Comments on: One person’s monster is another’s inspiration http://rjz.verminbrewing.com/2006/02/16/one-persons-monster-is-anothers-inspiration/ Ideas about travel and everything else, collected while traveling the world Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:53:13 -0800 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Penelope http://rjz.verminbrewing.com/2006/02/16/one-persons-monster-is-anothers-inspiration/comment-page-1/#comment-195 Penelope Sat, 18 Feb 2006 20:44:06 +0000 http://rjz.verminbrewing.com/2006/02/16/one-persons-monster-is-anothers-inspiration/#comment-195 Cool observation. I had a similar realization in my early 20s, when I started reading a lot about Catholicism and Wicca at the same time. You see, I was raised Protestant (United Methodist, to be exact), and so we didn't get saints. A major difference between Catholicism (Roman or Orthodox) and Protestantism is that they get saints and priests who are able to intercede, while Protestants have to form their relationship with God entirely on our own. (Ministers can give us advice, but they can't hook us up like priests can.) Thus, reading about a form of Christianity that had a saint to pray to for every problem--and a specific ritual with the right candle color and alter cloth and incantation ("prayer") for every saint--was as mysterious and fascinating to me as visiting a Hindu temple in India is to most Westerners. What I found out is that Wicca and Catholicism are very similar--a suggestion that would probably offend people from both faiths, but it's true! If you have a problem, you find out which helper is best suited to it--god, goddess, or saint, depending on your faith--and then you lay out the right color alter cloth, burn the right incense and the right color candle, maybe put up a picture of your helper to help you focus, maybe put out flowers or other objects your helper likes, and recite a very specific incantation a specific number of times. I find similarities like these comforting. I take them as a sign that the faithful may have a good idea, since it makes sense to so many, very different people. And, as R.J. pointed out above, it shows that we're not so different after all. I wonder, though, if my toothache would be cured faster if I prayed to Saint Apollonia <em>and</em> Aibheaog <em>and</em> chanted the correct Sanscrit seed syllables. Would I be confusing everyone out there, or just petitioning the same power again and again? Cool observation. I had a similar realization in my early 20s, when I started reading a lot about Catholicism and Wicca at the same time. You see, I was raised Protestant (United Methodist, to be exact), and so we didn’t get saints. A major difference between Catholicism (Roman or Orthodox) and Protestantism is that they get saints and priests who are able to intercede, while Protestants have to form their relationship with God entirely on our own. (Ministers can give us advice, but they can’t hook us up like priests can.) Thus, reading about a form of Christianity that had a saint to pray to for every problem–and a specific ritual with the right candle color and alter cloth and incantation (”prayer”) for every saint–was as mysterious and fascinating to me as visiting a Hindu temple in India is to most Westerners.

What I found out is that Wicca and Catholicism are very similar–a suggestion that would probably offend people from both faiths, but it’s true! If you have a problem, you find out which helper is best suited to it–god, goddess, or saint, depending on your faith–and then you lay out the right color alter cloth, burn the right incense and the right color candle, maybe put up a picture of your helper to help you focus, maybe put out flowers or other objects your helper likes, and recite a very specific incantation a specific number of times.

I find similarities like these comforting. I take them as a sign that the faithful may have a good idea, since it makes sense to so many, very different people. And, as R.J. pointed out above, it shows that we’re not so different after all.

I wonder, though, if my toothache would be cured faster if I prayed to Saint Apollonia and Aibheaog and chanted the correct Sanscrit seed syllables. Would I be confusing everyone out there, or just petitioning the same power again and again?

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