Perhaps we should discuss syncretism as a religious/ philosophical/ metaphysical trend?
Syncretism has a long history and transcends cultural boundaries. Monotheism tends to rule it out, but the majority of the world’s religions weren’t originally monotheistic. Like the Egyptian tradition I’ve spoken of before, and like the basis of renaissance occultism in more modern times, deities and religions were more akin to science than to political or social institutions in most of these cultures. Native Americans freely accepted stories of Jesus at first, as for them Jesus was just another being much like the beings they already understood. The same happened in Africa and China as well.
From what I’ve heard the Jesus story parallels a lot of other gods. Yes, even Horus of Egyptian origin.
A book came out a few years ago that said Egyptian handwriting was similar to Hebrew and their theory was that Moses was a monotheist who fled Egypt after Akhenaten died. (Secrets of the Exodus: The Egyptian Origins of the Hebrew People.) Ah, that would make sense.
King Tut’s father and a monotheist. Reverence for Ra only and by extension his son Horus.
Who turned into Jesus and the rest is history.
There’s a movie in which a Chinese girl imagines Jesus interacting with the family’s household gods and things are great until Jesus wants to be the only god.
The reason occultism was so strong during the renaissance is twofold. The church lost much of its temporal power, but at the time there wasn’t much evidence to substantiate the belief that the observations of “natural philosophy” a.k.a. science was any more accurate than any other branch of philosophy.
You often see Theban script in arcane diagrams. It looks quite familiar. Indeed, it’s a popular character set, and many students of the occult find it especially evocative emotionally as well as allowing them to record their rituals in a way that avoids unwanted scrutiny.
It seems quite complicated next to our modern alphabet. I can see that. Structurally it’s actually simpler than English which is why science used Latin as its naming convention. It’s clearer and lends itself to categorization much more easily. In the original texts in which this was used, the words would have read like a “pig” Latin, and I don’t mean the modern gimmick.
I get a tingle when I read it. Maybe I was a witch in a former life. Possibly, and the characters are not without any correspondence to other actual language based characters. They do draw elements of their structure from Arabic numerals, and in fact they closely parallel the style of Hebrew letters.
They remind me of leaves and vines. Ah, in that they would share a symbolic link with Ogham then.
Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.
Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~