Happy Easter
Update: This is what happens when you have small children – you dye your kitchen.
Yes, the festival of Easter, goddess of the Spring, is celebrated this time of year with the traditional symbols of fertility, the egg and the rabbit, by the people who settled around the Baltic Sea – the Teutons, Slavs, Finns, Prussians, Letts, et al. It is a festival of plenty after the hardships of winter, with the promise of new growth.
Of course, later groups took the celebration and turned it to other purposes, but I doubt Easter minds.
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It’s also the day we celebrate zombies.
– Badtux the Irreverent Penguin
Really?
Which groups would those have been?
And how was it transmitted?
Not nice, Badtux 😉
Well, it sort of started with the Knights of Teutonic order deciding to set up shop in my family’s homeland, Prussia, and spread with blood and fire, the standard method. After a few centuries a lot of people forget these antecedents.
I would like to thank you, Steve, for alerting me to Jams’s passing. He has been on an intermittent hiatus, so it didn’t occur to me it might be something more serious.
Easter. Yes, and yet another event of historic significance lost to the almighty dollar by the corporate rapists and pillagers, just like Christmas. I doubt that within a few more generations, the origins will even be remembered by anyone, except perhaps those who will rewrite the Bibles and other historical documents for the pleasure of their corporate masters, yet again. *shrug*
And so it goes.
Dagnabbit! I hit post when i meant to hit preview! *sigh* I really should wear my glasses… But they are in another room, and I couldn’t be bothered! 😆
Anyway, I was going to add (to follow up from your reference Bryan):
Curious how we have gone from killing, looting, pillaging and generally making lives of ordinary people miserable by the fire and the sword, to the boardroom and the courts!
Meeeh… It would have been better as a single post! *sigh*
I’ll go get my glasses… 😉
Kryten, Kryten, Kryten – it’s called ‘creative destruction’ and it’s necessary for the advancement of society, just like ‘free trade’. If you allow people to celebrate religious events without buying a lot of stuff our economies will collapse and there would be no money for religion.
Money is important for religion as is obvious from every religious broadcast you see. Every one of them includes a request for donations to continue their important work of asking for more money. You can’t expect people to believe a poor man wandering around in a bathrobe and preaching to anyone who will listen. It would be impossible to have a religion based on a premise that ridiculous. 😈
Yep. In fact, I have given up the idea of working my ass off creating a new company(ies) and drumming up biz the hard way! I’ve decided to change my name to Fred Smith, became a travelling salesman, go walkabout somewhere and discover some mysterious and magical scriptures written on the backs of old bus tickets, writing a modified version of the Book (with lot’s of references to *money is good for the soul*, and the Elites are the true children of Dog and are the true rulers of Mankind, and the weak shall be downtrodden! etc) and starting a Moron Religion! (ehh… that one’s already taken, I’ll think of another name!) Then I’ll sit back and rake in squillions, and have lot’s of bright-eyed, fervent, PYT’s (pretty young things) who will be willing to do anything for their new lord & master (for the cause, of course, and because *It Is Written!*) And then I’ll mysteriously disappear with a yacht full of babes somewhere (near an island of course), and everyone will be in awe at the magical diviness of it all, and throw ton’s of money into my secret bank accounts!) I can be bigger than the Morons and the Scamologists put together!!
Ohhhh… I am having rapid palpitations thinking about it! 😯 I can do this! Care to join me Bryan? You too can be a Prophet! You just have to be… prophetic! and we can have the Magic penguin as our idol (What do ya think Badtux?) 😉 LMAO
Of course… we would have to give up honesty, rationality, reality, honor, morals and ethics… But they are the sacrifices that must be made to become a Great Religion(tm)! A small sacrifice for all the moolah and babes we could ever want! 👿
People seem to forget that *ALL* religions were created by Humans!! I don’t give a rat’s what they may actually *believe*! ‘Faith’ is just another word for ‘hope’!
And, people truly are stupid (for the most part)! If I wanted to do a truly honest buisness, I could make a hand mirror with the inscription: “Your problem is right here! LOOK!” It would never sell. truth never does! But… *sigh* People won’t pay for truth, they pay for fantasy, escape and “Someone to blame!”(tm)
PS. Just for the record, I am NOT dissing anyone’s belief in a Divine Entity (God or whatever you want to call it/him/her). But I have never once seen anything truly *Divine* in anything man made (and I have traveled the Globe and been places most have never heard off!) That said, I have seen some truly wondrous creations of man that inspired awe and must have been somehow inspired by something than normal human creativity. Because of those few instances, I believe in the possibility of some kind of *outside* force or being. But that is the exception. The rule is that Humans are destructive, waste-full, misguided, selfish, thoughtless and in now way *guided* by anything *divine*!
Yeah… I have seen some truly amazing things, and some truly amazing people! But sadly, they are in a minority. *sigh*
“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”
— Omar Khayyam (translated by Edward FitzGerald)
People who understand that verse (whether they know it or not), only get one half of it. they may understand that “What’s done is done. What is said is said. And there is nothing that can be done to change that fact” (unless you are a GOP or one of their myriad fawning mindless zombies, etc), but it also contains a warning. “Consider what you are about to say or do! Because no matter what you do or say after, it cannot be undone!” Very few people stop and think.
I sometimes wonder why we have a brain capable of considering consequences etc. People rarely do, at least not until it’s too late to do anything about it. *shrug*
It is surely a universal proverb across cultures that “that which is said, cannot be unsaid”. It has been used in English language literature for decades, is a common expression among Slavs, has a German counterpart, and has spread across Asia. I would assume that the Africans, Polynesians, and Native Americans are all familiar with the concept.
Variations include: ‘engage your brain before you open your mouth’ and ‘If you do not speak they may think you a fool, but if you speak they will know.’
People can believe whatever they want, as long as they keep it to themselves. It is when they start pressuring others to join them that society has involvement. Christianity was flourishing on its own, and then it became the state religion of the Roman Empire and everything went pear-shaped. That why there is are bureaucratic levels in the Orthodox and Catholic churches. Religion probably is a force for good on its own, but sooner or later, they all want political power, and the corruption sets in.