God of the Week: Ahura Mazda

God of the Week 12/14/09: Ahura Mazda

Ahura Mazda is the chief god of the Zoroastrian faith. He is the all good uncreated creator of the universe and of all good things in it (all evil things in the world being the creation of the god Ahriman). In the mythology of the religion, this dualistic nature of the world leads to an ultimate battle between good and evil.

The struggle between the good and the evil beings, in which man takes part by siding, according to his conduct, with Ahura Mazda or with his foe, is to end with the victory of the former at the great renovation of the world, when a flood of molten metal will, as an ordeal, purify all men and bring about the complete exclusion of evil.

- Mythology of All Races, Volume 6: Indian and Iranian

Louis Herbert Gray, Editor

This concept of a final judgment and battle between good and evil was very influential to post Babylonian Exile Judaism and, later, Christianity (who appeared to have modeled their concept of the Apocalypse on it). Ahura Mazda also influenced the conception of the god Yahweh, who was transformed from a jealous tribal god, responsible for all things good and evil, to a caring and loving god with the evil adversary of the devil being responsible for evil in the world.

A hymn to Ahura Mazda from the Gathas:

” That I shall ask thee, tell it me right, O Ahura !
Who was in the beginning the father and creator of righteousness?
Who created the path of the sun and stars ?
Who causes the moon to increase and wane but thou ?
Who is holding the earth and the skies above it ?
Who made the waters and the trees of the field ?
Who created the lights of good effect and the darkness ?
Who created the sleep of good effect and the activity ?
Who (created) morning, noon, and night ?
Who has prepared the Bactrian home ?
To become acquainted with these things, I approach thee, Mazda,
Beneficent spirit ! creator of all beings !
That I shall ask thee, tell it me right, O Ahura !
How may I come,, Mazda ! to your dwelling-place (Heaven)
To hear you sing ? “

-Gathas, translation from “The Religion of Zoroaster” by R Brown

Though the exact origin of the deity Ahura Mazda is not known, it has been theorized that he may be a derivation of the Indian god Varuna, because of the many similarities between Zoroastrianism and Vedic Hinduism.

Cattle Mutilation: UFOs? Why Not Angels?

UFO’s? Thankfully this rancher doesn’t think so.

“Four calves, all killed overnight. Their innards gone. Tongues sliced out. Udders carefully removed. Facial skin sliced and gone. Eyes cored away. Not a single track surrounding the carcasses, which were found in pastures locked behind two gates and a mile from any road. Not a drop of blood on the ground or even on the remaining skin.”

How come skilled plane landing is attributed to divine intervention, but cattle mutilation is always attributed to UFO intervention? Whose to say it’s not the other way around? Heavenly beings in the Old Testament can get a bit uppity at times. Who’s to say that there wasn’t a whole load of vengeance needing to be done on those cows.

Holy Cow

A Connecticut dairy farm witnessed a miracle: a cow born with a cross on it’s head. Yep. God chose to manipulate the forces of nature to perform miracle; give us a sign.He didn’t choose to heal amputees, or cure the world’s sick children for this miracle. Nope. God, in his infinite wisdom,decided the best way to get everyone’s attentions is to put a white patch on a cow’s head. Well, we take what we can get, I suppose.

When asked if it could just be a coincidence, the farm owners said that she knows too much about genetics to think that a fuzzy, misshapen birthmark that sort of looks like two intersecting lines could possibly be a coincidence. Mmmmm. Me thinks the lady doth proclaim too much.

While it is vaguely cross shaped, to me it looks more like a ghost with a huge right arm. Or a hatchet.

They had better be careful on how much media attention they get with this “holy cow”. They may wake up one morning to find a thousand Hindu pilgrims gathered outside their door.

Norse God Odin as Santa Claus?

Saint Nicholas

That jolly old elf Santa Claus may have gotten his name from Sinterklaas, a Dutch derivation for  Saint Nicholas of Myra, but his wizened appearance, as well as a few of the customs and characteristics associated with Santa seems to stem from Norse traditions.

Odin

Phyllis Siefker, in her book Santa Claus, Last of the Wild Men: The Origins and Evolution of Saint Nicholas, Spanning 50,000 Years, sees parallels between the Norse god Odin and Santa.  The Germanic winter festival of Yule had many traditions attached to it that we would associate with Christmas today, including caroling and decorating evergreen trees. A Yule custom in which children would put straw for Odin’s eight legged horse into their boots and set them in front of the fire place only to find them filled with candy and toys the next morning seems to have led to the tradition of Christmas stockings today. Odin was, after all, a shape shifting wizard, able to sneak in and out under the cover of night. Saint Nicholas, it seems, was not gifted with such powers, though his love of cookies was notorious.

Vintage (pre-Coca-Cola) Santa Claus

In the early 20th century, Santa began to lose his rough around the edges wizard look and took on more of the child friendly fat man appearance we think of as Santa Claus today. This look was aided, though not invented, by a very popular series of ads by the Coca-Cola company.

Sinister looking vintage Santa

God of the Week: Apollo

God of the Week 12/07/09: Apollo

Apollo is the ancient Greek god of light and the sun, as well as healing, prophesy, honesty, and, as many sun gods, as a law giver. Apollo and his sister Artemis were fathered by the chief god, Zeus and Leto. His main centers of worship were in Delphi and Delos, though there were shrines of worship erected to him all over Greece. The temple at Dephi was indisputably the most well known oracle in all of ancient Greece and pilgrims had been traveling there since before recorded history to have the priestess go into a trance and forecast their futures.

Apollo is occasionally identified with the god Helios, who would more properly be thought of as a personification of the sun itself, rather than a sun god. In the Homeric epics (which have been dated between 850 to 1,180 BCE), both gods are refereed to as separate entities. Though, in Euripides’ play ‘Phaethon’ (written ~420BCE) it is implied that they are different names for the same god, implying that, as times went on, Apollo became associated more and more with the sun itself.

From, Mythology of All Races:

Apollo, the brightest and the most complex creation of polytheism, seems to have been originally the leading god of a people who migrated into Greece from the north in prehistoric times, his northern origin being apparently reflected in the fixed routes followed by the sacred processions to his two chief shrines. The one way, which, we may note, Apollo himself followed, according to the longer Homeric Hymn in his honour, ran southward from Tempe through Iolkos and Thebes to Delphoi; and the other led the pilgrims bearing the Hyperboreian fruits overland along the coast of the Adriatic to Dodona, thence eastward to the Gulf of Euboia, and from that point by ship to Delos. Apollo’s initial function is by no means certain, nor has any satisfactory explanation of the source and meaning of his name yet been offered.

In Homer Apollo is already the son of Zeus and the brother of Artemis, but, although his chief physical traits and the leading features of his character are fixed, he has yet to evolve the complex personality by which he is to be known to the Greeks after the fifth century b.c. He has to do with light, but is not convincingly identified with Helios. He is a god of healing, but not yet the god of healing, so that he revives Hektor after he has been wounded in conflict. With the power of healing must be assumed its opposite, the ability to inflict harm, whence it was Apollo who, in consequence of a slight, sent the pestilence upon the men and beasts of the Achaian camp. He is himself the expert archer of the Olympians and confers on Pandaros and Teukros skill in the use of the bow, but, though he wields the bow and occasionally takes part in the strife as a violent partisan of the Trojans, he is only accidentally a god of war. He is associated with prophecy in that seers, like Kalchas, draw their inspiration from him. Descriptions of him always represent him as in the prime of young manhood, with flowing locks of golden hair.

-The Mythology of All Races, Volume I: Greek and Roman

by William Sherwood Fox, Ph.D

Louis Herbert Gray, Editor

The Global Warming Hoax Emails

And now, a lesson on quote mining and McExperts “interpreting” data.

Or: Why Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Alex Jones are fucking idiots that don’t even have the ability to read emails written in English.

Be forewarned, you’ll have to watch a 10 minute video and the only yelling or crying is done by the aforementioned idiots (hmmm, if scientific papers were read by someone either yelling or crying would conservatives start paying attention?).

Mike Huckabee: God King

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said he was aware of Maurice Clemmons’ long and violent criminal history when he commuted his 108-year prison sentence, but he couldn’t have foreseen the deadly consequence of his act.

Of course not, how could anyone know that releasing a killer would give him the chance to kill again?

What I want to know is, why the hell is this or any other governor given the power to release a dangerous criminal? Who thought that this was a good idea? Criminals are put into prison for a reason, and it’s not punishment: it’s to get them off they streets so that they do not harm others. They were put into prison by our legal system and one man should not be able to, by the swipe of a pen, undo everything. Claiming to be able to forecast the future actually would be a better excuse than the real one: that we somehow have grandfathered into our system the god/king mentality that the leader of a certain political area has the power to undo any law they see fit.

The mental state of criminally insane people should be up to experts in the criminally insane. Even then, mistakes might be made, but at least it won’t be because of the whim of a faith head and the good ol’ boy network of patting other Christians on the back.

But, would an expert panel have released Clemmons? Not according to this:

During a pretrial hearing, he hid a piece of metal in his sock, court documents said. Before the start of another hearing, he grabbed a padlock off his holding cell and threw it at a court bailiff. He missed, and the lock hit his mother, who had come to bring him clothes.

“That’s the one word that came to my mind that I remembered about him, was that he was mean,” said W.A. McCormick, a deputy prosecuting attorney at the time. “He was shackled in court and deputies placed behind him while he was tried because he was such a security risk.”

Clemmons continued to lash out violently behind the prison fences in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

“Over and over again,” said Larry Jegley, the prosecutor who put Clemmons away.

“Failure to obey, engaging in sexual activity,” he rattled off the charges as he flipped through Clemmons’ prison record, “failure to obey, possession or introduction of drugs, firearms.”

McCormick said he told the parole board — repeatedly, in writing — that Clemmons should remain in prison. And he would have opposed it once again if he had known that Huckabee was considering commuting Clemmons’ sentence.

Not only should Huckabee not given clemency to Clemons, he should not have been able to. This man (Huckabee) is a danger to society.

There are Wing Nuts in America, Too

Religious fundamentalists are annoying and dangerous. So, Barack Obama decided to “refocus” efforts against al Qaeda in Afghanistan. So, is Obama for taking out all religious nuts that want to force everyone to live by their bronze age rules, or just Islamic ones? al Qaeda is indeed a pain in the ass, but isn’t it a bit bigoted to take them out in a military fashion but not even have the courage to speak up to the wing nut jobs in America, especially since they’ve already been so insulting?

Jesus Christ Kicked Off Jury

Story from AP:

Court officials say a Birmingham woman who changed her name to Jesus Christ didn’t live up to it when she reported for jury duty this week. The woman, previously named Dorothy Lola Killingworth, was sent to Judge Clyde Jones’s courtroom for a criminal case Monday.

Court officials told The Birmingham News Tuesday that the 59-year-old was excused because she was disruptive and kept asking questions instead of answering them.

Efforts to reach Christ for comment were unsuccessful.

“Effort to reach Christ were unsuccessful.” Isn’t that always the case?

Sexy Time in the Catholic Church

Forget singles bars. If you really want a swinging time, join the Catholic Church.

“Bookshops throughout India’s Christian communities in Kerala have already sold out of Amen, the autobiography of Sister Jesme, who has alleged that priests and nuns not only broke their vows of celibacy with each other but regularly forced novices to have sex with them.

The Catholic Church in India is mired in a series of sexual controversies, and has only just begun to recover from the dismissal of a senior bishop who “adopted” an attractive 26-year-old female companion as his “daughter”.

The book by the former nun reveals how as a young novice she was propositioned in the confession box by a priest who cited biblical references to “divine kisses”. Later she was cornered by a lesbian nun at a college where they were teaching. “She would come to my bed in the night and do lewd acts and I could not stop her,” she claims.

When she was sent to Bangalore to stay with a priest known for his piety, he lectured her about the need for “physical love” and later assaulted her.”

Of course, the best (and by “best”, I mean “worst”) part of the story is the trivial nature in which her claims are treated:

Dr Paul Thelekkat, a spokesman for the Syro-Malabar Catholic church said he had some sympathy for sister Jesme, and respected her freedom to express her views, but he believed her claims were trivial. “How far what she says is well-founded I can’t say, but the issues are not very serious. We’re living with human beings in a community and she should realise this is part of human life,”