#Canaanite Polytheism

[alephskoteinos]

I'm here for goth girl Anat

Are you?

[tsalmu]

Yarhibol, the Sun-God Dura-Europos, Syria c. 50 CE Source: The Pantheon of Palmyra by Javier Teixidor, 1979

[alephskoteinos]

Huh, I remember reading about this being a statue of Astarte.

Babylonian Alabaster Statue of the goddess Ishtar, 350 B.C.

[ofroadsentwinned]

Ok so back a few years ago, maybe more like 5?

There was a levpag content creator who made collaged images of the gods and now I can’t find their work.  I was trying to specifically find the images for Ashera/Athirat and El/Ilu.

Are you still out there?  Do you still publish these images for community use?

[elegantshapeshifter]

Steven Dillon's conversion to Christianity: what does it mean to Hellenism and Pagan Community?

Steven Dillon, the author of "The Case for Polytheism" and "Pagan Portals - Polytheism: A Platonic Approach", recently returned to Christianity.

This event made me think a lot. I think this event can teach us that the more you are concerned with "the One" and you think it can respond, the more likely you will go towards monotheism.

The point is that "the One" is us, and is "a thing", not "somebody".

The One is not a person. This is the reason why we worship the Gods, they are persons.

The One, the All, is so big that the idea that it can listen is nonsense.

Monotheism emerges when you think the entire universe can listen to you. Polytheism is the humbleness to understand that only certain parts of the Universe can listen to you.

And when you think you are talking to the One you are always actually talking to a part of it.

This is the reason why Christ, Yahweh, Allah, etc. are parts of the One and not the One.

Even attempts to interact with the entirety of the One are just interactions with parts of the One, ie one of the many Gods.

This is confirmed by Aleister Crowley's experience, we can read from the Liber Astarte Vel Berylli that he considered Allah, Christ and Yahweh as Parts or Aspects of the One, exactly as other Polytheistic Deities, and not as the All/the One in its entirety:

"Let the devotee consider well that […] Christ and Osiris be one […]".

"As for Deities with whose nature no Image is compatible, let them be worshipped in an empty shrine. Such are Brahma, and Allah. Also some postcaptivity conceptions of Jehovah".

"[…] the particular Deity be himself savage and relentless; as Jehovah or Kali."

-

Moreover, Dillon was (is?) Platonic, and the problem is even worse, because sadly the reaction to the problem of evil is very similar between Platonism and Christianity.

However, the Stoic (and maybe the Hindu and Buddhist) worldview completely destroys the problem of evil, because if the Divine is good and we simply don't perceive the goodness and that is what evil is, ie ignorance or misperception, then the problem of evil is solved.

If we, instead, perceive the evil as something real and the Gods as totally good not evil, the problem of evil remains.

-

Finally, a Pagan that comes back to Christianity usually doesn't know history very well, and is unaware of Natib Qadish, ie Modern Canaanite Religion or Neopaganism.

If you listen to Natib Qadish (ie Canaanite and Israelite Polytheistic Neopaganism) and Wathanism (Arabian pre-Islamic Polytheistic Neopaganism) practitioners' voices, you cannot come back to Christianity.

In fact, Christianity doesn't make any sense: Yahweh is a Storm God that comes from Edom to Israel through the Kenites or Shasu, which were nomads. His name meant "to blow", and so he was a variation of Baal Hadad.

In the origin, El was the father of Baal/Yahweh, and his sister was Anat and his mother Asherah. Later, El ie the Sky God and Yahweh ie the Storm God, merged and so Yahweh was seen as the husband of the Goddess Asherah.

In fact in Kuntillet Arjud it's possible to see blessings by "Yahweh and his Asherah". Moreover, even the Bible (read The Book of Judges) witness that people worshipped Asherah/Astarte and Baal together with YHWH.

In Elephantine in Egypt there was a Jewish temple for Yahu-Anat, ie both Anat and YHWH.

So how can Jesus be the son of the only God Yahweh if Yahweh was never a monotheistic God before the Josiah's reform that made Judaism monotheistic?

If Judaism is originally polytheistic then Christianity makes no sense.

By reading the "Cycle of Baal" we'll discover the origin of the Biblical Deity (or Deities?).

I end my dissertation with some interesting quotes from the Bible:

Jeremiah 7:

"17 Do you not see what they are doing in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? 18 The children gather wood, the fathers light the fire, and the women knead the dough and make cakes to offer to the Queen of Heaven."

Jeremiah 44:

"17 We will certainly do everything we said we would: We will burn incense to the Queen of Heaven and will pour out drink offerings to her just as we and our ancestors, our kings and our officials did in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. At that time we had plenty of food and were well off and suffered no harm. 18 But ever since we stopped burning incense to the Queen of Heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have had nothing and have been perishing by sword and famine.”

"19 The women added, “When we burned incense to the Queen of Heaven and poured out drink offerings to her, did not our husbands know that we were making cakes impressed with her image and pouring out drink offerings to her?”"

"25 This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: You and your wives have done what you said you would do when you promised, ‘We will certainly carry out the vows we made to burn incense and pour out drink offerings to the Queen of Heaven.’"

[i-love-comparative-religion]

I seriously don’t understand why more people aren’t talking more about this. I think it’s interesting!

https://academia.edu/resource/work/122323191

#AddsContext

(Academia.edu = #academic papers)

#CanaaniteReligion, #UgaritReligion, #El, #Yahweh, #polytheism, #monolatry, #monotheism, #HistoryOfReligion

[zenosanalytic]

#and the worst part is…#sometimes you don’t have a choice(via@a-book-of-creatures) Yeah (:T

Hi, sorry if this has been asked before, but do you have any reliable sources that talk about Ashtar? I'm also looking for articles that talk about El/Ilu; and Shalim and Shahar as well. I appreciate any form of help.

I've answered a similar Ashtar question a few months ago, refer to the bibliography here. I do not have much to offer when it comes to Shahar and Shalim because as far as I can tell most scholarship focuses on exegesis of the Bible, which is something I have next to no interest in. I've answered a question about them here; the main source to depend on is Pardee's Ritual and Cult in Ugarit. When it comes to El, the basic selection of sources dealing with Ugaritic religion should obviously be the start: Smith's Baal Cycle commentaries, Pardee's aforementioned book, Rahmouni's Divine Epithets in the Ugaritic Alphabetic Texts, Handbook of Ugaritic Studies, etc. For more specialized information I recommend: a) Il in Personal Names by Alfonso Archi (early history, and why names with the element il and its cognates do not necessarily refer to a specific deity in pre-Ugaritic sources) b) West Semitic god El in Anatolian Hieroglyphic Transmission by Ilya Yakubovich for the first millennium BCE c) The God Eltara and the Theogony by Anna Maria Polvani for El's Hurro-Hittite career (there's also the Elkunirsa myth but I do not think there's any recent treatment of it, so your best bet is to just read the translation in Hoffner's Hittite Myths from the 1990s) d) The Dwelling of ˀIlu in Baˁlu and ˀAqhatu by Madadh Richey for some lexical considerations regarding El's residence e) God (Ilu) and King in KTU 1.23 by Theodore J. Lewis for El's role as the king of the gods

Also, it's worth checking out Wiggins' monograph A reassessment of Asherah: with further considerations of the goddess since while hardly focused on El, it does discuss Athirat's relationship with him in the Ugarit section. Similarly, might be worth looking into this author's Shapash article.

[bi-numi-aliyani]

A wonder from ancient Canaan: This Iron Age temple of the emergent Israelite/Judean culture at the site of Tell Arad featured two incense altars and two standing stones. Uncovered ostraca identify it as the "House of Yahweh".

(Note: Some of the sanctuary at the Tell Arad site featured in these photos is a reconstruction as portions of the original were taken to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem/al-Quds.)

This is a stunning archaeological example of how the Israelite culture right down to something like temple architecture emerged from among Canaan. It was constructed early during Iron Age II by the Kingdom of Judah when the upstart cult of Yahweh was just emerging onto the historical record.¹ Some scholars have supposed worship of this deity emerged from the south and was brought by proto-Israelite settlers to the Judean Foothills while another theory posits it was introduced in the Kingdom of Israel to the north as the tutelary deity of the Omride Dynasty's ancestral clan.² Researchers continue to discuss and debate evidence from ancient texts including the Hebrew Bible and from archaeology to hopefully form a better understanding of the ancient Canaanite and Israelite cultures.

Of course, the fact Yahweh, most famous as the prototype of the monotheistic, Abrahamic concept of God, was worshipped in a polytheistic context and the Israelite culture originated within the Canaanite complex isn't a surprise anymore. How the historical record ties with the ancient texts we call "the Bible" is a fascinating subject on its own, but I also like to think about the stories we can surmise from the remains of the ancient world. I think about if in this ancient community one day, friends who were walking by, some who worship Ba'al, some who worship Yahweh, some who worship Kamosh and yet other deities, might have noticed groups of priests apparently very upset at one another. None of them, though, are worried about whatever particulars the priests might be squabbling about. They briefly laugh and shake their heads then walk on.

According to the Second Book of Kings in the Hebrew Bible, the House of Yahweh at Arad was shut down along with any other places of worship in Judah besides the Solomonic Temple at Jerusalem by King Josiah during his religious reforms in the late seventh century BCE.³

References

1. The Editors of the Madain Project. “Tel Arad Temple.” Madain Project. https://madainproject.com/tel_arad_temple.

2. Frevel, Christian. “When and from Where Did YHWH Emerge?: Some Reflections on Early Yahwism in Israel and Judah.” Entangled Religions 12, no. 2 (March 30, 2021). https://doi.org/10.46586/er.12.2021.8776.

3. 2 Kings 23:1–20, NRSV. https://biblia.com/bible/nrsv/2-kings/23/1-20.

[crankyscribe]

A suggestion from someone new to Canaanite Paganism

This sort of ties in to some local cultus kind of deal, but with Halloween coming up I was thinking about adding a Canaanite flavor.

Now this is sort of UPG but bear with me here. If you're a Canaanite pagan, you probably know about Mot.

He's the spooky God of death, always hungry for pretty much anything and everything (man or God alike), and he received absolutely ZERO offerings or worship. So around this time of year it could be that M/t is at his worst, looking for prey. Carve a scary face in a gourd or some other vegetable to scare him away.

Sort of like the ritual that pruned him like a grapevine.

[sag-dab-sar]

Deity Dagan

Originally a god of West Semitic speakers from the Levant, but worshipped widely throughout the Near East, including Mesopotamia.

Deity of grain, as well as its cultivation and storage. Indeed, the common word for "grain" in Ugaritic and Hebrew is dagan. According to one Sumerian tradition and to the much later Philo of Byblos, Dagan invented the plow. In the north, he was sometimes identified with Adad. Thus, he may have had some of the characteristics of a storm god. In one tradition his wife was Ishara, in another Salas, usually wife of Adad. Salas was originally a goddess of the Hurrians. Dagan also had netherworld connections. According to an Assyrian composition, he was a judge of the dead in the lower world, serving with Nergal and Misa-ru(m), the god of justice. A tradition going back at least to the fourth century BCE identified Dagan as a fish god, but it is almost certainly incorrect, presumably having been based upon a false etymology that interpreted the element "Dag" in Dagan as deriving from the Hebrew word dag "fish."

The earliest mentions of him come from texts that indicate that, in Early Dynastic times, Dagan was worshipped at Ebla. Dagan was taken into the Sumerian pantheon quite early as a minor god in the circle of Enlil at Nip-pur. Kings of the Old Akkadian peri-od, including Sargon and Narām-Sin, credited much of their success as conquerors to Dagan. Sargon recorded that he "prostrated (himself in prayer before Dagan in Tutul [sic]" (Oppen-heim, ANET: 268). At the same time, he gave to the god a large area of the country he had just conquered, including Mari, Ebla, and larmuti in western Syria. A number of letters from the Mari archives, dated mainly to the reign of Zimri-Lim, record that Dagãn was a source of divine revela-tion. The letters reported prophetic dreams, a number of which came from Dagan, conveyed by his prophets and ecstatics. In his law code, Hammu-rapi credits Dagan with helping him subdue settlements along the Euphrates.

The Assyrian king Samsi-Adad I commissioned a temple for him at Terqa, upstream from Mari, where funeral rites for the Mari Dynasty took place.

In the Old Babylonian period, kings of the Amorites erected temples for Dagan at Isin and Ur. In the Anzû(m) myth, Dagan was favorably coupled with Anu(m). At Ugarit Dagan was closely associated with, if not equated to, the supreme god El/I(u). Although he is mentioned in the mythic compositions of Ugarit as the father of the storm god Ba'lu/ Had(d)ad, Dagan plays only a very minor role. His popularity is indicated by his importance in offering and god lists, one of which places him third, after the two chief gods and before the active and powerful god Ba'lu/ Had(d)ad. Dagan is attested in Ugaritic theophoric names. In Ugaritic texts the god is often referred to as "Dagan of Tuttul." It might also be the case that one of the two major temples of the city of Ugarit was dedicated to him, and he might there have been identified with the chief god I(u) / El.

Festivals for Dagãn took place at Ter-ga and Tuttul, both of which were cult centers of the god. He was certainly worshipped at Ebla and also at Mari.

At Mari, in Old Babylonian times, he appears as fourth deity on a god list; that is, he was very important. He was venerated also at Emar. There a "Sacred Marriage" ritual between Dagan and the goddess Nin-kur was celebrated.

At the same city, a festival was held in honor of "Dagan-Lord-of-the-Cattle," at which the herds of cattle and prob. ably sheep were blessed.

According to the Hebrew Bible, Dagan was the national god of the Philistines. I Samuel:5-6 tells of the capture of the Ark of the Covenant by the Philistines. It was customary in the Ancient Near East for the conquerors to carry off the deity statues of the conquered to mark the surrender not only of the people, but also of their deities.

So the Philistines took the Ark, the symbol of the god of the Israelites, into the temple of Dagan at Ashdod. Since the Israelites had no statues of their deity, the much revered Ark was an obvious substitute. In this way, the Philistines marked the submission of the Israelite god to Dagan. However, on the next day, the people of Ashdod found the statue of Dagan lying face down in front of the Ark. The following day the same thing happened except that the head and hands of Dagan's statue lay broken on the temple threshold. This biblical account seems to be an etiology for a practice of the priests of the temple of Dagan at Ashdod, for it states that for this reason it is the custom of the priests of Dagan not to tread on the threshold as they enter the temple of Dagan. The best-known of the biblical stories that mention Dagan is in Judges 16, the tale of Samson and Delilah. After Delilah arranged for the Philistines of Gaza to capture Samson, they blinded him, shackled him, and made him a slave at a mill. During a festival to Dagan, the Philistines took Samson to be exhibited in Dagan's temple, where thou sands of Philistines had gathered for the celebrations. After praying to the Israelite god, the now long haired Samson got back his old strength. By pushing against two central pillars, he brought the temple crashing down on himself and on more Philistines than he had killed in his whole lifetime of killing Philistines.

— From a Handbook to Ancient Near Eastern Gods & Goddesses by Frayne & Stuckey page 67-69

[chamberofthespirit]

✧ Introduction to Yahwism ✧

Yahwism is a iron age religion from the Isrealite tribe from before the existence of Israel. According to the story, the Israelites were saved from slavery in Egypt when the god, Yahweh, came to set them free. Yahweh had become the god of the Israelites. As the Israelites met the Canaanite tribe, they adopted the worship of the gods El and Ba'al along with the goddess Asherah. Asherah had been seen as being the consort of Yahweh. As time went on, prophets of Yahweh and the rest of the Israelites, began becoming unhappy with worshipping other gods along side Yahweh so they destroyed idols of Asherah and banned the worship of the other gods, though this did not completely stop the worship of them. The Israelites saw Yahweh as the only deity worth worshipping in their tribe so they abandoned polytheism but still being aware of the existence of the other gods. As time went on and Israel came to be, Judaism and Christianity branched off from Yahwism but Yahwism is absolutely NOT Judaism or Christianity. Yahwists only follow the teachings of the Tanakh (hebrew old testament) as it was the first bible. Yahwists do believe in Jesus but only as a prophet and only use his original name, Yahshua. Yahshua only said he was the son of Yahweh but as a metaphor for being a believer and follower.

Differences:

Yahwism

~ Focus is Yahweh and His holy spirit

~ Follows the Tanakh

~ Yahshua (Jesus) is only a prophet

~ There is no hell, either eternal life for the worthy or eternal oblivion for the non-worthy

~ Using the labels "God" or "Lord" is seen as disrespect as they are not Yahweh's name

Christianity

~ Believes in the holy trinity, Jesus is a form of God

~ Uses the labels "God" and "Lord"

~ Contains the new testament, which is Roman in origin

~ Believes in hell

~ Celebrates easter, christmas, etc.

~ Uses holy water and holy oil

~ Believes in judgement day

Judaism

~ Uses the labels "God" and "Lord"

~ Believes using the name "Yahweh" is disrespectful and too divine to be said

~ Not much focus on the afterlife, focus is life on earth

~ Follows the Tanakh

~ Celebrates chanukah

[passionesolja]

Christianity to me is so unserious. Now, I don’t think that Christians serve Yahweh. I know that Jewish people serve the deity, but I don’t think most Christians research enough about the history of their god to know what the fuck is going on. Like some arrogant Christian will equate “El” with “Yahweh” and it’s like “you dumb mf, EL was the creator god in Ancient Canaanite religions”, mfs just believe whatever makes them feel good. A lot of Christians are terrified to even call Yahweh his/their name. I’m not. I know that Yahweh was a Canaanite storm god, and like a lot of early polytheism, he was worshipped by Canaanites and Jewish people of that era. His reach evolved as Christianity became a thing and it evolved. The average Christian doesn’t know this. No hate to them, but I take religions serious so I feel like I have to know this.

And with that in mind, I think the entire concept of an all powerful, all knowing god is so mf childish and stupid. Historically, gods had vices and flaws. Also, why would a god torture me for eternity just because I don’t fw him? Seems really man made, psychological torture to me. Like, plenty of Apes can comprehend the world at a 2nd/3rd grade level and that’s the age a lot of mfs get converted at. So is god gon send them to hell? Elephants have names and burial ceremonies, mfs aren’t converting them. Crows can make tools and have lil insular societies. Nobody give a fuck about them. Whales are super intelligent, like we’re just learning about how smart they are. Nobody is rushing to convert them over.

It’s almost like Christianity (as white people have used it) is an tool for mfs to gain power and subjugate others. “Oh those really intelligent animals aren’t important. We have dominion over them so even tho us and them share similar practices, we’re better so they can’t have a soul” dumbass mf you’re giving the game away. If your god gon send me to eternal hell for no reason (bc you can be a murderer rapist, tell god sorry, and face no eternal punishment, which is insane and not even how laws work) then I’m not gon fw him anyways. Even if he was real, which he’s not in the way that most Christian’s imagine him.

Christians really worship their own ego, and a mf like me has an ego but I don’t need every bitch on planet earth to lead the life I do. I’m too nonchalant to try to force my beliefs on a mf lmao

[tsalmu]

Baal Hadad, God of Storms and Fertility Stele from Tel Burna, Shephelah c. 1400 BCE Source: The Louvre

[aerial-jace]

Re: biblical analysis

I had a bit of a hard time when I was deconstructing coming to terms with how much I love a good Jesus metaphor

But yeah it's a book that a lot of people had be the basis of their literary development, and it's cool to see the themes pop up in other places

But you have to treat it like a book to be analyzed

I find the Bible fascinating from like a history of religion kind of perspective.

Biblical archaeology is not exactly my area but I do know a bit about it and when it's not a "Heinrich Schliemann looking for Troy with a shovel on one hand and a copy of the Illiad in the other" type of situation the Bible is an incredibly helpful tool in analysis and contextualization not only of the archaeology of the Levant but of the Near East as a whole.

I'm particularly fascinated by what close historical readings tell us about the development of Levantine religion during the time of its redaction. From Canaanite polytheism into Israelite monolatry and monotheism right down to Hellenistic Judaism and Early Christianity. It's such a rich source for thousands of years of extremely foundational history.

I've also been learning a lot more about Judaism recently thanks to the exposure of my Jewish mutuals and general connection to the Jumblr community on here. Hearing their perspective on these texts I was familiar with as a Christian has been really illuminating and has really opened my eyes about the VAST gulfs there exist.

I really recommend this website, Better Parables, which contextualizes the Jesus parables in its first century Jewish context and provides very interesting exegesis of them from a Jewish perspective. It's one of my current favorite Bible scholarship resources and it's really made me want to dive deeper into Jewish responses to Christian texts. I especially rally am itching to read the Jewish Anotated New Testament but I'm refraining because I do NOT need to make an unwise financial decision and buy a book like that right now.

[alephskoteinos]

I knew I was going to be interested in Esoterica's latest video about the Demiurge, and I knew I was going to look forward to part two coming up, but I find there's an analysis here that points to a god who has a central place in the "Gnostic" "demonisation" of Yahweh, and whose place as such may yet illuminate a pagan lens of what emerges as satanic outsideness.

The god in question is none other than Set, or Seth, the Egyptian god who ruled over the desert (the Red Land) outside the kingdom of Egypt. For this connection, Justin Sledge leans heavily into M David Litwa's book The Evil Creator: Origins of an Early Christian Idea, which I've since decided I now need a copy of.

It all seems to begin with the myth of Exodus, the Biblical story most people recognise as the one where God brings ten plagues on the land of Egypt to in order to force the pharaoh to release the Israelites from slavery and gets Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. An observation Justin makes is that, for Egyptian audiences, the Exodus story basically positioned the ancient Egyptian gods and the divine pharaoh as being powerless before the might of a single foreign deity, and the pharaoh as dying by drowning, which was apparently considered the worst die in Egypt. To Egyptian eyes, there could not be a more offensive, obscene, or humiliating portrayal of the Egyptian religion, and otherwise, to non-Jews in antiquity, the whole story seemed entirely unbelievable. For all that handwringing about how a foreign god could possibly threaten the good order of the gods of Egypt, there must have been some doubts about that order that entered the mind, if it had to seriously consider the possibility of a god like Yahweh standing toe to toe against Egypt.

But for some people responding to just how far Yahweh went against Egypt at least there was one answer: Yahweh must have been a malevolent donkey-headed god, if not just an angry demon. Or rather, to be more accurate, Yahweh was just Set/Seth, the Egyptian god who was already associated with foreigners who lived outside the kingdom of Egypt.

Set was also at a certain point already identified with Baal, or rather Baal Hadad, the Canaanite god of storms and rain, who Justin says was actually worshipped by nomadic traders in the highlands. That makes for an interesting link as far as local storm gods go. Yet, was Baal really just the main storm of nomadic highlander bandits? The connection to the barbaric outside is an interesting one to say the least, but surely Canaanite religion must have had a certain prominence in antiquity? Unless its presence was also elevated by its interaction with other religious traditions, such as early Judaism, Hellenic polytheism, and Egyptian polytheism? Still, Set being the "demonic" patron of foreigners linked to Baal being the god worshipped by "barbarian nomads" would be just the tip on its own. In a larger sense, one begins to see a massive gulf between that kind of divinity and the Biblical God presented by Christianity. In fact, especially with the link to Baal in mind, the image of Yahweh as Seth and Seth as Iao might seem to have almost nothing to do with the God of Judaism, apart from the calamities attributed to God in the Bible. Whereas Set was an ontologically ambiguous and wild god associated with storms and threats to cosmic and political order, Yahweh or God was associated with the absolute power of cosmic order as the guarantour of political order and sovereignty relevant to the nation of Israel, and only moreso with time, and as time past certain associations with storms, metallurgy, and war gave way to the kind of divinity more associated with El, as well as dominion over celestial objects (which God aggressively emphasizes to Job when he questions the goodness of God). It certainly is a grand and ancient story of recuperation if I ever heard it.

Justin also points out that Set was, after some time, gradually reimagined as a donkey-headed god, whereas in older traditional iconography, Set has the head of a strange creature referred to simply as the "Seth animal" (or "Typhonic beast"), whose actual species (if it was even a real animal species) we still don't know and have no idea what it could be. The donkey association is pervasive in Greco-Egyptian magic, and it seems to have been prevalent enough in Greece at least that Plutarch references the claim that Typhon fled Egypt while riding on an ass for seven days, which Justin says was probably a mockery of the seven days of creation in the Book of Genesis, and that Typhon then sired two sons named Jerusalem and Judea. This, Plutrarch says, is simply an attempt by some people (apparently including Tacitus himself) to drag Jewish traditions into the legends of Typhon. Whatever the intent it does serve to establish that Yahweh was seen as associated with Typhon, perhaps by people who didn't like Judaism to say the least. There seems to be a similar theme with the Roman link between Yahweh and Sabazios, a god who the Romans detested. Of course, never mind the fact that there was an all the more prolific tendency in antiquity to associated Yahweh with Zeus, the chief god of Olmypus and the adversary of Typhon in Greek mythology.

In antiquity, the donkey was considered the "dumbest" of all animals. We probably still think that to some extent today. But in antiquity that was also meant to denote Typhon's irrationality and the foolishness of his conflict with the gods. The donkey image apparently seems to recur throughout antiquity not only in hostile references to Judaism but also in similar references to Christianity. There are unfortunately certain canards in the ancient Greco-Roman world in which Jews were accused of worshipping a golden donkey or donkey head while practicing bloody sacrifices out of hatred for every nation in the world. These were probably not all that commonly believed, but they existed, and they do seem to have been prevalent enough that Jewish authors such as the historian Josephus felt it necessary to refute them. But then later, when Christianity started to emerge as a new religion in town, both Roman polytheists and some Jews occasionally referred to Christians as worshipping a donkey god, using the word "onocoetes" ("he who lies in an ass's manger"), which was meant to imply. And then of course there's the infamous graffito of Alexamenos worshipping his "god": an image of Jesus Christ on the cross with the head of a donkey.

The fact that Christians were accused of worshipping a donkey-headed deity cannot be seen in isolation from Seth already being depicted as a donkey god and him already being associated with Yahweh previously. Perhaps, then, Christians, and Jews prior, were really being accused of worshipping Set. Of course, the accusation was ridiculous and often xenophobic in context. But what it conveys is the idea of worshipping a god seen as "beastly", unlike much of the gods worshipped by Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians (even though those same gods were sometimes worshipped in animal form!).

At the same time, as Jake Stratton Kent elaborated in Geosophia, Seth Typhon was, for a long time, regarded as the patron deity of magicians, as in the very magicians who wrote the spells of the PGM. Kent also elaborated links between Seth-Typhon and not only Dionysus but also Iao, and suggested that they were sometimes identified. Justin also comments on spells in the Greek Magical Papyri, particularly the "erotic" spells, noting that they invoke Seth/Typhon and also show his image (that of the ass/donkey) along the name Iao or variations thereof. I might examine these spells again for the purpose of my PGM notes. Justin at least implies identification between these gods is in play, and in my opinion that is not at all unlikely to be the case. In fact the presence of magical amulets featuring donkey-headed gods and the name Iao probably support that suggestion. And it has to be stressed that, even though the name Iao is invoked, this is an identity that has very little to do with traditional Judaism. Throughout the PGM Iao or Sabaoth or forms thereof are syncretised with polytheistic gods with Helios or outright identified with them, or even subordinate to Helios, all of which is in stark contrast to how God traditionally establishes himself as distinct from all of the other gods and as the sole recipient of worship ("You shall have no other gods before me"). But, speaking of Helios, Kent also also stressed that Seth-Typhon was a solar-pantheistic god, of the kind of solar-pantheistic divinity also represented by gods such as Helios and Abrasax.

The heavy-handed link that Justin (and perhaps M David Litwa as well) presents between Set and Yahweh in the minds of the ancient Egyptians and Hellenes actually makes it much easier to look at a "non-Abrahamic" "satanic outsideness" centered around Set and the Greek Magical Papyri. Well, I say easier, at the least it could provide a much clearer set of clues. I'm already somewhat more interested in the centrality of Seth-Typhon in the notion of divinity in play and its arcane religious outsideness than in any of the standard reasons for which people like Gnosticism. This is where we get not to the standard narrative of the "Judeo-Christian God is the Demiurge keeping people imprisoned from the Pleroma [which is still very much the Christian God!]", but Seth as the insidious "evil" god of magic and chaos, specifically the disorder of matter, but also, perhaps, the heroic strivings of the transgressive magician. There is the possibility of much to be found in common with Satan after all, or at least the Satan of Stanislaw Przybyszewski. There may also in fact be a sense here in which Bataille's Base Materialism and Gnosticism can have a very good effect, not as an analysis of Gnosticism but as illuminating a much greater, lost religious world.

And unfortunately I suppose Soul Hackers 2's Seth also makes a little sense in this light.

Fuck my entire life.

[dizzyghoast]

it is funny watching some jews on this website go on and on about about christianity stole xyz from judaism as if judaism didnt steal a hunch of shit from canaanite polytheism and zoroastrianism