Inara - a Wiccan perspective
POSTED BY: incongresswiththebeast
UPDATED: Friday, May 12, 2006 15:14
VIEWED: 21618
PAGE 4 of 10
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Originally posted by ScrewtheAlliance:
Hey, that's fine -- I just thought that the original discussion topic was an astute one.
I wanted to chime in on this by now. A grounded philosophy is a philosophy; it shouldn't matter whether or not it stems from religion, a set of amalgamated belief systems, personal ethics, or whatever to be worth listening to. I'm a strict monotheist myself (Muslim, specifically), but I really enjoy hearing different perspectives on certain issues coming from other backgrounds; when it's on a topic that's originally fictitious (Inara and Companions), it means that the topic can be delved into without any reason to approach denigrating other folks' beliefs.
So, yeah, I think this perspective really adds something onto the idea of Companions in general and Inara specifically. There's been a lot of parallels with the original concept of a Geisha--respected women in high positions being the main thing there. But, the entire idea of a Companions' role being to unify seems like an additional concept. That seems like it's taken from not just pre-modern East Asian history, but ancient history as well; it didn't seem so obvious 'til hearing this perspective.
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As far as the gadfly, my skin is thick. I've been beat up by better people than that, and ones who had a real theological clue.
Some folks, very simply, should be paid no mind and aren't worth arguing with--or, more precisely, aren't worth being drawn into an argument with. KF
EDIT: It occurs to me that just as interesting would be a Hindu perspective... Sex is an extremely significant thing in old texts like the Mahabharata, and sex between the gods was supposed to symbolize unity... or rebirth... or something.
I'm not the one to give this perspective, obviously... KF
~KF
Lord, I'm walking your way. Let me in, for my feet are sore, my clothes are ragged.
Look in my eyes, Lord, and my sins will play out on them as on a screen. Read them all.
Forgive what you can and send me on my path. I will walk on until you bid me rest.
~Haven Prayer
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"So please, if you want to back your opinions up with something other than "freedom of speech," (go ahead, speak all you want. I don't believe there is a freedom of fff.net forum anywhere in the constitution), feel free to look at my latest post"
Then go complain and get me kicked off. You're the type. As for the rest, you clearly haven't been reading.
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Oh? So now you know I'm the type to complain to get you kicked off. First I'm the "don't give a shit about God one way or the other" type, then I'm the "lets silence this dude type." I believe every post I have made has challenged you to respond, and therefore I really do feel you should be allowed to speak your piece. I was merely calling to your attention that living in the "Land of the Free and Home of the Brave" doesn't give you special priveledge to give unruly and disrespectful opinions.
I suspect your subconscious is starting to realize your opinions are, while perhaps not fallacious, grounded in fallacious reasoning. If not, you would have something more substantial than proclaiming yourself a member of a free speaking society and, again, attack me instead of defend yourself. You direct the attention away by painting me as a silencer of dissenting opinion. Wrong, I am enjoying nothing more than you making yourself look stupid.
But maybe I am wrong. Maybe you do have something more substantial than how many ways you can make fun of Wicca or telling me "You only said two sentences that interested me." (Well, I'm glad your high sense of intellect only allows you to respond to the most carefully groomed of sentences.) Maybe you actually have perfectly legitimate grounds for belittling Wiccans and not oftering any backing other than trying to be funny and poke fun.
PROVE IT. Refute my arguments, which until very recently have been made against your ideas, not you. Show us you have something other than a high education to back your opinions.
I suspect you feel you have absolutely nothing to prove to me, I'm nothing but a screenname on a website. I suspect you also feel it's beneath you to reason with me, hell, I can't even see the enlightenment of Voltaire and satire. What an ignorant savage I am!
But I could be wrong.
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Originally posted by BitterBierce:
"So please, if you want to back your opinions up with something other than "freedom of speech," (go ahead, speak all you want. I don't believe there is a freedom of fff.net forum anywhere in the constitution), feel free to look at my latest post"
Then go complain and get me kicked off. You're the type. As for the rest, you clearly haven't been reading.
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Carry the Nuttin'
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Originally posted by kpo:Quote:
The Rebirth of the Goddess is a powerful theological argument in modern Paganism, and one the Radical Monotheists have no clear answer for.
Rebirth of the Goddess? What is that?
The idea is that when the Radical Monotheists took control of the Western World (and then exported their beliefs via empire to the rest) the god that they exalted as the One True God was understood and worshipped as male. Jehovah/Jesus/Allah were all male divinities from firmly patriarchal societies. The Mother Goddess that was universally revered for thousands of years of prehistory and protohistory was demonized or de-deified, at best given second-class status and at worst condemned as evil.
The modern Rebirth of the Goddess as understood by Wicca and the other neo-pagan religions is a ressurection of the ancient "fertility" goddess, but it goes beyond that. Modern Pagans view divinity as a reflection of our own humanity (or humanity as a reflection of the divine order) and recognize the Divine as both male and female. The Goddess is Mother, Maiden, and Crone in Wiccan belief, that is representitive of the fertility, sexuality, and wisdom of women and the essential divinity of womanhood through the Goddess.
This is brought home by a woman's ability to provide Caritas -- originally the love between a mother and child, but extended through our lives as the essentially sexual love a woman expresses for a man and later in life for the compassion she displayed for her community. Caritas was once seen as the prime motivating force in the universe. When Radical Monotheism and it's penis-packin' divinities showed up, the compassionate nature of Caritas was cheapened by the church into "Christian Charity". Caritas, however, goes far beyond that.
When you view the Divine as feminine, a lot of the preconceptions about our social roles in Western society become challenged: specifically the idea that men are the default gender, and that women are mere appendages or awards to male success. The Goddess personifies the self-realized woman, one who is in complete control of her sexuality, her psyche, and her spirit. She isn't just Jehovah in drag, but brings a uniquely feminine point of view to many profound questions in our society.
Inara is a purveyor of this Caritas in its most sexual form. What she and her sisters do is a trade, true, but it is more a devotion to compassion through sexual expression. I may go into this in more detail later.
StA
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I must make another acknowledgement of a mistake:
I incorrectly title Ben Franklin's satirical essay earlier. It was bugging me that I may have misstated it, so I took the time to find the right title.
"Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One."
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Carry the Nuttin'
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BitterBierce,
As a former agnostic turned Wiccan, I just have to say that I enjoy hearing your vitriol nearly as much as you do yourself. There was a time I would have found it upsetting. After that, there was a time when I might have found it sad. But now it's just plain ruttin' high-larious. 
And just to reassure you, I'm pretty sure we never dated--I'm another one of those 38-year-old guy Wiccans who leads a fairly normal life.
For all the rest of you who may have been turned off by stereotypical Wiccans--and I've met my share of them, too--let me just remind you of what the Christian philosopher C.S. Lewis once wrote: "The best argument against Christianity is Christians." Don't judge every adherent of a faith by what the most stereotypical members do.
Cedric
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You have far too much free time on your hands.
Well you're a Wiccan, I guess it shouldn't come as a shock that you've descended into cliche-speak in the very first sentence.
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Humor, you see, is a religious experience to many Wiccans. And we have internal stereotypes to make fun of that you haven't even etc etc lecture lecture
Oh god, it's a flashback to my 20's and the dreary lectures about how Summerians think shoelaces contain keras essense. I'm trying to explain to you how many of your type I've been around in my life: I don't know why, it just turned out that way. Let me state it simply- you're kind are not a mystery to me. And no, it's not true as you state below that to know your theology is to accept it. In point of fact, many theologians hold the same disdain for it I do.
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If you consider it mumbo-jumbo, then no, you don't know very much about it.
Like Christianity, it is an entirely self-contained set of illusions, but completely without a thousand years of philosophers jabbering about it (yes, I know paganism "predates" Christianity...just not the reconstructed religion anyone alive today adheres to). Acceptance and respect are absolutely not a requirement of knowledge. Christians adhere to nonsense, but at least it's extremely sophisticated nonsense.
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You say (there are New Age influences in all Paganism) like it's a bad thing.
Yep.
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Metaphysically meaningless? Only if you have a flat-headed, text-wedded narrow Radical Monotheistic point of view
Uh look, I don't agree with their point of view any more than you do, but denying the sheer amount of energy the Church put into exploring the philosophy of theology is absurd. In fact, the Christian drive for metaphysics are what created the modern university system of explored knowledge- the direct precursor to the scientific method and the englightenment came directly from their toiling. The nonsense those flatheads adhere to is several orders of magnitude more sophisticated than yours.
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Our metaphysics is quite robust and well developed in some circle -- I'm not talking about the Scott Cunningham crowd
Really! Do tell. Name me texts, I'll review them.
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It's commonly noted that the beliefs of the "New Age" are quite old, just with a new coat of paint. That doesn't bother us. Sorry if it bothers you.
What is it with people that think someone has to be pissed or sad or angry to disagree with their positions? Truth be told, your crowd has always been amusing to me. I literally cannot imagine a more benign set of phantasms than Wicca, especially because it's a fad that will fade in time. In fact, even my amusement is mild and close to dead neutral. My emotional content with Wicca comes to right about nothing. Dude, I don't hate you. Your kind is...cute.
This reminds me, mostly off the topic- I used to be a bouncer at the Ale House in Houston (peace be upon it), and one day we had to keep out some Wiccans who gathered (I forget the reason why), and this older Wiccan woman told me that it would "come back to me karmically" and that she was putting a curse on me.
Oh wait I remember now. We couldn't let in her four kids because of the booze codes. Anyway, it was the way she put it- she was hopping around in a very stately manner (I don't know how else to put it; I'd never seen stately hopping before). I couldn't keep that serious/frowny face bouncers are supposed to have and I started smiling. This made her more mad, which made me more amused, so I started laughing. This sent her into an exquisitely dignified rage. I was kinda impressed with the quality of her anger. My entire family died in a car wreck next week and I lost my left arm, but I'm sure it was a coincidence*.
By the by, the Ale House had the distinction of having the best educated doormen and bouncers I think in all history. I don't think there was a single one of us without a doctorate or about to get one. I did hear in a fight (that I
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And I think you missed some of what Bierce is saying, I don't think he has much respect for any religion, I just think he ascribes more value to monotheistic ones that represent some of Thomas Aquinas's values.
Well close, but not quite. I respect the sophistication of the metaphysics and the sheer maniacal energy they put into it- I like people who think hard and systematically, it's a prejudice of mine. The values are seperate and probably not all that closely related to their exquisite thinking: Christian values are just the values of an old, established system. You know; stability, be nice to your neighbor, learn to behave, all that stuff. Because of the Englightenment, Christianity went through a long process of being tamed, and as such isn't all that dangerous anymore. Younger religions (read "Islam") haven't had that extensive series of religious debates that kills everyone yet. My thinking about religions is thus almost entirely sociological and detached. I tend not to like the Arthur Miller atheists- they remind me of the nutters to much.
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I delibertly tried to keep the discussion in the flow of Bierce's bad tactics, bad taste, and arrogance
Tell me the truth. Are we no longer dating anymore?
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You see Bierce, your last post is exactly what torques people like me. You talk down to this person as if you are a parent explaining something to a child. At least, this time, you had the decency to reason out your gripes rather than randomly poke fun and pinch nerves.
You first start out insulting ScrewWithTheAlliance by saying he is speaking in cliches, and then insult Wiccans by saying they all do. That seems to be a favorite gripe for you. Have you realized, in all your drunken conversations with doctorate bound bouncers, that humans think, read, and speak in phrases? It's more efficient, its quicker. Now, perhaps, you can move on to the actual argument and not the particulars of how many people used a the phrase before hand.
Then he states humor is a religious experience. You and I probably both have the same opinion on humor and how it relates to spiruality, IE no connect. My response: if I'm grumpy, "so what?" If I'm not, "That's interesting."
Your response: "Oh, how stupid. Other theologians agree."
Then he criticizes you for simplifying their faith to mumbo jumbo. The fact that you've been around it all you life and managed to still sneer at it offers you no special insight into saying it's any less than a Christain faith. Sure, it's less organized, but how is that a guiding stone for a topic we both agreed could not be approached as logical? (you still insist on trying. Note I am not approaching the topic of Wiccan in a logical why, I'm approaching your reasoning that way.
You still offer no support for Paganism being a bad thing.
Ok, wait here's an actual, legitimate point you have made. "Christianity has led to scientific and enlightenment thought." Except your wrong. All the reformation Catholics and new Protestants did is further Aristotle's line of thought. Scientific and Enlightment thought is no more a Christain revolution than the Renessaince a British origin.
You refer to the lack of Pagan texts. Since I hardly see you as being a person to appreciate the Koran or the Bible for it's religious pretexts, then how is the Pagan word of mouth inferior? Is is not organized enough for you?
Then you say he is on the wrong side of legions of smart people. Does that mean he's not smart? 'Cause that's what it means to me. Well, since your the authority of who is smart, we must accept your argument.
What if these exact same people professed the necessity of devoutness, whatever flavor, in life? They would make them not smart, right? That's circular logic, dude. Don't use other's opinions as a shield to your own. I did that in my ninth grade social studies papers, just quoted people who said the same thing I did.
I have noticed, by the way, you have drifted away from acknowledging my arguments? Could it be that a fellow non-religious person with brains and capacity for intellectual argument actually disagrees? What is this? If I'm not blinded by the metaphysical impracticality of Paganism or monotheism, what is so driving my error of judgement?
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Carry the Nuttin'
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As a former agnostic turned Wiccan...
You know it's funny you say that because I don't think there is any other kind. I mean, I know there are, but I noticed a lot of people started like you; they usually came from irreligious familes. It lends credence to the personality theory of religion: some people just need it, but since we live in a secular age where the dominant system is under attack and in retreat, naturally religious people go for the purest religious experience.
That's also where the finely-honed metaphysics of the Christians works against them: they actually say and believe solid things and have reasoning for them. That's always a mistake. Best to keep it as silly fru-fru and fuzzy as possible. Religion is about feeling, not thinking.
Just to let you know, I didn't start an agnosto-atheist. It came as a long, slow, steady process of de-believing in my solid Catholic upbringing combined with the beginnings of systematic thinking.
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And just to reassure you, I'm pretty sure we never dated--I'm another one of those 38-year-old guy Wiccans who leads a fairly normal life.
Well then yeah, it probably is unlikely I've dated you then. I guess you just sound like a chick. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
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