SRS 1110 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Holy Guardian Angel, Greco-Roman Mysteries, Natural Disaster
22 Jun 2018
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SRS 1110
PART 1 : TERMINOLOGY
Abrahamic Faiths / Peoples of the Book : practices common to three faiths =
Judaism, Christianity and Islamic
Agrarian / Agricultural : They are all related and family is the structure. They are all
about growing things, therefore you cannot move from place to place. Only a natural
disaster would cause them to move. Their philosophy is take care of your food and you
will have surplus and all you need. You must tend to your crops, therefore you cannot
leave. They are a larger community, religious in nature, you pray to the gods and
goddesses for good weather to maintain your crops. This begins a hierarchy between
people and gods. There is no control over weather, therefore we pray to the divine. Pray
for female rain that nurtures the crops. A large emphasis is placed on the weather
because it is not influenced by humans therefore it must be influenced by the divine.
Specialization occurs (EX. expert squash grower). The first domestication of animals
happens (EX. dogs, goats etc) as well as specialized divine figures. There is more of a
hierarchy here. Supplication is when they ask or pray to the divine entity to do
something for you (EX. save my cousin from illness). Magic is when one performs x
ritual and y occurs as a result.
Aleister Crowley : Crowley was a powerful magician, poet, prophet and occultist but he
was not a neo-Pagan. He was brought up in an atmosphere of pious religious narrow-
mindedness against which he rebelled his whole life. In 1898, he joined the Hermetic
Order of the Golden Dawn. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the
Law, Love under Will. Crowley talked to Sybil Leek about witchcraft and taught her the
words of power. He was introduced to Gerald B. Gardner who is considered the founder
of modern Wicca.
animist : shamanic belief that everything is animated and everything has spirit.
axiology : axis, the study of the center of your beliefs, it is your cosmology in practice,
your belief system and how you live your life.
Burning Times : This did NOT occur during the Middle Ages. It begins after that period
during the Reformation and Renaissance. This was a time where the local priest was
the primary source of information. Religion controlled everything. During the
Renaissance, Gutenberg invented the printing press. Before this, everything was
handwritten. First thing that was printed was the Bible. Second or third book was the
Malleus Maleficarium. The Inquisition was part of hunting witches as well as stamping
out heresy...basically everything that disagreed with Roman Catholic Faith. 200-250
years of Burning Times happened, especially around the Protestant Reformation. The
Burning Times ended with the Scientific Revolution. ... Occurred between the twelfth
and eighteenth centuries. In the largest trial 400 women were supposed to have died in
a single day. According to the latest research, fifteen thousand executions were actually
recorded in the fifty years between the 1580s and the 1630s (Great European Witch
Hunt). There were actually more deaths by the state than the church. The death toll
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among women was greatest where the popular image of a practitioner of malefic magic
was female. The greatest number of convictions and executions took place near
disputed borders or in other locations where central authority had broken down.
cosmology : cosmos = the universe or someones world view ... the narrative is
mythology which is used to frame our world view, cosmology is the interpretation of
ones mythology, this can differ from person to person which results in the many sects
of religion.
culture : certain set beliefs shared amongst a large group of people, includes a variety
of social constructions, all learned behaviour which in not biological nor explicit ... EX.
a learned behaviour was a person of colour, apartheid starts in Africa, used this as
their distinction of race, three levels = white, coloured, black
folktale : can teach us what to do and what is safe to do. They teach, are understood to
be untrue and allegorical. EX. Once upon a time...
goddess : the main focus of ritual for most neo-Pagans, she is the deity of feminist
Goddess worship - otherwise called the womens spirituality movement or Goddess
spirituality. She is the Earth Mother (she is the earth we live on and the nature in which
we are her creatures are deeply embedded). Feminist Witch Starhawk says The
Goddess does not rule the world, she IS the world.. She is immanent because she is in
the world and in the creatures etc. She is the oldest and (at one time) the most widely
worshiped of gods. Rise of the Goddess occurred from 35,000 B.C.E to about 4000
B.C.E. The decline occurred around 4000 B.C.E when warrior-nomads began invading
from the north. They completely destroyed the Goddess by violently attacking and
wiping out her shrines, her priestesses and her adherents. Remnants can be found in
cultures. Today the Goddess is both womb and tomb, that is, the overwhelming cycle of
birth, death and regeneration. The earth is the Goddess body. Worship of the Goddess
also manifests in the heavens including the planets, sun and moon. Luna the moon is a
manifestation of the Goddess. She symbolizes female power and female strength.
heresy : actions and beliefs that oppose and go against a religious institution EX. the
gnostics who said God is too big to care and it is really the work of Satan.
Hunter-Gatherers : pastoral nomads or Agrarian, also small scale societies, they hunt
and gather, shift in view as the relationship between land and people changed, smallest
unit is an extended family ... all blood relation OR married in, they migrate and follow the
growth of what they live on (EX. fruit, elk) and they do not plant - only pick and gather
because they can move around easily this way (do not have to stay and tend to crops).
They use festivals to socialize, commerce can happen, gossip, courtship, trading etc.
There was no monotheistic god in small scale societies. They have spiritual places
where you may place offerings because all things are equal and have a right to exist. It
is a one-to-one direct relationship. When you kill as a hunter, you give up its life for you
to eat.
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Modalities of the Hunter-Gatherer religion was Shamanic = a type of worship. During a
shamanic ritual, they call out to a group of animals and ask for one to come forward and
offer itself to be killed for them. Some kinds of plants are alive and shamanic people
often interact with them. The Shamanic modality sees everything as equal, relationship
with the spiritual world is that of equals.
holiday : holy days, serious and usually address a loss or something grave. Festivals,
on the other hand, are a celebration.
left-hand paths AND right-hand paths : LEFT-HAND = popularly associated with
selfishness, cursing, hedonism and evil. A left-hand tantric ritual involved many
practices that violated Indian social norms, including non-marital sex and the
consumption of beef. Left-hand paths emphasize the deliberate and conscious violation
of social norms. They dont advocate going out and actually committing crimes. Any
path that emphasizes honoring the divinity within rather than serving the divinity without,
has been influenced by left-hand teaching. Left-hand practitioners become the divine or
find the divine within themselves. EX. Satanism
RIGHT-HAND = is popularly associated with altruism. Right-hand paths often stress
moderation rather than asceticism. Right-hand paths tend to emphasize following or
changing norms. Right-hand paths tend to place divinity outside the self, and left-hand
paths within it. Right-hand practitioners usually seek to serve the divine.
The distinction between this and right-hand paths has come down to the modern era
through Theosophy from the Hindu and Buddhist tantric traditions. The main distinctions
between the right and left-hand paths are actually the attitude toward social norms and
the locus of the divine.
legend : can teach us what to do and what is safe to do. Stories about small, localized
things that MAY have happened.
liminal (ity) : to be in between states of being, locations, categories. EX. December
31st, you may celebrate or stay home to mark the end of the year. In the Western world
there are two calendars : B.C and A.D. New Years is so important because it is the end
of one year and the unknown and promise of the year to come. Therefore this is a
liminal time in our calendar. EX. being engaged is a liminal time and liminal state of
being. You arent single nor committed.
magic (k) : MAGIC = stage entertainment using sleight of hand or supernatural tricks
MAGICK: the power of the universes energy, similar to electricity, we can see its
results. It is a force that we cannot physically see but we can see its impact.
magician / wizard : PROFILE = male, old, unmarried, considered good, it was learnt
or studied, takes a lifetime of studying to achieve title, self-applied title, practice in a
godly way, were not persecuted or viewed unfavorably.
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Document Summary
Abrahamic faiths / peoples of the book : practices common to three faiths = Agrarian / agricultural : they are all related and family is the structure. They are all about growing things, therefore you cannot move from place to place. Only a natural disaster would cause them to move. Their philosophy is take care of your food and you will have surplus and all you need. You must tend to your crops, therefore you cannot leave. They are a larger community, religious in nature, you pray to the gods and goddesses for good weather to maintain your crops. This begins a hierarchy between people and gods. There is no control over weather, therefore we pray to the divine. Pray for (cid:1688)female(cid:1689) rain that nurtures the crops. A large emphasis is placed on the weather because it is not influenced by humans therefore it must be influenced by the divine.
