Agreed. Which is why I find it odd that you’re displaying your ignorance so openly by not yet buying me a delicious gyro on a pita. After all, Iganfantaloq the Interlocuter is, at least potentially, out there, and he promises eternal damnation for anybody who does not buy me a gyro before the judgement day, which could come at any time. And faith in no Iganfantaloq requires just as much faith as faith in Iganfantaloq. Why are you risking eternal damnation when you could avoid it just for the price of a gyro?
They order life, give consistency to chaos, soothe emotions and normalize activity, they form bonds with all who participate in one, etc., etc., etc. Rituals do things, whether or not they are connected to some greater metaphysics and/or bureaucracy. In fact, the layers of management are an outgrowth of the tribal identity - it has been very vital for the most bureaucratic of faiths (mostly, Catholicism) to be very sure of who was in and who was out at various points in its history.
Mysticism is kind of my favorite flavor of religious expression, because it is mind hacks and metaphor and poetry and beauty and cruelty all wrapped up in one often-impenetrably-arcane practice. It is like humanity at its most weird, its most human.
You think ritual - before bureaucrats got involved - did metaphysical things? Like the mass actually transmuted unleavened bread into human flesh but then there was too many priests at one point ant it just stopped?
Yeah, and historically Sufis tended to be the most organic branch of Islam, in terms of the sheer variety of practice. Some of the biggest victims of purges of Islamic groups by various states/recent organizations have been aimed at Sufi orders, with large, often rural followings. The orthodoxy of the Saudis has become a metastasizing cancer, in terms of eliminating more unorthodox practices which connects people to their homes and history more firmly.
Bleh. As much as mysticism is one of my favorite flavors of religious expression, fundamentalism (ie, ‘cracking down on things that are unorthodox’) is one of the most toxic, vile, and destructive.
And it’s a real shame to see it coming out of Islam, where the incredible diversity of the ummah is so crucial to that religious identity.
But fundamentalism has a way of borking up everything out of some unattainable ideal of purity that just creates wave upon wave of human misery.
That’s why I really enjoyed bonfire Night as a child. Not for the political impications, but for the electric atmosphere of being with everyone in the village after dark, sharing anticipation of a giant blaze surrounded by family and friends.
Sure, by some people. But this does not seem to indicate much consensus. A more probable lineage might be from Bahamut, the dragon which supports the Earth of Arabian mythology, which seems to originate from a more obscure local deity.
Looking now, wackipedia says “Not to be confused with Baphomet or Behemoth.”, which is funny, and I think might demon-strate precisely the kind of mythological drift I was talking about. It is fairly well known that the Behemoth of the bible had its origins in Bahamut, even though the correspondence between them is not a direct one, there still seems to be a relationship between them. Saying that Bahamut → Behemoth → Baphomet would still be an over simplification, even if the lineage was certain.
Dodge book is a dangerous sport, there are too many corners!
