature of Imperial domination. Heretics as well as non-Christians were subject to exclusion from public life or persecution, but, despite the decline of Greco- Roman polytheism, Rome's original religious hierarchy and many aspects of its ritual influenced Christian religion as a whole;Stefan Heid, "The Romanness of Roman Christianity," in A Companion to Roman Religion (Blackwell, 2007), pp.
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This strategy is not solely a feature of Christianity; the phenomenon was discussed in broader terms by F.W. Hasluck, Christianity and Islam under the Sultans (Oxford) 1929. From a Christian perspective, "pagan" refers to the various religious beliefs and practices of those who adhered to non-Abrahamic faiths, including within the Greco-Roman world the traditional public and domestic religion of ancient Rome, imperial cult, Hellenistic religion, the ancient Egyptian religion, Celtic and Germanic polytheism, initiation religions such as the Eleusinian Mysteries and Mithraism, the religions of the ancient Near East, and the religion of Carthage. Reformatting traditional religious and cultural activities and beliefs into a Christianized form was officially sanctioned; preserved in the Venerable Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum is a letter from Pope Gregory I to Mellitus, arguing that conversions were easier if people were allowed to retain the outward forms of their traditions while changing the object of their veneration to God, "to the end that, whilst some gratifications are outwardly permitted them, they may the more easily consent to the inward consolations of the grace of God".Bede, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Digireads.
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Later associations with Thor seen throughout the internet, in heraldry and publications, appear to have arisen not from evidence but from more modern speculations and probable confusion from the simplifications of multiple Norse deities. The dominance of Odin and Thor in the Norse pantheon coincides with the time that monotheistic religions such as Christianity were influencing and challenging the polytheism of the older cultures in Northern European regions. The letter V, often used as evidence that Tovi derives from a diminutive of a longer name was a Latinisation of the Rune ᚠ and Medieval additions to the Younger Futharc duplicated the use of some of the 16 Runic characters used in the 9th to 11th centuries. The Rune for V is the same as that used for F. Pruda in old Norse, prúðr (prúðr meaning: proud/splendid fine; magnificent; stately; splendid; gallant; brave) It is tempting to speculate that Tófi prúðr (Tovi pruda) was a younger relation named after Tófa (Tove of the Obotrites), but no direct evidence to support this has come to light at present other than the presence of a Tovi Wendish fl.
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