Posted on 09/05/2002 12:23:19 PM PDT by Selmo
It really makes me mad when the media lumps Witches/Pagans in with Satanists...not even close to being the same.
Actually, voudon and Santeria are syncretic religions that represent a mixture of African animism with Roman Catholicism - thus the name "Santeria" (ie., worship of the Saints, or Santos.) These religions typically emphasize strong family bonds, community loyalty, etc... animal sacrifices are only used under extreme situations (such as to prevent death or illness) and performed in much the same way that the ancient Jews did them in the OT.
On a related note, it really makes me mad when ill-informed "wiccans" and "neo-pagans" feel the need to lump traditional "black & tan" religions in with "Satanism" as a way to curry favor with ever more ill-informed Noth American Christians.
The African diasporic religions go back for centuries and centuries, starting with the slave trade. There are approximately 50 million followers of what you call "Satanic" all over the world (albeit mostly in Cuba, Brazil & Haiti). There is a saying that Haiti is 90% voodoo and 100% Catholic - huh - some "Satanists"!
On the other hand, what is Wicca? A made-up hoax of a religion based on faulty and misleading scholarship which posited the existence of a stone-age, utopian matriarchy (sorry kids, but this never existed) but in fact draws almost all of its "teachings" from Gerald Gardner's association with Aleister Crowley (speaking of Satanists)- ever notice that Crowley's admonition to "Do as ye will" greatly resembles the wiccan's own pledge? There's a reason for this.... wicca is basically just a popular, feminist, and dumbed-down version of all of that old OTO stuff.
One more thing: if a bunch of "celtic" reconstructionist types want to run around the US and England calling themselves "witches" more power to'em, but bad scholarship and revisionist history does not give them the exclusive right to the words "witch" and "witchraft." Any anthropologist can tell you that witchcraft and shamanism have existed for thousands of years all over the world, and continue to exist, long before (and probably long after)the internet, B Dalton, and people with names like "Silver RavenWolf" and "FaeryDust MoonBeam" have come and gone too.
Pagan just means non-monotheist, it's not really the name of a religion. Nature woshipping PETA types would qualify. So would the ancient Romans.
Self so called Pagans in modern times tend to be New Agers, Wiccans, or followers of Crowley. That is to say believers in a pastiche of pre-Christian northern and western European mythologies.
Santaria practitioners are Pagans, too, but they don't call themselves that.
Couldn't find a frame-grab for that one! LOL!
they were playing cards with superman and santa claus.
They worship 'Taus Melek'--'The Peacock Angel'--you know: Lucifer. They believe that when God redeems even him that when Lucifer takes up his former arch-angel position that he will have special favor for the Yezidi of Kurdistan.
Yeah right! and there are russian troops with snow on their boots stationed at secret NWO bases throught the American West.
From what I understand of Yezidism they are monotheists who worship god... but they also believe that god is remote from the earth and has left a group of seven angels in charge, lucifer being chief among these... Lucifer was so sad when he was kicked out of heaven that he cried and creid until the fires of hell were extinguished! And then he was restored to his former place of honor... or something like that... Good God, there is so much disinformation and misinformation about the Yezidi out there (and outright bad scholarship by people w. agendas - Anton Lavey is good example) that it is really hard to tell....
Anywho, thanks for the link, I'll check it out. Here's another good one too, BTW:
The followers of the Yezidi religion, who have variously referred to themselves also as the Yazidi, Yazdâni, Izadi, and Dasna'i, have often been pejoratively referred to by outsiders as "devil worshippers." They constitute less than 5% of the Kurdish population. At present they live in fragmented pockets, primarily in northwest and northeast Syria, the Caucasus, southeast Turkey, in the Jabal Sanjâr highlands on the Iraqi-Syrian border, and regions north of the Iraqi city of Mosul.
As a branch of the Cult of Angels, Yezidism places a special emphasis on the angels. The name Yezidi is derived from the Old and Middle Iranic term yazata or yezad, for ,1 angel," rendering it to mean "angelicans." Among these angels, the Yezidis include also Lucifer, who is referred to as Malak Tâwus ("Peacock Angel"). Far from being the prince of darkness and evil, Lucifer is of the same nature as other archangels, albeit with far more authority and power over worldly affairs. In fact, it is Malak Tâwus who creates the material world using the dismembered pieces of the original cosmic egg, or pearl, in which the Spirit once resided.
Despite the publication of (reportedly) all major Yezidi religious scriptures, and the availability of their translations, the most basic questions regarding the Yezidi cosmogony are left to speculation...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.