the hurricane is god, so he blew the book away into a pole just to the right page open. Turns out, we all gotta burn while the righteous go to heaven. how bout that.
I was never raised religious so coming at it from the outside i always wondered why people stopped worshipping the things that actually materially affect things. The Sun, the wind, animals, water etc
in short? alienation from labor+concerns about the afterlife. Basically, people who didn't have to worry about the harvest coming through next season started to worry about long term things, so the purpose of religion switched more and more to afterlife focus over time. You can see this generally, with Greek mystery cults such as the Eleusinian mysteries, cult of Orpheus and Dionysius, the great gods at Samothrace, and the Korybantes cult down in Crete, as well as the cult of Isis and Serapis coming out of Egypt, the cult of Mithras from Persia, and various levantine revivals around the time of Jesus. No big cults came from further north in Europe, due to the fact that those places were full of simple farmers for the most part until Roman conquest. Worship of animals tends to die out really fast, it's very easily made to look silly, it can only stay sustained in hunter gatherer groups, sometimes nomads. Solar worship is also more open to fluctuation than you might think, the Greek sun god was mostly worshiped for prophecy, poetry, medicine, laws, and poems, and the Romans didn't have a major cult for the sun until they imported it from Greece(potentially a minor one but it's obscure), and the other Italic people's didn't have one(the Etruscans do, but he's connected with the whole of the sky). The sun does it's job day in day out a lot better than other parts of the world, so why bother propitiating it? Several solar cults kind of catch on in the late empire, but more among the wealthy than the common people. Wind gods get very rarely worshiped, there job is usually subsumed into a weather god's work, potentially sea god or others. Water gods tend to be a bit of a hold out, as are gods directly tied to land and farming, but push comes to shove they eventually get folded as eschatological concerns overwhelm them. As for why Christianity, unlike the others somehow throws all prior religions out even for those who still work the soil, that's because Christ is King. But in a more objective tack, it's the only one of this cults that wasn't henotheistic, allowing for other gods but centered on one, but strictly monotheistic. And if the old gods get thrown out but the functions they governed keep moving, then either Jesus is the true god or it doesn't really matter.
the hurricane is god, so he blew the book away into a pole just to the right page open. Turns out, we all gotta burn while the righteous go to heaven. how bout that.
I guess we're worshiping hurricanes now? 🤷♀️
Who you gunna worship? Some old codger or the divine winds that hurl trees like spears through your window?
I was never raised religious so coming at it from the outside i always wondered why people stopped worshipping the things that actually materially affect things. The Sun, the wind, animals, water etc
in short? alienation from labor+concerns about the afterlife. Basically, people who didn't have to worry about the harvest coming through next season started to worry about long term things, so the purpose of religion switched more and more to afterlife focus over time. You can see this generally, with Greek mystery cults such as the Eleusinian mysteries, cult of Orpheus and Dionysius, the great gods at Samothrace, and the Korybantes cult down in Crete, as well as the cult of Isis and Serapis coming out of Egypt, the cult of Mithras from Persia, and various levantine revivals around the time of Jesus. No big cults came from further north in Europe, due to the fact that those places were full of simple farmers for the most part until Roman conquest. Worship of animals tends to die out really fast, it's very easily made to look silly, it can only stay sustained in hunter gatherer groups, sometimes nomads. Solar worship is also more open to fluctuation than you might think, the Greek sun god was mostly worshiped for prophecy, poetry, medicine, laws, and poems, and the Romans didn't have a major cult for the sun until they imported it from Greece(potentially a minor one but it's obscure), and the other Italic people's didn't have one(the Etruscans do, but he's connected with the whole of the sky). The sun does it's job day in day out a lot better than other parts of the world, so why bother propitiating it? Several solar cults kind of catch on in the late empire, but more among the wealthy than the common people. Wind gods get very rarely worshiped, there job is usually subsumed into a weather god's work, potentially sea god or others. Water gods tend to be a bit of a hold out, as are gods directly tied to land and farming, but push comes to shove they eventually get folded as eschatological concerns overwhelm them. As for why Christianity, unlike the others somehow throws all prior religions out even for those who still work the soil, that's because Christ is King. But in a more objective tack, it's the only one of this cults that wasn't henotheistic, allowing for other gods but centered on one, but strictly monotheistic. And if the old gods get thrown out but the functions they governed keep moving, then either Jesus is the true god or it doesn't really matter.
'Reap the whirlwind'
charges Hitachi