Hey Graphei, that's what you get for taking a break !

Quote Originally Posted by graphei View Post
All of this talk of Christianity and cannibalism got me thinking. Have any of you ever read Smith's Jesus the Magician? For those not familiar, Smith's thesis was that Jesus was a black mage/con man/necromancer who studied in Egypt and picked up some bitchin' tattoos while he was there. All of his 'miracles' were not acts of God, but rather produced by Satan. The cult grew after his death and turned into what we have today. The book made a big splash in the day, but now it's read for entertainment, as a warning to undergrads of how not to do textual reconstruction, or as a Gospel among some of the tinfoil hat crowd.
Yup, I read it. I think he read too much of the Gospel of Simon Magus !

Quote Originally Posted by graphei View Post
For a long while, anything associated with African religion was thought to be one huge Satanic cult- witch doctors, cannibals- the whole 9 yards. I wonder how much of that mixed with some remnants of some gnostic groups that practiced such rituals is going on?
Gnostic groups practicing such rituals? None of the gnostic groups I know practice anything like that although, in all fairness, some of the Lodges I know of do. You're not thinking of the slander against the Valentinians, are you?

My gut guess, and I'm hoping that M-A knows enough to correct me, is that there is some weird form of double syncretism going on here. If we look at most of the syncretic religions that come out of the slave era - locumba, candolbe, vodoo, santeria, etc. - there is usually a fairly heavy emphasis on possession states as a key to power. On the "dark" side of them, this gets mixed in with a lot of 16th-17th century Catholic magic in its formal, aka ceremonial, form with, I'll admit, a really nasty set of add-ons tying in with blood magic. Totally different from anything gnostic .