(Part 3) Best products from r/pagan

Not sure if they have statues, but I love AzureGreen. Since I'm redditing at work I'll make a more complete list when I get home :)

EDIT: I'm home!

I've gotten only 3 statues online so far, so I'm just gonna link you to where I got them. The statues all arrived in a timely manner and in good condition so I have no problem recommending these sellers :) I bought a smaller figurine of Kwan Yin at a local store, and I can't remember where I got my statue of Hotei (fat happy buddha) from.

Here is where I got my first Santa Muerte statue. The second one was bought for me by my mom when she was on vacation in California.

Here is where I got my Goddess statue.

Here is where I got my Buddha statue. The Amazon store that I purchased my altar cloth from is India Shakti.

Not sure if it counts as a statue, but here is where I got my solar-powered prayer wheel :) Mom's got a Hotei next to our front door so I got the prayer wheel for it after I started turning the statue's spot into a mini-altar.

Another store I like is Vodoustore.com. I haven't gotten any statues from there yet, but I've gotten some prayer cards from them--Sta Muerte, Odin, Hekate, and I think one of Papa Legba--and they've arrived in a pretty timely manner. I've got some more cards sitting in my cart on that site. They've got all kinds of stuff so it's definitely worth checking out if that's your thing.

The Wicked Griffin sells awesome jewelry. I got a bracelet from them that I absolutely love. Not statues, I know, but definitely worth checking out!

I hope this helps!

if you are curious about a specific tradition I would seek out books that align with those. You wouldn't be stuck there of course, like say you read up on Irish Celtic mythos and modern traditions and you find you don't really jive with that, it's ok. Knowledge is always useful.

Just an aside though, when looking at pagan books keep a little bit of a skeptical mind. Look to see if they've done their research, and that they don't make bogus historical claims to try to give themselves legitimacy. Doesn't mean that they don't have good ideas, but you are under no obligation to buy everything that they are selling. A lot of folks get into paganism because they think it'll give them woo-woo psychic powers or make them special. Not really how it works. It's a personal path that you walk, it's about your relationship with your higher power/s and the world you live in. There are many different ways within paganism to navigate that world. Soo yeah :)

Personally, I would suggest you have a go at Joseph Campbell's the power of myth, and a hero with a thousand faces. Not strictly pagan but he deals with jungian archtypes which many pagan traditions deal with as well. You may find some of his lectures on youtube and spotify. Another book is Women who run with the wolves. It's kinda geared towards women but men can get stuff out of it as well. It's a good meditation I think. If you want to read more about pagan culture and a bit of history, maybe check out The Bull of Heaven.

Red flags, look at the margins, see who they site. It's ok to dig into academic texts. Pagan books aren't always strictly pagan. If someone makes a claim or statement, don't be afraid to get a second source. For some things like rituals, you'll see many different types. If you are on your own path and not in a group it's completely ok to throw out what doesn't work for you. Some pagans like to gate keep, don't listen to them. The modern pagan movement was started in the 40's by Gerald Gardner ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Gardner_(Wiccan) ), and there's no solid evidence that he didn't make his tradition up despite his claims. You get to make up your own mind about that of course :)

A lot of books first people start read are Wiccan because Wicca is rather popular. It's not a terrible way to go, just depends on what kind of info you're looking for & it's not like you're stuck in the Wiccan hole. It's just one kind of structure amongst many. Go to the source historically, and look around at what people are doing now. Meditate, google your authors, use your brain box always.

Good Luck!

Šulmu, /u/KlingonLinux! I gotchoo on "Canaanite" and Israelite (they were more or less the "same" people religio-culturally for most of Antiquity, and definitely genetically/ethnically) and Punic/Phoenician (Iron Age Levantine ["Canaanite" and Israelite peoples and so on] peoples abroad throughout the Mediterranean as far West as Southern Spain/the island of Ibiza and North Africa) sources, awīlu.

Some necessary clarification : I routinely put "Canaanite" in scare-quotes, because there was no definitive, proto-national much less national identity for so-called "Canaanites" in the way that Israelites and Judahites eventually had by the 1st millennium BCE, and the people of Syro-Palestine during the Middle to Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age would overwhelmingly identify and operate by clan, by tribe, or by city-state before calling themselves and operating as Knaʿni (Ugaritic, meaning "people of Canaan"). "Canaanite" religious forms consonantly varied quite noticeably by city-state, in ways that, say, Egyptian ones did not, even taking into account "alternative" (but not competing) Egyptian local theologies and so on. Speaking in perhaps excessively general terms, there was a State religion overarching the regional ones in Egypt which, in effect, bound them together as a cooperative dynamic unit. "Canaan" as such had no such large-scale, cohesive "religious infrastructure" of Egypt's much less Mesopotamian Kingdoms' and Empires' like, and it didn't "help" that the exceptionally powerful Egyptian Empire of the Late Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom Periods and contemporaneous Mesopotamian and Hittite Empires were constantly vying for control of the North Sinai and Syro-Palestine. The economic centers of "Canaan" were, indeed, frequently subservient to Egypt throughout Bronze Age history, with Egyptian Kings investing governors and mayors of its own throughout "Canaanite" territories following the Thutmosid Conquest, much to the personal danger of said governors and mayors (who were neither particularly liked nor trusted by their Levantine subjects nor by Egyptian officials) and much to the cantankerous chagrin of the Levantine peoples living under Egyptian Imperial rule. Which is to say nothing of Egyptian-mandated relocations of restive Levantine people and so forth.

Furthermore, Hebrew Biblical literature intensely confuses what "Canaanite" even means in a religio-cultural sense, using the term simply to inveigh against religious beliefs and conventions, regardless of actual origin, Deuteronomic Jews did not wish to see carry over from their ancestral religion(s)/culture(s) and from neighboring religions/cultures (e.g., Mesopotamian and Egyptian religions/cultures. See Leviticus 18, Deuteronomy 7, and Ezekiel 23 as but three illustrations of the aforementioned) into newly-minted Judaism and what had then become the Israelite-Judahite "national" identities (primarily in politically-motivated defiance, it should be noted, of their later Master, the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which had made of the internally-fractured Kingdoms of Israel and Judah satellite states through rigorous opportunistic military conquest and serious economic and political strong-arming, beginning with the great and cunning King Tukultī-apil-Ešarra/"Tiglath-Pileser" III). A few scholars and especially many would-be Revivalists not academically-trained frequently, unwittingly hang their understanding of "Canaanite" upon all this confusion -- and the latter not in anything like a Jewish context nor through a Jewish hermeneutic, either, while still treating iffy Jewish accounts embedded in Scripture entirely too literally, which makes it an even more weird and defunct confusion.

Now, it's very important to form a baseline understanding of the historical circumstances of the Near East concerning "Canaan," what came out of it, its influential neighbors, and religio-cultural receptors. I know it feels like unnecessary drudgery to many people, but the religious tidbits don't make much sense and their use in/continued relevance to Modernity can't be adequately evaluated without learning and understanding their historical contexts, which is where a lot of would-be Revivalists go very wrong, in my opinion -- especially since "Canaanite" and other non-Kemetic ANE religious Revivals are still very much in their formative stages and aren't being led by people with necessary, thorough backgrounds in Ancient Near Eastern Studies. For this, I recommend beginning with Donald B. Redford's Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, Marc Van De Mieroop's A History of the Ancient Near East: ca. 3000 to 323 BC, Amanda H. Podany's Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East, and Mark Woolmer's Ancient Phoenicia: An Introduction. They're not short texts, apart from Woolmer's that is, but they will give you a decent, fairly comprehensive understanding of the circumstances of the ANE.

Concerning "Canaanite" and Israelite, etc., religious details and developments, just about anything by Mark S. Smith, Rainer Albertz (namely, this massive text he co-authored with Rüdiger Schmitt), Daniel E. Fleming, and Dennis Pardee are quite sound.

Stories from Ancient Canaan, 2nd Edition edited by Mark S. Smith and Michael D. Coogan is probably where you're looking to start vis-a-vis "Canaanite" religion(s), as most people like to get at the mythic material first and foremost. After that, I would definitely recommend picking up The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (Biblical Resource Series), along with Pardee's Ritual and Cult at Ugarit (Writings from the Ancient World) and Nicolas Wyatt's Religious Texts from Ugarit -- there should be a free PDF of the latter still floating around the nets somewhere.

While William Foxwell Albright has since become outdated in areas, his works are nevertheless necessary, now "classic" reads. Of particular use and importance is his Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan: An Historical Analysis of Two Contrasting Faiths

Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan by John Day and the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, Second Edition are handy, but relatively scarce and expensive.

Tryggve N. D. Mettinger is a much-beloved scholar of mine, though be aware that in The Riddle of the Resurrection: "Dying and Rising Gods" in the Ancient Near East -- one of the very few decent and comprehensive texts in ANE "comparative religious studies" -- wherein he addresses a few major Levantine Gods like Ba'l-Hadad, he unfortunately demonstrates a very poor comprehension of Greek, so if you ever pick that title up please do remember to take his interpretations in the chapter concerning the Phoenician God Melqart with a metric ton of salt.

Aaron J. Brody's Each Man Cried Out to His God: The Specialized Religion of Canaanite and Phoenician Seafarers was a short, widely-accessible, and enjoyable volume; he covers quite a few lesser-known and under-explored elements of Levantine religions therein.

It sounds like a lot, I'm sure, and there's so much more to read and discuss beyond all these, but hopefully this will provide a decent springboard for you into the crazy, wonderful world of Levantine religions.

I hope this helped, and if you need anything else on this, or concerning Mesopotamia and Egypt, feel free to ask anytime.

> I wonder how much you can understand what makes French French by learning Gaulish...

That's a great question! Honestly, not a whole lot just because modern French has evolved so much over time and is fundamentally based on Latin. Don't get me wrong, Gaulish was important to the development of French, as the vulgar Latin spoken throughout the Roman province of Gaul was a mish-mash of different Gaulish dialects mixed with Latin. But I think that French overall is clearly an Italic language, and the Franks probably had just as strong an influence over it as the Gauls did. But despite the fact that only a small fraction of French vocabulary comes from Gaulish, it definitely helped transform French into the language it is today.

What I just wrote above was an extremely abridged, superficial version of the Gaulish history of French. It's a complicated subject, and you would probably have to chase down an expensive textbook to get a proper history of it.

There is a good pop-history book about the French language called The Story of French. It's 500 pages, but I found it fun to read. It barely even touches on the French language's history with Gaulish, though. There's just that much more to write about French development in Medieval to modern times.

But I would say that the few words that do come from Gaulish are surprisingly important words and they help shape the character of the language. It seems like almost anything rustic, nature-based, or agrarian comes from Gaulish (alouette, lark; cabane, cabin; cheval, horse; mouton, sheep; etc., the list is very long)

There are also a small number of key words that aren't rustic which come from Gaulish, such as aller (to go), chemin (path/route), cloche (bell), craindre (to fear), crème (cream), drapeau (flag), manteau (coat), petit (small), and pièce (piece).

I'm sure you can see that some of these words even worked their way into English via Norman. Wikipedia has a good list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_French_words_of_Gaulish_origin

I feel like I rambled a lot and still couldn't do the subject justice, but I hope that answered your general question and gave you some more insight.

If you're looking for information on the Mesopotamian pantheon, I can give you a few good places to start.

 

First, try the ORACC website. It provides general overviews of many of the major deities of the Mesopotamian pantheon, including their function in the religion, their iconography, their genealogy, and more.

Second, the ETCSL provides a collection of myths, cult songs, prayers, wisdom literature, and more from the Third Dynasty of Ur (a transitional period between the Akkadians and the Babylonians). When most people think of Mesopotamian mythology, they're thinking of material from this period in its history.

Third, the SEAL project is set up much the same as ETCSL, but focuses on Akkadian, Assyrians, and Babylonian literature instead of Sumerian. You'll have to do some exploring on SEAL, as not every text listed has a translation available.

 

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As far as book recommendations are concerned:

 

The Treasures of Darkness by Thorkild Jacobsen is an excellent introductory overview to the stages of Mesopotamian religion, including a plethora of insights into their deities and why certain ones achieved prominence when they did.

Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia by Jean Bottéro (translation by Teresa Fagan) is an excellent exploration of the psychology of Mesopotamian religion, focusing on the mental and emotional connection the people felt towards their gods and goddesses.

The Harps That Once by Thorkild Jacobsen is an exploration of dozens of Sumerian myths, poems, cult songs, and more; each with extensive notes and explanations along the way.

From Distant Days by Benjamin Foster is similar to "The Harps That Once," only it focuses exclusively on Assyrian and Babylonian myths, cult songs, prayers, and so forth.

 

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Finally, I moderate r/Sumer, the subreddit dedicated to the reconstruction and revival of Mesopotamian polytheism. You're more than welcome to join us over there and ask questions.