Quotes About Deities

if oxen and lions and horses had hands and could draw, they would represent their gods as oxen and lions and horses.

Fetishism and idolatry are the gateway to polytheism. Certain spirits are elevated in esteem and power so that they are now considered gods. Rituals develop; superstitions give way to prayers and sacrifices; relationships among the deities are recognized and get complicated. Nevertheless, polytheism is still just animism on a bigger scale.

Well, I think the Yoruba gods are truthful. Truthful in the sense that i consider religion and the construct of deities simply an extension of human qualities taken, if you like, to the nth degree. i mistrust gods who become so separated from humanity that enormous crimes can be committed in their names. i prefer gods who can be brought down to earth and judged, if you like.

There are gods, but there is no God; and all gods become devils eventually.

Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.

Mythology is Fan Fiction - for the Gods.

religion is created by humans rather than by gods, and it is defined by its social function rather than by the existence of deities. Religion is anything that confers superhuman legitimacy on human social structures. It legitimises human norms and values by arguing that they reflect superhuman laws. Religion

El invento del politeísmo es favorable a una tolerancia religiosa de mucho alcance. Puesto que los politeístas creen, por un lado, en un poder supremo y completamente desinteresado, y por otro, en muchos poderes parciales y sesgados, no hay dificultad para que los devotos de un dios acepten la existencia y eficacia de otros dioses. El politeísmo es intrínsecamente liberal, y raramente persigue a «herejes» o «infieles».

Animists thought that humans were just one of many creatures inhabiting the world. Polytheists, on the other hand, increasingly saw the world as a reflection of the relationship between gods and humans.

I was descended from a handful of fertility deities, but I guess I really hadn't understood what that meant. I mean, there was fertile and then there was being able to get pregnant while you were already pregnant.

Universal deities ... never seem to smile. Not in any culture. What's the point of having omnipotence if you don't enjoy it?

Religions understand this: they know that to sustain goodness, it helps to have an audience. The faiths hence provide us with a gallery of witnesses at the ceremonial beginnings of our marriages and thereafter they entrust a vigilant role to their deities.

Religions understand this: they know that to sustain goodness one, it helps to have an audience. The faiths hence provide us with a gallery of witnesses at the ceremonial beginnings of our marriages and thereafter they entrust a vigilant role to their deities.

While Devas,Asuras, Nagas,Yaskhas and Devatas satisfied mundane, everyday needs, they did not answer more primal issues:Why does the world exist? Do we exist? Who are we? There was a need for God who was greater than the gods. There was need for Ishwara, the supreme lord, Mahadeva, the great god who is God, and Bhagavan, the container of all things.

Whenever people can access deities directly without the intervention of a religious hierarchy, they don't need to have hierarchy so much.

The gods of old times mated sometimes with mortal women, our legends tell us.

Around the new mother, three deities mounted guard against the dreaded violence of Silvanus, that 'fierce, terrifying, rough' demon of the woods (Aug., CG, 6, 9, 2): they were Intercidona (for without the blade of the axe one cannot cut trees intercidere); Pilumnus (for without the pestle one cannot make flour), and Deverra (for without the broom one cannot pile up the grain).

yoga: the Hindu practice of bowing to pagan deities through poses called 'asanas', a practice made popular in the West by New Agers. Even if a Christian were to use Scripture or hymns, each of these postures is still designed to worship pagan deities. Many yoga studios are filled with pagan statues and the use of blasphemous Sanskrit chanting.

The forms of the central and surrounding deities... should not be protruding like a clay statue or cast image, yet neither should they be flat like a painting. In contrast, they should be apparent, yet not truly existent, like a rainbow in the sky or the reflection of the moon in a lake. They should appear as though conjured up by a magician. Clear appearance involves fixing the mind one-pointedly on these forms with a sense of vividness, nakedness, lucidity, and clarity.

f]ortune is the lease capricious of deities, and arranges things on the just and rigid system that no one shall be very happy for very long.

At the birth of society and civilisation I find a religious landscape littered with feisty female deities who make wisdom their business.

The latest page I've been working is about the organization of the pantheon of the gods. Who's indebted to whom, how they are related, who screwed whose uncle or grandmother, all of that.

It is known that pontifical law forbade the dedication of the same sanctuary to two deities (Liv., 27, 25, 8); therefore at least a double cella was required.

if a gens died out, in theory its cults disappeared with it; but the state made efforts to preserve at least some of those whose celebration was important to the Roman people (who were always concerned to treat the most minor deities tactfully) by entrusting them to an association (sodalitas).