Since prehistory, people have desired more intimate connection with animals. Cave paintings in France and animals carved into the landscape in Peru demonstrate the depth of feeling and intimacy towards our animal relations. Study religious symbols, and you get a glimpse of how close humans’ relationship to animals is. Moslems call camels, “God’s Gift,” and Incas refer to llamas as “Children of the Great Mother.” In Christianity, Christ is called the “Lamb of God.”
The religious pantheons of many cultures feature the merging of animals and people. In Egypt, Bast is depicted as a woman with a cat’s head, while Horus is symbolized as a hawk. Zeus of the Greeks could transform Himself into various animals for his own purposes. The Hindu God Ganesha is depicted as an elephant, while Cernunnos, the Celtic Lord of the Animals, is shown with a stag’s horns on his head.
There's a certain kind of mindset that says that we, the current oh-so-modern inhabitants of the world, are the epitome of social and biological evolution, that we're a massive improvement over everything and everyone who has come before us.
This concept was very popular in Victorian times thanks to Social Darwinism, a misapplication of the concept of evolution to social and cultural contexts. It was simply an easy way for well-off white westerners to feel superior to People of Color and pretty much every single culture that had come before them.
Today's Faithful Friday edition celebrates the many religions of our world. This week, we've got legendary women of Germanic Yuletide; "pagan" traveler portraits; ancient religions of the MidEast; is religion inherently violent; faith-free ritual.
Germanic female figures of the Yuletide holidays are featured in this post. How many are you familiar with? Do your holiday traditions include any of these customs?
Erin Lale
Fellow faculty at Harvard Divinity School posted an open letter to Wolpe in response to his article. It's available on this page, below the call for p...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. The Wild Hunt has a roundup of numerous responses on its site, but it carried this one as a separate article. It is an accoun...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. This one is by a scholar of paganism. It's unfortunately a Facebook post so this link goes to Facebook. She posted the text o...
