How would I make a Jewish-influenced, but pagan religion?

Zioneer

Banned
Before we start discussing, don't say Christianity is the pagan religion I'm thinking of. It's a clever joke, but it's just not that funny.

Anyway, onto the main discussion. I'm planning a reboot of my Khazars TL, and want to solve one of the biggest problems; namely, that I know little about Judaism, and have little interest going into the absolute minutiae of the religion as it spreads through all of Russia/Ukraine, etc.

My solution is to have the Rus, while made a tributary by the Khazars, and made to follow a few Jewish laws (the Bene Noach laws, to be exact), they remain somewhat pagan. Hence the title of this thread.

I want to figure out the details of a heavily Judaic Slavic pagan religion. So far, I have the obvious idea of the Rus beginning to claim that they too are descended from the same grandson of Noah the Khazars are, but I can't think of anything else but that.

So I'd like some help. How do I add enough (but not too much) Jewish influence to Rus paganism to make it an entirely different religion than both?
 
Hey, isn't Christianity--oh, wait, damn.

Anyhoo, what I would do is combine the Kievan Vladimirist pantheon (Perun, Hors, Dazbog, etc.) with the Jewish idea of one god--the way to do this would have the pagans begin viewing each different god as only one aspect of an all-consuming, all-ruling ultimate god (i.e. Yahweh), similiar to Hinduism. I would also keep the World Tree as a part of the Slewish (TM) cosmology, with Yahweh and all his aspects ruling from Heaven, Valhalla, whatever, and the underworld existing at the roots of the tree, while Midgard (our world) circles around the trunk. I can imagine a lot of legends combining Jewish and Slavic mythology here--Abraham scaling the tree to live with Yahweh, the World Tree as the Tree of Knowledge in Genesis, etc. I can also imagine Baba Yaga becoming a Slewish equivalent to Satan or, on a lesser level, the Krampus. Further, I imagine a heavy integration of pagan celebrations with Jewish saints and legends, as well as celebrations+customs.

Gods, I love it when people ask questions about my favorite religions.
 
I think that what makes the Jewish version of Yahweh compelling is that he's personable like the gods of other pantheons, but there's only one of him. So I don't think that Yahweh would catch on as a god-behind-the-gods, people would want to engage him directly as a normal god. So make him king over the pagan gods, and incorporate Jewish elements of worship to the other gods. Perhaps some would be assimilated and others demonized.
 
Hmm, you have a point. Better idea: keep Yahweh as the one true god, BUT turn the lesser gods into Elohim (angels) with specific purposes, y'know, their normal godly purposes.
 

Zioneer

Banned
Hey, isn't Christianity--oh, wait, damn.

Anyhoo, what I would do is combine the Kievan Vladimirist pantheon (Perun, Hors, Dazbog, etc.) with the Jewish idea of one god--the way to do this would have the pagans begin viewing each different god as only one aspect of an all-consuming, all-ruling ultimate god (i.e. Yahweh), similiar to Hinduism. I would also keep the World Tree as a part of the Slewish (TM) cosmology, with Yahweh and all his aspects ruling from Heaven, Valhalla, whatever, and the underworld existing at the roots of the tree, while Midgard (our world) circles around the trunk. I can imagine a lot of legends combining Jewish and Slavic mythology here--Abraham scaling the tree to live with Yahweh, the World Tree as the Tree of Knowledge in Genesis, etc. I can also imagine Baba Yaga becoming a Slewish equivalent to Satan or, on a lesser level, the Krampus. Further, I imagine a heavy integration of pagan celebrations with Jewish saints and legends, as well as celebrations+customs.

Gods, I love it when people ask questions about my favorite religions.

Holy crap, that's awesome. That is exactly what I was going for. It fits with the duality thing in some Slavic pantheons, and it qualifies for Jewish influence. Thank you.

But let's go even deeper into the specifics; perhaps the World Tree is a metaphysical sort of concept? A somewhat religiously literal tree as the Tree of Knowledge/Garden of Eden, then shifting to a spiritual tree, an ideal to strive for during the Slewish person's life, and ALSO a expectation for what the world will be like in perfection once more (Messanic coming and all that)?
 
if you get a "tribe" of Israel isolated long enough with enough of kabbalah and some sense of Talmudic debate of fundamental concepts, well...

"Kabbalah" seems to get off the ground around the 11th century.

Behind that, the whole "esoteric" train of thought that sort of led to it was going around way before that.

(I'm skimming wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah ...)

Parts behind it include some interesting things, "and the Divine Feminine," if you want to start dualistic...

skim, skimmity-skimming...

aha

"Dualism
Zodiac in a 6th century synagogue at Beit Alpha, Israel.


Although Kabbalah propounds the Unity of God, one of the most serious and sustained criticisms is that it may lead away from monotheism, and instead promote dualism, the belief that there is a supernatural counterpart to God. The dualistic system holds that there is a good power versus an evil power.



There are two primary models of Gnostic-dualistic cosmology: the first, which goes back to Zoroastrianism, believes creation is ontologically divided between good and evil forces;



the second, found largely in Greco-Roman ideologies like Neo-Platonism, believes the universe knew a primordial harmony, but that a cosmic disruption yielded a second, evil, dimension to reality. This second model influenced the cosmology of the Kabbalah."



there are aspects of kabbalah that can be misunderstood and distorted along those lines,

"According to Kabbalistic cosmology, the Ten Sefirot correspond to ten levels of creation. These levels of creation must not be understood as ten different "gods" but as ten different ways of revealing God, one per level. It is not God who changes but the ability to perceive God that changes."

"Rabbi Dr. David Gottlieb notes that many Kabbalists hold that the concepts of, e.g., a Heavenly Court or the Sitra Ahra are only given to humanity by God as a working model to understand His ways within our own epistemological limits. They reject the notion that a satan or Angels actually exist. Others hold that non-divine spiritual entities were indeed created by God as a means for exacting his will."


so, an isolated group under certain circumstances or perhaps pressed into a special relationship with an individual or individuals who are "ascended" during a period of stress, or something like that, it could develop from that, somehow, certainly, arguably.
 

Zioneer

Banned
if you get a "tribe" of Israel isolated long enough with enough of kabbalah and some sense of Talmudic debate of fundamental concepts, well...

I did say I didn't want to go incredibly deep into Jewish religious minutiae. But that does help a little bit. Thanks for providing so much feedback, though I'm unlikely to use it all.
 

Aww, you're making me blush. Re the World Tree, I'd say that depends on whether or not the Slews regard Eden as a physical, real place rather than a metaphor in and of itself. If it's physical, then the Slews would probably regard the WT as a physical place as well. In other words, it would be an essential part of Slewish cosmology, the cornerstone of the universe, etc., etc. If it's a metaphor, hoo boy, there's gonna be a hella lot of complex theology surrounding the WT. The way the tree is set up (roots in the underworld, heaven in the branches) might lead to an early form of class consciousness and appreciation. After all, the World Tree cannot stand without its roots in the dirty, death-filled Underworld: neither can a society stand without its roots in the dirty, hard-working lower classes. All society is supported by them. That could be cool.

Climbing the World Tree could be a metaphor for being true to the ideals of the Slewish religion. Speaking of that, what are the ideals of the Slews? I'd say a mix of the Jewish values of being an active member of the community, loyalty to God, and the Slavic values of being strong, courageous, and well, warlike. Maybe the Slews have their own version of Lesser Jihad? But back to the spiritual tree. Going by that class consciousness thing from before, I imagine that Slews would eventually believe in a sort of emancipation for every world on the tree (both Midgard and the underworld), meaning that even those who do evil would be able to live in heaven after a few million years of punishment. This would likely lead to a respect for every class, as one would know their place in society is important no matter what it is. Anyhoo, these are just thoughts.

But modelcitizen does make a good point about the Sephirot: those Ten Levels of Creation could correspond to the Slavic gods and their personalities.
 
Hmm, you have a point. Better idea: keep Yahweh as the one true god, BUT turn the lesser gods into Elohim (angels) with specific purposes, y'know, their normal godly purposes.

So basically follow the Christian route, and turn the previous Gods/Goddesses into Saints or Angels, while adopting the traditional celebrations and customs with a Jewish element added to the mix subtly changing the culture over generations.

If you're not interested in doing the research to go into the specifics of the Jewish religion and the early medieval Slavic and Rus pagan religions, then just take Christianity and replace the 'Christ' element with what common Jewish elements, and replace the Celtic/Germanic elements with Slavic/Rus ones. Add turnip and onion for taste and BAM! 'Jewish'-paganism.
 

Zioneer

Banned
So basically follow the Christian route, and turn the previous Gods/Goddesses into Saints or Angels, while adopting the traditional celebrations and customs with a Jewish element added to the mix subtly changing the culture over generations.

If you're not interested in doing the research to go into the specifics of the Jewish religion and the early medieval Slavic and Rus pagan religions, then just take Christianity and replace the 'Christ' element with what common Jewish elements, and replace the Celtic/Germanic elements with Slavic/Rus ones. Add turnip and onion for taste and BAM! 'Jewish'-paganism.

Well, I'm interested in doing some of the reason, but not ridiculously in-depth for parts of the religion I'm not interested in at all, and which probably wouldn't fit the pagan part.

I can do some research, but honestly I don't think kabbalism as a whole would be a good fit. Elements of it, sure, and large elements of the Jewish religion as a whole, sure. But I'm not interested in transplanting kabbalism to Slavic mythology.
 

Zioneer

Banned
Islam, you mean? That's much closer to Judaism than Christianity.

Well, yes, but I've heard many many jokes about how Christianity is mostly just Jewish-influenced paganism with the serial numbers filed off, and I've been sick of it for a while.

Anyway, let's go deeper into DirtyCommie's idea, but with the "gods" that are not the Slavic Pagan Jew's chosen god being angels.

Would Perun be a good fit for a Yahweh-figure, or would we have to use Yahweh himself?

And what about the partial duality of the Slavic gods? How would that fit into a Judaicized worldview?
 
Quantum Neo-Platonic Kabbalistic Tarot Gods!

If you want to go the Kabbalistic route, I've seen charts where the links between the various Sefirot or "emanations" of God correspond to the Major Trumps of the Tarot. Not all Sefirot have links between them!

These links, rather than the Sefirot themselves, might correspond to those Slavic gods the "Slewish" keep.

You get motion in a Neo-Platonic system when you have interactions between ideal forms; it sort of corresponds to how if you have an orthogonal basis set for a quantum-mechanical system where the set members have fixed, definite energies, they are unchanging in time--time and energy are "commuting" observables in Dirac's formulation of quantum theory you see. This defines the pairs of observables whose uncertainties, multiplied together, must equal the Planck constant--the more you know one of a pair of commutating observables, the less certain you can be of the other. So if you know the energy of a system exactly, you know nothing about when you are observing, therefore the system is eternal! Since real systems are not eternal and there is observable motion, a real thing is a superposition of various degrees of the basis set, each one of which has a characteristic frequency determined by its energy; the observed motion of a particle is the result of "beats" in the wave function as the basis sets get in and out of phase with each other.

In a neo-Platonic system, the ideal forms are also eternal and unchanging, and the motion of things in reality is because real things are not pure ideal forms but composed of interactions between them; thus gods or angels who have personalities and are seen to be in motion cannot be themselves ideal emanations of God but are composites of different aspects interacting.

Now the Tarot itself is very modern, apparently; there weren't any sorts of card decks in Europe until the late 14th century and fashionable mystics didn't make much of Tarot for divination until the late eighteenth century! And the "classic" decks used today, the Rider-Waite-Smith and Aleister Crowley's Thoth deck, were actually invented in the early 20th century.

So your 'Slews' wouldn't have Tarot unless they invented it in parallel; this leaves the way open to identify the links between Sefirot as corresponding to the gods, as dynamic aspects of God that the Sefirot are the more eternal, stable emanantions of.
----
By the way you do notice I trust how much the idea of "gods" as actually being very powerful "angels" under one true God resembles the world-view Tolkien was portraying in his various myths and legends. The Creation story of the Silmarillion, "The Music of the Ainur," is just such a synthesis of Jewish and pagan worldviews--seen to be sure through the lens of a pious and orthodox and quite erudite Roman Catholic. But I don't see much prefiguring of Jesus in any of Tolkien's corpus, well not in stuff that is meant to be from before the time of Christ anyway, though the man certainly took care to keep it all consistent with Christianity as he understood it.
 
By the way DC, I did not know that the Slavic mythos also had the image of the "World Tree;" here I've been thinking that is a Nordic/Germanic thing! Is it then something that they picked up from interactions with Slavs?

Because I don't know of that particular motif in Hindu mythology, while there are a lot of other correspondences between Vedic and Eddic traditions. So I guess the whole world-tree, tannenbaum thing might actually be fundamentally Slavic?

Or vice versa the Slavs had plenty time and opportunity to borrow that from the Germanics if the latter were the originators. I just didn't realize they shared that with the Germans.
 
SplendidTuesday: I think for Sludaism to actually be a successful mix of Judaism and Slavic Paganism (i.e. have both Jews and Slavic Pagans convert), it would have to use both Perun and Yahweh. Yahweh would be the uber-god, while Perun would be an Archangel Michael-type figure (i.e. Yaweh's greatest and most loyal Elohim). I just think that there wouldn't be enough Judaism without that.

About partial duality, I'd go one further and say that the Slewish Yahweh is capable of sending avatars to earth as sort of "temporary Messiahs" when things get really bad. That will open the door for future Slewish God-Kings, which would be cool.

yourworstnightmare: Sort of. It really means "lesser god", technically, but that's what the angels are.

wolf_brother: Yeah, basically.

Shevek: Oh, yes, the Slavs definitely had the image of the world tree. Not only that, but they believed the oak tree was a part or a seedling of the world tree, and had the capability to spirit men away to other parts of the tree. The Hindus, too, actually have their own little spin on the World Tree: the Ashvattha, or Sacred Fig Tree, is supposed to grow down from heaven onto earth and connect the two. It's also supposed to be a life-bringer, with Ashvattha branches (dried) granting extended life. Furthermore, Gautama Buddha is supposed to have received enlightenment under the Ashvattha.
 

Zioneer

Banned
SplendidTuesday: I think for Sludaism to actually be a successful mix of Judaism and Slavic Paganism (i.e. have both Jews and Slavic Pagans convert), it would have to use both Perun and Yahweh. Yahweh would be the uber-god, while Perun would be an Archangel Michael-type figure (i.e. Yaweh's greatest and most loyal Elohim). I just think that there wouldn't be enough Judaism without that.

About partial duality, I'd go one further and say that the Slewish Yahweh is capable of sending avatars to earth as sort of "temporary Messiahs" when things get really bad. That will open the door for future Slewish God-Kings, which would be cool.

Shevek: Oh, yes, the Slavs definitely had the image of the world tree. Not only that, but they believed the oak tree was a part or a seedling of the world tree, and had the capability to spirit men away to other parts of the tree. The Hindus, too, actually have their own little spin on the World Tree: the Ashvattha, or Sacred Fig Tree, is supposed to grow down from heaven onto earth and connect the two. It's also supposed to be a life-bringer, with Ashvattha branches (dried) granting extended life. Furthermore, Gautama Buddha is supposed to have received enlightenment under the Ashvattha.

We need to find a good name for this religion already, I'm tired of the name Slewish/Sludaism. Kozarism, maybe, after the name for the mythological ancestor of the Khazars themselves (who the Rus will absorb and be mostly assimilated by)?

As for Perun's role, I do like the idea of a Archangel Michael-like role. Perhaps a Rus Kozari writes down scriptures to the effect of explaining that Perun is not a god, and never wanted to be worshiped as one.

Perhaps in a nod to their pagan origins, there's a hierarchy of the angels (former gods of course) based on crazy metaphysical mythology with the World Tree?

I like the partial duality bit and the temporary Messiahs, it fits very well with what I want.

Should I fit in a bit about the Kozari analogue to Satan, though? How would he fit in?
 
how would the The Resurrecters Of The Temple sound?

a besieged/isolated group of Jews might (might!) get the urge to resurrect The Temple wherever they are, sort of a statement of defiance, of self-declared strength and self-validation/existence.

The Temple, looked after by the High Priests (a patrilineal designation descended from Aaron, the brother of Moses) hosted a lot of practices that were definitely ahh retro in comparison to how we see monotheism practiced in recent-ish times.

I am talking about the sacrificing of animals, specific animals for specific reasons, et cetera!

I'm not saying, in extremis, that the Resurrecters would end up going all Aztec and getting mighty grisly. I'm just saying that there's something very... um... RETRO... about elaborate procedures and practices about sacrificing animals on altars etc.

It's just that the elaborate practices/rituals and sense of inherited hierarchy could (could! maybe!) poke some into a more erm throwback perspective.
 
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