On the Divine Identity of Jesus

In the first place, Christianity rejected pagan deities as idols. However, Christ came to be viewed as the fulfillment of the positive aspects of pagan mythology.

The belief in a savior deity whose death and rebirth brought immortality to man, the themes of illumination and regeneration, ritual initiation into a community of worshippers, sacred banquets etc were all practiced in the early church. Religious practices were considered as shadows of reality–the logos which was Christ. For example, Colossians 2: 16 - 17 says " Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a sabbath. These are only a shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ."

Likewise, the classical gods were assimilated as figures of Christ. Apollo as the Sun god was seen as the pagan precursor to Christ the Light of the World. Prometheus the suffering liberator of mankind was subsumed by the figure of Christ the suffering savior who set the captives free. Dionysus the deity of death and rebirth was considered a prefigure of Christ who realized in history the positive aspects of what Dionysus represented in mythology.

Yes, this fits to how proper worshippers of Christ would truthfully see Dionysos, even when this perspective is beheld in the perspective of a Dionysian.

It would be very meaningless if a Christian figured that his living Lord and Saviour was merely an aspect of some particular city states mystery god.
From my own perspective this still gives Dionysos as the historical father of Christ, where Zeus is the literal father, Zeus the bearded patriarch of the heavens.

I no longer question Christ’s prerogative in this world. He is a son of Zeus, a bastard from a Jewess… very explosive kid.
I see myth as a form of reasoning. It doesn’t point to truths or facts but it allows for profound insights to occur within the interplay of the mythical figures in their synthetic narratives. It is so literally the chemistry of the mind that it might be seen as the most accurate identifier for the actual chemistry of the brain.

Someone said it very nicely recently; we must have evolved from reptiles, because if we had evolved from rodents wed always be having rodents at the core of our myths and not snakes and dragons.

The future cat or kitty-christ however may be great enough a myth to render the snake a happy servant.
It reminds me of Nietzsches distaste for the tiger, he found it unpleasantly tense.

Of course there must be a myth about the virgin birth of a kitten. A great cosmic Lion had descended on the harmless mother. In a way Katzenberg beat me to that. Still that proves its not unviable.

I bet the Christ could use a new vessel even just to take stock of two thousand years of work. An upgrade, fit to todays markets of passion, if you’ll excuse the vulgarity, Felix. Still carrying the seed of Revelation, no longer demanding destitute servility.

Sure. Gotcha bro. No problem.

Of course - Orthodox Christianity is as hard headed as orthodox Islam. This is why it is worth anything at all.
It is generally advised for an orthodox religious person to assume I have nothing to offer and avoid engaging me. Orthodoxy assumes everything is already given; I am the antithesis of that assumption.

To a rat, the snake might seem rather deity-like and certainly a better metaphor for the unknown powers that be. But we evolved from both proto-rodents and proto-reptiles.

Yes well I’m curious about your sources and methodology. Orthodox Christians have their sacred sources, which are primarily their biblical canon, their creeds and, for some, the ecclesiastical hierarchy. They think they own Jesus’s identity. But I suppose as a meme he belongs to the world. So everybody’s free to take their shot. Orthodoxy relegated the erotic and aggressive aspects of the Dionysian spirit to Satan. There’s a kind of internal battle between monotheism and dualism inherent in Christianity I think.

My methodology is pretty direct, I just call on Jesus, I visit the holiest Christian places such as the church of the sepulchre in Jerusalem and many churches in Italy and France, I study the texts both canonical and disputed such as the dead Sea scrolls, and anything I can do to bring the spirit of the Christ in my presence. I’ve been doing such for two decades. I’ve had a lot of very vivid and personal experiences with Jesus as well as Mary as well as the Baptist. It is perfectly real to me, and pastors have recognized this in my demeanor, words and eyes over the years. I don’t believe the intellect has much of a place here, only the open heart.

But still I don’t claim Christianity. I claim the Aesir and the Olympians as my personal gods. But I consider the Christ and his flock my allies. Christians tend to have more of a backbone these days than secularists.

A question occurs here: do rodents have a “reptile brain”?

Addendum to Felix
I said I see myth as a form of reasoning, and later that I dont see Christianity as a matter of the intellect but of the open heart.
I need to clarify that I consider the heart to be more Reasonable - have better, more profound reasons - than the intellect.
Pure intellect is dry like paper cuts. Myths allow for a more wholesome and vivid substance of mind.
The intellect thrives amidst the myth. Freud and Jung are examples of this fecund relationship.

One thing I am convinced of concerning gods is that they are by definition greater, “larger” than what any mortal can be completely right about. This is why there are 4 gospels for Jesus. Doing justice to a god requires a congregation. I believe this is what sets apart a god from a demon. Satan does not require a congregation, that is why is is fallen, he walks among us as one of us, and so he walks inside of men, as a friend, a companion, an equal or someone uncannily pretending to be. Jesus does not present himself as an equal, he always is more generous than what a mortal can be. The problem I have always had with the move of converting to his will is that his will isn’t capable of dealing with everything a philosopher is concerned with. He is just there, like a sky of fresh air - but my spirit is also bound to the salt of the sea and the musk of the earth. The fact of the matter is that Christ did not reveal himself there, but Odin did. I believe that Revelation is the way a god makes himself known. This is why I am averse to dogma as a form of belief. I am not against dogma as a way of preserving the words of prophets and the records of divine events, but I believe that these form the riverbed to the body of communion.

I wish to lend my mind to facilitate the Christian faith in claiming the third millennium. I was of course deeply facetious with the whole cat thing, yet not without wishing to evoke an intuition about the change of the relationship of humans to animals which is going on, a very favourable trend of humanizing animals, which I suppose is the upside to the trend of animalizing humans. I am contemptuous in the extreme of the idea that animals to not cognize, there is much of consequence to be learned from the mentality of all warm blooded species. I used to dislike dogs when I was a child, now I am deeply fond of them. Dogs often bark as I pass buy - in my occult past barks of anguish and warning, now of uncontrollable excitement. It is very funny, the people who own the dogs are never aware of the dogs reasons and get all fussy. Dogs are in a field of consciousness that humans are too dull headed for, a field where the enjoyment of life is very strong and never collapses, a more acute sense of the present enabled by a richer apperceptive machinery.

So as we humans have let our apperceptive machinery decay in favour of the planning mind, which doesn’t really require any all too immediate knowledge, because the immediate is too contextual to universalize into methods. But the pleasure of life and thus also the meaning and the drive, the core of it is well represented by our pagan pantheons, which are accessibel in walks in the woods, rowing a boat at dusk, sleeping in nice sheets, lighting a candle in a midnight garden, exchanging a glance with a dove, seeing the sky curl up and knowing what comes, hearing the message in a rodents cry, maple seeds gathering on the balcony, an unsuspected eclipse alone in a field, suddenly the silence of all of nature holding its breath; of all this Christianity did not speak, but this is what the Earth needs of us now, and I do not sense that the Christ is partial only to man - the son of man surely is a steward of the earth.

A second coming was announced near the days of judgment. I say that it will likely benefit these humans that have turned to the earth - not for salvation, but for an excess of love. The earth is ready to receive the passion that has been built for the vulnerable during two thousand years. She is the proper recipient for the love that Christians have gathered across a hundred generations and across five continents.

The cat serves me as a symbol of a cleanliness before the Earth.

What inspired you to go in this direction? Are the experiences of Jesus, Mary and the Baptist visual? Why Aesir and the Olympians?

I think I get that. Christian theologians are said to have re-discovered narrative theology in the late 20th century. Most of what we are is unconscious. Mythic imagery seems to rise from that deepest layer of consciousness.

An interesting perspective.

That all makes sense to me.

Concernng animal cognition I heartily agree.

Now that we humans are destroying life on a global scale, it seems more precious to some of us.

Or we’ll destroy life on the planet and Christ won’t come which seems more realistic given the way we’re going and the lack of evidence that would lead us to expect that Christ is going to return from heaven to save us from ourselves.

I do not necessarily concur. He must have come to realize that the antimony between the old and the new is not remideble , thus , His assumptions were not realistic about the temporal enlightenment through suffering and redemption. Why?

He knew the gods would be exiled, and that Zeus would seek revenge, of course on a compassionately course of comic relief, but it need Brunhilde (in Gottendamerung )who convinced him that his intellect would consign His Sacred Heart (in Parcifal) to be able to do It and consigned to find the absolute through the another way. I believe his coming is inevitable, , because even if it’s only a myth It lives in our hearts as a kind of an unfinished tableau.

Man never ever leaves things , especially Redemption unfinished, otherwise his conscience may kill him

The untimely and very mysterious death of my best friend when I was 20 gave me a shove in the direction, things followed from there.

More than just visual, they’re also personable and emotive, but very different om each other. Mary was the most emotive and dramatic one, she was with me for a week at one point and showed me what had been done to me when I was a child. I cant go into that but it left me completely changed in every fiber. And I suddenly knew how to pronounce French.

Jesus appears to me on a more ethereal plane. Very clearly and lucid, but I think he accepts Im not his primary concern. I know he appears to many Christians in all sorts of ways, sometimes deeply visceral. Ive heard beautiful and shocking stories on my travels.

The Baptist, he seems to govern occultism. I discovered that something very magical happens when I meditate on his name while I wash my hands and face with cold water. It feels like Im washing away the veil between the subjective present and some objective eternal version of what I am.

Mind you I don’t do any of this frequently or lightly.

Thats a good question.
I can mostly say that the idea of death changed when I was touched by the Aesir, though it may have been one from the Vanir at first -
I think you know you’ve entered a religion when you become glad at the idea of dying for a god. I love them unconditionally.

Thats good to hear from your side.
I find this to be a very divisive point.

Not sure what side I represent to you. We are in the sixth great extinction of life on earth. And this time we humans have brought it on. I am traumatized by the suffering we human primates bring to our animal brothers and sisters everyday. I work at reducing animal suffering. We have brought the earth out of balance and we will pay a great price for it. We could avert disaster but I don’t see that happening and the cost becomes ever higher and the measures it would take more drastic.

Yes I realized after posting that was going to raise questions. Im not even sure what side I meant, I guess I vaguely referred to traditional Christians.

“I am traumatized by the suffering we human primates bring to our animal brothers and sisters everyday. I work at reducing animal suffering.”

It seems we’re on the same side.