Bloody hells… 
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Less racism, more religious persecution!
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Yep, need that. Shouldn’t matter what we look like or who we find attractive.
Careful now, the religious like to assume they are the persecuted, and fail to see what they do as persecution.
I like the following quote which conveys the feeling quite well, I think.
“To the privileged, equality feels like oppression.” - Mallory O’meara
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I’ve been delving into Mandaean cosmoloy lately as you know from my other posts and what strikes me about Abrahamic religions especially, and it’s many branches is how much the faith hinges on vilifying the Divine feminine. Despite having one of the brst cosmologies and Void Patheon in my opinion. They still consider the Divine Feminine as the original sin.
I’ve seen it in the fandom too with how player ideas around, An’she, and Belore specifically, mirror this deep hatred or vilification of the feminine, the Moon, the Void, the Leviathan. Etc. I hope Metzen and Blizzard stay on course for the World Soul Saga.
If you don’t know exactly what I’m talking about it’s comparative mythology where the demiurge trapped sophia in the meterial plane by encircling her in an embrace (in somevariations this was against her will-laxk of consent) we see parallels of this in Odyn (firey man) and Helya (Serpent woman) in other myths it’s more violent, Enil kills Tiamat and turns her serpent corpse into the world. Regardless there is always a struggle bettwen the devine masculine and divine feminine. The divine feminine is often depicted as a serpent or Naga.
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To clarify… you are hoping they maintain the hatred of the feminine?
I want to say you want the opposite, but as written this line suggests otherwise.
If you want this from a story/culture line, I can see the appeal for storytelling and if we were reading a novel, I’d even be accepting of it.
Sadly, we are in an MMO and people tend to take such projections as personal endorsements/insults, of their ideals.
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No, sorry if I misspoke. I hope they subvert it (ie the norm of patriarchal religious world view). Metzen’s storytelling has always been promising. He seems to have a lot of myth knowledge (even if it’s secondhand through dnd)
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Oh good, my hope is correct.
Well, yeah because snake be evil… lol, there’s actually some evidence that our visual system has distinct modifications for detecting snakes.
I personally like snakes, but most people I know are very uncomfortable around them.
The depiction of predatory animals or creatures that use stealth and poison as vilified in mythology is more a demonstration of our ancient past as a prey species than anything inherently evil about the creatures themselves.
My point is… to those who feel threatened, associating that which they feel threatened by with something considered universally threatening is fairly common and is basically an “appeal to emotion”… which as we both know is a sign of a weak argument.
That was Carl Sagan’s hypothsis in Dragons of Eden lol that we, as being evolved from monkey’s and small rodents, remember snakes being our number #1 predator so our myth of dragon’s and snakes is just our primative “lizard brain.” Since it’s also hypothesised that humans actually keep a evolutionary code in our DNA that stores knowledge from our ancestors. Interesting stuff. I love Carl Sagan.
Snakes are a huge theme in comparative and creation mythology. They are both good and evil. My favorite is the concept of Abraxas )which was later demonised by the Catholic Church.) But Abraxas was just another variation of Jesus or ‘Divine Adam.’
A gnostic sect I think about a lot are the Orphites. They were remnants of ancient Egyptian Cult of the Serpent. They believed in the theory of the serpent and the cosmic egg that became so popular in gnosticism. In the ancient Egyptian myth Amun and Amunet were two snakes, Ammunet was tasked with guarding the cosmic egg but when she and Amun were coiled up mating they accidentally broke the cosmic egg spilling out the universe. (At least in one myth)
The old idiom should be instead, “what came first? the serpent or the egg.” Chickens had apparently nothing to do with it.
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Even when they frequently intended to be evil, I find myself more like to agree with them.
This I’m not familiar with.
This is somewhat familiar to me. It’s been a while though…
considering how frequently the abrahamic myths mentioned Egypt… I wonder if their hatred of the snake was partially born of the favorable view the Egyptians had/have with it?
lol, tell me about it, technically something in the ocean created the first egg… and it probably wasn’t even something we’d recognize as an animal.
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There’s speculation that when the Isrealites left Egypt while they were in the desert they still venerated Amun and Ammunet in serpent form.
So Moses performed the miracle (he himself was a priest in the Cult of the Serpent, as the second son of the Pharoh he had a high place as a priest of Amun, this ritual to turn a stick into a serpent is ancient Egyptian magick) of the snake on the rod to show them God’s wrath. The Abrahamic God smited those who still worshiped false idols, ie, (ammunet, and the other ancient egyptian Gods) source: The Secret Teaching of All Ages- Manly P. Hall.
Realistically, if you don’t believe in miracles, this is just a fancy story about how Amun worship became assimilated with a new Abrahamic monotheism.
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I know in old Celtic pagan beliefs in Ireland, a lot of people wore serpent amulets, because snakes were said to ward a person from all harm.
In a lot of the old religions, serpents were often venerated as divine beings. I think it was around the time that the Abrahamic faiths started spreading that snakes and other serpents started getting demonized, because they were seen as the devil incarnate in our world
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what does this mean? all the powerful characters are females
Alexstrasza, Xalatath, Sylvanas, Jaina
males dont do crap in this series
woman power
Clearly, you’ve never heard of the French Revolution. Or Soviet Russia. Or Pol Pot’s regime in Cambodia. Or Mexico’s Cristero War. Or China’s history from Mao to now…
Materialist antagonists, now there’s a unique idea we haven’t seen before in WoW (like the Maesters Guild in A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones books have become a group opposed to the supernatural). By the way,
Stealth and poison could also be applied to spiders, but 1) venomous snakes haven’t ever eaten people so there’s no prey aspect (the only snakes that may have eaten people are the big constrictors, which don’t have venom) 2) spiders aren’t vilified anywhere near as much in mythology.
While that idea has potential and is one of the better ones, it also raises questions and potential plot holes;
- How could it have been dropped on Azeroth “accidentally”
- If it was a deliberate attack, why not use more when the first one failed?
- Admitting an accident happened and cleaning it up aren’t going to cause such a hit to reputation (the Naaru don’t have the same political baggage as rl governments)
- If it was aimed at the Old Gods, there’s no reason to hide that from the people of Azeroth (those Azerothians who know of the Naaru are fine with them, and nearly everyone opposes the Old Gods).
- Why use a bomb when the Naaru are very willing to get personally involved in conflicts? (Army of the Light, Siege of the Black Temple, the counterinvasion of Revendreth…)
- Why haven’t the people of Hallowfall tried to expand the Light’s influence outside Hallowfall?
Seriously, Blizzard should start paying fans considering how much we’ve done the writers’ job for them in the past.
Plus Tyrande, Yrel, Azshara, Talanji, Calia…
There are powerful characters who are males, but I think I get your point.
That’s not what the divine feminine is.
“What Is the Divine Feminine? The divine feminine is the feminine aspect of the divine power that connects and binds the Earth. She is the goddess energy that exists within all of us. Many ancient cultures had a divine feminine concept. The Egyptians had Isis; the Greeks had Aphrodite; and the Hindus had Shakti.” - Google
Psychologists of the 20th century along with theologians developed a divine masculine and divine feminine concepts of the Anima/Animus. As dualistic parts of the divine human soul, viewed through hero/villian archetypes. There’s a new age mesh of spiritual philosophy and psychology of the self that is pretty facinating. I am sure it will be relevant in upcoming expansions. It was relevant in Shadowlands.
A good book rec. Is Man and his Symbols by C. Jung.
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sounds like some mumbo jumbo to me
Stuff like this almost makes me want to return to my old studies of mythology.
I recall from some of my older research that similar events were happening wherever the abrahamic faiths showed up.
Heck demon used to be daemon which basically just meant spirit and was neutral… suddenly all of the old daemons were evil… not to surprising that the depictions of many
‘devils’ look an awful lot like the depictions of satyrs.
I have mixed feelings on Jung, but that doesn’t mean the book is bad, so I’ll have to look that up.
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Really? Did whatever research you may have done turn up Apep/Apophis from Egyptian mythology?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apep
Or Nidhogg and Jörmungandr from Norse Mythology?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nidhogg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B6rmungandr
As for the Abrahmic faiths, snakes themselves - the animals - aren’t inherently evil. Jesus himself said;
“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.” Matthew 10:16 (NIV)
(while Jesus is also in the Qu’ran, I’m not sure if that quote of his is also there)
We’ve had good and evil depictions of snakes and snake-beings in WoW, from the Naga to the Sethrakk.
Given your knowledge of paganism and old religions, I’m surprised you neglected to mention Apep, Nidhogg and Jörmungandr.
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I didn’t neglect to mention it because I wasn’t talking about Norse mythology, I was specifically talking about Irish Paganism and what they believed in
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this is what we need
some friggin snake bosses
Jormungandr, we need that rising up through the cracks of the deep in war within
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The aspect of snakes or serpents being something that was connected with the mythological beliefs of health, fertility, medicine, wisdom and rebirth; has been a constant across the world in many cultures throughout the ages dating right back to the very first ones known. For example it is present in the world’s oldest known culture that of the Australian Aboriginal which traces back more than 10,000 years. This can be seen through the dreamtime story of the Rainbow Serpent which is in their culture was a greater god of rebirth and creation.
Extending on the information you were talking about in terms of their connection with Ireland and the Irish. Snakes were a significant part of Celtic religion that symbolized fertility, healing, wisdom and rebirth. The ethereal energy of snakes strengthened the power wielded by the deities of local healing and fertility cults in Gaul, Britain and Germany.
The Celts had esteemed serpents as mystical creatures of the Underworld and the spirit mediums of the chthonic deities.
While the druids believed serpents were primordial beings with an ancient knowledge and wisdom of the earth.
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