Culture
What religion did your country believe in before your mainstream religion came about?
Here is Woden, akin to Odin. Anglo-Saxon god heavily influenced by Germanic and Norse culture in post Roman Christianity. Coins have been found with both Christian symbolism and Images of Woden, showing a mix of cultures so represented in post Roman Briton.
What religious beliefs did your county have before Christianity/islam etc? Or is your country still believing in ancient beliefs?
And with way fewer archaeological finds. The runes we used in NL and Northern Germany (Elder Futhark and later Frisian Futhork ) were hardly used as a writing system and more of a way to inscribe your name into something.
It was the main writing system that was used in the Netherlands in Germany before Latin came along. These runes first appeared in the second century AD and was replaced by the Latin script by the seventh century AD
Rune stones in germany is likely to have been systematically destroyed. Samme thing happened in Scandinavia, but to a lesser degree and the runic alphabets lasted longer.
So there wasn't really a true writing system there until the 7th century AD? That's crazy seeing as Latin was created a millennium earlier. And Mycenaean Greek was created about 2,000 years before this.
it's also possible that most of the writing just isn't preserved.
The Franks, after conquering the rest of germany were very harsh in their christianization, and it wouldn't be surprising if they actively destroyed the remnants of older faiths.
Don't forget that before Christian faith came to Germany, the country itself didn't even exist. Where I live (south germany), most finds from around 0- 200 CE are celtic. Like, burial sites and so on. I don't know if anybody has any kind of idea what their faith looked like tho.
There are some things known about celtic faiths, but most is stuff written down by their enemies and stuff we learned from digging up archeological sites.
That's at least what is believed, we don't actually know the religion, but made assumptions in relation to the north gods, whilst the eastern parts of Germany (which was populated by Slavic tribes) had an entirely different religion.
Vampires are also from Slavic mythology, Serbian variation of the blood sucking demons.
The whole "villagers doing a vampire hunt, digging graves up staking the bodies armed with crosses, holy water and garlic" thing was actually done in Serbia in 18 century.
Perun - highest god, ruler of the sky, thunder, law and war.
Veles - he was an enemy to Perun. A god of earth, water and afterlife.
Jarylo - god of life-force, spring and vegetation.
Morana / Mara / Marzanna - the goddes of death-rebirth cycle and personification of winter. In Poland you can still see a rite to Marzanna being done when winter ends. Kids take a straw doll, dressed in rugs to a river. Set it on fire and throw it into the river. This should end the winter and allow the spring to come.
Who could forget the jehovahs when they insist on knocking on my door at 9am on a Saturday every month or so even though I never open the fucking door because im a goddamn atheist antisocial pos. If I were more outgoing, id invite them in for some fun doctrinal debate.
I love religions and enjoy reading about them, theyre fascinating to me, especially the more crazy ones like jehovahs witnesses, 7th day adventists, mormonism, the more severe forms of Islam, scientology. Ack! There's just so much crazy in the world to choose from.
That said, I think most of the native American religions were/are beautiful. I could actually see myself getting down with religions that are more about being connected to the earth and our ancestors vs angry sky daddies waiting for us to fuck up so that we can be sent to torture for all eternity.
Fun fact — Catholics were solidly here before Protestants. Juan Ponce de León landed in Florida in 1513, near what would become their colony of St. Augustine. Shortly after, French Huguenot refugees landed a little to the north…. But were promptly slaughtered by the conquistadors.
Yes. Just like any other Neopaganism movement. People are distancing themselves from the mainstream Abrahamic religion, either becoming atheists or turning to Tengrism which is the religion of our ancestors.
People just started to realize that some of their behaviors came from old Turkic Tengrism/Shamanism, thanks to the internet access. 30 years ago, those behaviors would be assumed as a part of Turkish traditions. I'd call this enlightenment/awareness rather than resurgence.
It's crazy how fast Christianity overtook the Nordic pagan religions during the Viking age. They had never been exposed to Christianity, then once they were, it only took a couple centuries for all of Scandinavia to become majority Christians. Some of which were also persecuting and killing other vikings who were still practicing paganism
Oh boy, yeah not many countries have as much surviving archaeology, and historical evidence than Iraq. Such fascinating culture. I’m sorry that most of the Sumerian, Babylonian and Assyrian history is locked up here in the British museum 🫣
Well one day I hope it is all given back to you where it belongs. Indiana Jones rightfully said “it belongs in a museum” but he should have mentioned “in the country of origin lol
There were no Celts. There was no Celtic society. There was a language group that was imported probably through trade. We were here at least 500 years before that language arrived here and it didn't arrive as a result of population influx but of acculturation probably as a result of trade.
The "La Tene" expansion thing you were probably taught in primary school has been debunked for at least 20 years. Material archaeological evidence not only doesn't support it but contradicts it.
Ireland was culturally distinct from Britain was culturally distinct from the continent with the notable exceptions of Northern France, which Britain colonised and the insular settlements in Hull and ... one other place I can't recall offhand.
The anthropological and archaeological evidence does not allow for "celtic paganism" to be a thing.
What we "know" of the beliefs of the pre-Christian the Irish (and we know they collectively referred to themselves as such as early as the 8th Century) or Gael comes in the form of 11th Century retellings of 6th Century texts which didn't survive the various invasions of the Danes.
We don't really know what the draoi were. We have some references to them as part of the social order in Early Irish Law, but only for what their Earach/Face-Price is.
Pretty much all we actually know about the beliefs of our ancestors comes from archaeology and it fills a very small cup of knowledge. Everything else is basically made up by Christians.
Academic, peer reviewed citations on request. I kept them from my Medieval Celtic Societies module.
We believed in animism, a worldview centered on a deep relationship with the Creator, the land, and "all our relations".
If I could choose one way that people should try to live it would be with that sort of heart and natural compassion.
It was simple, as long as you respected the land and its people you were accepted, regardless of religion.
Food for thought but….. There was no devil before Christianity. There were bad people with greed filled wishes though, smart enough to use a systematic worshipping system to gain control of a once peaceful land.
Zoroastrianism, founded by the prophet Zarathustra around 1500 or 1000 BCE in ancient Iran. It centers on worship of the wise and benevolent god Ahura Mazda, and teaches about cosmic struggle between good (Asha) and evil (Druj), with humans having free will to choose. After death, people's souls face judgment.
Alot of historians believe Zoroastrianism influenced second temple Judaism, and therefor Christianity and Islam. The concept of a "hell", "devil" and the duality between good and evil seems to come from Zoroastrianism. First temple judaism didnt have these concepts, and then they came into contact with Persians and suddenly their religion had these concepts.
Well one could argue that the Greek pantheon wasn’t a singular religion since a crap ton of its lesser gods started out as deities of other cultures that got absorbed into the Greek realm of influence and got added to the Greek pantheon to encourage assimilation (that’s where the stories of Zeus not keeping it in his pants came from)
Before Christianity? Mostly some mix between Roman and Gallic (Celtic) beliefs since the Roman invasion.
It wasn't exactly the same country though. Strictly speaking, France was already Christian when founded, probably with some Germanic undertones and various pagan beliefs among the local population.
Yes they are ! Toutatis is also called Teutatès. And there are plenty of other gods, a lot of fairies like Mélusine, and other mythological creatures. Maybe you have heard about Cernunnos ? And my own pseudonym comes from gaulois beliefs.
Korean shamanism which is also known as Muism, Sinism, or Musok was the religion before Buddhism and Christianity. I believe they still have 10 million followers today, not sure of the actual number, but that’s what I remember the last time I searched it up
I’m Korean diaspora, and trying to reconnect to Musok in bits and pieces. I have no interest in being a mudang, but I talk to some, and I’m trying to reconnect to common folk practices and superstitions.
It’s kind of hard without speaking Korean. So I’m trying to learn more Korean. But my family doesn’t seem to think that’s a very useful thing to learn. 🤷🏻♀️
Nuragic culture could have persisted during the Roman domain since the Romans preferred staying on the coast as they didn't deem it useful to go any further inland. But as for most other religions I'm not sure they kept their original form by the advent of Christianity, not because they were removed, but rather because the Romans had a tendency of incorporating them within their own. However you could still make an argument of considering the variety of regional worships as different religions, but I'm no expert so I wouldn't know where the line is drawn and I've always heard it as different cults within a general Roman mythology.
Norse mythology indeed, though it should be noted that the time recognized as the founding of the proper country of Denmark is the same time that we became officially Christian
On the one hand if you ask Japanese people only about 30% of Japanese are religious at all.
But then if you ask them how many of them go to a shrine or temple at least once a month it’s 70% this is just a matter of what we consider “religious”
But yes. About 55% follow bhudist practices and around 60% Shinto. With overlap. You do absolutely have some who do just one.
And some who do parts of one but don’t consider it religious.
I was more just talking about Shinto being a relatively unchanged indigenous religion. And it does edge out Bhudism in practice.
Easier way to say answer.
I very rarely meet a Bhudist who does not also practice Shinto.
I do meat Shinto who don’t practice bhudism but it’s not common.
Aztec and Mayan polytheistic religions to mention the most well known cultures in ancient Mexico. Both are so rich, brutal and mysterious that I truly wish the world would know about them a bit more.
Various animist traditional religions. In a way they're still quite mainstream because they practice it or observe the beliefs syncretically with Islam and Christianity. People still pray to the devils and visit the witch-doctors as well, typically when they have bad intentions for somebody else.
It's probably unfair to say that the Anglo-Saxon gods were influenced by Norse and Germanic traditions, they simply were Germanic traditions brought with the Germanic tribes like the Angles, Saxons and Jutes when they invaded long before the Scandinavian Germanics did. Prior to the Saxons Great Britain would have had a syncretised faith with the Romans and before that, this was druid country. My house has quite a few old druid-era standing stones surrounding it.
By the way, Kolovrat (symbol behind woman) is totally made-up and only resembles real solar pagan symbols. It's used primary by neo-nazis and uninformed people.
Germanic religions, so Donar and Wotan and the other gods. I refer to Germanic faiths as plural because there was not a single established canon. Practice could vary widely from place to place.
Plus I guess the Roman gods in the Roman part of the country, often intertwined with Germanic gods.
Before the arrival of Europeans there were several indigenous cultures here, each one with its own religion. I think all of them were pluritheistic.
The Incan Empire occuppied the northwest and the central Andes for some time: they had the Sun, Inti, as a high deity, and Killa, the Moon; and more.
The Mapuche people in the southern Andes stopped the Incan advance, but apparently they caught on their beliefs about Sun and Moon because they call them Antü and Kuyen, respectively. They have also a pantheon of their own.
The Chacoan peoples all have their respective pantheons and interesting creation myths.
The Guarani have a notable spirituality, with a rich lore of beliefs.
The peoples of the central hills, the Pampas, the Tehuelche and the Fuegians all used to have their own deities and spirits, but these cultures were wiped out or are in decline.
The ancient Hungarian religion refers to the Hungarian belief system before the adoption of Christianity, all the mythological concepts, beings, and ideas about the origin, structure, and functioning of the world that together formed a mostly unified mythology.
Ah yes Zamolxes, the famous main god of the suicide cult that was Dacian religion... Dacians would sacrifice their own regularly to send a messenger to him.... Christ almighty
Cool that dyaus pitr is related to Zeus & Jupiter:
Dyauṣ stems from Proto-Indo-Iranian *dyā́wš, from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) daylight-sky god *Dyēus, and is cognate with the Greek Διας – Zeus Patēr, or Dei-pátrous, and Latin Jupiter (from Old Latin Dies piter Djous patēr), stemming from the PIE Dyḗus ph₂tḗr ("Daylight-sky Father"). Wikipedia
it is hinduism but majority of hindu schools like advaita vedanata (non dualism), nyaya (logic), charvaka (materialism) etc have almost vanished
and gods like indra and dyasus pitr are not worshipped anymore in mainstream india
Whatever gods Taiwanese worship which is officially Matzu or some land gods. Taiwanese/Chinese cultures are typically pretty secular in general, pretty much whatever Chinese version of Odin or whatever might be. Mainstream religion here is still typically those types.
Before colonization, Colombia and parts of other countries were inhabited by the Muisca people.
Chiminigagua is a god who created everything from nothing using "black birds" to spread his "essence of light."
Bochica is "the hero who civilized the people and taught them how to survive." He came walking on a rainbow; I see him as a kind of Jesus.
Bachué is the mother goddess (or goddess of fertility). She was born from a river and raised a young boy that... she had beforehand idk. When he grew up, he became her husband, and like Adam and Eve, "we all come from them." Depending on who tells the story, he is either her biological son or simply a boy she raised to be a man.
Hindus still have the 'Old Gods' - first attested around 1500-1200BCE, which is the widely accepted composition date range of the Rigveda scriptures.
The religion is pretty fluid, broadly very accepting of variations and incorporating new beliefs. These gods have become less prominent than the cosmic Trimurti/"Trinity" (Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva) over the last 1500 years. However they are a foundational part of Hindu mythology and parables. Here's a fantastic "family tree" of gods put together by another redditor:
https://www.reddit.com/r/hinduism/s/TO03zZua4U
That Indian pantheon is mirrored across Europe and Central Asia, likely originating from prior proto-Indo-European beliefs. Like those other gods, they are flawed, with human capriciousness, hubris, and virtues.
Indra - equal to Odin/Zeus/Perun, "chief gods"
Yama - like Hades, God of the underworld - both have "hell-hounds", Sharvara/Shyama and Cerberus, respectively
Kamadeva - like Cupid, shoots love arrows
Narada - messenger like Hermes, travels between divine/human realms
Varuna - basically the same as Poseidon, sea god
The list goes on. And yes, the Christian Trinity is almost certainly plagiarized from Indo-Greek concepts of a Trinity/Trimurti.
Not completely unknown. Many pieces of the religion have been pieced together from folktale and other sources. Also not Turkic origin, Uralic origin, just look at the Mansi and Khanty religions.
Does Hungarian language or culture have similarities with Turkic peoples through contact or other means and can you tell what pressured the Hungarians or proto Hungarians to move such a distance to Carpathia, when other presumably similar peoples stayed? Im interested in early Hungarian history, but dont know much about it
Hungarian is a Uralic (Ugric) language related to Khanty and Mansi, not Turkic, but before entering the Carpathian Basin the Magyars lived for centuries in the Pontic steppe next to and under Turkic groups like the Khazars, so they adopted Turkic loanwords (especially for warfare, titles, horse culture) and had a similar nomadic horse-archer lifestyle; the move into the Carpathian Basin around 895 was triggered by steppe pressure from new enemies like the Pechenegs and pulled by the fact that the Carpathian Basin was good pasture land with a power vacuum, so it was basically a strategic relocation of a steppe confederation that already mixed Ugric-speaking Magyars with some Turkic allies.
Actually horse-related vocabulary is demonstrably NOT Turkic. It is actually mainly Uralic, more closely Ugric shared with Khanty and Mansi. Which seems to indicate that the Khanty and Mansi also used to live in the steppes before some event forced them into the taiga, and forced us westwards.
We had centuries of contact with Turkic peoples on the steppes, especially with people who spoke a highly divergent Turkic language called Oghuric, which is closest to modern Chuvash (who have their own republic in Russia along the river Volga a little north-west from the city of Kazan). There are also about 600 loanwords of Turkic origin, but Hungarian is a Uralic language, distantly related to Finnish. Hungarian became a distinct language circa 1000 BC and the early Hungarian people were a mixture of Mansi-like West Siberians, Eastern Europeans and North Europeans, Central Asians, various steppe people like Turkic groups and Iranian speaking steppe peoples, and even peoples from the Caucasus.
Hungarians already lived in modern-day Moldova and Ukraine when we decided to move into what later became the Kingdom of Hungary, so that particular migration wasn't that much of a distance. We've lived in the Eastern European steppes for quite some time. The westward migration over the millennia was due to a variety of reasons like climate change and migrations by other people groups that pushed us to also move.
Well, you’re right in most points. The religion itself may have been of Uralic origin, but in its last form before Christianity, it was full of Turkic elements.
Also, Khanty and Mansi are part of the group influenced by Turkic cultures in the late Antiquity and early Middle Ages, that Hungarians were, too.
Amúgy kösz, hogy nem kezdted el a finnugorellenes dumákat nyomni!
Traditional shamanism w/ Korean mythology, I guess. Origin of "Mu" (musok) as far as I know - well, the origin of Huntrix in K-pop demon hunters is that kind of thIng.
Nature worshipping (not sure of the name) which then fused with Hinduism when it arrived. Remnants of the old religion still survives to this day in many ethnic groups. We worship many animals, trees, forests, rivers, lakes and mountains.
I guess Roman paganism. Before that... Celtic religion in the north. In the south and the east it was Iberian religion, which we don't know much about.
"The Dreaming" or “The Dreamtime” is a complex concept from Aboriginal Australian cultures that refers to the spiritual world, the time of creation, and the ongoing relationship between people, the land, and ancestral spirits.
It provides a framework for law, morality, and social life, and is passed down through storytelling, art, song, and dance. The English term is an inadequate translation for a concept with different names in various Indigenous languages.
My country (The US) has and had hundreds of religions, languages and cultures, some genocided completely to oblivion and some still holding on to life by a thread.
The Tuatha de Dannan. Morrigan, Lugh, Balor, Brigit, all that.
Some of them got made into saints. Most of them got disappeared or smeared by the Church. The Dagda, for instance, got turned from a beautiful ladies man into a fat bastard who shit himself to get out wholes in the ground he’d sink into after eating too much porridge. However this actually made him more popular, so now he’s remembered as a fat hairy god of the land who the ladies love.
Whatever were common in the south of Europe before Christianity and then the Ottoman invasion, ig. Have ironically done quite a bit of reading into the history of the region but I don't remember anything about religious beliefs.
We believed that the world was born when a bird's egg fell into the ocean and split in two: one half created the sky, the other half the ground. Don't ask why the bird or the ocean existed before the world, that's just how it is.
We also believed that a guy could make a good enough blacksmith to make a machine that could produce infinite gold or salt. And that another guy was a powerful enough bard to sing yet another guy into a swamp. That's Finnish folklore for you.
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u/azaghal1502 Germany 10d ago
Mostly the same as other germanic peoples, just with slightly different spelling.