ancient religions Archives - Page 7 of 7 - Tales of Times Forgotten

No, Groundhog Day Is Not of Ancient Pagan Origin

As you may or may not know, February 2nd is known as “Groundhog Day” in North America because there is a popular superstition that, if a groundhog comes out of his hole on February 2nd and sees his shadow because it is sunny, he will go back in his hole and there will be six more weeks of winter, but, if he does not see his shadow because it is too cloudy, he will stay out of his hole and winter will be over soon.

Every year, at the site of Gobbler’s Knob in the town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, a widely-publicized ceremony is held in which a groundhog named Punxsutawney Phil is brought forward by members of the Inner Circle of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club dressed in tuxedos and top hats.

The president of the Inner Circle then pretends to listen to Punxsutawney Phil, who allegedly tells him in a language that only the president can understand known as “Groundhogese” whether or not he has seen his shadow. The president of the Inner Circle makes a pronouncement of whether there will be an early spring or six more weeks of winter. It’s all a very silly affair and very few people, if any, actually think the groundhog can predict the weather.

Naturally, there are people insisting that Groundhog Day is of ancient pagan origin. This is, of course, entirely wrong; there’s really nothing ancient or pagan about Groundhog Day as we know it today. Nonetheless, people today are obsessed with trying to connect all modern holiday customs back to ancient paganism. People like to believe that the traditions we have today are ancient. In reality, though, most modern holidays customs are products of only the past few centuries.

Was Jesus Copied Off the Greek God Dionysos?

As everyone reading this is doubtlessly already aware, there are hundreds of memes and articles out there on the internet claiming that Jesus was “copied off” various pagan deities. The usual culprits include Horus, Dionysos, Mithras, Attis, Tammuz, Adonis, Sol Invictus, et cetera. I have already written a detailed article debunking claims about Jesus being copied off of Horus. Now I am going to debunk the claims about Jesus being copied off of Dionysos.

This article will be a lot more nuanced than my article about the alleged parallels between Horus and Jesus, however, since there really are some significant parallels between Jesus and Dionysos; they just aren’t nearly as numerous or as significant as Mythicists on the internet often claim. There is some evidence that some Christians may have intentionally shaped certain stories about Jesus in response to stories about Dionysos, but there is no good evidence to suggest that Christians just “copied” Jesus wholesale off of Dionysos.

The Motivations behind Human Sacrifice

For people today, the fact that so many peoples throughout history have practiced human sacrifice seems absolutely baffling and horrifying. We tend to think of human sacrifice as the ultimate act of barbarism, an act that epitomizes everything savage and uncivilized about our species. Nonetheless, it is important for us to understand why people have historically engaged in this practice.

Human sacrifice has occurred in virtually every part of the world at some point in time and has occurred in some part of the world during every historical time period. Thus, whether we like it or not, understanding the motivations behind human sacrifice is a part of understanding what it means to be human.

No, the Romans Did Not Just “Steal” All the Greek Deities

Lots of people seem to wrongly assume that the Romans “stole” the Greek gods and just renamed them. People often portray this as though it were an act of plagiarism, like one student copying another student’s homework. It is easy to see how they have gotten this impression, since they know the Greeks came first and that the names of the Greek and Roman deities are used today interchangeably. The problem is that this is not at all what actually happened.

In reality, the ancient Greeks and Romans originally had separate deities with different names, different mythologies, and different attributes. These deities were worshipped in different and unique ways that were specific to the culture in which they were venerated. In other words, the Romans had their own deities. Then, due to immense Greek cultural influence in Italy, the Romans gradually came to identify their own native deities with the Greek ones.

In the process, the Romans adopted the traditional stories and distinctive divine attributes belonging to the Greek deities and attributed them to their own deities as well. Eventually, by around the first century AD or thereabouts, the Greek and Roman deities had become largely indistinguishable from each other and they were widely seen as the same deities only with different names.