I Am Pagan [Paganism]

In northern European languages and cosmologies (Norse, Celtic, Germanic) the Moon is actually MALE and the Sun is FEMALE. But I still see Neopagans and New Agers who say they practice Celtic religion referring to the Moon as 'she' and the Sun as 'he' when even a brief bit of research will show that is not the case at all. Please, stop just cramming distinct traditions into a pseudo-Wiccan format that doesn't really fit or represent the religion's actual beliefs and practices. Just read a book written by a real scholar. I've done it before. I swear it won't hurt you. It's actually kind of fun to learn new things!

Okay, rant over. I feel better now, thank Saga.

But seriously, I've noticed a certain aversion to research in the Pagan community that just blows my mind. The Elder Pagans, the people we are ostensibly emulating, held learning and retention of information in very high regard. Druids were lauded for their meticulous memory and were living stores of religious, legal, and genealogical information. Norse skalds were looked at in a very similar way. We should be striving to regain that, not focusing on doing the least amount of reading possible.

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Qwerty14

Yeah it is always interesting to see how different cultures give gender to things. In most cultures it seems that the sun is considered a man and the moon a woman. But in some places the sun and moon are the same gender and in most Germanic/Celtic places the sun is a woman and the moon is a man.

MidsouthGuy · 31-35, M

@Qwerty14 Actually, it's more common to see the Moon as male and Sun as female.

Qwerty14

@MidsouthGuy Would you like to back that up? Because Most of Europe, the middle East, the Americas and Africa have the sun as a man and the moon as a woman. China has them both as men and Japan has them both as women. What part of the world is really left?

MidsouthGuy · 31-35, M

@Qwerty14 Celtic cultures (which includes Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, the Isle of Man, Brittany and Gaul) Germanic cultures (which is a huge cultural group, so please don't make me spend half an hour typing them all out) Norse, Lithuanians, Latvians all consider the Sun female and Moon male, so that's most of Europe right there. The Hittites along with other Anatolian peoples and the Canaanites believed the Sun female and Moon male, while Egypt considered both Sun and Moon male, as did the Mesopotamians. Ay Ata is a Turkic Moon God and Gun Ana a Turkic Sun Goddess. So there goes the Near East too. Japan actually has a Sun Goddess (Amaterasu) who is the primary deity of the Shinto pantheon, and a Moon God (Tsukiyomi-no-mikoto). Chandra is a lunar God in Hinduism, which makes up a HUGE portion of the worlds population. There are two Chinese Sun Goddesses that I know of, and likely more. Most Lunar deities in Polynesia and Oceania are regarded as male. So That's a big chunk of Asia. I am willing to admit I can't speak for the Americas, although I am aware that in Nahua religion the Sun is male and Moon is female.

There you go, I backed it up. :D

Qwerty14

@MidsouthGuy You could have just said half of Europe. I'll admit I was wrong about Japan. I must have misread it. But India and China have sun and moon gods. Either way most of the world still has a male sun.

MidsouthGuy · 31-35, M

@Qwerty14 India and China have numerous local solar and lunar deities both male and female. So lets go with half the world.

Qwerty14

@MidsouthGuy Anything to make this boring convo end lol I mean they're all stupid anyhow as neither the moon or sun are deities at all.

MidsouthGuy · 31-35, M

@Qwerty14 Not to you, but to over a billion people they are.

Qwerty14

@MidsouthGuy Yeah but eventually they'll open a science text book and find out the moon is a rock and the sun is a ball of hydrogen

MidsouthGuy · 31-35, M

@Qwerty14 I'm a practicing Polytheist and I see no contradiction in the existence of solar and lunar deities and the fact that the sun is a star and the moon is a ball of rock.

Qwerty14

@MidsouthGuy Why do you feel gods have gender at all? Kinda curious. See with a montheist it doesn't matter. God is god. No man or woman. But with polytheists they humanise their gods. They say there are men and women and they have babies etc

MidsouthGuy · 31-35, M

@Qwerty14 We have spirit-workers (what other people call shamans) and they speak to the Gods and Goddesses, who present themselves as male or female and as having familial bonds of parents, children, and siblings. When I talk about deities having gender or relation, I refer only to specific ones. Ingvi always shows Himself as male, speaks of Njord as His father and treats Frejya as His sister. Sometimes He is an effeminate male, but He still takes the form of a man. And before you or anyone else asks, no, spirit-workers don't use sacred mushrooms or any of that other hippie crap.

Qwerty14

@MidsouthGuy Of course not. Drugs would make it harder to make this shit up lol

MidsouthGuy · 31-35, M

@Qwerty14 I'm not making it up. What possible benefit do I receive from lying about this? To look cool? I'm not some fourteen year old goth trying to bum cigarettes, I'm a functioning adult with a job and bills to pay who practices a minority religion. The only thing I'm getting from this is a small amount of entertainment to help keep me sane during a bout of pretty severe insomnia.

Qwerty14

@MidsouthGuy Me too. I appreciate you keeping me entertained.

MidsouthGuy · 31-35, M

@Qwerty14 You're welcome. And thanks for not calling me stupid or resorting to profanity. People tend to think of Polytheism as primitive or crude, but polytheistic cultures have thousands of years of culture, art, science, theology, and philosophy that they've given to the world. I do my best to show we are not limited to brutishness and savagery, but people don't like to listen.

Qwerty14

@MidsouthGuy Nothing wrong with polytheism. Plus every country has their own versions of em. No one can act like their culture didn't have em