Spirituality for Living

Death rites are perhaps the most universal in there nature and there significance. The lore behind death rites is as big as religion, science and magic itself, and the rites of death are really rites of life. They differ as much as the cultures views on life, from the Haitian “birthday” like celebration to an [...]

In Norse belief most people go to hell. This is the literal source of the word and it was governed by the Vnir goddess Hela. To the Norse, hell was just a place of dreary boredom. Hell wasn’t for the evil. It was just the underworld instead of the sky.
Helios is Greek for sun, which [...]

Bushido is a diverse body of philosophy, and it is strongly linked to the Japanese religion of Shintoism. Shintoism and Ma’at, the native religion of Egypt, are very similar. They are tied to the forces of nature and the land.  Holding them sacred, but also having a sense of divine order and humans connection to [...]

Sun worship is much more broad than people tend to be aware of. With the rise of the Holy Roman Empire they didn’t concede to allow all their traditions to be set aside in favour of purist views, and thus why they have the word Catholic to describe their faith, “universal”. But despite being linked [...]

Evidence for early Jewish sun worship was the practice of burnt offerings. People across the world had observed that fires would “miraculously” arise. They were considered signs of God. Even in the story of leading Israel out of Egypt, and in Moses encounter with a burning bush, they observed that fire consumed things and shined [...]

Can anyone name the worlds oldest religious texts?
Bahagavida? Good guess, but in written form it isn’t as old as another. The Egyptian tomb texts predate any religious cannon. They even predate the Book of the Dead which was later published. For the Egyptians, life and death weren’t separate things. They were seen as parts of [...]

There was a goddess named Hathor, the hippo who governed the Nile.  You were considered to need to cross the Nile so they invoked the aid of the Bison Goddess by imitating her act of creation. The shaping of human bodies from clay. Except in this case the clay was linked to the spirits of the [...]

The Egyptian Pharaoh was both King and High Priest. At first, the ascension (not unlike the Buddha’s ascension) was considered possible only to the Pharaoh. It was only later that they came to believe that all souls could ascend, and when they transformed into the Akh they were able to wander the whole world though [...]

What amounts to a necromantic practice is that of the Sin Eater. The Sin Eater was a person who performed a rite that is based on a Christian concept. Every sin must be atoned for, yes? If one could not receive final absolution, then one of the village, a Sin Eater, would perform a rite over [...]

You can internally think about ‘doing the right thing’ with every little thing that you do, or that happens. It’s exhausting. Exhausting and crippling. Who has succeeded by conscience alone? Anyone? And those who complain of never succeeding, are they people of weak conscience?
What is conscience but learned values/ideals? Exactly, and is that judgment such [...]

The different schools of Gnosis have differing attitudes about reality and the creator. From Jehovah being genuinely evil to just being fallible, and from any partaking of reality as being damning of yourself to the problem being misperception of reality.
Asceticism? Yes. To a most meditative attitude, mostly. Some say you can’t achieve gnosis without abstinence. [...]

Does anyone find that the world seems to care for their opinion? These emotions and sensations you have judged bad, they just keep happening don’t they?
The world wants to influence your opinion with another? Hmm, only opinions want to influence your opinion. These opinions are called ego. The world itself cares only for your essence. It [...]

Are dragons an entity akin to angels in the metaphysical world or a species of angel? They are not angels, but not beneath angels. In the beliefs that deal with dragons, there was always a path to meeting with dragons, and it was always seen as intense, challenging, dangerous, because it always involved confronting the [...]

In one of the earliest stories of a “robot”, a mystic with his insights creates a “golem” to serve his community. But his insights are shallow and the golem, an animated statue of clay, after a while stops taking orders and instead starts destroying people and things.
So far this imbalance still exists in the modern [...]