7 'Ancient' Forms of Mysticism That Are Recent Inventions (from Cracked)

7 Ancient Forms of Mysticism That Are Recent Inventions

I got this article off cracked, and I know, yeah, many people here read it anyway, but the topic seemed interesting, so I thought I'd post it here to discuss, along with other forms of "recent inventions" in what we think is ancient mythology and theology. A summary for those of you who don't want to check out the original article (which you should, it's really good!):

7. Yoga (as a set of postures combined with breathing techniques)-> From 1960.
Derived off a combination of what was from a 19th century manual listing 122 poses (most of which taken from Indian Gymnastics, a craze introduced by the British), and some hindu teachings from their texts.

6.Tarot Cards for your fortune-> From the 18th century
Originally just used for another sort of card game, although the card set we are more familiar with has an older history! They were "paganed up" to lend them an air of mystery in the late 19th century (where for example, the Pope was removed and replaced with a hierophant.

5. Satanism (or at least the basis of Satanism as it exists today) -> Founded 1966
LaVey built it off such varied sources as Crowley, Nietzsche and Ayn Rand. Earlier Satanism is a little harder to show, because it was usually just used as a way of putting people to death that the people of the time didn't understand (hence the Salem witch trials), and anyone would admit to anything under torture. Lots of the surrounding trappings of the Satanism we know is absolutely imagined:
Baphomet (the imagined horned goat thing) was actually originally a Latin corruption of the word "Mohammed". Even the pentagram (up until LaVey) was originally used by Christian as a charm AGAINST demons and witchcraft.

(I'll skip some that aren't REALLY relevant, to...)
1. THE VIKING RELIGION
All that stuff, Odin, Thor, hammers, Ragnarok, and so on, if not absolutely made up, was very likely completely distorted and inaccurate. ALL that we know about the Viking religion was from books by one Snorri Sturluson, a non-believer of the Viking Religion, who lived in the 13th century, several hundreds if years AFTER Scandinavia had been Christianised. In fact, many parts of what he wrote (like Odin being hung from a tree and being pierced by a spear) are thought to have been RIPPED FROM CHRISTIANITY!


It is definitely an interesting read, and brings to mind some other stuff that I thought of as well...

Like how current Wiccanism has almost no relation to the original Wicca and Druidism that was practiced by the native europeans before the advent of Christianity, because none of the books or teachings or practises really survive (except in the accounts of invading romans or christians who were not exactly unbiased).

Or how the idea of the "Rapture" as it is thought of today is also a very recent invention.

reply to post by babloyi


Thanks for posting that. Kind of depressing about the Norse myths, I always liked those.

In some parts the article is a little disingenius. Yoga, for example, has deeper roots than they intimate. But the deal with the Satanists is very true. LeVey and Co. are cheap carnival barkers -- I point I take great relish in pounding home to various internet McSatanists.

Thanks for sharing this. I'm usually on Cracked but I haven't stumbled upon this article.

This is a load of rubbish, the author of that article on cracked didn't research Asatru/Odinism at all. For a start the Edda's was just one type. Adding to that there are no mention of the sagas and if it did turn out to be a load of codswallop then does archaeology continually disprove the article? I'm sorry but this is one cracked article which has no basis, I could go on forever.

It was the Christians who stole the idea of Odin being hung from the tree and being pierced by his spear and twisted it into their own form, and not the other way round as has been shown throughout time as to how Christianity has adapted to whichever culture it has been submerged into.

Praise be to Odin! ;D

reply to post by Wulfric


Praise Thor*, you infidel of the one true!

OP; what about astrology?

There are three main branches of astrology, namely Western astrology, Indian astrology, and Chinese or East Asian astrology. The study of Western astrology and the belief in it, as part of astronomy, is first found in a developed form among the ancient Babylonians; and directly or indirectly through the Babylonians, it spread to other nations. It came to Greece about the middle of the 4th century BC, reaching Rome before the advent of the Christian era.

That's as mystic as you can get. The stars are certainly more interesting than dogma and descriptive deities.

reply to post by ExistentialNightmare

Isn't the issue with astrology somewhat the opposite?
I mean, recent advances in astronomy have required astrologers to modify their methods to have them still "make sense".

So does this mean that the dudes before that had been doing it wrong all those thousands of years?

reply to post by babloyi


I always thought yoga was this

Yoga
en.wikipedia.org...

Yoga (Sanskrit, Pāli: योग yóga) is a physical, mental, and spiritual discipline, originating in ancient India,[1][2] whose goal is the attainment of a state of perfect spiritual insight and tranquility.[3] The word is associated with meditative practices in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.[4][5][6]

And I thought Thor ect came from Germanic mythology
Such as:
en.wikipedia.org...

and Germanic mythology has its roots in Proto-Indo-European religion

en.wikipedia.org...



but if some dude on the internet says its not well that’s good enough for me

i'm trying to find out when
Wednesday -- Woden's day
Thursday -- Thor's day
Friday -- Freya's day

started been used as the names for days

www.crowl.org...

reply to post by babloyi


The article you refer to appears to be rather badly researched, and from your description is seems to be more a prapaganda-manifest than a serious analysis.

There's no question about 'hybrid' systems (religious/semi-religious) spouting like mushrooms, and based on sources of an incredible uncertain quality. Good old academic source-reseaching as a I learned in my youth, has been replaced with 'direct-experience-gurus', whose words are taken for self-evident truth as a result of a social pendul-movement away from doctrinalism.

Being a great critic of doctrinalism myself, I ofcourse don't advice blind acceptance of doctrines (rather the opposite...I propose a very critical approach), but intellectual honesty requires at least, that WHEN doctrines are brought up, they must be taken on their self-definitions and manifestations, not as adapted or hijacked for other purposes.

Rather familiar with germanic mythology as I am, I will take that up as an example. The Woden (Odin, Oden) scenario described has a COMPLETELY different context than the christian similarity, as has germanic creation-myths also (rather resembling a kind of washed-out tao'ism than the abrahamic model(s) ).

Especially christianity has had (and have) an unpleasant habit of annexing the ideologies of competitors, and in the above mentioned new-age marketplace of syncretistic 'one-size-fits-all' -'god', christian missionaries have not been late in moving in creating a multi-faceted-but-mainly-christian 'god' concept, suitable for the new-age believer, who from social fad-movements passively has acquired an anti-doctrinal attitude (as worthless as a passive pro-doctrinal attitude).

But 'easy comes, easy goes'. In a generation new popular fads will be invented and promoted.

Originally posted by racasan


i'm trying to find out when
Wednesday -- Woden's day
Thursday -- Thor's day
Friday -- Freya's day

started been used as the names for days

www.crowl.org...

A short, and possible digressing addition.

Monday = moon-day.

Tuesday = Tir's (or Tyr's) day (another germanic 'god')

Saturday = surprisingly breaking the pattern as being 'loeverday' (washing-day)

and sunday naturally being the sun's day.

Originally posted by bogomil

Originally posted by racasan


i'm trying to find out when
Wednesday -- Woden's day
Thursday -- Thor's day
Friday -- Freya's day

started been used as the names for days

www.crowl.org...

A short, and possible digressing addition.

Monday = moon-day.

Tuesday = Tir's (or Tyr's) day (another germanic 'god')

Saturday = surprisingly breaking the pattern as being 'loeverday' (washing-day)

and sunday naturally being the sun's day.

ah yes
Tiu (Twia) is the English/Germanic god of war and the sky. He is identified with the Norse god Tyr.

I think Saturday was Saturn's day (Cronus/Kronos)

what I'm looking for now is about this

The Seven-Day Week The Babylonians marked time with lunar months. They proscribed some activities during The major periods are seven days, 1/4 month, long. This seven-day period was later regularized and disassociated from the lunar month to become our seven-day week.

so why a 7 day week
i don't think the moon thing works - it seems a very bad fit

reply to post by babloyi

Isn't the issue with astrology somewhat the opposite?
I mean, recent advances in astronomy have required astrologers to modify their methods to have them still "make sense".

So does this mean that the dudes before that had been doing it wrong all those thousands of years?

There's no "right" or "wrong" way to do astrology; it's cold reading anyway; they truly believed their convictions for years; believed that celestial bodies can be analysed to predict human affairs.

It really doesn't matter if new data proves it wrong; or whether you give people with different star signs the same horoscope reading; it means something to them.

.....this is called the forer effect
penn and teller, derren brown, james randi and richard dawkins have recreated the same test on different
tv shows.

The Forer effect (also called the Barnum Effect after P.T. Barnum's observation that "we've got something for everyone") is the observation that individuals will give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people. This effect can provide a partial explanation for the widespread acceptance of some beliefs and practices, such as astrology, fortune telling, and some types of personality tests.

en.wikipedia.org...

I just thought that mystics might enjoy discussing the origins of Astrology; i know many people are interested in ancient astronaut theories and such like.

reply to post by ExistentialNightmare


You wrote:

["I just thought that mystics might enjoy discussing the origins of Astrology; i know many people are interested in ancient astronaut theories and such like."]

Just for the record: Mysticism isn't the same as occultism, though recent inflation of new-age language has eradicated the border. It's more 'promotional' (and thus more lucrative) these days to be 'esoteric' than to be a dabbler in the plain unknown area of the just para-natural (as opposed to the super-natural).

reply to post by bogomil

Just for the record: Mysticism isn't the same as occultism, though recent inflation of new-age language has eradicated the border. It's more 'promotional' (and thus more lucrative) these days to be 'esoteric' than to be a dabbler in the plain unknown area of the just para-natural (as opposed to the super-natural).

I find mysticism very interesting indeed, and regardless of belief or faith; i fully support the investigation into the unknown, the transcendent and the numinous (even the "supernatural") But even with the conviction of a coherent hypothesis; i feel it is wise to maintain one's critical faculties, and to not fall victim to confirmation bias (or even the threats and promises of religious dogma); whatever the ultimate truth.

reply to post by ExistentialNightmare


One idea I get a lot of use out of is called reality tunnels
en.wikipedia.org...

The theory states that, with a subconscious set of mental "filters" formed from their beliefs and experiences, every individual interprets the same world differently; hence "Truth is in the eye of the beholder".

Every kind of ignorance in the world all results from not realizing that our perceptions are gambles. We believe what we see and then we believe our interpretation of it, we don't even know we are making an interpretation most of the time. We think this is reality. – Robert Anton Wilson

The idea does not necessarily imply that there is no objective truth; rather that our access to it is mediated through our senses, experience, conditioning, prior beliefs, and other non-objective factors. The implied individual world each person occupies is said to be their reality tunnel. The term can also apply to groups of people united by beliefs: we can speak of the fundamentalist Christian reality tunnel or the ontological naturalism reality tunnel.

If I want to explore transcendent or even supernatural hypothesis I simply cut in the appropriate mental filters and away I go

I use a brake state (what wiccans call a banishing ritual) for me that’s playing ping pong on my xbox kinnect and then I go and try stuff like Taoist alchemy (which I found fascinating) or astral projection (which I enjoy when I can find the time to do it) and the best part is I don’t have to drag around all the fear and other baggage that goes with such things (paths maybe?)

Originally posted by ExistentialNightmare
reply to post by bogomil

 

Just for the record: Mysticism isn't the same as occultism, though recent inflation of new-age language has eradicated the border. It's more 'promotional' (and thus more lucrative) these days to be 'esoteric' than to be a dabbler in the plain unknown area of the just para-natural (as opposed to the super-natural).

I find mysticism very interesting indeed, and regardless of belief or faith; i fully support the investigation into the unknown, the transcendent and the numinous (even the "supernatural") But even with the conviction of a coherent hypothesis; i feel it is wise to maintain one's critical faculties, and to not fall victim to confirmation bias (or even the threats and promises of religious dogma); whatever the ultimate truth.

edit on 11-7-2011 by ExistentialNightmare because: (no reason given)

I can only agree with your reservations. There's no need to throw the advantages of rational reasoning out 'together with the bathing-water'. If there are problems with making a functional compromise, I would rather wait with an 'official' approach to mysticism, than sacrifice rationalism.

Being so lucky to live in a liberal society, I can always pursue such an interest privately.

reply to post by racasan

The theory states that, with a subconscious set of mental "filters" formed from their beliefs and experiences, every individual interprets the same world differently; hence "Truth is in the eye of the beholder".

The idea does not necessarily imply that there is no objective truth

Nicely put, tbh.

If I want to explore transcendent or even supernatural hypothesis I simply cut in the appropriate mental filters and away I go

I believe many call that "thinking outside the box" - To not be confined by prejudice or convential understanding.

I use a brake state (what wiccans call a banishing ritual) for me that’s playing ping pong on my xbox kinnect and then I go and try stuff like Taoist alchemy (which I found fascinating) or astral projection (which I enjoy when I can find the time to do it) and the best part is I don’t have to drag around all the fear and other baggage that goes with such things (paths maybe?)

Interesting; I find Taoism very interesting; i had a discussion whereby Taoism as a "religion" was under fire; I'd perhaps define it more of a "way of life" - It doesn't insist upon itself; it doesnt come with supernatural baggage; or very specific commandments like Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Juduism or Islam) or even Bhuddism.