God Rock Radio #265 – A Brief History of The Divine – Part 5 (Greece & Rome)

The world of Ancient Greece was very diverse but their rites ,rituals, cult practices and their pantheon of Gods and Goddesses had enough in common to be viewed as one religious system. Jack “The Agnostic” Garcia travels back to the Aegean during the 3rd and 2nd Millennium BC and examines the origins of this Greek religious system hat developed over the course of centuries. The Minoans worshiped the Great Goddess and filled their palace sanctuaries , cave shrines and mountain peak temples with sacred stones , pillars , bull horns and representations of snakes and double axes that paid homage to the divine feminine principle. When the war like Mycenaeans became politically dominant they absorb the Minoan traditions but their divine war God , the archaic prototype for Zeus , Poseidon and Aries soon overshadows the Goddess. Jack also examines the role of The Iliad & The Odyssey in the Greek conception of deity.  A divine society of supernatural beings who live more or less together on Mount Olympus and kept the universe in divine order and prevented it from falling into chaos. then Jack travels back to the Ancient Mediterranean and examines Roman religion. A religion of the state that was interwoven into Roman society. Where the proper performance of prayers, rites, rituals, ceremonies and festivals was thought to ensure Roman military success and imperialist expansion. Jack also examines Roman religion before the introduction of Greek elements. The early Romans believed in a type of Italian Shintoism , local and specialized spirit / deities without physical form. Every tree , stream , mountain or river had its own God or Goddess , vaguely defined divine , disembodied entities that had to be both respected and propriated. And last but not least , Jack examines how Roman religion changed over the course of centuries as the empire expanded and encountered new cultures , absorbing and adapting foreign deities and their cults into Roman Pantheon.  

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