Even the sanest christian is still anti-European. Most of them would literally slaughter White Pagans for not praying to a jewish literary character. And they did just that back in the day. Not effectively though considering that peasantry (99% of the population) stayed true to the ancestral faith (hence the term pagan).

Need someone with photoshop skills. Nothing too challenging, just a meme picture to make.

The "gods are metaphors" interpretation makes divinity into something abstract and often straight up mathematical. This is where you get all kinds of autism about sacred geometry, which often ends up looking kind of Islamic. The gods are not triangles or equations.

You can't push this abstract interpretation of the gods back further than about the 6th century BCE in Europe. But you can trace the "gods are literally real" interpretation back as far as myth itself. Because our forefathers all believed this.

@folkishworldview

Hear me out. I think historical accuracy is a beautiful thing, but not everything has to be a documentary. If it's fiction then a horned-helmet, biker viking is not necessarily bad. I know a guy who was drawn to Paganism due to pure aesthetics, but later became a real, pious and knowledgeable practitioner.

Ancient Greek philosophy and it’s role in the downfall of traditional belief is a topic I sporadically return to. Now’s the time to explore it again, but this time with some assistance. I will turn to good old Nietzsche to be the guide and provide some commentary to his words.

In his analysis of pre-platonic philosophers Nietzsche goes over many different thinkers. We will focus on the ones who were precursors to christianity.

Well, how did he [Heraclitus] view the religious excitement of his times? In Dionysian excitement he saw only an invitation to ill-bred drives by way of hot-blooded festivals of desire. He turns against the existing ceremony of expiation: “When defiled they purify themselves with blood, as though one who had stepped into filth were to wash himself with filth.”

He attacks worship of images: “They pray to images, much as if they were to talk to houses; for they do not know what gods and heroes are.” Yet he reserves a special hatred for the creators of popular mythology, Homer and Hesiod. “Homer deserved to be chased out of the lists and beaten with rods, and Archilochus likewise.”

Commentary

Heraclitus was one of the first anti-Pagan heretics of the Ancient world. He attacked both the rituals and belief of his own people. He (much like other heretics) also attacked Homer and Hesiod, the educators of Greece who presented a traditional worldview where theology was not smeared with anti-Pagan philosophy.
Obviously Heraclitus had great influence on christians (e.g. do not worship images), but he wasn’t the only one.

We do not know much about Xenophanes. He was banned from his father city and lived in Zancle [in Sicily], Catana, and Elea.
His last primary work was On Nature, in which he fought against the opinions of Thales (whom he admired as an astronomer) and Pythagoras, as well as those of Epimenides.
His primary struggle, however, was directed against Homer and Hesiod; in this regard we are shown his relation to the religio-ethical movement of his century. He disputes the polytheistic folk beliefs, an incredible struggle that led to his exile.

Commentary

I already wrote a lot on Xenophanes, an exiled heretic who influenced Socrates (who was executed for heresy) and through him (and plato) all christians and even other abrahamics. For example, Xenophanes is very respected in Islam generally seen as somewhat of a proto-prophet of Allah. Islamic anti-anthropomorphism owes more to heretics like Heraclitus, Xenophanes and Socrates than any Divine Inspiration muslims think they had.

He noticed that everyone imagines the gods like themselves:
Negroes [see them as] black and flat-nosed; Thracians, blue eyed and red
haired.

His main propositions include the following:
One god, greatest among gods and men, in no way similar to mortals either in body or in thought.

Xenophanes struggles for a mythical, general notion of nature.
It is not some doctrine of an (im)personal God existing beyond the world, which would be some pure spirit; rather, the entire dichotomy between spirit and matter, deity and world, is absent here. He resolves the identification of God and man in order to equate God and nature. In this regard he leads a heightened ethical consciousness that seeks to distance all things human and unworthy from the gods; we are shown here a struggle against what is specifically Hellenic, as in his other ethical notions.

What naturally comes into consideration here, then, is not Xenophanes as a philosopher but rather his struggle [Kampf] against polytheism…

Commentary

"Struggle against what is specifically Hellenic", "Struggle against polytheism". In these words we can summarize Xenophanes. Notice that Nietzsche is somewhat impressed with the heretic and paints him as a person who wanted to purify the religion of his people. As a result he just took the people out of it. While Nietzsche claims that Xenophanes’ god is not akin to christian ganz andere (impersonal spirit) I disagree. Blurring of spirit and matter leads to divine becoming diluted to the point where everything is god and as a result nothing truly is. As Pagans we can point at our Gods and call them Gods, then point at, say, a park bench and call it a park bench. In pantheistic-monotheistic blur such separation of Gods and not Gods is impossible.

In Pagan theology the world is divine because it was shaped by the Gods and bears their marks. It is occupied by the Gods, but not every single place is divine. A few are, like temples or groves.

Christians simply remove the god placing him beyond the real world which they see as profane and lowly. Xenophanes dilutes the Gods into nothing. Essentially in his theology everything you can call is divine. The latter goes against Hellenic tradition he was born in which is why Xenophanes had no place to call home for most of his life. When there’s no longer particular deities, but one abstract divine power which exists everywhere and nowhere in particular there’s no Paganism.

Disregarding the mytho-poetical tradition of his people as nonsense only a peasant could believe the heretic tries to invents some secret truth, a code to crack. Being the only judge of his own effort the heretic is always successful and then proceeds to lead a life of preaching. The latter mostly falls on deaf ears, but some (naive youth) are corrupted. The heresy grows and gains attention. This leads to the leader being exiled or killed. A belated response which only helps the heretic’s movement grow by giving it a martyr.

Now. Whose life I’ve just described? Jesus’? Yes. Socrates’? Yes. Heraclitus’? Yes (though he was smart enough to exile himself and lived as a homeless recluse). Xenophanes’? Yes.

The pattern fits almost all Axial Age subverters. Though some of them were royalty like Heliogabalus and Akhenaten, they still ended up slapped back by the people (read what his own guard did to Elagabalus for being a proto-christian troon).

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Happy father’s day to all Pagan dads