{"id":1137,"date":"2009-04-02T15:28:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-02T15:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1137"},"modified":"2009-04-02T15:28:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-02T15:28:00","slug":"polytheism-and-the-empowered-individual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1137","title":{"rendered":"Polytheism and the Empowered Individual"},"content":{"rendered":"

An interesting article from a Hindu writer on polytheism, monotheism, and contemporary politics in India: “The March to Monotheism<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

This paragraph caught my eye:<\/p>\n

If the upside of monotheism is universalism and egalitarianism, the downside is that it admits of no rival. There can be no middle ground, no compromise. Reality is binary. It’s either one or zero. It’s my god or your devil. The aversion to idolatry and icons emerges from the same logic: an icon or idol is a personal god; it empowers individuals. It is democratic. It allows any individual to fashion his own god.Which is why iconoclast kings and priests have gone out of their way to destroy idols: the idea is to destroy the spirit of the empowered individual.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An interesting article from a Hindu writer on polytheism, monotheism, and contemporary politics in India: “The March to Monotheism.” This paragraph caught my eye: If the upside of monotheism is universalism and egalitarianism, the downside is that it admits of no rival. There can be no middle ground, no compromise. Reality is binary. It’s either […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[40],"class_list":["post-1137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-polytheism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-il","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":273,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=273","url_meta":{"origin":1137,"position":0},"title":"Kinder, gentler polytheism Charged with\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 29, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Kinder, gentler polytheism Charged with reviewing both it and a new book about the emperor Julian, I have finally begun Jonathan Kirsch's God Against the Gods. Even as the legacy of the Vietnam War still influences American politics, so the fourth-century C.E. conflict between the ideas of Julian and his\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11097,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11097","url_meta":{"origin":1137,"position":1},"title":"This Is the Real “War on Christmas”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 24, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"From a hardcore Muslim Instagrammer: Shaykh Ibn Al Qayyim said \"Congratulating the non-muslims on the rituals that belong only to them is haraam by ijm\u00e2 (consensus), as is congratulating them on their festivals and feasts by saying: 'a happy festival to you' or 'may you enjoy your festival,' and so\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/muslim-merry-christmas.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5788,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5788","url_meta":{"origin":1137,"position":2},"title":"New Book on Ukrainian Paganism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 6, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The Return of Ancestral Gods: Modern Ukrainian Paganism as an Alternative Vision for a Nation by Mariya Lesiv, who teaches in the Department of Folklore at\u00a0 the Memorial University of Newfoundland, has now been released by McGill-Queen's University Press in Canada. From the publisher's site: In The Return of Ancestral\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Europe\"","block_context":{"text":"Europe","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=europe"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mqup.ca\/filebin\/images\/products\/main\/9780773542624.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":821,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=821","url_meta":{"origin":1137,"position":3},"title":"Blog Valhalla, Polytheism, Books and More","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 14, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6 Yvonne Aburrow's Pagan theologies wiki has what might be the definitive list of active Pagan blogs. I am adding a link on my sidebar.\u00b6 Speaking of which, this blog now appears on BeliefNet's Blog Heaven page again. Thanks to everyone who made a fuss.\u00b6Bedside reading: I started, put aside,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"blogging\"","block_context":{"text":"blogging","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12534,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12534","url_meta":{"origin":1137,"position":4},"title":"Was This the Birth of Monotheism?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 1, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"There you are, living your polytheistic\/animistic Bronze Age life in a middle-sized city of about 8,000 people in what today we call the Jordan Valley when boom! Actually, you don't remember anything. You and everyone else nearby were vaporized in an explosion so intense that grains of sand turned into\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Bronze Age\"","block_context":{"text":"Bronze Age","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=bronze-age"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/file-20210917-27-aguoxh-300x270.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/file-20210917-27-aguoxh-300x270.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/file-20210917-27-aguoxh-300x270.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":883,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=883","url_meta":{"origin":1137,"position":5},"title":"Mars and Venus Are in Love","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 31, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Ich bin ein siegreicher Unterwasserkommandant. The July issue of the popular military history magazine Armchair General has my name in it. Two other readers and I were named winners of the \"You Command\" contest in the March issue, involving a U-boat attack on an Atlantic convoy in 1943. It's a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Aphrodite\"","block_context":{"text":"Aphrodite","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=aphrodite"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}