What are your thoughts on 'Hell'?

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Is Hoodoo more a religion or just a practice? I know it originated in the American South and was practiced by African slaves during days of slavery. People often confuse it with Voodoo but they're actually different.

The movie "The Skeleton Key" claimed it was not a religion and more of a type of folkmagic but I don't trust movies to tell me the truth.

I do know it's a combination of both African and Christian practices. Hoodoo practioners actually use pages from the bible in their conjuring.

Sorrt for getting off topic again. But this is an interesting discussion!

Not sure if this was mentioned but Hell means grave(sheol)in Hebrew.

Hoodoo is "African-American traditional folk magic."

Oki doki then.

The tour guide from New Orleans said that people who practice it were offended by The Skeleton Key because it got a lot of facts about Hoodoo wrong.

Much like The Craft did with wicca.

She’ol is in the OT which means “grave” but Hell isn’t. Christians superimposed their notion of Hell into the OT later on.

Ecclesiastes 9:5 says that the “dead know nothing.”

Psalms 146:4 says something similar.

My wife's son was in a religion known either as "Shango" or "Orisha."

The Spiritual Baptists in the West Indies syncretize Christianity with various African religions, including "Orisha."

"Orisha" is a religion of the Yorubas in Nigeria. "Shango" is one of the gods. There are times when it seems like he is one of the "main" gods.

Spiritual Baptists syncretize Shango with either Saint Jerome or Saint Barbara.

Last edited by kraftiekortie on 10 Jun 2019, 8:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I’d enjoy worshipping a moon goddess.

It’d be a pleasant change.

I bet you would love wicca. It's kind of a matriarchal religion (not sure if that's the right term?) with a lot of female practioners (and males too). They have some very interesting and open minded beliefs and it's a religion that respects and treasures nature.

But as I said there are many wannabe wiccans who don't understand what the religion is really about. Basically people who watch too much TV about witches.

I'd recommend reading books like "Raymond Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft" or anything by James Gardener (the man who helped find the religion in the 1950's).

I do like learning about different religions and cultures. It fascinates me.

I was just thinking about how extreme it is to tell someone to “go to Hell.”

I’ve never said that to anyone, but you probably couldn’t say anything much worse than wishing someone eternal torment.

I agree. And what kind of merciful Father sends his children into a burnpit to be cooked for all eternity for misbehaving?

The concept of hell was introduced primarily as a means of intimidation and manipulation.
It was designed to force social harmony and to maintain the authority of the established religious power base through brutal psychological abuse.
It was also a concept which facilitated emotional lust for revenge since there are just some incidences where death is just not enough.

The interesting unintended consequence is that its inception inspired...err...unintended consequences.
To counter the temptation to suicide to avoid possible eternal damnation, the Catholic religion at least, snookered this option by inducting "suicide" into the hall of mortal sins, which in turn would fast track the individual into, you guessed it, eternal damnation.
Almost a catch 22 situation. EEP!

"What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive."
For many hundreds of years, the psychological abuse continued in order to intimidate the sheeple into behaving themselves.
Unfortunately, education eventually...errr...educated the great unwashed and forced the eventual revelation by Pope Francis to confess that the concept of "hell" was simply an "artist's interpretation".


Let us forget and forgive how the collective billions of tortured souls believed in the "wisdom", moral and intellectual "integrity" of religious organisations. <guffaw>

Damn and damnation!.
I'm sure to go to hell for posting this...err...post.

Not a very nice one.

I’ve noticed that some people like to think about their enemies being in Hell. Some ghoulishly enjoy those scriptures in the Bible where God says “Vengeance is mine!”

I wouldn’t wish that on the people who hurt me the worst. Of course, I wouldn’t mind some form of punishment where they have to admit to wrongdoing, I suppose... But not eternal torment!

To quote The Red Woman from Game of Thrones

"There is only ONE Hell princess, the one we live in now"

Overlooking the fear and terror that the notion of Hell has given to multitudes of sinners, it’s done great things for literature.

It’s remarkable to think of the literary works that we wouldn’t have without this concept.

Agreed.

Btw wiccans dont believe in hell.