I've always liked the rendering "I AM HE WHO IS". There's something really _primal_ about it. The ultimate badass boast.

loooool

https://youtu.be/Ch7OHpZiosU

>things can mean whatever I want them to mean

>sex has been a great source of artistic inspiration

I don't know about y'all but I have never sat there with a stiffy and gone "YA KNOW WHAT SOUNDS GOOD RIGHT NOW? PAINTING."

More than anything that screencap proves pro-choice people are what they are as a basic pathology of their obsession with perversion

I just got invited here, and I didn't make up the name. Wouldn't be surprised if someone else had used it prior

I've never been in here before. It's the name of the Gnostic Demiurge. I chose it to troll gnosticfags and their endless kvetching that God is just _soooooo mean_ for "trapping us in mortal bodies"

I happen to like the Creator and His Creation, personally.

Ah yeah that would be where it came from

I hate to use the term "meditation" due to its connotations of heathen hocus pocus but I'd suggest just doing a basic visualization meditation as you go to sleep regarding a particular piece of comforting Biblical imagery

putting your mind in the right place goes a long way toward solving those sorts of problems

Isn't the whole point of the Harrowing that he _did_ get a Hell visa?

If I handed most church-going, Bible-believing Christians these days, the book of Ezekiel, stripped of its author attribution, chapter and verse numbering, they would call it occult kike shit

For the record, it was occultism that _brought me to Christianity_.
It was the realization that the average person who insults the textual integrity of the Bible, trusts grimoires riddled with copy errors, translation faults, redundancies, and contradictions, that made me return to the traditions I was raised with

Righteous.

Uh oh looks like I just posted a pagan myth. Better freak out about that, too

Agreed

I like visual symbolism better because I have a shit memory for the written word

I think there's also a large part of this where, in regards to the Old Testament material anyhow, modern believers, including and seemingly especially people in this group, have a really bizarre and visceral reaction against it

they instinctively recognize it belongs to an older and more archaic worldview and mindset, but they react with hostility toward this

Facts: God's chosen patriarchs banged on drums and blew on trumpets made of ram horns while sacrificing rams on an altar adorned with ram horns
The Old Testament is PRIMAL as _fuck_

Yes. Horrid, really. See, I was raised in a flavor of backwoods-ass folk Protestantism that had gone so hard into separating itself from the cultural trajectory of European Christendom to get a clean break from it, it was absolutely _steeped_ in the Old Testament.

Yeah you feel me then

Right? Most "believers" I've met who wear a cross around their neck, are wearing what an anthropologist would consider an apotropaic totem based on the wearer's understanding of what it is and what it does

I mean, ideally it ought to be an expression of a greater cosmic truth, but the way most people treat it, it's a totem

I should certainly hope so.

Or else I've been wearing this cross around my neck for nothing lol

oh no it's an Irish-style high cross with little scenes of theologically significant episodes from the Bible on it for extra _magical potency_

lmao

I do wonder how many people here have actually read the Book of Habakkuk

I mention Habakkuk especially because large sections of out read like something right out of "pagan" myth

It describes Elioun marching down from the Holy Mountain preceded by Resheph and Mot

i.e. the Canaanite gods of plague and death

The concordance is the ultimate grimoire

It was a pun

"grimoire" literally just means "a book of words"

a grammary

lol

What an odd conversation. If the Creator Created Creation, that means Creation inherently functions according to the Will of the Creator.
This is basic natural theology.

Distinguishing between something being wrong for purely material reasons, and being wrong for moral reasons, is forcing a false duality onto God and limiting His powers of architectural brilliance

Well that's odd. That sounds like gnostic bullshit to me.

Using the name of the substance the Lord made the cosmos of to denote something inherently negative is crypto-gnosticism.

But if the abuses are an unavoidable inevitability inherent to the production of said thing, once again, there's no distinction there between the moral and material wrong

So you're telling me YOU believe in a world where it would be hypothetically possible to create pornography that does not inevitably rely on human exploitation?

Sounds like you're defending porn at this point.

Drawn pornography either looks like something 5 year old boys make to giggle adolescently at, or it is based on photographs of living models

Nice attack, moralistic weirdo. I'm applying natural theology to ethics.

I'm talking about the intrinsically mind-poisoning arbitrariness of moralism

lolokay

Yes, I understood that point. I am saying dividing the body from the soul is gnostic blasphemy.

The same way dividing Christ the Man from Christ the Deity is Arian heresy.

Ahh

Excuse my mixup

I will admit to having a kneejerk reaction to moralism of any kind because it implies that God is so foolish and powerless that he needs to beg us to follow arbitrary rules for some promise of some kind of future reward

>like God is a secret battery powering arcane effects on objects

I've never heard a more blasphemous and heretical description of natural theology in my life, not even from animists and pagans

The God that micromanages the cosmos like some kind of heathen overlord deity, some kind of Baal

is not God

Like God takes time out of His infinitude to personally and uniquely grant your prayer at the exact moment you speak it

That's voodoo nigger shit.

Well then they're just as much heathen voodoo niggers as the motherfucker who thinks God takes time out of His infinitude to answer their prayers personally and particularly

>if they work without will and intent
>implying there are things outside of God's will

Does that shit even "work" or is it entirely delusional?

I would like to posit the possibility that superstitious nonsense like that functions on a purely psychological level

_Belief_ in witchcraft is pagan nonsense.

Burning witches was forbidden by the Lex Salica and Lex Ripuaria

as a heathen practice.

Yeah like I said, it works on a purely psychological level

You are now saying it is possible to wield power that does not come from God

that is paganism.

That is animistic voodoo nigger shit.

Idolatry.

"Demon". Even the use of the word for a pagan tutelary spirit is idolatry. the Old Testament makes it exceedingly clear there are only se'irim and shedim

Elemental spirits whose only power is to cast fear into the heathen

'Se'irim', "hairy ones", embodiments of places inhospitable to human life.
"Shedim", 'unclean spirits of the air', impure thoughts arising from faith in powers outside of God

What is even the point of including the Old Testament or _calling_ it the Old Testament if you're just going to graft a bunch of Greek paganism onto the Faith of the Prophets?

The Old Testament makes it clear the cult of Molech arose very straightforwardly from sedentary agrarian societies who functioned collectively rather than tribalistically

Don't want abortion? Burn houses and live nomadically. Very simple.

Associate only with your own blood kin.

The name "Moloch" literally just means "king". It is the cult of city-state chieftains that burned children to ensure a good harvest.

No city-states, no charismatic cults of city-state kings.

Simple.

>Exorcist

Ooga booga.

Take that shit to Nigeria where it belongs,.

Or Haiti.

If demons are _allowed_ to do certain things, then they act according to the Will of God

Again I ask...What is the point of even holding the Old Testament if you're going to build off of Greek paganism rather than the actual Old Testament?

Using apotropaic totems like holy water and crucifixes to drive bodiless powers away is what voudon houngans do when they bang on drums and wear hot chili pepper necklaces to drive off plague-spirits

It's pure heathen superstition without any Biblical basis.

Have done.

Nothing but Greco-Roman paganism sloppily grafted onto the Christian faith to compromise with converts

Which parts? You mean the Gospels that were written long after the Church had been established and were tailor-made to appeal to converts?
Yeah I imagine that the gospel that was tailor-made to appeal to superstitious Aramaean peasants would have all sorts of stuff like faith-healing and demon-banishing, the same way the gospel tailor-made to appeal to Greek converts is full of lofty transcendental metaphysics

Which Christians would that be exactly? Find me a single mention of "Matthew", "Mark", "Luke" or "John" in the Letters of St. Paul. Find me one mention of the specificities of the events described within the gospels in the Letters of St. Paul

I'm waiting.

Prove the Synoptic gospels even _existed_ in the time St. Paul wrote his Letters.

They are the basis from which you argue, so prove their legitimacy.

Prove to me that the Letters of Paul even make reference to the Synoptic Gospels or that they even _existed_ at the time

I'd be more than happy to admit I'm wrong, I'm just curious where I can find evidence these things you use as the basis of your argument are legitimate

Like I could just make shit up right now and say that Christ was the reincarnation of Baal-Tammuz like some kind of Zeitgeist dork but without any actual textual basis I'd just be talking out of my ass

I never said there are no demons