Did King Arthur actually exist?
>>427721
prob some cornish bloke that beat up some saxons
>>427721
Only vaguely, as far as we can tell from the very sparse records.
Most likely he was a Brittano-Roman chieftan or petty king who at some point fought the Saxons.
Camelot, the round table and all that is just anachronistic suff made up half a millennia or so after. Glastonbury's connection to him was apparently made up by monks to get more backing for their monastary.
the lad prolly busted some scotts
Who's more powerful in christian mythology, Angels or Saints?
Could an angel beat a saint in a fight?
>>427567
According to my chinese cartoons, yes.
Every believer is a Saint you idol kissing fuck.
Angels don't exist, they're metaphors.
So do we all agree the unification of Germany is the worst thing to happen to European civilization since the black death?
>>427158
What ought to have happened then?
Stayed as small states? Unified as smaller nations?
>>427158
Cant we all agree that humanity is the worst thing for humanity since humanity?
>>427158
No the best
If you can convince me Protestantism is wrong, i'll convert.
>>425986
>Catholic
>1054
Fixed
>>426008
explain
>>426027
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East%E2%80%93West_Schism
Discuss.
Also, weird history related obsession s general.
Im not as autistic but i like pretending im from frontier times when i hunt squirrel with my muzzleloader
>>422764
Pretend that I'm a general or royalty or leader or just normalfag from a different time period when I'm alone.
It's gotten progressively more and more intense, with physically moving around pretending to do things and talk to people that i imagine and fighting imaginary enemies.
also tied very closely with my sexual desires. almost always fap to a historical female, often medieval royalty. I pretend to be her spouse or a forbidden lover.
Basically, I live my life (which is relatively functional) asking myself "what would <insert historical character> do in this situation?"
>>422764
When I was in 3-4 grade, I used to be obsessed with the (American) civil war, I carried around some giant 1500 page volume on civil war battles and read it instead of paying attention in my classes, every time I got to choose what movie my family would take out from Blockbuster I would choose Gettysburg or Dances with Wolves (because of the opening scene), and I had a union rifleman's hat that I would wear around everywhere. My parents basically just ignored it and made me buy my own books and toys (but didn't give me any chances to earn more than $.50 at a time, naturally) and it went away eventually.
In a more recent bout of autism, I learned pipe and tabor and started playing it on my school's quad from time to time. It's not so bad because people will come up and talk to me to ask questions about the instrument. I even got a lunch date out of it once.
Who are the modern descendants of Scythians?
Also Scythia thread.
>>425078
Ossetians
Were Scythians the original Indo-Europeans nomads who didn't migrate from Russian Steppe and never settled down?
>>425098
Fugg, forgot about the Alans. But either way they are heavily mixed with the other North Caucasus people, they don't look much different if compared with Chechens or Dagestanis. Although linguistically I suppose they are the closest.
It's 1933, and you're the leader of Poland.
How do you ensure the long-term survival of Poland?
>>422998
For starters, I'd do whatever I could to replace the world's best cavalry with some fucking tanks. Beyond that, I don't know anything about Poland at the time. Any good sources?
Completely reform the army. Turn it into a Huge hezbollah style urban infantry group. Like, when the germans enter a city, they can expect to be shot at from 10 different areas. Also spend more money on anti aircraft I guess. Then I would create a seperate force good for forest insurgency. Lastly, I would create a force of 5k to 10k brave who would sneak inside the german borders and use insurgency tactics/backstab soldiers moving past towns. Also to recruit anti nazis in those areas.
>>423006
>cavalry
-1/10
Name one painting more based
>protip: don't even bother trying
Romanticism was cancerous horseshit.
Rome II: Republic Boogaloo edition
>>420340
>Second Punic War play
>Non est me sung by chorus
ROMA INVICTA
O
M
A
I
N
V
I
C
T
A
>>420579
R O M A
O L I M
M I L O
A M O R
/his/ picture thread
Hello /his/.
First, the library link:https://mega.nz/#F!AE5yjIqB!y7Vdxdb5pbNsi2O3zyq9KQ
Secret societies are a topic that gets a lot of discussion, most of it garbage filled with conspiratorial fantasy or outright falsehood. It's also hard to give a history of these things as a secret society only remains truly secret if we never know about it. I guess I'll start with something as a model for prehistoric shamanic modes of initiation.
Kamaina is a form of assault sorcery. It's predicated on learning how to murder. Initiates will be trained how to attack to immobilize using blows to the head neck and shoulders along with dislocation, before administering various poisons sometimes straight from a snake fang, before sodomizing the victim with an armadillo tail or other similar object to strip out the musculature. When the victim dies the shaman returns to harvest the purified fluid of decomposition like an anteater probing an anthill. These guys are an extreme example of darkness. They are supposedly shapeshifters and community bullies. I bring them up as there's evidence these guys were operating before colonial contact in the Americas implying, given the location, that these guys didn't have much complex culture in their background, and are probably a good model for what secret initiation looked like before recorded word, at least on the darker aspects.
>>415657
That said, the mode of initiation should be familiar if you keep up on these things. Songs of power are recited as the aspirant takes near fatal doses of mind altering compounds and going on a spirit journey. In the case of these assault shaman it tends to be conquering demons and the like, coming to terms with their own grave, etc. They return with powers beyond the day-to-day spells of their tribefolk, it's reckoned some of these guys have a power that's similar to force choke – it can crush and rupture organs and is supposedly manifested as a trail of black smoke emerging from the mouth of the shaman. You can read all about these guys in “In Darkness and Secrecy” and “Dark Shaman: Kamaina and the Poetics of a Violent Death”.
Before moving over to Greece I should note that while I don't really have much on what we'd consider in our eyes to be a secret society in middle Eastern cultures as Sumeria was rising, that doesn't mean groups of a religious nature did not open up shop with teachings closed off even from the literate, which could only be delivered in person through ceremony. We just don't have much archaeological record thereof. On the other hand, one could possibly reckon Judaism at the time of the First Temple as a quasi-secret mystery cult, what with names of god and veiled chambers. Egypt at least early and nominally appeared more mystery cult oriented, as most teachings were only veiled behind general illiteracy, to my knowledge.
We have evidence of yoga being practiced by the peoples of Mohenjo Daro but in truth we've got no way of knowing how their systems being constructed. Jan Fries' “Kali Kaula” goes into this. We've got solid evidence that by the time of 500-800 AD certain tantric sects had become more or less secret societies. We just don't know how far back this tradition extends, exactly.
>>415667
So, Greece. One of the most well known mystery cults/secret societies were the Eleusinian Rites. This thing was in operation for hundreds of years before Christ, you can read all about it on the wiki in overview; in short it was a comment on the changing of the seasons, via the myth of Persephone, Hades, Demeter, etc., and then later, tied to the winemaking process another initiation concerning Iaccus. These rites were equinoctial and had a goodly number of appendant rites along with them. The European folder in my library has as much stiff scholarly reconstruction as I can dig up on the matters and have recommended folks use it for their own takes on Greek religion.
While these rites were going on, according to Coming Forth by Day, spells were being recited at the tombs of kings in Egypt to assure their rebirth as a star in the body of Nut.
Jumping ahead we could probably qualify the Essenes as a mystery cult. Maybe even a handful of factions in the temple that'd continued Hekhalot and Mervaka mysticism. In any case, aside from prosecutions of varying size from Rome, surely some Gnostic sects had gone underground due to complex reasons. This is a really touchy subject as people like to either present the Gnostics as heretics and ignore them or they essentialize and champion them without really understanding the diversity of sects under that banner. Rudolph in “Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism” throughout and toward the end lends credence to the idea that some attacks on the Gnostics made by detractors actually have some mass behind them. Accusations of blood rites and orgies; the thing is not every single Gnostic sect though Demiurge was bad, moreover, some while seeing the material as corrupt sought not renunciation but synthesis with the material.
>>415676
I should note that toward the end of this period we get the Mandean groups who likely are the origin point for most of what we understand as ritual magick these days. They'd recite spells for the intercession of various angels and spirits, up to and including passage through the world of the dead and afterlife.
Toward the end of the Gnostic suppression, we see Bon and Buddhism meld into Vajrayana. Within a couple hundred years, Abhinavagupta gives Buddha the finger and starts to synchretize Vajrayana with native tribal Kashmiri Saivism. As mentioned, these groups in the vamacara tradition went underground to continue their practices in peace. It's actually kind of cute, given the secrecy of some of these groups, modern mainstream Hinduism often reacts to evidence of practice of these modes like we do to Satanism. Nothing funnier than watching Vaishnavu panic over skulls found along the river bank in modern news reports.
In 800 AD we see the first closed community in Egypt devoted to what would become Kabbalah; the Genizah fragments appear to be the first deviation from Hekhalot and Merkava mysticism into the material which would serve as the basis of Luria and Leon's elaborations & Zohar.
Obviously, I'm skipping around a bit. While Knights Templar could technically be construed as a secret society, I think occult templarism is a boogeyman that needs quashed. Moreover, the Hashishim, as I understand the history, is largely the fanciful product of Magellan's tall tales. Yes they existed but the hash eating and insanity are probably embellishment.
What's up, /his/? I'm writing a paper on why refugees shouldn't be accepted into America, and I was comparing Islam to other religions, the main one being Christianity. I touched up on 2 violent verses from the Quran and now I feel to prevent myself from creating a logical fallacy my teacher will inevitably point out and mark me down for, I should also point out that Christianity has some violent verses in the bible, but the militancy rates of Christians are pretty low. Can anyone provide some statistics for the rates of militancy in Christians?
TL;DR I need some statistics for christian militancy rates. Also do you think Islam is really a religion of peace?
>>396080
You've already failed by taking religion at face value
>>396080
Christian Militants have killed more people post 9/11 in america, but you know, higher population and all that.
http://securitydata.newamerica.net/extremists/deadly-attacks.html
has sources and is pretty balanced
Just check through this website in general.
Personal opinion, the refugee's aren't a big deal and are massively overblown in significance.
>>396089
Reiterate. My teacher is pretty fine with my arguments if I can back them up with credible facts.
2015-11-01 11:36:48
Post No. 27939
[Report]
[View thread]
This board is dedicated to the discussion of history and the other humanities such as philosophy, religion, law, classical artwork, archeology, anthropology, ancient languages, etc. Please use /lit/ for discussions of literature. Threads should be about specific topics, and the creation of "general" threads is discouraged.
For the purpose of determining what is history, please do not start threads about events taking place less than 25 years ago. Historical discussions should be focused on past events, and not their contemporary consequences. Discussion of modern politics, current events, popular culture, or other non-historical topics should be posted elsewhere. General discussions about international culture should go on /int/.
/his/ is not /pol/, and Global Rule #3 is in effect. Do not try to treat this board as /pol/ with dates. Blatant racism and trolling will not be tolerated, and a high level of discourse is expected. History can be examined from many different conflicting viewpoints; please treat other posters with respect and address the content of their post instead of attacking their character.
When discussing history, please reference credible source material, and provide as much supporting information as possible in your posts.
When somebody says they're a "Gnostic" today: Are they in a direct continuity from the Gnostics of early Christianity?
>>433693
It varies desu.
I consider myself gnostic but I do fuck-all research about christian gnosticism and the nag hammadi, my knowledge generally comes more from random readings of the kabbalah and the anthroposophical/rudolf steiner society
so yeah when you ask someone if they're gnostic as if they're Christian Gnostic.
>>433697
So for you Gnosticism = Occultism, in a sense?
>>433707
Gnosis, for me, means higher knowledge. A shaman doing hardcore drugs and inquiring the high spirits to grant him knowledge of "higher worlds" is a Gnostic as much as the buddhist who is meditating and trying to figure out the whole of reality is. Christian Gnosticism is less Gnosis for me and more like passing dogma and teachings down from ancient scripts.
So yeah, occultism would be gnosis in a certain way, but from what little I've read early christian Gnostics were actual Gnostics in their beginning.
Why does /his/ like military history so much?
Threads about history of warfare and strategy usually get dozens and hundreds of replies, while other historical topics rarely gain this kind of tract (exceptions exist of course).
You would think it was only WW2 and corresponding events that are popular, but also early modern, ancient and medieval warfare gets a lot of attention. Why is this the case in your opinion?
>>433457
grog shit
>>433457
War is the ultimate expression of humanity's soul
Loads of documentation and a love of violence?
