The truth about deities

[Haseo]

Re: The truth about deities

This reminds me of a youtube video I watched exploring the cultural references in video games. Specifically the summons of Final Fantasy (Ifrit being one, and not depicted very well in the game compared to the real life reference). A little off topic, but it had some good info about deities from other cultures that I didnt know (Like Bahamut who I always thought of as a dragon with pewpew mouth lazers 0.o). As far as your beliefs, I respect your opinion but I believe my God, your God, And all Gods ever worshiped by humans are real and all part of the same energy that everyone and everything is part of. By worship, I believe we draw the energies to us in the form of whatever deity we connect our specific desires to. In a way, you can say I believe your God, is my God, is one God.

[Tylluan Penry]

Re: The truth about deities

Sorry to be pedantic but I think the thread has been wrongly titled. This is Your truth about deities. Not THE truth about them.

And certainly not mine.

[Oshii]

Re: The truth about deities

Kind of a rude way to come to a forum, if you ask me... which you didn't, but you also didn't ask us if we wanted your opinion right off the bat (to the OP).

[Questfortruth]

Re: The truth about deities

Those 7 things you mentioned about contacting the Jinn, work for the Jinn. As concerning other paths - it works a lot more differently. Jinn isn't a god as far as I understand. So it can't be compared with the deities we worship.

If you do not make sacrifices whether small or big, you do not light candles, you do not tie knots, you do not need an item belonging to an individual when making supplication and/or you don't need the persons name and mothers name. And if you are only calling upon a said deity, then most likely you're not working with or calling upon what we would refer to as the Jinn.

No doubt however that one or two of you reading this post will know exactly what I'm talking about.

Point one,you are telling us your beliefs,and then it seems insisting that only yourself understand the nature of deities,guided by a book with no more credence than the bible,or another book written by humans.

Second, You tell us ALL the deities we decide to follow are liars and demons or Jinn as you say. BUT,all we have is your belief on these matters,and you quote from a book that has nothing to do with our beliefs.

This forum is a mixed bag of beliefs,and I believe proselytizing(the attempt to convert someone) might be considered a sin in Islam because people have been jailed for doing that in Muslim country's.

Interesting that you do not find it wrong to try and convert anothers belief,but it is a bad thing if others try this on you....

All I did was tell you about the Jinn, mentioned a few of their characteristics and without knowing what every single one of you believes asked you to compare it to some of the deities you worship and your beliefs about those deities. This was the point of my post. In Islam we believe there are some who openly worship the Jinn and some who worship them without knowing who they're worshipping.

I'm really not trying to convert any of you, as a Muslim it's our duty to learn. I've done some reading about certain pagan belief systems and to me it seemed far too much in line with the Islamic concept of the Jinn. I'm here to share that with you and I let you come to your own conclusions. I'm not recruiting you into anything.

This reminds me of a youtube video I watched exploring the cultural references in video games. Specifically the summons of Final Fantasy (Ifrit being one, and not depicted very well in the game compared to the real life reference). A little off topic, but it had some good info about deities from other cultures that I didnt know (Like Bahamut who I always thought of as a dragon with pewpew mouth lazers 0.o). As far as your beliefs, I respect your opinion but I believe my God, your God, And all Gods ever worshiped by humans are real and all part of the same energy that everyone and everything is part of. By worship, I believe we draw the energies to us in the form of whatever deity we connect our specific desires to. In a way, you can say I believe your God, is my God, is one God.

Lol yes and there are references outside of video games too. Genie from Alladin anyone? The singular for Jinn is Jinnie. Hence the whole genie in a bottle three wishes ordeal.

Kind of a rude way to come to a forum, if you ask me... which you didn't, but you also didn't ask us if we wanted your opinion right off the bat (to the OP).

Sorry it was not my intention to come off as rude. I'm merely comparing what I'm seeing to the Islamic concept of the Jinn. Go to an Arab magician, in a place like Morocco (Morocco is the black magic hub of the Arab world) pay him 20 dinar and just like that you have a brand new lover, a brand new job, a new position in your community etc. They're also the first to speak to you about the Jinn and their practices seem to be very much in line with many of the practices which worship deities.

Again I'm sorry if I'm coming off as rude or arrogant, that's not my aim.

[thalassa]

Re: The truth about deities

I'm not here to offend, I realise most of you have never been exposed to what Islam teaches. So I believe this could be a good platform for us to learn from one another.

Actually, all of us have. One of our moderators is Muslim.

1. Going into a state of impurity before calling the Jinn, this is usually done by masturbation.
2. Invocating a Jinn by calling it's name three times.
3. Something needs to be offered to the Jinn they do not work for free, usually its a sacrifice.
4. Blood sacrifices, sacrifices of chickens, goats, cows etc.
5. At the extreme end sacrifices of human beings would be used.
6. The most severe rituals in calling the Jinn would involve sacrificing a human child.
7. Tying knots (I'm not going to explain this but if this is something that you've engaged in then you've worked with the Jinn)

1) The gods I worship neither require nor request sacrifice nor impurity.
2) The gods I worship are not invoked by calling their names three times.
3) See #1
4) See #1
5) See #1
6) See #1
7) Knot magic neither uses nor requires a deity or entity

The types of things you can call a Jinn for can appear to be good and can also be evil, but getting yourself in a situation with the Jinn is very very costly and in the end you will find it extremely difficult.

1. Jinn can bring you wealth
2. Jinn can bring you power
3. Jinn can bring people to admire and revere you
4. Jinn can even make other people fall in love with you

And on the other end

1. The Jinn can be used to break up familys e.g. getting a husband and wife to divorce.
2. The Jinn can be used to cause an individual to fail at certain things in life be it studies or work.
3. The Jinn can be used to stop an individual from doing something the invocator does not want them doing.
4. The Jinn can be used to inflict diseases (If after any of these rituals you or any one with you has gone into some sort of epileptic attack then that's the Jinn)
5. The Jinn can even be used to kill people.

The deities I worship can't and don't do any of these things.

Here's the thing...you really don't seem to understand that much about Paganism...particularly with regard to its infinite variety.

[Doc_Holliday]

Re: The truth about deities

If you came up to me and told me I was worshipping some evil dumb beast, I'd punch you in the Jinn.

[Willow]

Re: The truth about deities

/off topic: This is one of those days where I am absolutely proud regarding the members (intelligence, integrity, open-mindedness) of this forum. /on topic

This thread reminds me of the piece of insight given to me by a former friend: it's not what you say, but how you say it.

Hello everyone, this might be a little hard for some of you to accept or understand but for others it will click instantly.

I’d like you all to read this with an open mind and try to relate to it, if you have any questions or comments then feel free to respond.

First of all I’m a Muslim and reading some of your posts I feel like some of you understand more about the unseen world and have more faith and belief in it than most religious people do. But there are some things which most of you don’t seem to understand, and it’s those little things that have a way of taking a story and flipping it upside down.

Everything I’m telling you now comes from the religion of Islam, make sure you read it all the way through otherwise it won’t make sense.

Some of you have managed to figure out, or are starting to figure out, that we are not alone on this planet. Well you’re right. There is another creation that inhabits this planet with us. This creation is called the Jinn.

These Jinn are the “Gods” worshipped by the ancients, and the beings that continue to be worshipped by many people today.
So in actuality, who or what are the Jinn? Well first and foremost it is important to note that there are both good Jinn and bad Jinn.
The Jinn are a race and a creation just like human beings are but with some differences.

--snip--



And yes Iblees, Lucifer, Satan whatever name you wish to call him by, is very much real. He isn’t a fallen angel he is one of the Jinn, the leader of the bad ones and the most powerful one among them. He lives much longer than the other Jinn and is still alive today.

Does any of this make sense to any of you? Do you at least see some elements of truth in what I’ve said?

This thread reminds me of the piece of insight given to me by a former friend: it's not what you say, but how you say it.


The emboldened lines are the statements I'm referring to. It gives off the assumption that unless we are able to "understand and accept" the "truths" you are giving us, we are inherently wrong. It may not be what you intended, but that is how it is being received. It's the portrayal of you truth being the absolute truth, whether we want to accept it or not.

Many belief systems can rework another person's beliefs to fit within their own in positive or negative ways, to try and fit everyone's beliefs into one is unwise and inevitably inaccurate.

The rest of my qualms have already been addressed in previous posts, so I won't dig into those.

[Naiad]

Re: The truth about deities

This is kind of redundant, but truth is a creation of human perception, so therefore my truth will not be the same as yours...and so on. Truth is merely what you perceive to be correct.

And yeah, you come off a little strongly in the beginning. It really sounds like you're basically saying we're all absolutely wrong.

[Keldorn]

Re: The truth about deities

The deities I worship can't and don't do any of these things.

Here's the thing...you really don't seem to understand that much about Paganism...particularly with regard to its infinite variety.

I expect that the deities I deal with could handle anything on that list if motivated enough. I just think they're more likely to answer several of those requests by sticking a steel toed boot up my ass. I'm pretty sure that if I were a deity, I'd want to apply a boot to the ass of anyone to request several of the items on that list without very good reason.

[Corvus]

Re: The truth about deities

First of all the Jinn are not immortal, some of them have very long lifespans but they all eventually die, the reason many people believe them to be immortal is due to the fact that the Jinn's lifespans are so long that they have most likely seen many generations before them and will continue to see many generations after. Many of the Gods worshipped during ancient times are still alive and some are not.

Iblis refused to bow to Adam correct? and the Jinn predate humans who were born shortly after creation. If Iblis is still alive from the beginning of creation to now it's a matter of semantics if the thing is immortal or not since it has been alive for all the time the world has existed. To a human it would seem and practically be immortal. Although, I am curious now. If Jinn die then they must have a method of procreation to replace their numbers or else their entire race would go extinct. If Jinn lack physical bodies though how can they procreate?

In the world of the Jinn things aren't as straight forward as ours. The reason I'm speaking about Jinn and giving you their characteristics is so that after I give you their descriptions you can draw comparisons between the deities you worship and the Jinn, if there seems to be some correlation between the two then it might give you a better insight as to who the deities are.

Many of my deities are fiery in nature but they range from very beautiful to bestial in appearance, or both sometimes. However fire is a holy attribute of god in different faiths, for example god appears as fire in the Torah, so having the appearance of fire or being associated with it does not necessarily mean one is a Jinn. Many times my deities have done things simply because I asked and received nothing in return but my thanks. Other times I give them offerings and don't ask for anything. I can only speak from personal experience but I feel love from my goddess and I think she interferes with my life in ways I cannot comprehend because she cares for me.

The world of the Jinn may be different from ours but one would assume they have different societies and cultures. In which case there would be some Jinn with different beliefs from other Jinn. There might be a group of Jinn that have formed subcultures or countercultures to the majority of the Jinn and who's to say these groups don't have different beliefs? Do Jinn even know if God exists? How do we know that Jinn don't have different religions like we do and that they don't wonder if there's a god or not.

Yes within Islam Angels do not have freedom of choice, anyone who has an encounter with an Angel is because God has told that specific Angel to go and have an encounter with that specific person. The difference in power between an Angel like Gabriel and a Jinn such as Iblis (Lucifer, Satan) cannot be described, they are not on the same level at all.

My point was Angels in faiths other than Islam are more similar to Jinn. If some angels are in fact Jinn then this proves they can do God's will and interfere with human lives. One can argue that the most good people are those who can choose to be evil or righteous. Islamic angels live in total devotion to God and so cannot be tested, they cannot be good because they do not have the temptation of being bad.

The reason I'm posting here is to tell you about the characteristics of the Jinn, you can then draw relationships between the deities you believe in and the Jinn. Me and you have never had the pleasure of meeting each other so I don't know about what it is you worship. But if you find that there are some similarities between the deities you worship and the description I'm giving of the Jinn. Then it should at the very least make you think.

I primarily follow deities of Kemet, which is ancient Egypt. My principal deity is Hathor who is a goddess of love and protection. She appears as a cow or a woman with cow ears or horns. Her roles revolve around birth, where she protects mothers, and death where she helps souls into the afterlife. When humans tried to kill the sun god Re she took on the form of a lioness and devoured evil people and she was called Sekhmet. I see only a few parallels between her and the Jinn. Jinn are greedy and evil but Hathor is motherly and protective. Jinn seek to incite violence and lie to mankind while Hathor only does harm when she must.

1. Going into a state of impurity before calling the Jinn, this is usually done by masturbation.
2. Invocating a Jinn by calling it's name three times.
3. Something needs to be offered to the Jinn they do not work for free, usually its a sacrifice.
4. Blood sacrifices, sacrifices of chickens, goats, cows etc.
5. At the extreme end sacrifices of human beings would be used.
6. The most severe rituals in calling the Jinn would involve sacrificing a human child.
7. Tying knots (I'm not going to explain this but if this is something that you've engaged in then you've worked with the Jinn)

1. The god Re created the gods of Air and Moisture through masturbation. It is not a state of impurity to me. Even so my gods do not require I masturbate or otherwise make myself impure before worship. In fact it's customary for one to wash themselves and wear fresh clothing, sometimes even abstain from eating certain foods, before conducting a ritual.
2. Once should be enough. They're incorporeal, not deaf.
3. I don't give offerings to my gods nearly as much as I should but Hathor still helps me out if I ask nice enough. When I do give offerings I might put flowers around her statue, sing songs or play music.
4. No? If anything she'd want beer before blood. I do practice necromancy, which is separate from my worship of Hathor, and that sometimes requires blood but I'll use my own and not more than a few drops. I never harm animals or kill anything for my rituals.
5. This implies I value a human life over an animal's. See #4
6. I don't even like kids. Again see #4.
7. Knots? That's not part of my tradition.

1. Jinn can bring you wealth
2. Jinn can bring you power
3. Jinn can bring people to admire and revere you
4. Jinn can even make other people fall in love with you

And on the other end

1. The Jinn can be used to break up familys e.g. getting a husband and wife to divorce.
2. The Jinn can be used to cause an individual to fail at certain things in life be it studies or work.
3. The Jinn can be used to stop an individual from doing something the invocator does not want them doing.
4. The Jinn can be used to inflict diseases (If after any of these rituals you or any one with you has gone into some sort of epileptic attack then that's the Jinn)
5. The Jinn can even be used to kill people.

God can do all of these things too. Just look at poor Job. God gives blessings and curses. Some of my gods definitely could do any of these things, but why would they want to? The only people they would do those things for are people who don't really want much.

I do not doubt any of you in the sense that I don't believe you are deluded or are making things up when you say you've seen or experienced things. When you say your rituals bring you certain things in your life yes I don't doubt it and I'm sure most of you only call upon these deities to do good, But there is the big problem of deception when it comes to the world of the Jinn.

If you ask a Jinn to do only good things and harm no one in the process then does it matter? In the end there would be more good in the world. If it's a moral issue just because a rule is broken then one would question why the rule exists. Even if it was true, isn't it similar to what humans do every day? I pay a man to tend my garden, he gets money and my flowers are happy. Someone gives a Jinn something and gets something in return. It's like a transaction. Not everyone worships deities, some just work with them and have relationships which are much more informal. In which case one again wonders why it would be wrong. If it's wrong to give someone something to have them do something then most systems of economics have a problem, not to mention most social structures.

I'm really not trying to convert any of you, as a Muslim it's our duty to learn. I've done some reading about certain pagan belief systems and to me it seemed far too much in line with the Islamic concept of the Jinn. I'm here to share that with you and I let you come to your own conclusions. I'm not recruiting you into anything.

Again I'm sorry if I'm coming off as rude or arrogant, that's not my aim.

I've been attempting to be (reasonably) polite because I feel you aren't trying to be arrogant or mean and you haven't outright been rude. I appreciate the effort but it does seem like you're coming from a view point where you expect us to have a revelation and realize we're walking with devils as you express your truth to us.

[Gleb]

Re: The truth about deities

If you do not make sacrifices whether small or big, you do not light candles, you do not tie knots, you do not need an item belonging to an individual when making supplication and/or you don't need the persons name and mothers name. And if you are only calling upon a said deity, then most likely you're not working with or calling upon what we would refer to as the Jinn.

My gods don't ask for sacrifices from me, but devotion. Again, things work differently from pantheon to pantheon. If you read about it a little, then you'll understand a bit more. Yes - Kemetism does offer things to the gods during the festivals. But they don't come from impurity, blood or calling the deity's name 3 times. Things that are mostly offered are different kinds of food, drinks and items (books, jewelery...).

From the things you mentioned about the Jinn can do - it's hard for me to understand where all of this can lead to. I mean - many users here want to reach something special during their connection with deities. A bond. -This is how it was since I am here in the forum. But working with Jinn sounds like rude use of connection. It is the "I - to you, and you - to me" method.

[Hekla]

Re: The truth about deities

The jinn are nothing more than Islam's propaganda machine, much like the Christian demonization of everything that's not Yahweh. That's why you think the jinn and our gods are so similar, because they are, it's just the jinn are based off of our gods, and not the other way around.

There. Are we done?

[Juniper]

Re: The truth about deities

The jinn are nothing more than Islam's propaganda machine, much like the Christian demonization of everything that's not Yahweh. That's why you think the jinn and our gods are so similar, because they are, it's just the jinn are based off of our gods, and not the other way around.

There. Are we done?

The OP is just as entitled to his opinion as everyone else here. It's been said many times in this thread that our own truths are not the same as someone else's. How is your statement any different than what he's said?

[Torey]

Re: The truth about deities

DING! Wrooong! Because I do not worship Satan, he did not create me. I see him as a sort of guide. He might recommend a course of action, but I can say "f**k it, I'm doing it my way" and he would be "oh well, allrighty then". You can't rebel against someone who doesn't control you. And yes, Satanism is about becoming a God, in some way. Not becoming one with God, no, no, that's silly. Also, I

We ARE gods. We have working relationships with other gods.

[Sean R. R.]

Re: The truth about deities

We ARE gods. We have working relationships with other gods.

True enough, but only when I can throw flames out of my hands I will consider myself a god. For the meantime, refer to my title. :P