Cyprus-Forum.com

[wyoming cowboy]

(That Mouflon has a soul. Man - always back to food and ritual slaughter )

Back to topic - I'm not into point-scoring over religions.

I agree there are many similarities among religions - probably independently arrived at or through greater communication in our history than we have recorded evidence for.

These similarities only go to prove what Carl Jung described as the 'collective unconscious'; which for me is one of the greatest explanations, attempting to unify genetics and culture.

....."unify genetics and culture"

i understand what you are saying, i think, this concept answers many questions, but the questions it creates seem limitless

[wyoming cowboy]

(That Mouflon has a soul. Man - always back to food and ritual slaughter )

Back to topic - I'm not into point-scoring over religions.

I agree there are many similarities among religions - probably independently arrived at or through greater communication in our history than we have recorded evidence for.

These similarities only go to prove what Carl Jung described as the 'collective unconscious'; which for me is one of the greatest explanations, attempting to unify genetics and culture.

Pondering these two words(genetics culture),in the context of this thread, while driving through the state of New Mexico,ironically nicknamed "The Land of Enchantment, it felt as if my conscious mind was being impregnated with a new idea of seeing the world around me. Amazing concepts ran through my mind. How do cultures develop? (reproduction) what influences have they had? (mutations) wow..i thought...this could be applied to individuals, families, relationships, economics, diplomacy ...etc etc.....why didnt i see this before?

Greek Island Girl, you also stated that my quotes of Edith Hamilton on myths were too simplified.. lol,,,lol.now I understand...

Every spark in the universe aspires to become a raging inferno, what influenced the spark that ignited Greece(us)?

[GreekIslandGirl]

- Twelve Olympian Gods and Twelve Disciples of Jesus.

- The Christian tradition of creating Saints is akin to the honouring of half-mortals favoured by the Olympian Gods.

BTW The Orthodox Church still presides over the opening ceremonies for the Olympics, honouring Hera and Apollo etc.

Nope - the Olympian Gods are not dead - they are transfigured into Greek Orthodoxy.

[GreekIslandGirl]

Why we still burn Olive leaves in the Orthodox church ... The lighting of the flame at Olympia; olive branches ignited by Helios, the "All-seeing", later described by Plato as the idealization of Goodness. All adopted in Christianity.

[yialousa1971]

The true Gods of all Greeks, Hellenes sit on Mt. Olympus not in Mt Sinai or Jerusalem or wherever the christian catholic/orthodox priests tell us he lives.

"The Greeks made their gods in their own image. That had not entered the mind of man before. Until then, gods had no semblance of reality. They were unlike all living things. In Egypt, a towering colossus, immobile beyond the power of the imagination to endow with movement, as fixed in the stone as the tremendous temple columns, a representation of the human shape deliberately made unhuman. Or a rigid figure, a woman with a cat's head suggesting inflexible, in human cruelty. Or a monstrous mysterious sphinx, aloof from all that lives. In Mesopotamia, bas-reliefs of bestial shapes unlike any beast ever known, men with birds' heads and lions with bulls' heads and both with eagles' wings, creations of artists who were intent upon producing something never seen except in their own minds, the very consummation of unreality. These and their like were what the pre-Greek world worshipped. One need only place beside them in imagination any Greek statue of a god, so normal and natural with all its beauty, to perceive what a new idea had come into the world. With its coming the universe became rational. Saint Paul said the invisible must be understood by the visible. That was not a Hebrew idea, it was Greek."

Christianity took upon itself to take Greek ideas add oppression and fear and impose them back on the Greeks, in order to subdue them, much like the Spaniards imposed christianity on the Incas of Peru and the Americans imposed christianity on the native Americans. In my opinion Greeks need to revert back to their roots and worship the Gods of Olympus.