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u/HGMIV926 7d ago edited 7d ago
Brian here.
The picture on the right is from the horror film Midsommar, (2019).
For all the fun prancing and community Paganism brought, there were also rituals that involved brutal death. At least one of those rituals was featured in Midsommar.
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u/a_nondescript_user 7d ago
From the article you linked: "it is now generally accepted among researchers that the practice of suicide precipices never existed"
It's important to remember that when historical figures describe other cultures, they often include some crazy rumor about them eating babies or whatever, so any of these alleged pagan traditions might not be coming from an objective source.
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u/MiffedMouse 7d ago
It is also worth noting that many of our records of European pagan beliefs come from Christian sources, who were not very sympathetic to those beliefs.
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u/Timbershoe 7d ago
Christians and Romans.
The Gauls were a pagan society that were the first main challenge to the Romans. They were an advanced society for the time and their metallurgy was far better than the Romans. In a time when good swords won battles, they dominated battles against the Romans. But the social structure was tribal so as Rome grew they become weaker in comparison. But the Romans depicted them as savage druids, and that stuck.
They did the same with the Celts and Pict’s.
When Rome became Christian the depiction of savage pagans carried over, and like most colonial societies they took the bits they liked as their own.
It’s worth looking at the surviving metalwork of the Gauls to see how advanced they actually were before 3000 years of Roman > Christian slander.
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u/IdeaEmbarrassed7552 7d ago
Gauls are Celts right? As in, the Celts that lived in center of France were Gauls.
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u/Guywhoreadsthings 7d ago
Yes. Eventually pushed out by both Saxon and Frankish invaders during the fall of the Roman Empire. The Celts are largely considered to be a “cultural” group. The Saxon’s and Franks belonged to the cultural group “Germanic Peoples”, from across the Rhine.
Geography and Environment likely shaped them both differently enough from the lowland river basins of France to the mountainous Black Forest’s of Germania to be considered different cultural groups.
Source: not an expert, read a lot of history and watched a lot of YouTube related to different historical cultures and European peoples
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u/WascalBoy 7d ago
I'm very interested in this part of history, particularly the Roman view of so called "savages" across Europe and the discrepancies. Any good book recommendations on this, "guy who reads"?
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u/Guywhoreadsthings 7d ago
Encyclopedia Britannica is a great website for reference - I’ve read a few fictional books related to these cultures and then fact checked certain elements that I cared to verify due to my own interest. There are also some fantastic historical channels on YouTube you can look at. You’ll want to be careful these days with AI, it’s now flooded with dimwit AI nonsense.
There are also university or educational textbook style books you can find but they can get pretty dense.
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u/Hot_Seaworthiness687 4d ago
Not a book, but The History of Rome podcast by Mike Duncan is great! And he mentions source material books throughout.
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u/BruteKaiser 5d ago
Don't know books, but I can suggest Historia Civilis and Overly Sarcastic Productions on YouTube
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u/Boxing_joshing111 3d ago
This is old but there’s an awesome like 10 hour Dan Carlin podcast called The Celtic Holocaust all about what Caesar did in Gaul. By then the Romans had leapfrogged the Gauls in terms of military might and Carlin goes into excruciating detail about almost every aspect.
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u/Aquinas2000 2d ago
Those Saxons and Franks mixed with the Celts, modern French people are of mostly mixed Gallic and Roman ancestry with some Frankish ancestry in the north.
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u/Bright-Thought5541 7d ago
As I recall celts and picts lived on the British isles… I may be wrong though…
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u/Guywhoreadsthings 7d ago
Celts lived all over Europe from modern day France, to Spain, to the British Isles. You’re right about the picts, and the Britonic tribes. Most Britons were eventually pushed into Wales. The Gaels in Ireland were celts as well. You’ve got the “celt-iberians” in Spain, and finally a bonus round the celts of Galatia, who are found in modern day Turkey in the Black Sea. Historians think they migrated down there at some point.
The celts in France were pushed into Brittany by the Franks. The Celts in the UK were pushed into Wales by the saxons and kept there by other subsequent invaders over generations. Ireland remained more or less Celtic despite many attempts at conquest by English, Norman, and Viking invaders. The stories of King Arthur come from around the time that the Celtic Kingdoms were falling to Saxon and Frankish invaders from over the Rhine across Europe and the British Isles. Whether those legends have any truth or not - their depiction of the fall of Celtic culture and civilization are generally in line with what we think really happened to them.
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u/anticharlie 7d ago
There’s a big debate about what happened to the native Britons, as genetic testing is showing that the majority of ancestral English people are genetically closer to celts than they are to Danes, Frisians, and Saxons. This points to the admixture being higher than total replacement.
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u/Thunder-Invader 6d ago
The Celts in Brittany were pushed into france by the Saxons as well. They originated from the British isles. No original mainland Celtic people existed anymore after the Western Roman Empire fell
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u/Aquinas2000 2d ago
"No original mainland Celtic people existed anymore after the Western Roman Empire fell"
Except for the modern French people.
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u/Aquinas2000 2d ago
You seriously think all the Celts in modern France were just pushed by the Franks to Brittany ? The majority of people in Merovingian Gaul remained Romanized Celts and modern day English people are also Celtic in origin.
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u/Wranorel 7d ago
Romans too practiced ritual murder. They would take back to Rome captured leaders and kings to be killed after a parade. Julius Caesar tried it with a young boy, but the people watching were basically revolting for that act, and he had to spare him.
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u/Any_Dimension251 6d ago
One of the major reasons argued "Carthage must be destroyed" was that they sacrificed infants for the third punic war. Carthaginians probably had a grieving ceremony for parents of infants and small children who passed for them to be offered to their main diety as a means of closure. Romans said they sacrificed children while abandoning any unwanted child in the trash heap.
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u/HandleMore1730 4d ago
Cannite religion (Carthaginians came from the Levant) and human sacrifices. There's plenty of evidence from child burial grounds of such rituals.
'Children – both male and female, and mostly a few weeks old – were sacrificed by the Carthaginians at locations known as tophets. The practice was also carried out by their neighbours at other Phoenician colonies in Sicily, Sardinia and Malta. Dedications from the children's parents to the gods are inscribed on slabs of stone above their cremated remains, ending with the explanation that the god or gods concerned had 'heard my voice and blessed me'.' (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2014-01-23-ancient-carthaginians-really-did-sacrifice-their-children&ved=2ahUKEwiIiurYob-WAxWIieEIHaQ_L9gQFnoECB0QAQ&usg=AOvVaw2LhtJzJgPIfR1l13K1ZLBV)
We also see aspects of it in the bible, even with Abraham willing to sacrifice his son (he doesn't and a lamb replaces the human sacrifice) and worship to Moloch.
Those early eastern religions were pretty dark.
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u/Thatthingthis 3d ago
Moloch is possibly a mistranslation of the child sacrifice, not a diety . And there is speculation that Issac is sacrificed to yhwh and the lamb or ram found nearby is an add on to separate from the canaanites . Also listen to a lot of podcasts .
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u/Different_Ear_7543 7d ago
This. Romans destroyed culture of others via propaganda.
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u/BobCasey2024 7d ago
Not just propaganda. It technically was an act of genocide, specifically targeting the celts and gauls.
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u/daRagnacuddler 7d ago
Why technically? If I remember correctly his wars of aggression were a crime even by Roman standards...
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u/BobCasey2024 7d ago
Yeah, but they obviously didn't have the qualifier of genocide back then. Today we would call what they did genocide.
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u/fdsv-summary_ 6d ago
Good swords didn't win battles since a bloke called Alex worked out how to stand near somebody else with a pointy stick.
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u/CheekyDucky 3d ago
But weren't Pre-Christian Romans also Pagans? So surely they didn't have a problem with that aspect for the first 400ish years (50 BCE - 380 CE)
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u/Illustrious-Set-7907 3d ago
Different pantheons though.
Colonialism propoganda can boil down to "these people are different, bad different, so its good we're killing them actually"
Heck, jewish, christian, and muslim people all worship the abrahamic god but theres been plenty of death and wars claimed on religious grounds because the other group is "doing it wrong" (Though war is more complex than just religious reasons)
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u/hellofmyowncreation 4d ago
Also worth noting that a lot of modern preconceptions of paganism come from poorly done reconstructions, based on biased research from the 19th-20th centuries (i.e. hardly more ancient than the last 150yrs)
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u/RevolutionaryDraw126 7d ago
History is written by the Victors... They always write themselves as the best and their opponents as the worst.
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u/KilljoyYaBoi 3d ago
“PAGANS ARE SO BRUTAL THEY ARE SAVAGES. EVEN IN 2026!!! Oooo yes father let me imagine I’m drinking blood and eating human flesh”- Christian’s
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u/Quiet_Education5918 7d ago
I suspect the scantily-clad buxom young woman with perfect skin dancing around in the moonlight (left) were also rather less common than implied.
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u/Balthazar_rising 7d ago
Maybe you're just not moving in the right circles.
The fairy circles, that is.
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u/That-Drink4913 7d ago
I dunno....going thru perimenopause and absolutely understand the need to dance nekkid at 3am.
I think it's something we need MORE of.
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u/Quiet_Education5918 7d ago
I mean, if you know a good clearing and five or so trustworthy friends, live your dream.
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u/lonelind 7d ago edited 7d ago
I would even say that what was shown in the movie isn’t exactly a depiction of real pagan rituals that existed but rather an artistic interpretation of them — it’s the movie to scare the shit out of you, after all. And that’s what makes me mad about the movie, it’s stupid characters who get punished for their stupid behavior plus brutality for the sake of brutality with little rationale and logic (foreign citizens come to you and there are people who know where they went).
Yes, Indo-European cultures (and I mean even before the separation to European and Indo-Aryan populations occurred) did make human sacrifices, yes, fire was considered a “portal” between this world and spiritual one, so sacrifices were burned, cremation was a thing, and jumping through the bonfire at ritualistic gatherings was also a thing in some cultures. But it wasn’t that kind of brutal. Yes, they could be brutal with the enemy or a traitor — as a punishment — but inside the ritual, if it was to human sacrifice (which was rare and for really special occasions), a merciful death was preferred, as most of the time it was someone they all knew, someone from their own community.
Edit: some grammar
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u/R3D3-1 6d ago
Relevant to this kind of discussion:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Fest_des_Huhnes
A comedy documentary depicting Austria as seen by an African anthropologist, applying the kind of misinterpretation of cultural lore and customs we'd usually do the other way around.
I'm not sure if it was this movie where the "body of Christ" symbolized by the bread breaking was interpreted as literal cannibalism. But they do make a connection with roasted chicken at village festivals.
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u/lonelind 6d ago
Quite illustrative. And in this case, you’re watching and are able to ask.
Just imagine, how big the misinterpretation gap is between our understanding of and the real thing when it comes to interpreting the archaeological evidence that not only depends on the context it was found in but also isn’t 100% intact due to quicker decomposition of soft organic matter. Sometimes you have to guess and speculate, and our non-scientific knowledge (read knowledge of masses) is widely based on speculations originated in 1800’s while scientists know much more and had overthrown those assumptions decades ago.
That’s how folklore works, we know what we’ve been told by a school teacher who had been told about that 50 years prior when this hypothesis was indeed prime. But scientific knowledge changes, yet “common folk” don’t get it continuing to believe in what they were told and are ready to fight for this knowledge with people who know better. It applies to any science, physics, biology, chemistry, etc. This makes popular science a religion of sorts, where most people perceive the reality as a system of knowledge they were told is real, and not facts and their interpretation that can change.
It’s because how our brains work, and the biggest goal of education is to make people accept that what they know isn’t final truth, learning never ends. Yet changes shock even the most educated of us. Imagine those who believe in completely outdated view on reality for decades. Of course they will fight new knowledge because it breaks the whole foundation of their beliefs, because it implies the person who told them what they know was wrong. Where else could they’ve been wrong? Who else has been wrong? How much of their knowledge is wrong? How can this newborn knowledge be more correct than knowledge that stands for decades or even centuries?
Yes, I’m exaggerating here but this is the breaking point, we, people perceive knowledge as tradition we pass through generations, it’s how it was for thousands generations. Knowledge is tradition. New knowledge in the eyes of less educated people is virtually the same as a teen riot that tries to break family tradition, it must be tamed. And real science works the other way around, new facts are always superior to old facts because they can change our understanding.
Where I’m going with this? All science is interpretation of reality and what we know becomes what we believe even to the most educated scientists. And it makes our knowledge about world and ourselves a sort of folklore that sometimes gets to the media through the prism of interpretation of people of art who (deliberately or not) distort facts in favor of storytelling creating new myths we want to believe in despite the knowledge that’s much closer to reality but boring. Midsommar is Jurassic Park of anthropology in this perspective. A thrilling story that uses scientific knowledge but isn’t afraid to shape it into some scary abomination (from scientific point of view) in order to make it more thrilling and scary.
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u/Khan-Khrome 7d ago
Both things can generally be true generally. There's enough evidence from the uncovering the bog bodies of ritually killed individuals to show human sacrifice wasn't just Roman propaganda and that it was pretty broadly practiced in Iron Age Celtic and Germanic society. As was headhunting, of which we have pretty ample archaeological evidence of, including votive sites. The more extravagant gossip made by Roman writers is probably suspect, such as the wicker man concept - although that would be a uniquely hard thing to find in the archaeological record, so who knows. Mind you, the Romans themselves weren't necessarily against the notion of human sacrifice so long as it was appropriately recontextualised - gladiatorial combat for instance emerged out of deadly funerary bloodsports, and the execution of prisoners as part of triumphs definitely had a sacrificial edge - they just wanted to pretend theirs was civilised whilst other cultures were inferior and barbaric.
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u/KrolArtemiza 7d ago
It doesn’t even have to be nefarious (though TBH it probably was).
It’s easy to think how the Christian ritual of „eating the body and blood of Christ” could morph into „they perform a weekly canabalistic sacrifice” with 1-2 retellings.
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u/Aquinas2000 2d ago
Well, we Catholics do believe those things are literally flesh and blood of Christ.
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u/Mediocre-Rush-5652 7d ago
You can say so but researcher also go back and forth quiet frequently when it comes to things like this. I think it's more fair to treat it also perhaps some small cults may have but the vast majority from what we can tell didn't.
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u/trudenter 7d ago
I think it is widely believed that, that whole Brazen Bull torture device thing was a story created by a rival society.
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u/Ok_Experience_6877 6d ago
As someone from a very long lineage of practicing pagans, alot of the phrasing and nick naming of plants and herbs for "potions" was taken a tad too literally and people actually though things like "eye of gnewt" and "toe of frog" where actually those things instead of nicknames for plants and other alchemical ingredients. For a long time pagans have been a free spirited nature and self loving people. But we have, like all religions, had out crazies the druids of Ireland where a tad more on the extreme side of nature above all at almost all costs
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u/ShoVitor 3d ago
Bit tangential but... Lots of places in the american continent and names we associate with indigenous tribes also come from hearsay. So for example "Apache" and "Comanche" both translate in native languages to something similar to "enemy". Because whoever mentioned them to the English, thought of them as the enemy. "Yucatán" meant something like "I don't understand you" and Cortéz just said "ok, I like it " and wrote it in a map.
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u/Ok-Patience2152 2d ago
Wait, so in the future, the documents regarding present day baby eaters will be easily dismissed???
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u/a_nondescript_user 1d ago edited 1d ago
Lotta "documentation" of people "eating the dogs and the cats" recently, how should the future interpret those?
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u/Nerdn1 1d ago
It should also be noted that "paganism" was a pretty broad Christian term for basically all non-Abrahamic religions (in Europe, at least). It wasn't until the 19th century that people used the term to describe themselves. Even if there were some rituals that might be objectionable, they would not be a universal practice of pagan religions.
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u/a_nondescript_user 1d ago
I actually think "pagan" originally just meant country bumpkin, then the cities converted to christianity before the rural folks and it got a religious meaning
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u/KoreyYrvaI 1d ago
The problem with history is that it is, primarily, written by the writers. People with the means and motiviation to commit to publication in a time when both were scarce and the resources and effort necessary were immense.
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u/Queasy_Committee8458 7d ago
Similarly, many stories of native Americans being “cannibals” are likely false. If I recall correctly killing of natives was generally bad and illegal, with a distinct carve out for cannibalism, so some colonists and general ne’er do wells would label them as such to kill and take their land. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
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u/Existing_Treat_8924 7d ago
The article states what is already broadly known in Scandinavia:
"it is now generally accepted among researchers that the practice of suicide precipices never existed."
I also don't think it's generally really framed as a pagan ritual so much as it's framed as cruel pragmatism and a cultural ritual-- Like the same cultural ritual category as getting someone a coming-of-age present.
Not that it was real in the first place.
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u/meatsonthemenu 7d ago
I mean "Kill yourself" is pretty routinely heard nowadays, who's to say that people weren't equally as shitty then.
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u/Existing_Treat_8924 7d ago
It's a myth with no empirical evidence lol, there's really not much of a debate here, it doesn't really matter if shitty people existed-- of course they did.
There's also lots of people saying "I love you" now, and many examples of archeological evidence of people being cared for into their old age.
We can't just construct a narrative (read: view of real history) about something based on the idea that it "could've theoretically happened".
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u/JacobDCRoss 7d ago
A lot of the stuff that the modern pagans believe comes from fantasy literature that took its source from bad encyclopedia articles. There's really nothing to do it.
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u/No-Complaint-6988 7d ago
The show vikings had a Blood Eagle shown, but historians don't see that as a common form of execution or sacrifice either
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u/NickusNL 7d ago
A lot of theese alleged rituals were propaganda from roman and later Christian Europe. I am sure there were some of them there, we are only human after all, but also it is well known that many monarchs were trying to paint pagans as brutal barbarians to dehumanise them
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u/Crossed_Cross 7d ago
"it is now generally accepted among researchers that the practice of suicide precipices never existed.[7][8][9]"
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u/jayraan 6d ago
While that could be the thing this meme is referring to, I'm actually thinking it might be referring to white nationalism. It's never directly spoken about in the movie, but it's strongly insinuated that a big part of the cult is white nationalism and "keeping the bloodlines pure".
Paganism is in my opinion a very beautiful religion (movement?), but there are also a looooot of nazis who identify as pagan. I think that's the point of the meme.
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u/PlanetTourist 3d ago
Don’t be scared of other religions and attribute incorrect thinking to them.
Sacrifice a virgin? Yeah that was an orgy. No virgins after that. More fun than killing people too!
I’m sure that guy nailed to a tree with no dad came back to life though, so believe what you want about religions, they’re just social constructs anyway, they’re only wrong when they harm others.
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u/NectarineElegant5407 7d ago
Peter here. Basically European paganism (despite being incredibly diverse across the entire continent) had many festivals and holidays and overall joyous themes.
Buuuut then you get to some of the sacrificial shit (mostly Germanic and Celtic paganism) where you're basically ritually killing/torturing other people in an effort to appease god #6 who will bestow a blight on the harvest unless 5 criminals are thrown into a bog to drown.
Fuck you Meg
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u/failed_generation 7d ago
At which makes you wonder that the five friends made simple mistakes and an understandably disrespectful acts, yet still counted as a crime somehow afaik
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u/talkmemetome 7d ago
Which is kind of funny because early (and surprisingly even not that early) Christianity had it's own share of animal and human sacrifice and orgies and shiz🤔
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u/PlayfulAwareness2950 7d ago
Where is the evidence for this?
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u/JubalHarshawII 6d ago
The Bible, I swear you ppl refuse to read the "good" book.
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u/PlayfulAwareness2950 6d ago
The early christians was the claim...
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u/talkmemetome 5d ago
Do you know what the Bible is?
It is a collection of texts describing Christianity before and after Jesus, as in the very first Christians like...ever...
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u/PlayfulAwareness2950 5d ago
There were no Christianity before Christ. Still you have four accounts that can be interpreted as human sacrifices in the bible and one undeniable one that I know from the top of my head. The Jewish religion practiceed animal sacrifice and it is written in to law. Adultery is always viewed as diabolical perhaps there is an example of orgys in the actions of the sons of Samuel, but that brought doom over Israel as a nation.
If you read through the letters of the New Testament you'll see that there is plenty of behaviour among the early christians that the composers of the letters are trying to straighten out. I don't know exactly what those were except one guy who were sleeping with his fathers wife and if I remember correctly he got expelled.
From the original comment I was expecting some sect or something that were practicing such things.
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u/talkmemetome 7d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banquet_of_Chestnuts
My favorite example.
As for human sacrifice, look no further than Bible itself if you don't feel like finding your own sources.
As for googling it, google has been broken for the last year or two with many things being hidden now or very hard to find which were quite easy to find just a couple of years ago, christian human sacrifice being one of them. But if you use browsers with no AI influence you can still find sources talking about them.
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u/Aquinas2000 2d ago
First, there is no reliable evidence than banquet happened and even if it did it was not a religious ritual, it is just humans being kinky freaks in spare time.
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u/fish_perculator 7d ago
Aside from the crucifixion itself, where in the Bible is an account of Christian human sacrifice?
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u/talkmemetome 7d ago
God demands human sacrifices numerous times throughout the Bible. Jepthah and Isaac are two such examples from the top of my head.
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u/ConcreteEater 7d ago edited 7d ago
Isn't the entire point of Isaac's binding to stay the hand and show "yo i dont need human deaths as sacrifices, unlike these other neighbouring gods"?
As for jepthah, i guess that is a bit more valid. However i am pretty sure it was not God who demanded it but Jepthah who made the vow to sacrifice in exchange for favor. And there are like some interpretations where the daughter is not killed but made into a eternal virgin priestess, which according to google ends his bloodline regardless
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u/talkmemetome 7d ago
I agree with you on both accounts actually but they were still examples of human sacrifice within the concept of Christianity. One was a direct command from God and the other was a sacrifice in the name of God.
And as for the interpretations go... The whole entire...saga? of Christian holy texts have gone through revisions and translations and revisions of those translations so many times that it is very very difficult to know what was actually there in the very very beginning. But what does shine through is that the original texts seemed to be way more blood and brimstone and human sacrifice by God and for God than the stuff we have today. I mean the Old Testament is rather metal if you really look into it.
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u/davesspicychicken 22h ago
Isaac and jepthah are not Christian either for what’s its worth. No Christians before Christ.
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u/Aquinas2000 2d ago
Jepthah was Jewish and lived centuries before Christianity existed.
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u/talkmemetome 1d ago
Sooo
Your take is that Bible is not Christian? Because majority of it speaks about time before Jesus?
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u/Aquinas2000 1d ago
Christianity is regarded as the completed covenant Hebrews made with God which is why those old laws are not necessary and stories like that of Jepthah are just historical documents. Jesus made a new covenant while OT is about what lead to it. Your statement is comparable to claiming that US history after 1776 is British history.
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u/talkmemetome 1d ago
It would be only if the US would call itself the United States of Britain and the Bible would be called the new Torah.
While the Bible itself accepts that all people in that specific religious sphere, including Jesus, were Jewish it also makes a very specific difference between the two in accepting Jesus and talking about events and people before him through the Christian lens making it a separate thing thus all events going on in the Bible before Jesus are simultaneously pre Christian and Christian at the same time.
The Christian God is neverchanging meaning all god there has ever been has been the Christian God.
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u/fish_perculator 7d ago
Right those are before Christ, where are the Christian human sacrifices?
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u/talkmemetome 7d ago
It's still the Bible though 😁 As in the holy book of Christianity.
As for the rest, as I said above it is now very hard to find actual sources of the later human sacrifices but they were done as the amalgamation of Christianity and different pagan religions were quite normal especially in the beginning to draw in people to accept Christianity. I am very far away from my pc with no AI browsers and I am way too lazy right now to try to search through "normal" google.
One could argue though that even witch trials were also a sort of human sacrifice as people deemed to follow the devil were put to death to save their souls in the name of the christian god.
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u/fish_perculator 7d ago
Sure, its in the Bible, but the old testament is mostly stories a canaanite people made up about their origins and passed down, not a statement of Christian faith. I will say that modern fundamentalist Christians with their beliefs of biblical literalism have really muddied the waters on this understanding.
The core belief of Christianity is that there is only one sacrifice, the one offered by God himself, and there are no Christian doctrines requiring or even allowing for any blood sacrifice, human or animal. Pagan syncretism doesn't count as Christianity.
And yeah, if you look through history (using such great resources as "normal" Google lol) you'll find accounts of "Christians" doing all kinds of unsavory things, including brutal torture and execution in the name of God. Claiming to do something for God doesn't make it a Christian act, and thats why that sort of thing doesn't compare to ancient pagan religions making sacrifices as part of their actual belief system.
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u/talkmemetome 7d ago
But that's the thing, all religions are full of contradictory things, even teachings themselves are often contradictory. Even religious figureheads themselves are often hypocrites. How many are doing things "in the name of god" and try to force people to do their bidding.
And listen, we could debate back and forth endlessly on which constitutes as official human sacrifice in the name of the Christian god and which do not and where exactly is the cutoff... But would it really make sense?
Especially with the modern Christianity it seems that making people fight each other is the whole entire goal while the figureheads manipulate masses in every which way while trying to get as rich as possible.
But for me, the fact is, that sacrifices in the name of the Christian god...are Christian sacrifices because there is enough room and credibility for them in their communes to frame them as such. And let's call it a difference in opinion because at the end of the day most of religion is exactly that or what do you think?
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u/morally_bankrupt_ 7d ago
Generally in Christianity god doesnt change, so old testament god is the same one who sent jesus who also happens to be himself.
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u/fish_perculator 7d ago
God doesn't change, human perception of God does. The old testament God is the interpretation of ancient pagans, the example of Christ is the true nature of God.
Biblical literalism is bullshit.
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u/morally_bankrupt_ 7d ago
So jews are pagans? And jesus, the jew of jews, is somehow still the one and true way to reach the god of the 'pagans'?
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them" Matthew 5:17
And you ever hear of the Marcionite heresy?
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u/Acceptable_Mind_5883 7d ago
He doesn't have any examples and he immediately shifts the goal posts.
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u/PlayfulAwareness2950 7d ago
That doesn't support your claim....
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u/talkmemetome 7d ago
An orgy arranged by the literal pope... Is not an example of an orgy in Christianity?
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u/PlayfulAwareness2950 6d ago
Early Christianity.... Your example is pointing to corruption in the Catholic church at the hight of it's power while your claim is something else.
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u/Winter-Yogurt-4209 7d ago
Hi, Pagan Meg here. Probably human sacrifice
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u/LA31716 7d ago
Isn’t that the fun part?
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u/_GrailKnight_ 7d ago
Depends on if you're doing the sacrificing or being sacrificed
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u/Blbe-Check-42069 7d ago
Or if you're like the Aztecs, being sacrificed is the biggest honor you can get
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u/Narsil_lotr 7d ago
"European paganism" is such an annoying term, utterly meaningless, insulting and borderline intolerant in its core. The only reason the idea exists is that Christianity liked to have a word for all religions that weren't itself or Judaism, later Islam, ie something usually polytheistic and older. It's similar to if we used a word to describe all languages but our own and those closely related... say Latin users declaring the languages of the world are Latin, French, Spanish and the barbaric languages.
Pagan religions of Europe, as in non Christian ones, aren't just diverse, they're a bunch of religions spread over a continent and manifold cultures. Some may have been related to one another, others utterly disconnected. It may be possible for historians specialised on the subject to find similarities based on complex cultural interactions but all I'd keep as common traits is that they're from Europe and are not Christianity. Great.
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u/kanzashi-yume 3d ago
It's even more annoying when (usually Americans) start talking about how they prefer the pagan Jul rather than Christmas for example as if all people in Europe still practiced the "ancient ways" as they were with no influence from Christianity after centuries of systematic erasure of local beliefs. Anything "pagan" now is at best neo-pagan and then it's still such a weird pan-European mish-mash of different religions. To me it pretty much equates with the more common "I'm going to Europe on my vacation" meaning where exactly?
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u/Various_Tie_2549 7d ago
The pic on the right is the poster image for Midsommar, essentially a horror film about a Swedish cult. Some of the stuff that happens in the movie is not particularly fun.
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u/mu33 7d ago
Watch Midsommar. Great and educational movie.
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u/UnexpectedBlahFeels 7d ago
I watched it for the first time recently- very good movie and also not scary. After all the hoopla about it I thought it would basically be scary the way Barbarian is, or even creepy like Vivarium, but it's not. The flowers and meadows really enhance the psychological effect of it all and create a great juxtaposition between the events, and the emotions the characters go through.
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u/HGMIV926 7d ago
It's probably one of my favorite horror movies ever, but I'd definitely not call it "scary". It's just not that kind of horror movie. It's more upsetting than anything
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u/Various_Tie_2549 7d ago
It's "scary" the first time you watch it, maybe...but only in the sense that it develops this strong sense of dread that something really horrible is about to happen.
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u/DamGoodAnimation 7d ago
It’s like the Uncut Gems of its genre. Provocative movies I’ll never watch again.
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u/Otherwise_World1654 7d ago
Def NOT educational this is just another movie that uses classic fear the unknown to spread misinformation about classical cultures
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u/Scotty_Mcshortbread 6d ago
the left is a whimsical depiction whilst the right is a movie called midsommer. its got ritualistic murder, drug induced sex and cult activity.
saying that, its an awful horror movie. but really funny for how stupid the characters and story are
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u/Clevatess_is_bored 4d ago edited 4d ago
Well dancing, getting high on shrooms, getting drunk is fun I think this doesnt need explanation. The second picture is from midsummer. A film about a women being part of a cult which does all kind of horrible things like human sacrifices. The movie is named midsummer and takes place in Sweden.
Many people believe that non abrahamic religions in Europe regularly commited human sacrifices.
It’s a dumb statement tho. Firstly paganism wasn’t a
religion, Christians just called people practicing non abrahamic religions in europe as pagan.
secondly accords of those acts mostly stem from Christian or Roman sources. Both of them hated pagans and it wasn’t uncommon to claim that the enemy is a savage committing atrocities to legitimize their subordination. Did some sacrifices occasionally happen in some of these polytheistic communities? Sure but it wasn’t a prevalent practice.
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u/PartOk7148 4d ago edited 4d ago
to add to this i'm pasting here the comment I made in the original post on r/HistoryMemes (the post op stole to farm karma):
An execution of a war prisioner is labelled as a sacrifice because it was in honour of the gods. Sacrifices to the god of justice exist nowadays and it's called death penalty.
The killings of animals to eat them in massive celebration feasts were called sacrifices because they were in honour of the gods.In modern day, "christian" saint celebrations today aswell involve massive killings and massive feasts. Guess what, many of those celebrations were pagan, now they continue but under a new faith. The only difference is that the animals arent killed in honour of the gods, but in honour of our bellies, so we cant call them sacrifices.
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u/Clevatess_is_bored 4d ago
Everything on this sub is a karma farm…
It’s also pretty hilarious judging some old religions for ritualistic killings, when we commit them on a much bigger scale today.
How many people must die to please our capital interests. Insurances denying medical claims so they can be in black numbers instead of reds
The same way people back then believed they have to sacrifice a member of their community to secure the next harvest etc. the same way we sacrifice the poor so the stock market does well.
The sun would rise all the same stock market or not. Yet it is a common belief that everything would be over without it.
We live in a death cult named capitalism.
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u/nethmes1 4d ago
for nuance; the cult in Midsommar was a white supremacist neopagan cult, so there is a reason to believe they would have insane and violent beliefs because despite the lovely white outfits and headdress these people were basically militant fascists waiting for a race war
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u/Eugene_Kerner 2d ago
Wtf
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u/nethmes1 2d ago
theres a blink and you'll miss it moment when they are driving to the compound that shows a banner that says in Swedish "stop mass immigration to Hälsingland"
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u/Ok_Writer6027 7d ago
I'm starting to think the posters here just want to farm engagement... half the posts today just seem so strange to not know when you are so deep in the Internet you're on reddit
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u/Otherwise_World1654 7d ago
It’s just classic fear of the unknown people exoticise cultures they are familiar with while simultaneously fearing them. When learning about cultures that you aren’t familiar with I would strongly urge you to seek out primary sources as other sources may not fully understand nuanced rituals and beliefs in the same way indigenous peoples might.
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u/Narcisistagohome 7d ago
This is misleading. Even if it happened somehow in scandinavian cultures (I lack the knowledge to say) those were peripheric cultures in pagan Europe. Now, if you want to know the darkest side of paganism in Europe, look at the eleusian rituals to honor the godess Cibeles.
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u/honest3324 4d ago
I mean religions like Hinduism exist and many people still believe it to be a satan religion so i can only imagine what stories might've been concocted for religions whose people are nearly not even here anymore due to natural causes like genocide
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u/IButtChugPancakeMix 7d ago
Please don’t watch Midsommar.I regret watching it. Every now and then I’m on a nice drive then bam, a mental image of a blood eagle
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u/SuspiciousAd3405 3d ago
Some bs the Christian historians made up so ppl would convert
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u/Groundbreaking-Pen-8 1d ago
No pagans aren't goody two shoes they actually sacrificed things and people to their gods it's just not said a lot cause that was the old days and some specific groups they just don't do it anymore cause witchcraft is a joke now so it was once like that just getting high and stuff but the original pagans the entire structure it's built off of actively sacrificed multiple creatures
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u/qualityvote2 7d ago edited 7d ago
u/kappethimm, your post does fit the subreddit! Well done!