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Cyrus Shahmiri View Drop Down
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Posts: 6240 		  Quote Cyrus Shahmiri Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Christmas and Easter
    Posted: 19-Dec-2010 at 14:13

Athena, it was good that you mentioned the name of the daughter of Demeter which was Persephone, it is said her name meant "Persian-speaker" in Greek, you probably know that the pomegranate is native to Persia, the Greek story could be certainly related to Persians.
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Posts: 403 		  Quote Athena Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20-Dec-2010 at 11:51
Originally posted by medenaywe

On Roseta stone ,they celebrate 18th of march  like equinoxes .They called this day Festival of Deities Fire..
Hmm...Festival of Live...literary...


 
A google search of "Roseta stone day Festival of Deities Fire.." comes with so much garbage it appears futile to find any good information.  Can you provide more detail or possibly a useful link? 
The Romans treated fire as scared, and the temple virgins were responsible for keeping the fire going.  Religion at this time not being individualistic but communitist.   Prayers were not for individual desires but the good of Rome, and those virgins kept the fire of Rome burning.   In Zoroastrianism fire is not just life, it is truth, and of course the Lie is associated with death.  What is the value of fire in the Roseta stone mention of Festival of Dieties Fire?  
 
I am beginning to see a more wholistic relationship between past consciousness and Christianity in the celebration of "new life in spring".  If we tie this with the Truth, the sun over coming the darkness, the Lie over coming death, the Christian celebration is nothing new
 
Interestingly, all this is connect with Virgo.  The goddess can take two paths, the path of fertility or the path of Truth and Justice. 
.http://www.gods-and-monsters.com/virgo-myth.html


Edited by Athena - 20-Dec-2010 at 12:36
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Posts: 4620 		  Quote opuslola Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20-Dec-2010 at 18:48
I could post a lot of speculation about the fruit/flower in question! I could even suggest that it is the symbol actually shown in the famous "fleur de Lys!"

Just take a look at it?
http://www.quotationspage.com/subjects/history/
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Posts: 403 		  Quote Athena Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 21-Dec-2010 at 01:10
Originally posted by Cyrus Shahmiri

Athena, it was good that you mentioned the name of the daughter of Demeter which was Persephone, it is said her name meant "Persian-speaker" in Greek, you probably know that the pomegranate is native to Persia, the Greek story could be certainly related to Persians.

 
According to this site, there seems to be many connections between Greek mythology and Zoroastrianism.  I had not idea the Persian influence could have been this strong.  The technology of fire and metal working could have come from Persia.  This would then be the foundation of some Greek myths.  The  pomegranate is often seen in the hand of Hera, Zues's wife. 
 
 


Edited by Athena - 21-Dec-2010 at 01:13
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Posts: 4620 		  Quote opuslola Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 21-Dec-2010 at 15:16
As written above "The winter solstice occurs on December 21 or 22 and marks the beginning of winter (this is the shortest day of the year)."

And, surprisingly, last night (the 21st) we witnessed a full eclipse of the Moon, upon the "winter soltice!" And, as I believe it was reported, it was the first one since 1638 CE! In actuallity it is said;
"NASA reports that this is the first time an eclipse has coincided with a solstice since December 21, 1638 CE!"

The early to mid 17th century was a strange time! An eclipse on this specific date could have been a portend of many things (mostly bad)during this period of the past!
http://www.quotationspage.com/subjects/history/
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Posts: 6240 		  Quote Cyrus Shahmiri Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 21-Dec-2010 at 16:16
Tonight is Yalda, Happy Yalda! Smile 
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Posts: 4620 		  Quote opuslola Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 21-Dec-2010 at 17:59
Cyrus, somewhere above you said, in answer to one of my posts;

"What do you mean by "both" cultures? Lion is revered in different cultures as a symbol of power."

I was merely referring to the comparison of Mithra(ism) to Judaism, and other related beliefs! After all, the Bible of the Jews, mentions that a famous Iraninan/Persian King actually suggested that the Jews and the Persians both worshipped the same God!

You must note that a "perfect red-heffer" was considered as one of the most perfect animals to be sacraficed before the "God" of both nations!
http://www.quotationspage.com/subjects/history/
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Posts: 403 		  Quote Athena Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22-Dec-2010 at 02:07
Originally posted by Cyrus Shahmiri

Tonight is Yalda, Happy Yalda! Smile 
 
 
Happy Yalda, Cyrus. 
 
Here is the best explanation of this victory of the sun over the darkness yet. 
This Persian celebration and worship of Mithra who protects the morning light, was blended with the Eygptian celebration in Rome.   That this day celibrated order with disorder is amusing.  Thanks for telling of us of Yalda, Cyrus.  It is an important key to our history and religions. 
 

One of the themes of the festival was the temporary subversion of order. Masters and servants reversed roles. The king dressed in white would change place with ordinary people. A mock king was crowned and masquerades spilled into the streets. As the old year died, rules of ordinary living were relaxed. This tradition persisted till Sassanian period, and is mentioned by Biruni and others in their recordings of pre-Islamic rituals and festivals. Its' origin goes back to the Babylonian New Year celebration. These people believed the first creation was order that came out of chaos. To appreciate and celebrate the first creation they had a festival and all roles were reversed. Disorder and chaos ruled for a day and eventually order was restored and succeeded at the end of the festival.

The Egyptian and Persian traditions merged in ancient Rome, in a festival to the ancient god of seedtime, Saturn. The Romans exchanged gifts, partied and decorated their homes with greenery. Following the Persian tradition, the usual order of the year was suspended. Grudges and quarrels forgotten, wars would be interrupted or postponed. Businesses, courts and schools were closed. Rich and poor became equal, masters served slaves, and children headed the family. Cross-dressing and masquerades, merriment of all kinds prevailed. A mock king, the Lord of Misrule, was crowned. Candles and lamps chased away the spirits of darkness.

Another related Roman festival celebrated at the same time was dedicated to Sol Invictus ("the invincible sun" Originally a Syrian deity, this cult was imported by Emperor Heliogabalus into Rome and Sol was made god of the state. With the spread of Christianity, Christmas celebration became the most important Christian festival. In the third century various dates, from December to April, were celebrated by Christians as Christmas. January 6 was the most favored day because it was thought to be Jesus' Baptismal day (in the Greek Orthodox Church this continues to be the day to celebrate Christmas). In year 350, December 25 was adopted in Rome and gradually almost the entire Christian Church agreed to that date, which coincided, with Winter Solstice and the festivals, Sol Invicta and Saturnalia. Many of the rituals and traditions of the pagan festivals were incorporated into the Christmas celebration and are still observed today. 

 
Opuslola, our local news showed pictures of a red moon.  The pictures were taken during the eclipse.  Man, if people had superstitious notions and didn't have scientific explanations of the event, it must have been terrifying. 
 


Edited by Athena - 22-Dec-2010 at 02:28
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Posts: 6240 		  Quote Cyrus Shahmiri Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22-Dec-2010 at 08:49
You are welcome! Smile
 
More info about Yalda in Iran's news network Press TV: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/156494.html
 
This part of the article is interesting:
 
According to Iranian mythology, from Yalda night forward, light triumphs over darkness as days grow longer. This celebration, based on the Iranian calendar, comes in the Persian month of Day, the pre-Zoroastrian creator god (Deity). Later he became known as the god of creation and light. It should be noted that the English word “day,” is derived from this word and its symbolism of 'Good'.
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Posts: 403 		  Quote Athena Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22-Dec-2010 at 12:23
I am too easy move by passion.  Cyrus, your little piece of information is as exciting to me, as Red Clay's finds of artifacts! 
 
Do you realize you have revealed a deep part of human psychi?  In the word "day", we are sharing a wholistic concept of creation, that is order out of chaos, and it is about good (orfer) and evil (chaos) and all this is tied to our emotions.  You are saying the word "day" is a complete concept about light being the spiritual good that is repeatedly victorious over the darkness, and death, right?  This is same also the Truth that is victorus over the Lie, and this is tied to the belief that virtues are synonous with strenth.  All this gets tied to ideas about mortality and immortality, and we most certainly feel emotional about that.  As day follows night, if we are virtuous, we are strong too, and rise again.   Our immortality is tied to being strong, virutuous and good.  Yalda is the lights victory over darkness, and if we live the good life, we too will be victors over the darkness, Lie, death.  It all makes perfect sense, now that I see the tie with the sun and natures cycles.  Thank you.  This is the root of our religions is it not?  This is exactly what I hoped would come up when I started this thread.  Thank you.   
 
We want to be immortal and question what will hold the order, that which is our individual being, in order when we die?  If nothing holds our personality in order, our whole being returns to choas, and  the "I" of who I am can no longer exist.   So we image an all powerful God that gives the whole universe order, and we image a life after death without evil, the Lie, the darkness.  We imagine if we aline ourselves with this God, we will be immortal like the sun who repeatedly is victorous over darkness.   Only if we make ourselves one with His order, can we be immortal.   If we reject this order and chose chaos, we must die with our body. 
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Posts: 4620 		  Quote opuslola Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22-Dec-2010 at 19:40
Athena, you actually wrote above;

"One of the themes of the festival was the temporary subversion of order. Masters and servants reversed roles. The king dressed in white would change place with ordinary people. A mock king was crowned and masquerades spilled into the streets. As the old year died, rules of ordinary living were relaxed. This tradition persisted till Sassanian period, and is mentioned by Biruni and others in their recordings of pre-Islamic rituals and festivals. Its' origin goes back to the Babylonian New Year celebration. These people believed the first creation was order that came out of chaos. To appreciate and celebrate the first creation they had a festival and all roles were reversed. Disorder and chaos ruled for a day and eventually order was restored and succeeded at the end of the festival."

Did not anything in the above seem vaguely familar? Have you ever heard of the "King of Fools" on "all fools day", etc., in the West, and especially in France?

Have you ever considered just what part "Quasimodo" played in the famous book?

If you want to be considered as "serious" then you must recognize such things!

Sorry I erased that little quip since I could not even figure out just what I wrote!

If it is not a "ruse", then perhaps you could do some study of Fools Day and see if it is worth sharing?

Sorry for seeming like such a smart ass!

regards,



Edited by opuslola - 23-Dec-2010 at 10:40
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Posts: 17084 		  Quote medenaywe Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23-Dec-2010 at 13:59
Here you are:(translation from phoenician language)
http://www.freemaninstitute.com/rosettatext.htm
   Why is 3 days earlier ?Beginning of spring today starts on 21/22 of march....
And i am still looking for good high resolution copy from roseta stone!?!I am working on demotic text.
Will be very gratefully from You!Purpose is  pure research.Results that are expected =TRUTH.Thanks.


Edited by medenaywe - 23-Dec-2010 at 14:07
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Posts: 403 		  Quote Athena Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24-Dec-2010 at 22:58
Very nice Medenaywe.  There is so much information in your link.  Unfortunately, I am too tire to remember it, but I will get back to it.  Thank you.   
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Posts: 326 		  Quote Kanas_Krumesis Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25-Dec-2010 at 04:11
Merry Christmas to everyone!!! 
 
Christmas tree in Varna, Bulgaria
 
Traditional Bulgarian dish for Christmas
 
Traditional hand-made decoration for the Christmas tree
 
Christmas liturgy in Sofia
 
Because of the gifts Christmas is a favorite holiday of the children


Edited by Kanas_Krumesis - 25-Dec-2010 at 04:12
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Posts: 403 		  Quote Athena Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25-Dec-2010 at 10:38
Lovely pictures Kanas_Krumesis.   I am so envious of the person who made that beautiful pie.  I am lucky to heat a bowl of canned soup without ruining the food.  But I feel an urge to copy that pie for our next pot luck and impress all our neighbors.  What I am saying is there is so much more to the celebration.  There is that desire to connect with others and impress them well, regardless of what religion a person is.  I am not Christian but enjoy decorating a community room for Christmas.  The greens and colored bulbs and lights just make everyone feel happy, except for those who choose to be intolerant, and they create their own hell with their intolerance. 
 
Decorating with ever greens around the winter solstice is at least as old as ancient Rome.  Jeremiah wrote of people who cut and decorated trees sometime between  626 to 586 B.C..
 
http://www.religioustolerance.org/xmas_tree.htm
 

Jeremiah 10:2-4: "Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not." (King James Version). 

I think Jeremiah did not have a good understanding of these people and their reasoning for cutting and decorating trees, because his words are unnecessarily critical, like a tourist objecting to the ways of people who are not known. 
 
 It seems almost everywhere people noticed ever greens remained alived in the winter when other plants died or appeared lifeless.  My intenetion with this thread is to reconnect us with the cycle of natures.  I do not believe religion that breaks us from the cycles of nature is a good thing. 
 


Edited by Athena - 25-Dec-2010 at 11:22
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Posts: 403 		  Quote Athena Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09-Jan-2011 at 12:26
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wadjet
The Egyptian goddess Wadjet celebrations were also geared to the Solstices and equinoxes events.  
 
The goddess Wadget is associated with the Eye of Horace, which is on the USA dollar bill.  The Eye of Horace is both of myth and matheical symbol.  Observation of events in the sky and developed math being essential to Egyptian concept of order coming from chaos, and the human effort required to maintain order.  Perhaps something we should not dismiss as important to us tody, because it is grounded in reality. 
 
How well grounded to reality are we today in our temperature controlled homes, offices and cars, and artifacial lighting that allows us to confuse night with day?  We work the same through ever season of the year, and may not even be aware of the how oribit in space and time effect our reality.  We living in an abstract man made reality rather concretely grounded in the cycles of nature?   How grounded in math are we, considering how abstract our math is today, compared to using our fingers to compute by 6's and 60', giving us a concept of time, 60 seconds, 60 mintures and 12 hours in a day, and  the 360 degrees the circle?  
 
Might we feel like life is out of control because we have become so abstract and disconnected with nature?  How about the role Christianity has played in disconnecting us from the earth, our mother,  and nature's cycles, by telling us we celebrate Christmas and Easter because of the birth and death of a diety, instead of because of the cycles of nature? 
 
The Egyptians were fanatical about math and order, and perhaps their is a value to the perceptive? 


Edited by Athena - 09-Jan-2011 at 12:52
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Posts: 4620 		  Quote opuslola Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09-Jan-2011 at 19:49
In an above post is this Biblical quotation;

"Jeremiah 10:2-4: "Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not." (King James Version).

First of all, I do not see that the above verse, in the KJ version at least, describes anything like a Christmas tree! It seems more to me that the above quote describes "wood workers" or "Crafts men", or more correctly the New Testament "Carpenter", or more generally a "Mason!", who works the tree into a man made product, much like a statue made of wood, that is then bedecked in Silver and Gold, like many such statues were made! If it took more than one piece of the tree to make the statue, then these pieces were made into a whole via the use of nails and hammers, etc.!

There existed no telling how many such wooden gilded statues that were made over the centuries, and then stripped of their silver and gold, and left to rot away!

Regards,


Edited by opuslola - 09-Jan-2011 at 19:54
http://www.quotationspage.com/subjects/history/
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Posts: 403 		  Quote Athena Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09-Jan-2011 at 21:13
You made me curious so I googled wooden gilded statues, and I think you are right. 
 
 
The link shows a picture of a gilded cobra, and the cobra is associated with goddesses and protection.  It also is associated with helping the sun god safely make his nightly journey past demons in the underworld.  Connecting what is said about the signs of heaven with making wooden gilded statues.   As the cobra deity would help the sun god, it would help the pharaoh in the underworld, enabling the pharaoh to rise again too.   This would be different from the Christmas tree, because it is clearly making an idol, right?
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Posts: 4620 		  Quote opuslola Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16-Jan-2011 at 21:06
Athena, if you are indeed still reading from this site, you wrote;

"The Romans treated fire as scared, and the temple virgins were responsible for keeping the fire going. Religion at this time not being individualistic but communitist.   Prayers were not for individual desires but the good of Rome, and those virgins kept the fire of Rome burning.   In Zoroastrianism fire is not just life, it is truth, and of course the Lie is associated with death. What is the value of fire in the Roseta stone mention of Festival of Dieties Fire?"

Actually, I could present a very good argument that these so called "Virgins!" were actually temple "prostitutes!"

Can you deny it?

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