The Pokey Finger of God

The State Cult Hypothesis: “Christianity was primarily the result of a competition between the state cults of Diocletian and Constantine. It was the efforts of Constantine to defeat Diocletian’s Tetrarchy, co-opt the Persian cultural invasion, and subsequently unify the Roman Empire that resulted in the creation of Christianity.”
Constantine was a keen student of history, and [...]

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I was looking to see what content wiki had on early Christianity, when I found a link to a digital version of papers written by Martin Luther King, Jr, when he was in divinity school. Most immediately, I’ve enjoyed his study of Mithraism and his paper on Mystery Religions in Christianity.
It is at this point [...]

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I have been dwelling further on Venus, the planet specifically, in its passage from Morning Star to Evening Star. I sense a deep pattern here, and placing myself within it may be the best way to quickly understand it.
On Sunday, June 8th, Venus-Solar conjunction will occur. There are three significant points to make about this [...]

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My recent flirting with a regular weight-training regimen has begun to produce noticeable results, almost despite my inability to keep to a schedule. My body feels better and my yoga is better when I keep the discipline of practice.
It reminds me of the benefits I would get with regular meditation practice. Again, discipline with regular [...]

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I had promised a review of Franz Cumont’s Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism. It is difficult for me to stop where I am with the book and make these few statements, as I desperately want to spend more time tracing out the various ideas and go about verifying his assertions.
In these few lectures, Franz Cumont [...]

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i. Magic is the art of transforming imagination into reality. [Hail Hekate!]
ii. The axis of manifestation begins with imagination and it ends with reality. Simple rules dictate how objects, relationships, and events are manipulated across this axis into reality from the imagination. Most of these rules are institutionalized, in one form or another, into the [...]

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One of the books that lent me is a look at the Old Testament from the perspective of Cultural Anthropology. The title even states the same in fewer words. Within this text we are told that the miraculous revivals of the dead performed by Elijah and Elisha only make sense from the perspective of [...]

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It has been something of a tradition with my wife and I to hang a small bell on the rear-view mirror of our car. She started the habit of ringing a bell whenever we pass a carcass on the road as a way of blessing the passing of whatever animal it had been. We like [...]

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With my first experiences with neo-pagan ritual came a series of doubts and inner debates. These early contacts with paganism were my catalysts in a major restructuring of how I viewed myself and the world around me. I think back on some of these early conflicts and sometimes I’m able to draw a line from [...]

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I’ve been having an interesting exchange of letters with a cousin I lost touch with twenty years ago. She was Catholic last time I saw her, seems she’s discovered paganism over the last five years. I ended up writing a summary history of Christianity, and realized when I was done that it was the most [...]

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