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Many Lives in a Single Life
Shall I discuss the many lives in a single life? I do understand that people experience what seems like different selves. From both my experience and my research, I have both learned and witnessed this shift in others, often radical actually, and just as often unnoticed by them. They never lose their core context, but…
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Mayan Spiritual Order
Mayan astrology is really an extension of Mesoamerican efforts in general. The Aztec people were working on the same general sort of thing as well, so the distinction is perhaps overly fine a point to make. Mayan astrology doesn’t focus primarily on planetary observation. It does involve things like that, especially tracking the star Venus,…
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Mayan World View
Were Mayans organized in city-states? They were organized into city states. Their city structures being temples. I kind of see the Aztecs like the Romans – war like conquering empire – and the Mayans like the Greeks – focused on learning. This is another way they were like the Greeks. In a sense yes, though…
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Cycles of Creation
The cycles of creation were mostly elemental in nature, corresponding roughly to the Mayan agricultural cycle, but they did also include things like a season of war as well. In a way, perhaps like our football seasons, both American and European, and periodically the world “ended” in a storm season. Would the calendar tell them…
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Gods in Everything
I did some research on how the Mayan books were constructed. The codexes or more generally? The codexes. They were accordion books, and they seem to have thought that the gods lived in the words and when you opened the books, the gods would come out. Ah, indeed they did. Gods were in everything. In…
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A Day of Remembering
What do you know about witches? Pointy hats and brooms. There was a period where everyone wore the pointy hats, and broom was originally a term used to describe any of a variety of herbs. Puritans with the belt buckle on the hat? Yes. The buckle was also common. An inquisitor likely wore that sort…
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Guide for the Dead
The veil between the worlds was viewed more or less as being open Halloween night, and human beings were not the only beings in the underworld which was not a deep, dark, dank cavernous region. It was viewed as being much like our world, but better kept, blessed as it was the abode of the…
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Fate of the Damned
As for who decided the fate of the evil dead, it was not decided by any of the gods. They had a concept of spiritual purity or wyrd. This is maybe why we call people weird these days, to imply there is something wrong with them, but everyone had wyrd. The triple goddesses of the…
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Halloween Night
There were other issues afoot with oncoming winter. One of those relates both to nobles and commoners. The onset of madness was seen as more likely to occur Halloween night, and nights after these people were considered to be away with the fairies as they do still sometimes say in places in Ireland. In their…
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Carolling and Processions
Today we are talking about carols. In today’s world we tend to underestimate the significance of music to society. The original meaning of the word carol was circle dance and they were not confined to any specific event though they have always had a festive spirit to them. Carols were later adapted to depict points…
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Carols, Hymns and Chants
Are there any links between carols, hymns and chants? Ah yes, carols, hymns and chants… Everyone familiar with things like Gregorian chant? Chants were taken up by monks and pilgrims as they were engaged in either ritual processions like funerals or on pilgrimage. Gregorian chant is just a more contemporary version of an ancient practice.…
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Communal Glue
Today, how many people have a grasp on music? Or art in general? Not many unfortunately. It is definitely uncommon, but originally it was the glue of the community. What is the communal glue now? Iphone? And the advertisements they plug us into. Even television serves to celebrate something we no longer have public sanction…
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Forms of Relationship
I read that the viral commercials don’t even result in as many sales. It’s true, they don’t. When they hit on the principle that makes things go viral it weakens interest in the physical product. People are instead fascinated with the spirit expressed by the commercial. There is a spirit world. If not a literal…
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Syncretic Thought
Shall we discuss syncretism? Syncretism is an ancient term. It originally referred to a political organization around the kingdom of Crete which gives an early clue as to it’s meaning. If you take an inclusive view of diverse schools of thought, if you entertain the notion that otherwise discrete belief systems can be held together…
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Contemporary Syncretism
The history of syncretism is really vast planet wide. Shall we look at contemporary syncretism? With the brain initiative, as well as previous shifts in thinking in both spiritual groups as well as nominally secular schools of thought, we are beginning to test and examine traditional beliefs as they manifest in day to day down…
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The Force
I don’t intend to discuss Star Wars as allegory or anything. Like many great works of fiction, or those that had the potential to be great, there are solid ideas behind the Star Wars concepts that either closely parallel real world principles or even draw directly from them. The core concept necessary for understanding Jedi…
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Jedi Code: First and Second Precepts
The first principle being… There is no emotion, there is peace. Emotion confines us to our restricted personal sensitivities, our compulsive habits. If we embrace the notion of the Force, and what it might have to offer us in understanding the world, we would come to see that at any given time everything and everyone…
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Jedi Code: Third and Fourth Precepts
There is no passion, there is serenity. As we go through our lives we tend to become heavily invested in the various things we do, and because of that, we often are blinded to what our efforts, and what achieving our goals, would really mean, what it would all actually accomplish. Having feelings about what…
Category: World Belief
On my spiritual path I have studied many world beliefs. While I don’t claim to be an authority on them, I will share some of what I’ve learned in the ‘World Beliefs’ category. Perhaps they will inspire you to seek further.
Those who abandon their faith are not faithless. Perhaps quite to the contrary, their faith has given them the strength to abandon trappings. Religion from the Latin religio meaning practice. We will all have practices. I was very devout myself, and in my devotion I found I could no longer devote myself to that creed. My faith isn’t weak. It motivates my seeking. I don’t subscribe to any specific faith. I find truth in my personal experience which does loosely label me a Gnostic. Many Gnostic schools say the logos indwells our sun itself.
The Buddhas wisdom was put into the context of the greater way as was the only way it could be, but in fact the symbolism is at best intuitively true. The spheres exist within us. Wisdom is simple. It is the sign of true knowing. Not if they can spout arcane jargon, but can they take an arcane topic and make it abundantly clear to the uninitiated.
I will state that these beliefs discussed are not necessarily my beliefs.
“There is not enough religion in the world to destroy the world’s religious.” Friedrich Nietzsche