Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Among other things, altars were erected for the Spartan warlord Lysandros.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Personal cults were also formed around Macedonian kings Amyntas III and Philip II.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

During Alexander's lifetime, several Greek cities in Asia Minor established cults in his honor.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Alexander cults were also established in Greece, but these disappeared after this death.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

During the successors of Alexander, new cults were formed.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The first such cult was founded in Skepsis in honor of Antigonos Monophthalmos in 311 BCE.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The motivation behind this tribute was the Treaty of Antigonos and other diadoques, which guaranteed the independence of Greek cities.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Later, Antigonos and Demetrio were worshipped as “saviors” (soter) in Athens.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

In Greece, the cult of persons was not just a matter of flattery to kings and not everyone received this honor.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Ruler cults were also formed around other diadoques and this tradition continued until the Roman period.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[10] Sovereign worship continued to spread westward.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

In ancient Rome, Emperor Augustus was the first to apply many of the methods used to construct contemporary personnel cults.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

He hired poets, historians and artists to shape his public image.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Sculpture, for example, gradually shifted away from realism towards an idealistic style of filming.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[11] In Rome, emperor worship was a key element uniting the kingdom.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Culturally and geographically fragmented world power needed a metaphor of unity and loyalty of the kind formed out of respect for a divine emperor.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Later, especially starting with Diocletian, the Empire became more formal and orientated and the emperor moved beyond the reach of the common man once and for all.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[12] With Christianity, the position of emperor changed from god to possessor of divine right, but the superiority of the ruler over the common people was preserved.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The development of formalization culminated in the Byzantine Empire, whose complex court ceremonies were designed to emphasize the deviant position of the emperor.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

In the absolute monarchies of Europe, it was generally considered the ruler to rule the people by divine right.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

However, the worship of monarchs and emperors differed from contemporary person worship decisively in that in them, the ruler's power and superhuman qualities were considered to derive from outside the ruler—usually through a god or gods.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[13] It was not until the 19th century that new philosophical and psychological views of the persona enabled the emergence of the great personage cults of the 20th century.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Unlike in these modern cults of persons, in European absolute monarchies the institution of the king, rather than the individual ruler, was considered sacred.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[14] Atheological background As a reaction to industrialisation and urbanisation, in philosophy and art, dawn directions emerged in philosophy and art in the 19th century that emphasised the importance and personality of the individual.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Friedrich Nietzsche conceived the idea of Übermensch, or superhuman, rising above the prevailing values and moral perceptions of society, the so-called slave morality.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Nietzsche emphasized individualism and also the importance of the subconscious, instincts, and creative individuality as the foundations of authentic life.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Over-humanity, however, according to Nietzsche's view, was not measured by the person's external power (although after overcoming oneself, the superhuman comes to dominate those who have not done it) but rather internally by how the individual is “the judge, executor, and victim of his own law”.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[15] Although it was not Nietzsche's original intention, these ideas soon began to be applied to politics and social theory.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Several European intellectuals believed that modern society should reject the rough egalitarianism and liberalism of the left in such a way that extraordinary personalities might emerge.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Ernst Bertram's work Nietzsche: Versuch einer Mythologie (), published in 1918, put forward the idea of a prophet sent to save the people from themselves.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Another prominent German social theorist, Max Weber, suggested that the most authentic form of political power in the modern period would have been derived from a charismatic personality rather than succession or merit as before.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[16] According to him, a successful leader should be independent of his environment and rely only on his own willpower.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[2] Weber felt that the will of a powerful persona could only appear as a political force so kaun when “when the faith of his supporters confirms him as charismatic” and he remains the leader of his supporters only as long as he could demonstrate his uniqueness.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[16] An essay by Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung on Personality Development appeared in 1934.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

According to Jung, behind the great deeds of world history were always the “leading personalities” rather than the “silent people”.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

He believed that true personalities were rare and that “cruel necessity” would drive them to create their own law and thus end up as “leaders”.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[16] In Germany, the doctrines of personality were enthusiastically received in the period after World War I, when people had become disillusioned with the old liberal bourgeoisie.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

A “German messiah” was also longed for as a corrector of the indignities of a lost war.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Hitler knew how to exploit these ideas in time and they formed the basis of his future cult of personage.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[17] [18] Among the Russian revolutionaries there was also enthusiasm for Nietzsche's superhuman views, although in 1922 Nietzsche's books were banned because they represented “bourgeois mysticism”.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Writer Maksim Gorki longed for a Russian superhuman to wipe out the old system from the way of the new one.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[17] However, a more central role than Nietzsche rose in Russia, eschatological material borrowed from the Orthodox Church and popular mythology.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[17] Before the revolution, literature had a powerfully apocalyptic spirit — a romanticized yearning for salvation and a strong individual rescued from degenerate tsarism was mixed with the expectation of revolution.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Anatoly Lunazharski, who became the first Commissar of People's Enlightenment in 1918, and his supporters sought to link Russian religiosity to the Russian revolution by presenting the idea of creating a God-like hero of the new revolution, which Lunazharski [19] described as being” of all religions the most religious”.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[20] The Bolsheviks also took advantage of the admiration and appreciation of the Tsar, which was part of Russian tradition.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[21] Particularly in rural areas, vigorously, the view that the monarch was essentially a good and just father figure who would save his subjects from corrupt officials and greedy landlords.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

This belief waned with the trials of the First World War but continued to live even after the revolution.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The Bolsheviks succeeded in part in transferring this same admiration to the new leaders.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[21] Grigory Zinoviev described Lenin in 1918 as a “leader by the grace of God”, and a poem written in honour of Stalin's birthday in 1939 said [17]: Art played a great role in creating a cult of persons.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The Bolsheviks were opposed to Russian avant-garde art and took advantage of artistic strife between various factions in the late 1920s.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Socialist realism was declared the only official artistic trend of the Soviet Union in 1932, after which the cult of persons appeared strong in almost all fields of art.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[22] When socialist realism was taken as an official direction even in other socialist countries after World War II, a narrow field of party loyalty continued in art, including person-worship against Stalin as well as images of other local party leaders.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[23] After Stalin's death, control of socialist realism declined, although censorship existed right up to the glasnost of the mid-1980s.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[24] Soviet personnel cults around Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Lenin formed the first person cult of the Soviet Union.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

His ascetic, industrious and orderly nature set him apart from many other Communist Party leaders.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[25] Partly against Lenin's will, he soon came to be regarded as a “good tsar” who was modest and folk, but at the same time the creator of a new just system.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[21] From 1918 onwards, he began to be appointed vožd, or leader; a term that in the 1920s extended to the entire leadership of the Communist Party.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

During the Civil War, the party already began to consciously exploit and spread this vision of Lenin as a tool of its political survival, when, through religious-tinged interpretations of the revolution, the Civil War began to be interpreted as good and evil, revolutionary saints and as a battle between the evil spirits of counter-revolutionaries.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Lenin became the main saint of the revolution, the author of the Holy Bible of the Work, as one poet described him in 1918.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[25] Until his death, Lenin was able to prevent this cult that had arisen among the people from ending up as part of official party propaganda.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

However, immediately upon his death, this Christ-like Savior-Lenin was taken as part of the party's official Lenin cult, although many of the party's leaders, including Lenin's widow Nadežda Krupskaya, opposed it.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[21] The first step in canonizing Lenin was the decision to embalm his body and place it in a mausoleum in Red Square.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[21] The idea was apparently first put forward by Stalin in October 1923, months before Lenin's death, although no record of that meeting has remained.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The final decision on the matter was made by a specially created funeral committee whose chairman, the head of the secret police, Feliks Dzeržinski, finally, at the end of months of heated debate, recommended the display of the body as “the emblematic embodiment of the revolution.”


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Already in 1924 Saint Petersburg was renamed Leningrad, and the first huge Lenin statues were erected in Stalingrad in 1925 and Leningrad in front of the Finnish railway station in 1926.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[25] Many forms of Lenin worship were borrowed from the Russian Orthodox Church.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Orthodox icon corners, on which icons depicting Christ, the Virgin Mary and holy people were hung, were replaced with “Lenin nooks”, on which were hung pictures of Lenin from childhood to old age, photographs of other communist leaders, and communist literature (from earlier prayer books instead).


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[26] [27] The propaganda poster also used many forms borrowed from icon art: for example, images showing Stalin against a red background with his hand raised resemble the icons' way of depicting the blessing Christ.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The display of Lenin's embalmed body has also been considered to have been related to the veneration of the relics of the Orthodox Church.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Poems written in honor of the leaders began to be influenced by Orthodox texts of worship: “But Thou Great Stalin are higher,/than the highest places of heaven”.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[28] After the death of Stalin Lenin, Stalin sought as quickly as possible to present himself as a continuator of Lenin's work.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[21] A few months after Lenin's death, in April 1924, he gave a lecture series at the University of Sverdlov, which was later published as a book on the basics of Leninism.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

In his lectures, he argued that the party and its leadership had a historical duty to preserve and defend all of Lenin's revolutionary views.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[29] Beginning in the late 1920s, the term vožd began to be used alone from Stalin, who had become a “leader and teacher” similar to Lenin.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Stalin was described as Lenin's loyal pupil and companion, and in magazines and other propaganda material, their pictures were published side by side.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[21] Slowly, however, the political imagery began to change: while still in the 1920s Lenin was often shown in pictures in the foreground and Stalin in the background, in the 1930s they began to be depicted side-by-side, and finally, after the middle of the 1930s, Lenin could be shown no longer in the background on a poster or as a ghostly figure smiling at his successor, who had taken over the space in the foreground of the images.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Editions of posters portraying Stalin were often 150000 or 200000 copies.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[29] Stalin's personal worship reached its full measure in the 1930s.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

As recently as the 1920s, criticism of Stalin could appear in literature, but by the 1930s all literary expression had been tamed into the service of personal worship.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[29] Worship had reached such proportions in literature by the middle of the decade that, in August 1936, an editorial in the journal Izvestija stated with apparent honesty: “Writers no longer know what to compare you to, and poets no longer have enough linguistic gems to describe you.” [30] Various levels of government competed with the naming of production plants, villages, theatres and other establishments after Stalin.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Coming into the 1940s, the Soviet map included not only Stalingrad but the cities of Stalinsk, Stalinogorsk, Stalinabad, Stalinsky, Stalinograd, Stalinis and Stalinaul.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[31] In 1937, it was proposed to rename Moscow to Stalinodar or Stalindar (a gift from Stalin) and change the calendar so that the time-counting would begin with Stalin's birth.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

These suggestions were too much for Stalin, who denied both.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[30] In the years leading up to World War II, efforts were made to slightly curtail Stalin worship, because there was a fear within the party that it would begin to turn against itself.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Personal worship rose again after the Great Patriotic War, and especially its victory.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

For example, in the film Berlin's overthrow, Stalin was shown alone studying war maps and plotting Hitler's defeat.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[30] Behind official Stalin worship hid a wide range of people's personal influences to support and advocate worship, and the exploiters of the occasion and true believers often behaved similarly.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

By supporting official worship, one might contribute to one's standing within the party system, or especially during the Great Purges of the 1930s to seek to secure survival.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[32] The party also aimed to target the popular hostility created by political decisions such as the famine brought about by forced collectivization or the Molotov—Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 away from Stalin.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Many Soviet citizens also refused hero worship, but many, such as the poets Anna Ahmatova and Osip Mandelstam, were forced for their own safety to act as required for worship.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[33] Osip Mandelstam was first arrested in 1934 for his anti-Stalin poetry and a second time in 1938, after which he died in the Vtoraja Retška displacement camp near Vladivostok.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[34] Mandelstam's wife later reported that when the poet was writing an Ode to Stalin in 1937, he had to “tune himself out like an instrument by giving his way in to mass hypnosis”.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[32] [35] The demise of Stalin's cult of persons, Stalin's personal worship did not last long after the dictator's death.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

In 1956, Khrushchev informed the stunned party leadership that Stalin had abused his power and unnecessarily subjugated Soviet citizens.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

In his speech, Khrushchev invoked Karl Marx's letter to German party worker Wilhelm Bloss, in which Marx states [5]: In his speech at the secret session, Khrushchev denounced Stalin as a murderer and torturer of party members.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

It has been reported that the impact of the speech on listeners was so traumatic that some meeting delegates suffered a heart attack during it and others committed suicide after the session.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[36] Soon Stalin's body was removed from Lenin's mausoleum and buried in front of the Kremlin Wall.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

A stanza of the Soviet national anthem containing the verse: And under Stalin's leadership, in the works/we grew up in fitness, the heroic work was performed only in musical terms until 1977, when references to Stalin were completely removed from the lyrics.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[37] As a counterbalance to the deconstruction of Stalin's worship, Lenin's figure was ever more exalted since then: in every place he had visited during his life, museums or monuments were erected, his statue was raised in the square of every village, countless places were named after him ( not only cities but streets, parks, factories, and other establishments, as well as natural sites), his image was attached to every possible connection down to operating objects, and his words or examples (real or imagined) were invoked on every issue.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

This continued until the end of Soviet rule.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[21] According to polls conducted in recent years (2005), today's Russians' view of Stalin is divided.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Many people view Stalin as committing crimes against his own nation, church and foreigners.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Stalin is also considered guilty of the losses suffered by the Red Army at the start of Operation Barbarossa and the abuse of prisoners sent to the Gulag.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

On the other hand, economic solutions made during Stalin's reign strongly developed the country, according to Russian newspaper CMNews.run, “the cult of persons prevents ordinary Russians and the country's elite from honestly seeing the history of the country and noting Stalin's merits in raising the Soviet Union of the 20th century as a superpower”.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

In an opinion poll conducted in 2005, 50% of Russians rated Stalin's influence on the history of the country as positive and 37% viewed this negatively.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[38] The collapse of the Lenin person cult The Lenin cult of persons was much longer-lived than Stalin's and continued for more than six decades despite various major social changes.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

A significant part in maintaining the cult was the strict state control over media and education promoting the mythical image of Lenin especially to children and adolescents.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The Lenin cult began to crumble only during the 1980s under the influence of perestroika and glasnost reforms initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[39] Gorbachev took advantage of Lenin's position in society to push through his own reforms.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

He justified the new politicist direction with Lenin's writings, among other things, citing the fact that Lenin often used the terms “glasnost” and “perestroika”, and that the idea of perestroika sprang from the “immortal thoughts” of this.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

According to Gorbachev, “perestroika brought us closer to Lenin and Lenin closer to us”.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[39] However, with the new openness policy, the Lenin cult also came under review.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

In 1989, a series of unknown Lenin writings from the party's central archive were published.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

These documents revealed previously unknown aspects of the revolutionary leader: among them, his cruelty to the clergy and kulaks.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

This information challenged the earlier image of mild-mannered Lenin and led many to believe that Lenin, not Stalin, was the true father of communist concentration camps and mass executions.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

In May 1990, demonstrations calling for democracy were already carrying placards reading “Down with the Lenin cult”.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The protests also forced Gorbachev to accept that it was “high time to end Lenin's absurd idolization”.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[39] In the spring of 1991, after a referendum, the name of the city of Leningrad was changed back to Saint Petersburg partly as a result of the campaign of Mayor Anatoly Sobchak.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[39] Although for the majority of Russians the Lenin cult has lost its relevance, Lenin nevertheless has its own prominent position in Russian culture.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Many people are nostalgic about Lenin and the Soviet Union.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The remains of the Lenin cult are also still prominently displayed in Russia.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Monuments in Vožd have been preserved by thousands and some are being restored and maintained so because of their artistic or historical values.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[39] Also, Lenin's embalmed body is still on display in Moscow's Red Square.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Nazi Germany Hitler approached his own cult of personnel in very different ways than Stalin.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Stalin ultimately appeared as a patron of Lenin's revolution and a representative of large groups of labourers and land labourers.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

In Hitler's view, the fundamental attribute of leadership was the person of the leader and the main function of the state was to elevate strong natures to a position of authority.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[40] In his book My Struggle (Mein Kampf) Hitler addressed the subject for a whole chapter.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The most central message of the cult of personage was the claim that he had a special relationship with the German people.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Hitler himself described this in the Reichstag of Nuremberg in 1934: “Our leadership considers the people not just the object of leadership but it lives in the people, knows with the people and fights for the people.” The Führer was the personification of the people who led them to historical destiny.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[40] Hitler was scrupulous about his public image and practiced his manic spontaneous-seeming speeches time and time again.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[41] Hitler also did not allow himself to be photographed with glasses on his head, despite being so remote that he had to write papers using a capital letter “führer typewriter”.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[41] In spreading Hitler's cult of persons, visual expression played a key part.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

All public spaces were to have a photograph of Hitler, and in 1934, Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick announced that an approved photograph of the Führer would be hung in all offices with state funds.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Busts, postcards and posters depicting Hitler were widely displayed in public, usually taken by Hitler's court photographer Heinrich Hoffmann.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[42] The problem with presenting Hitler as personified by the German people was that Hitler himself bore little resemblance to the National Socialist “Aryan” ideal.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

She was comparatively short and had no blonde hair.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Hoffmann's task was therefore to try to present Hitler in the most positive light possible, despite these shortcomings.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[42] After 1933, paintings made especially of Hitler abandoned naturalness and began to present Hitler as a taller, more muscular soldier, prophet and statesman.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

In addition to light and portraits, efforts were made to widely disseminate the director's writings.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

By the time of the fall of the Third Reich, Mein Kampfia, as a cheap staple edition, had sold 8—9 million copies.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[43] From 1936 onward, a copy of the book was distributed free of charge to all married couples.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[44] Nazi Germany was not as anti-religious in principle as the Soviet Union, and religion and religious imagery were even more explicitly exploited in the Hitler cult than in Stalin's equivalent.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[45] Hitler was often characterised as a god or a gift from a god.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Alois Spaniel, who served as party leader in Saarland, described Hitler as “the new, bigger and stronger Jesus Christ.”


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[46] According to Reverend Hans Kerll, he was a “true Holy Spirit”.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The National Socialists developed their own liturgy entirely, which included, among other things, creed, baptism, and marriage initiation.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[45] New public holidays were declared in the country: Hitler Day on 20 April to mark Hitler's birthday, the day of the German mother on 9 November, the birthday of Hitler's mother, and on 30 January, the grand festivities on the anniversary of Hitler's ascension to Reich Chancellor.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[47] Streets and squares were named in honour of Hitler, thousands of German boy children were named “Adolfs”.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

There was also a sexual aspect to Hitler's cult of personnel, which, for example, Stalin completely lacked.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Hitler himself chose to remain unmarried, and his mistress Eva Braun had been forced to remain invisible.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[48] Numerous women sent letters to Hitler asking him to bear children for them.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

It is reported that in the courtyard of Hitler's villa in Bavaria, Berchtesgaden, a woman picked up crushed stone from the ground over which Hitler had walked and fainted with enthusiasm.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[49] The ideology of absolute leadership (Führung) and subordination (Gefolgschaft) was also ritualized with the Heil Hitler salute, which became in 1933 compulsory for all state employees.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

It was also mandatory during the singing of the national anthem and the party Horst-Wessel-Lied.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

All public correspondence also came to conclude with the Heil Hitler greeting, and became popular even in response to the telephone.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

People's Republic of China in the People's Republic of China, the most prominent form of personal worship was created after the 1949 Communist rise to power around Mao Zedong, the “Great Teacher, Great Leader, Great High Commander, and Great Helmsman”.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Mao demonstrated innate charisma and leader's abilities even as a young student in Changsha by organizing a student organization, delivering a newspaper, and organizing the defense of a school building against a marauding military force.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Subsequently, Maon succeeded, by his own inherent influence and leadership, to change the tactics of the Red Army in the Long March and ascend after 1949 to the leadership of the Communist Party [50].


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

It can be said that the person-worship built around the leader of Mao, as in the case of many other dictators, emphasised and magnified the person's true exceptionalism.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Mao began appearing increasingly on propaganda posters of the Chinese Communist Party from the early Fifties onward, even as Mao himself warned of the dangers of personal worship.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

At the 1958 party conference, Mao said: “There are two types of person cults.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The first is healthy person worship directed at men like Marx, Engels, Lenin or Stalin who had the truth in their possession.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The second is false person worship, which is not premeditated and is blind worship” [51].


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Due to the disastrous outcome of the Great Leap Forward, in 1960, Mao was sidelined in the Communist Party of China and sought to regain power by exploiting the military that supported him.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The construction of a cult of persons took place with Mao's approval and for his political ends.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Worship of Mao did not reach unprecedented proportions until the late 1960s, when, under Lin Biao's leadership, the People's Liberation Army was made a vehicle for spreading Mao worship and the “Great Mao Zedong School of Thought”.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The army was also used as the main dissemination and teaching tool of Mao's Little Red Book.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

During the Cultural Revolution, all leaders except Mao were criticized.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

All Chinese were instructed to study Mao's Red Book and the book was reported to “... offer the breath of life in the Tibetan Highlands to the gasping soldiers, inducing enthusiastic laborers to lift the sinking city of Shanghai by two inches, prompted inaccurate meteorologists to predict the weather correctly and surgeons to stitch dislodged fingers back into place” [52].


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The People's Liberation Army rose during the Cultural Revolution to lead the arts.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

A new hyper-realistic style was born, designed to educate people and encourage them to wage war against all things bourgeois.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The color scheme of the paintings was usually very red, which in color depicted the revolution and everything positive.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The people portrayed by the paintings, usually soldiers or farmers, had been presented as ageless, muscular and healthy, and efforts were made to fade gender differences.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

These customs were also observed with Mao and he was described as a tall, muscular “superhuman”.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Mao was often presented as a benevolently paternal figure, referring to the Confucian tradition of obedience.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Other common subjects on the posters included Mao as a wise statesman or a great military leader.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

A large group of posters also depicted Mao's various historical deeds.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

His face was usually painted in reddish and warm hues, and was usually the principal source of light for paintings.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Mao might even be photographed surrounded by a halo so that the light emitting from Mao illuminated the faces of the people standing around.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The Speaker's physical fitness was praised with stories of his astonishing swimming performances in China's great rivers.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[52] During the Cultural Revolution, Mao's image became a standard feature of all homes, either in the form of an official portrait or a small statue or bust.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The absence of a portrait of Mao was seen as a sign of counter-revolutionary ideas.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Mao's image was often centrally located on the family altar or in the place where the family altar had stood before the anti-religious campaign of the Cultural Revolution.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

In the morning, noon and evening, people gathered around Mao's image, bowing three times, singing the Chinese national anthem and including aloud songs from the Little Red Book.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

After the end of the Cultural Revolution in the early 1970s, the most extreme features of Mao worship began to be pruned out.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The “3000 year emperor worship tradition”, which Mao himself had supported and encouraged, was condemned and put to the fault of Lin Biao, who had fallen out of favour (and apparently slain) in 1971.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The intense person-worship during the Cultural Revolution was no longer repeated, although Mao continued to be a major political influence in China.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

After Mao died, his body was embalmed and taken to a mausoleum in Beijing, which today serves as a popular tourist destination.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

His image is hung in the square of Heavenly Peace and the image of young Mao adorns the new 100 yuan banknote.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[52] Personal worship in other countries After World War II, during the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union armed and financially supported many authoritarian and totalitarian leaders in Europe and the Third World.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

In many of these dictatorships, sizeable cults of persons emerged around the leaders of the countries.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

According to Polish newspaperman and writer Ryszard Kapuściński, for example, Ugandan dictator Idi Amin cleverly exploited the competitive setting of the eastern and western powers.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[53] In Zaire, Mobutu Sese Seko was strongly supported by Western powers, as he was visibly opposed to communism.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[54] The United States also saw, for example, Thailand as a buffer zone under domino theory and used the country's king, Bhumibol Adulyadej, as a percussion weapon against communism [55].


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

In turn, the Soviet Union supplied economic and armed aid in Africa to the dictatorship of Mengistu Haile Mariam in Ethiopia [54] and to the so-called popular democracies in Eastern and Central Europe.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

In Europe, phenomena such as Stalin's cult of persons emerged around new leaders of popular democracies in Central and Eastern Europe, such as Mátyás Rákos, Bolesław Bierut, Klement Gottwald and Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[56] After Gheorghiu-Dej, Nicolae Ceaușescu, who rose to become dictator of Romania, favored the widespread worship of his persona, granting himself titles such as “Conductor” (Leader) and “Geniul din Carpati” (Genius of the Carpathians).


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Ceaușescu even made himself a golden sceptre and appointed his wife Elena and other members of his family to high government posts.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[57] The Albanian communist leader Enver Hoxha also built himself a cult, with titles such as the “Great Teacher” attached to him.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Hoxha was presented in official propaganda as the savior and supreme leader of Albania and museums and memorials were erected around the country in his honor.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[58] Thanks to the cult of persons, when Hoxha died in 1985, the whole country mourned the passing of its leader.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[59] In the Middle East, Iraq's longtime dictator Saddam Hussein rebuilt King Nebuchaddrezzar's palace, inscribed with the words: “Built during the triumphant Saddam Hussein, the great defender of Iraq and its glory.” Baghdad became a Saddam theme park with countless buildings named after Saddam.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The largest mosque in the world to be built in the city became the Saddam Hussein Mosque, the airport was Saddam Hussein International Airport, and the northeastern district was Madinat al-Saddam.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[60] Starting in the 1950s, independent African states often saw sole leaders rise to the leadership.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

In 1957, Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of independent Ghana, became a paragon of personal worship for many of these leaders.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

In 1964, a one-party system was imposed in Ghana and government criticism was banned.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

A cult of personnel was created around Nkrumah, calling him “saviour” and “star of Africa”.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[61] A sizeable cult of persons was built around the Zaire dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

To maintain the cult, portraits showing Mobutu were erected in public places and propaganda praising him was circulated in the media.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Mobutu's mother was compared to the Virgin Mary and Mobutu herself to Jesus.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[62] State propaganda reaching the proportions of individual worship is not just the exclusive domain of dictatorships and revolutionary leaders.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

In monarchies, too, traits of erecting a cult of persons may be observed.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand is an example [63] of a hereditary ruler whose character is harnessed to the service of the army [64] and the elusive elite [65].


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

It is not possible to make any criticism of the King or the circles close to him for fear of the fulfilment of the Majesty Crimes Act [66].


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Official portraits of the king are encouraged to be put on view at urban gates, road crossings, government institutions and schools, as well as private homes.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The portrait of the king printed on coins and banknotes makes the spending money almost sacred, which must be treated with great respect [67].


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The King's portrait is additionally featured on corporate internet pages, television advertising breaks and film pre-screenings, where one must stand up while the royal anthem is playing.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Disobedience may result in an indictment for the crime of majesty [68].


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The King's achievements in promoting the well-being of the people, in environmental issues and in agriculture are subjects of great praise [69] [70].


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

In Thailand, the cult of the king is seen as a continuum of old traditions.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Officially, the deep respect for the king is justified by the country's power religion Buddhism [71], which has been mixed with Brahman features.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

In Indian religions, the king is considered a divine figure (devaraja) and virtuous caitzer (dhammaraja).


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Personal cults have also been considered to have emerged in some Democratic states.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

For example, according to some political scholars, in Indian politics, politicians exploit the caste establishment when they rise to power and when they rise to power exploit the state apparatus to create personal worship around themselves.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

According to Neena Vyas, particularly those Indian parties whose support relies on poorly organised groups rather than organised party machinery are particularly reliant on cults of personalities.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[72] Among other things, the country's longtime prime minister, Indira Gandhi, has been associated with personal worship features.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

His supporters presented him as an omniscient and -butter on all political issues in India and took “Indira is India” as their motto.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

According to Subroto Roy, around Sonja Gandhi, widow of Indira Ghandi's son Rajiv Gandhi, who rose to the leadership of India's Congress Party after Rajiv, there have been efforts to create a similar cult.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[73] Political worship in the present day since the collapse of Communism and the end of the Cold War, much of the totalitarian states where phenomena such as personal worship are conventionally created have disappeared.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Today, significant cults of persons appear, as a rule, in the last, closed communist states such as North Korea and in some of the former Soviet countries, such as Turkmenistan, which have not developed a functioning democracy.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

North Korea The most advanced form of personal worship today is the Yuche cause built around North Korea's “Great Leader” Kim Il Sung and this son, “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

A calendar is in use in North Korea beginning with the year of Kim Il Sung's birth in 1912.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[74] In the country, raising people to the cause begins in kindergarten.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

In primary schools, the syllabus includes 304 hours of political instruction and in high schools 504 hours of such subjects as “The Revolutionary Acts of Kim Il Sung” and “Kim Jong Il's Revolutionary History”.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

There are also stories about Kim Jong Il's life of miracle acts, such as “at the age of four he smeared the map of Japan with black paint and it rained and storms in Japan.”


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Kim Jong Il was reportedly born in the Soviet Union, but the state claims he was born on a mountain traditionally revered as sacred.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

During 1992—1994, 300 poems and 400 songs were published in North Korea praising “The Beloved Leader” [75].


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Libya There is person-worship around many autocratic leaders in the Arab world.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Libya's late leader Muammar Gaddafi did not hold any official position or office in his country, but was labelled “Guide to the Revolution” and “Brotherly Leader” among other things.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Gaddafi's Green Paper was the most central piece of political life in the country.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[76] Turkmenistan There is also an autocratic regime and personal worship in some of the newly independent states that emerged with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Saparmurat Niyazov, the president of Turkmenistan who died in 2006, declared himself the leader of all Turkmen (Türkmenbaşy).


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

On 29 December 1999, Parliament declared him president for life.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Towns and airports have been named after the president, and statues depicting him can even be found in the middle of the Karakum Desert [77].


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

On Niyazov's 65th birthday, the Central Bank of Turkmenistan issued a series of coins illustrated on his family tree and on his 66th birthday in 2006 was the turn of a series of six gold and silver coins representing his six books, with the presidential seal on the obverse.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[78] After Niyazov's death in 2006, Gurbanguly Berdymuhamedov rose to become president of the country.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Personal worship similar to that of Niyazov has also been formed around him.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[79] Russia Some scholars have seen signs that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a cult of persons would be emerging around Vladimir Putin in Russia.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Other scholars have related to the issue with reservations, suspecting that it is not possible to successfully create worship around a leader without a totalitarian party apparatus.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The emergence of a person cult is also complicated by the fact that in modern Russia people have access to information widely from multiple sources.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

With the collapse of communism, the person cult institution lost its credibility in the country so completely that the emergence of such a thing in Russia is unlikely.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[21] Turkey The presence of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the first President of the Republic of Turkey, can be seen throughout Turkey.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Atatürk is the great leader of Turkey and the father of all Turks.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[80] Ataturk's images and posters adorn the walls of many public places such as hotels, restaurants, bus stations, railway stations, airports, schools and universities.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Schools have their own so-called Ataturk corners.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The main street in Ankara is Atatürk Bulevardi.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Istanbul International Airport and Turkey's largest dam Karaba in eastern Turkey have been named after him.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Ataturk's images also appear on Turkish lira banknotes and the image is required to be displayed on the premises of all government agencies.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Ataturk's memory and persona are protected by legislation and his political principles have constitutional protection.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Insulting Ataturk can be sentenced to imprisonment.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

If the insult has been committed in the media, the punishment can be toughened.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[80] Statues portraying Ataturk are protected and for damaging them can be sentenced to five years in prison.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[80] Ataturk's memory is protected by a law that has not been amended despite reforms related to freedom of expression.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[80] Atatürk Mausoleum was completed in Ankara in 1953 and Atatürk, who died in 1938, is buried there.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The mausoleum is protected by soldiers.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Ataturk's official tomb is closed.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[80] Schoolchildren arrive to pay tribute to Ataturk's life's work on behalf of the Republic of Turkey.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[80] [81] The Supreme Command of the country visits the Atatürk Mausoleum, and during each state visit, an official wreath of the visiting state is laid in the Atatürk Mausoleum.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The cult of persons can be seen in the mauseleum in many ways.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

It houses Ataturk's personal items, including a shaving tool as well as personal clothing and also the earthly remains of his dog Foks'.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[80] [81] Personal worship in Finland has not arisen person-cults to the same extent as in totalitarian systems such as the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

In the final stages of Urho Kekkonen's presidency, the secrecy of the President's deteriorating health and the trailing skiers can be seen as a precursor to the cult of personalities.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[82] Kekkonen was described in his time as fit, youthful and athletic, as a cultured dude who rose from the deepest ranks of the nation to become a statesman, and his health problems and blunders were covered up to the end.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The cult of personalities associated with Kekkonen's long term as president and genuine criticism and the defeat of the opposition has been considered to have undermined Finnish democracy, although it did not substantially break it.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[83] Kekkonen also received tributes of the kind normally given only after death: a street named after him in Helsinki and his image on a 500 mark banknote.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[84] Another Finn who has been attributed almost person-cult-like traits from time to time is Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Already during the wars he became almost an object of worship and efforts were made to counter criticism of him.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[85] On its 75th anniversary, Mannerheim received the unique title of Marshal of Finland and at the same time renamed Helsinki's main street Heikinkatu and also Turuntie Mannerheimintie.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Numerous other Finnish cities have Mannerheiminkatua and roads.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

A statue was completed for Mannerheim in 1939 in Tampere.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

However, the implementation of the statue project was postponed due to, among other things, the outbreak of war, as well as after the wars due to opposition from Mannerheim himself.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The statue was erected in Tampere only after the marshal's death in 1956.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

Later statues have been erected in numerous Finnish cities.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

The Day of the Flag Celebration of the Finnish Defence Forces on 4 June is at the same time the birthday of Mannerheim, which was originally celebrated as the birthday of the Marshal of Finland.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[86] In the 1960s, efforts were made in Finland to draw attention to the stages of the Mannerheim cult, and in particular in the left-wing movements of the 1970s, criticism of Mannerheim and the Mannerheim cult in particular emerged.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

[87] See also Big Brother Cult Personalismo Sources Common sources Citation error, replace with {{cite book| author = Overy, Richard| title = The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia| publisher = Penguin Books| year = 2005| id = ISBN 978-0-14-028149-1}} Citation error, replace with {{cite book| author = Kirkinen, Heikki (ed.


Question: Is Christianity basically a person cult?

Personal worship (politics)

) | title = Russian history| location = Helsing| publisher = Otava| year = 2004| version = 3rd edition (1st edition 2000) | id = ISBN 951-1-15799-X}} References elsewhere Check date values in: |accessdate= (help) CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: unrecognized language ( link) Check date values in: |accessdate= (help) CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link) Check date values in: |accessdate= (help) CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link) Category:Sociology Category:Social Psychology Category:Civilization History Category:Cults Category:Politics Concepts Category:Propaganda Category:Key Articles of Screening


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Ancient Greek religion consisted of several cults, beliefs and ordinances that lived parallel to each other, with varied origins and histories.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Beliefs and ordinances were often local in nature, so in reality one could speak of “Greek religions” or “cults” in the plural, though through the Greek world there were many similarities in beliefs and editorials.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Greek religion was not just about Greek mythology and its deities; it involves various folk beliefs, cult ordinances and mundane rituals, as well as mystery religions.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Greek religion was communal in nature: worship of gods was the function of the city-state.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Mystery cults, the most famous of which was the mystery cult of Eleusii, offered a more individual life of faith.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Although Greek mythology has survived quite well, it is tricky to draw a picture of the beliefs of the common folk, which seem to have differed appreciably from the more sophisticated religious structures of civilisation.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Greek religion did not include any dogmatic or theological doctrinal constructs.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

The focus of religious life was on the cult.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

People were allowed to think of gods whatever they wanted as long as the cult of gods under state protection was not violated.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

[1] Many Greeks recognised the most prominent, so-called Olympolan gods: Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Hera, Apollon, Artemis, Aphrodite, Ares, Hephaestus, Athene, Hermes and Hestia; in addition, Hebe and Dionysus and Demeter could also be read among them.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

[1] [2] The most prominent deities were worshipped in various city-states, but epithets could be added to the names of the gods to express their distinct and local nature.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

In addition, many cities had their own patron deities, as, for example, Athens Athene.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Some schools of Greek philosophy, such as Stoicism and some forms of Platonism, used language that seems to refer to a single transcendent deity.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Greek religious practices extended far beyond mainland Greece, to the Ionian coast and islands to Asia Minor, to Sicily and southern Italy to Greater Greece, and to settlements located in various parts of the western and southern Mediterranean.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

In the territory of present-day Italy, Greek religious ideas blended together with the Etruscan religion, forming the Roman religion.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

In the eastern parts of the Roman Empire, Greek religion became increasingly intertwined with Eastern beliefs and cults.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

History Origin Greek religion seems to have evolved from the religion of the Mycenaean culture of Bronze Age Greece.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

The religion may have incorporated into itself some of the earlier beliefs and practices of the region, such as that of the Minoan culture.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

A large number of different names referring to gods may have been identified from Mycenaean linear B tables including Knossos, Pylos, Thebes and Kydonia.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

These include both gods and goddesses.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Some are, with great certainty, the same ones known from later Greek mythology.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Some, in turn, appear to be early forms of these, while some remain entirely unrecognised.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Thus in Mycenaean religion, in any case, the first signs of the pantheon of later ancient Greek religion, that is, the totality of gods are observed.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

[3] [4] [5] Most clearly of the Mycenaean texts can be identified Zeus (di-we, di-wo), Hera (e-ra) and Poseidon (po-se-da-o, po-se-da-wo-ne).


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Also identifiable also appear to be the later Apollon designation of Paian (pa-and-wo-ne), Ares (a-re), or Enyalios (e-nu-wa-ri-jo), Artemis (a-te-mi-to, a-ti-mi-te), Athena or Athena (a-ta-na), Dionysus (di-wo-nu-so), Eileithyia i.e. Ia (e-re-u-ti-ja) and Hermes or Hermes Areias ( e-ma-*25 a-re-and).


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

However, although familiar names appear in the texts, they do not convey whether these gods had the same function as later.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

[3] [4] [5] Some scholars have considered that strong female deities in Greek mythology in particular, such as Hera and Artemis, originated as early as Minoan religion.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

[6] The early Greek, from the north around 2000 BCE.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

the Indo-European inhabitants who arrived appear to have been farmers, and central to them was the underworld gods affecting from underground, the ctonic gods who controlled or complicated the fertility and growth of the land.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Therefore, there was a desire to placate them with rituals.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

These spirits eventually took on a human form and became part of the god world as gods and goddesses.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Central to the land and its growth power were the goddesses Demeter, who was the goddess of farming, and Hera, who was also conceived as a landmother; and Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

[7] Later Indo-European warrior tribes who arrived from the north brought their own gods with them.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

The most central of these was the sky god Zeus, who replaced the previous great goddesses as the supreme god.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Zeus settled down to rule from Mount Olympos, and a kind of hierarchy of other gods formed around him.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

At the same time, Athene, who had previously played a role perhaps similar to other goddesses, was also transformed into a god of war.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

[7] Many Bronze Age cult sites remained in use, although there were frequent changes in cults.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

[8] Likewise, many early cult images used during antiquity were Minoan or Mycenaean cult objects.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

[9] Archaic period The ensemble of the so-called Olympian gods who ruled on Mount Olympos became established in the Greek Archaic period.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

At that time, Homer and Hesiodos created their epics, which depicted the origin of the gods of Greek mythology (birth of the Gods) as well as key events (Iliad, Odyssey).


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Herodotus later regarded the birth of the Gods as authority regarding the names of the gods and their attributes.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

[10] However, Homer and Hesiodos did not invent gods, and for the most part they took names for the gods from old cults.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

However, they can be seen to have given the Greeks their pantheon, the world of god; thanks to Homer in particular, older local deities were gradually sidelined from the way of the Olympian gods, and the Homeric gods thus became pan-Greek gods.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

[1] However, the older, local god world did not completely disappear.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

It continued to live alongside the Homeric goddess, partly intertwined with it.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Mythology recounts several instances where a newer god had supplanted an older one in some place; for example, Apollo came to Delphi, slaying a Python who had previously influenced there, and in the process the old cult was replaced by a new one.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Often, the old and new god fused together; for example, Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, was often conceived as the same as Hera or Artemis, but in other places she was read as an independent goddess.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Older beliefs also manifested, among other things, in notions of a Homeric deity being linked to some animal, such as Zeus to a bull and Poseidon to a horse.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

[1] For all the older, more primitive gods, the Homeric god world did not replace at all.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Some of the most prominent gods in the Greek godworld were prehomeric in origin: these include Demeter, Dionysus and Asclepios.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Dionysus and Asclepio in particular were never counted, at least not entirely among the Olympian gods, but were preserved as if outsiders.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

An older trait was also a long-preserved belief in various daimons, spirit beings.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Spirits were seen in all objects of nature, including animals, plants, streams, rocks, springs, and rocks.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Furthermore, many different god spirits with some single function appeared in popular beliefs; for example, a spirit called Taraksippos was tasked with scintillating horses in racing.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

[1] In the Post-Homeeric period, so-called Homeric hymns were born, dedicated at religious feasts to various gods.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

From the Archaic period onwards, the work of epic poets in creating a shared religious and mythological consciousness was continued by other poets such as lyricists and tragedy poets.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

[11] The Classical Period through the Greek Classical can be characterized as more secular oriented than retreating from the world.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

This is especially true of Athens.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

However, religion played a large part in the lives of the Greeks.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Official expenditures were directed towards the traditional Olympian, homeric religion, and cult spending was often celebrated as major folk festivities.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

In cults, the Pan-Greek and local cult might be linked; this was done, for example, in Athens by emphasizing Athena's status as the daughter of Zeus.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Various orgiastic cults arrived in Greece from the north and east, one of which was the cult of the mother goddess Kybele.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Most popular among the people were mystery religions, such as the mysteries of Eleusii, which included promises of reward in the afterlife, and the mysteries of Dionysus, where ecstatic features were emphasized.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

[12] [13] In the classical period, Greek religion also faced criticism.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Many well-known philosophers criticized traditional beliefs.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Among the earliest was Xenophanes, who criticised the depiction of gods as anthropomorphic, or human shaped, as well as the fact that gods are depicted as possessing human vices.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Other pre-democratics also introduced natural philosophical notions in which the gods had no stake in the natural course of the world.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Socrates, for his part, criticized, among other things, attempts to make the gods act according to the will of men.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

However, there were also dangers in presenting new religious ideas, as reflected in the expulsion to Anaxagoras, for example, and in the indictment and death sentence received by Socrates.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

[13] Later, for example, Plato did not talk about polytheistic gods, but focused on a single god called the Idea of Good.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Aristotle spoke of the first mover.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

There was not much actual atheism yet.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

[13] Hellenistic and Roman periods In the Hellenistic period, Greek civilization spread over a wide area and at the same time new cults came to Greece, interpreted in Greek mythology terms: Ammon and Baal, for example, were understood as Zeus, Atargatis as Aphrodite and Anaitis Artemi.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

At the same time, Greece, like the whole ancient world, was spread by the mystery religions of the East, which offered a more popular solution to the problems of people's faith life.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Among these religions, the most important were the Egyptian cults of Serapis, Isis and Osiris.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Such mystery religions provided a conduit for more personal religious sentiments.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Various occult oriental doctrines, such as astrology, also came to Greece, as well as various Chaldean, Babylonian, and Egyptian occult influences.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

The number of Greek Jews increased.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

[14] The elevated level of civilization and widespread philosophical doctrines rapazed, at least among the upper class, the belief in several gods and their abundant interactions with men.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

The solutions of different philosophical orientations to the problem of deity were different: skeptics and Epicurans believed that gods either do not exist at all, or that their influence on life is insignificant.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Plato's followers, such as Middle and Neo-Platonians, most often postulated the existence of a single god, but no consensus on the nature of this being arose.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Theodoros “Godless”, who belonged to the Cyrene school, denied the existence of gods altogether and thus represented a rare form of absolute atheism.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

[15] When the Roman Empire conquered Greece in 146 BCE, it adopted much of Greek religion, as well as other culture.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

The Greek gods were identified with the old Roman gods: for example, Zeus to Juppiter, Hera Juno, Poseidon to Neptune, Aphrodite to Venus, Ares to Mars, Artemis to Diana, Athene to Minerva, Hermes to Mercury, Hephaestus to Vulcanus, Hestia to Vesta, Demeter to Ceres, Hades to Pluton , to Tykhe Fortuna and Pan Faunus.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Some gods, such as Apollon and Bakkhos, had been embraced by the Romans even earlier.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

However, there were many older gods in Roman religion that were not associated with any Greek gods, such as Janus and Quirinus.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

During the Roman period of the period in the first century, Christianity of Jewish origin emerged, which also spread to Greece.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

At the same time, Mithraism and the cult of the Invincible Sun (Sol Invictus) spread from the East.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Also, the upper class again sought solace in religion and magic.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

[16] Alongside early Christianity was also influenced by Gnosticism.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

[17] During Late Antiquity, with Christianity already emerging as the state religion and majority religion, Emperor Julianus Apostata was still trying to resurrect the Hellenistic polytheistic religion.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

He sought to convert it into a religion similar to Christianity, with a unified theology and organized clergy.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

For many Neo-Platonians of late antiquity, philosophical study was, at the same time, a religious activity.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

[18] Beliefs Gods Ancient Greek theology was based on polytheism, or polydeity, that is, the assumption that there were multiple gods and goddesses.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Among the most notable gods were the so-called Olympian gods.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

There were always 12 of these at any one time, which originated in Asia Minor.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

However, the names counted in the crowd varied in part; often the Olympolans included Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Hera, Apollon, Artemis, Aphrodite, Ares, Hephaestus, Athene, Hermes and Hestia; sometimes, instead of Mount Olympos, there is Demeter, and Dionysus in the place of Mount Olympos.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

[19] [20] In total, various gods, local heeros and spirits numbered thousands; [12] Hesiodos mentions deities as being thirty thousand.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

[21] Most of these were different natural spirits, such as nymphs.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

The gods were believed to be immortal, but not omnipotent.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Also, the gods were ruled by fate that superseded everything else.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

In Greek mythology, for example, Odysseus was destined to return to his home in Ithaka after the Trojan War, and the gods could only prolong his journey home and make it harder, not to stop him.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

The gods formed a hierarchy in which Zeus, king of the gods, often held a position above others, although even he was not almighty.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Some deities had full control over certain aspects of nature; for example, Zeus was the god of the sky who sent thunderstorms and lightning; Poseidon ruled the sea and earthquakes; and Helios ruled the Sun.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Other gods dominated abstract concepts, such as, for example, Aphrodite love.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Lesser deities that were more or less associated with the Olympic gods were numerous.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Among the most popular was Dionysus, the god of wine and ecstatic rapture, who was also often called Bakkhos.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Other popular gods included Pan, the horned god of shepherds and folk music, and Hecate, who was the god of witchcraft and crossroads.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

The gods were usually depicted as anthropomorphic, that is, human shaped.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Gods acted like humans and had human vices.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

However, a clear distinction was made between the life form and possibilities of action of gods and humans.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

[12] The gods were able to work together with people and, for example, have children with them.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Sometimes certain gods were pitted against each other, and may have sought to supplant each other.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

For example, in Iliah, Zeus, Aphrodite, Ares and Apollon support Troy in the Trojan War, while Hera, Athene and Poseidon support the Greeks (Theomakh).


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Such contradictions were, as if, a heavenly reflection of the wars waged on earth.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

The cults were often very local.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Some gods were attached to some particular city or place.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

For example, Athene was merged with the city of Athens, Delphi and Delos of Apollo, Zeus Olympia, and Aphrodite Corinth.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Some gods were annexed to countries outside Greece, such as Poseidon to Ethiopia and Troy, for example, and Ares to Thrace.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Although the most prominent gods were worshipped in different parts of Greece and although major cities had temples for all the most significant gods, for many gods the connections to specific places remained strong until the end.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

The eponymous nature of the god worshipped in different places did not guarantee that the beliefs or cults attached to the god had been similar: the Greeks knew full well that Artemis, the virgin hunter worshipped in Sparta, was a very different deity from Artemis of Ephesus, who was multi-breasted goddess of fertility.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Many gods symbolize many different things, and different aspects of the gods were distinguished by different epithets.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

For example, Zeus Agoraios was the patron of activities on the agora, Zeus Filios the god of friendship, Zeus Horkios the guardian of the sworn vows, and Zeus Ksenios the god of hospitality and strangers.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

On the other hand, the cults of many gods were very similar to each other.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

For example, traits derived from the cult of the early Mother Goddess or Potnia Theron were later associated with both Hera, Artemi, Afrofite, Demeter and Athena.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

[19] It was possible for mortal man to become a heeros, a hero, and even an immortal god.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

An example is Heracles, who was the son of Zeus but had a mortal mother.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

By committing great heroic deeds and his semi-divine origins, Heracles was eventually given the opportunity to become one of the gods.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Heracles refused, but he became immortal.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Afterlife The Greeks believed in an afterlife in the netherworld, where the spirits of the dead migrated after death.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

If no funeral was delivered, it was widely believed that the spirit of the deceased would not enter the underworld, but will remain haunted forever.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

The Greeks had several different views on the afterlife, and views changed over time.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Among the most famous areas of the Underworld was Hades, ruled by the eponymous god, the brother of Zeus.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

The place was originally called Hadee's house or place.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Another area of the underworld, Tartarus, was the place of suffering where the damned were thought to end up.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

The third area, Elysion, was a pleasant place where the virtuous dead and those ordained in mystery cults could reach.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Few, such as Achilles, Alkmene, Amphiaraos, Ganymedes, Ino, Melikertes, Menelaus, Peleus and many who fought in the wars of Troy and Thebes were counted into those who had gained immortality and eternal life in the fields of Elysion — or in the Isles of Happy, which was another designation of the Greeks” to the sky”.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Some Greeks, such as Pythagoras, for example, had embraced the idea of reincarnation, although not all accepted such a view.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Mythology The Greek religion had an extensive mythology.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

It consisted mostly of stories about the gods and how they influenced the people living on earth.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

At the centre of myths were often heroes and their deeds, such as Heracles and his twelve feats, Odysseus and his journey home, Iason and the search for the Golden Fleece, and Theseus and the Minotaur.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Several species appeared in Greek mythology.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

The most notable were gods and humans.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

The Titans preceded the Olympian gods and were the target of their wrath.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Other creatures included centaurs, who were half human and half horses; nature-based nymphs, of whom dryads were tree nymphs and nereids sea nymphs; and satyrs, who were half human and half Santa.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Greek mythology also included monsters such as Cyclops, one-eyed giants; the sea monster on Sky; the water vortex Charybdis; female gorgos; and the Minotaur, who was half human and half bull.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Many myths related to the Trojan War between Greece and Troy.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

The subject was told by a wide circle of epic fables, the epic cyclos.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

The most famous of the war is told by Homer's epic The Iliad.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Many other fables recounted the aftermath of the war, such as the homecoming of Odysseus, the subject of Homer's Odyssey, or the assassination of King Agamemnon, now known above all from Oresteia of Aeschhylos.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

The Greeks didn't have a single cosmogony or creation myth.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Different religious groups believed the world originated differently.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

One creation myth is told by Hesiodos in his epic The Birth of the Gods.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

According to it, there was only one initial deity in the beginning, Khaos (Chaos), who gave birth to other initial deities such as Gaia, Tartaros, and Eros.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Eros gave birth to the Titans, who still gave birth to the first Olympic gods.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

The mythology survived until the end of antiquity, and became part of Roman mythology.


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Both the Greeks and Romans were literary peoples, and depictions of mythology were written down as epic poetry (such as the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Argonautika) and plays (such as the Bakkhants of Euripidee and the Frogs of Aristophane).


Question: How many gods were there in Greek religion?

Ancient Greek religion

Greco-Roman mythology became popular again in Europe of the period that followed the Renaissance, and was portrayed in his art by artists such as Botticelli, Michelangelo and Rubens.