Everything Under the Moon

So, I've begun to read the Lotus Sutra and recently and I've been researching bhuddism as well as Daoism, I was raised in an atheist family, but have always been interested in religions. I attended a Catholic highschool so I have knowledge on the Catholic religion as well.

I don't follow any of these religions but I do agree with bits and pieces of certain ones, and I was wondering if it's ok to take pieces from each one and include them in my practice? For instance, using certain pieces of the Lotus Sutra text in my spells.

If you find it helpful and empowering to your spellcraft to include facets from different belief systems, there's no reason why not as far as I can tell. Generally with magic, if you find something to be useful to you, you use it. Combining like that is the basis of eclectic craft.

WitchyMermaid95 wrote:So, I've begun to read the Lotus Sutra and recently and I've been researching bhuddism as well as Daoism, I was raised in an atheist family, but have always been interested in religions. I attended a Catholic highschool so I have knowledge on the Catholic religion as well.

I don't follow any of these religions but I do agree with bits and pieces of certain ones, and I was wondering if it's ok to take pieces from each one and include them in my practice? For instance, using certain pieces of the Lotus Sutra text in my spells.

This is called syncretism and there isn't a single belief system nor religion that has never had it. Go for it.

Every religion has had a visionary at its start. Who can have a vision of religion better suited to you and your situation than you?

planewalker wrote:Every religion has had a visionary at its start. Who can have a vision of religion better suited to you and your situation than you?

What a wonderful way of putting it!

Shireside wrote:If you find it helpful and empowering to your spellcraft to include facets from different belief systems, there's no reason why not as far as I can tell. Generally with magic, if you find something to be useful to you, you use it. Combining like that is the basis of eclectic craft.

Thank you for this response.. i really like the idea of using whatever comes naturally or seems useful, I know with magic it's very sort of personalized and unique to each person, but I always feel like I'm doing something "wrong" so this was very helpful and motivating

The reason some may find not to do it is because of the belief that it is holy in some respect and you can not touch it without permission from other humans. In truth every idea is free for you to use as you see fit. Parts of human culture tells you otherwise.

The thing is to be aware that your grasp of it may not represent what another group take the sutra to mean.

Adapting it to another cultural context and combine with other tings also is a great way of actually getting to know the subject. Understanding more abstract ideas, in my view, is a creative process of analyzing parts and not passive intake of ready made things afraid of taking them apart.

The challenge is to know how your take on it may differ from other interpretations or to know what are your own assumptions directing the interpretation.

You can't mix religions. They're not cocktails. And it's not because it would be insulting to some deity, but because most every religious construct ever dreamed up is almost entirely man-made and is culturally appropriate for the time it was devised. From Judaism to Scientology, history creates situations that men and women don't understand properly and they create a religious system to plug the gap.

But here's the kicker.

When you know what religion is, you can distil the parts that speak to you on a personal level and then use their archetypes to form your own path to divinity. I've now read and re-typed that sentence about seven times, and still find it a bit unclear, so let me paint you an example.

You implied that you like the Lotus Sutra (Buddhism), Daoism, and aspects of Catholicism. Let's say, purely as a crude simplification for argument's sake, that Buddhism is mainly personified by its polytheism, Daoism largely encompasses passivity, and Catholicism has its concepts of relics. Could you then forge a path based on these three things and worship accordingly?

Yes.

You'd need to square some of the contradictions involved, typically when you embrace an Abrahamic monotheism, but you're not worshipping the religious figures or deities involved in those particular religions; you're worshipping what they symbolically represent. There are no intelligent, external entities - merely images created to explain the inexplicable. The Romans needed to get around via ship, so created Neptune. The Greeks needed the Aegean for travel and trade, so prayed to Poseidon. These aren't individual gods, merely different names fulfilling the same basic need.

Just remember:

What you want to work with are energies, not supernatural beings. Those energies live within you.

Once you understand that, your choice of material can become practically infinite.

If I understand you Darkest A., religion is a formula. I think I agree.

How to you know she doesn't want to work with supernatural beings? It's her decision I think.

autumn swan wrote:How to you know she doesn't want to work with supernatural beings?

Because they don't exist; not externally to us, anyway.

They're personifications, typically used as an intermediary between the person/people they're relevant to, and divinity (the power of creation) itself. Does this mean you can't work with them? No, of course not. But it's safer to understand that what you're evoking is a part of yourself, rather than part of a cosmic, and traditionally contradictory, pantheon dependent upon culture.

Truly, the outlook of deities, the perfect knowledge of what is. I don't personally invoke Godhood. I do not discount it's existence in an infinate multiverse. If practiced with faithful regularity of rite and ritual that has been created independently , and used exclusively by, a single individual, it still is well within the definition of religion, even if kept secret by said individual. Language, another construct of cultural imposition. D@mn! I can't get away from the crafty little buggers.

planewalker wrote:If practiced with faithful regularity of rite and ritual that has been created independently , and used exclusively by, a single individual, it still is well within the definition of religion, even if kept secret by said individual.

Absolutely.

Too many people think of religion as an independently created concept that you have to follow on and adopt. When I say "religion", I'm talking about a personal relationship with divinity.

They get that whole created by God thing going on when it's a construct by and of people.

I use zen (scientific self),
Islam (faith in space not time),
Atheism (sun is love, moon is light),
and I also hear angels who believe that death understands love, or close enough.

All this means my place in "Heaven" (I hope it is okay to use the word), is reinforced by knowledge and not just superstitions! I see religions as *proof of beautiful life* - spirituality is always valid in such experiences. So, "religious experiences" void the nonsenses. I think that would be called syncretism, but with the heaven(s) in mind.