Controversial idea about ancient religions | Ed Barnhart and Lex Fridman

[@LexClips]

Lex Fridman Podcast full episode: kzbin.info/www/bejne/d6vddmp9hNuMsJo Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: lexfridman.com/sponsors/cv8011-sa See below for guest bio, links, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc. *GUEST BIO:* Ed Barnhart is an archaeologist and explorer specializing in ancient civilizations of the Americas. He is the Director of the Maya Exploration Center, host of the ArchaeoEd Podcast, and lecturer on the ancient history of North, Central, and South America. Ed is in part known for his groundbreaking work on ancient astronomy, mathematics, and calendar systems. *CONTACT LEX:* *Feedback* - give feedback to Lex: lexfridman.com/survey *AMA* - submit questions, videos or call-in: lexfridman.com/ama *Hiring* - join our team: lexfridman.com/hiring *Other* - other ways to get in touch: lexfridman.com/contact *EPISODE LINKS:* Ed's KZbin: youtube.com/@archaeoedpodcast Ed's Website: archaeoed.com/ Maya Exploration Center: mayaexploration.org Ed's Lectures on The Great Courses: thegreatcoursesplus.com/edwin-barnhart Ed's Lectures on Audible: adbl.co/4dBavTZ 2025 Mayan Calendar: mayan-calendar.com/ *SPONSORS:* To support this podcast, check out our sponsors & get discounts: *MasterClass:* Online classes from world-class experts. Go to lexfridman.com/s/masterclass-cv8011-sa *Shopify:* Sell stuff online. Go to lexfridman.com/s/shopify-cv8011-sa *NetSuite:* Business management software. Go to lexfridman.com/s/netsuite-cv8011-sa *AG1:* All-in-one daily nutrition drinks. Go to lexfridman.com/s/ag1-cv8011-sa *Notion:* Note-taking and team collaboration. Go to lexfridman.com/s/notion-cv8011-sa *PODCAST LINKS:* - Podcast Website: lexfridman.com/podcast - Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2lwqZIr - Spotify: spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 - RSS: lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ - Podcast Playlist: kzbin.info/aero/PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4 - Clips Channel: kzbin.info *SOCIAL LINKS:* - X: x.com/lexfridman - Instagram: instagram.com/lexfridman - TikTok: tiktok.com/@lexfridman - LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: facebook.com/lexfridman - Patreon: patreon.com/lexfridman - Telegram: t.me/lexfridman - Reddit: reddit.com/r/lexfridman

[@MagnusGalactusOG]

Adesanya is a descendant of the Moche

[@silverygrey7919]

I would suggest you read Willuam Sullivan's Secret of the Incas for the subject of the Feline dieties in the development and maturation of Mesoamerican and Andean civilizations.

[@h0jdurimoldosmani216]

' '

[@jamieelkes5210]

i would love to see you interview Ralph Ellis

[@stratometal]

I had a teacher talk about Maya mythology , a science teacher of all things and he spoke of the "main" deity of the Maya civilizations, and his thinking of the other deities not being seen back then as gods but rather as spirits similar to what Barnhart talks about here. He thought the same for many other civilizations with pantheon like religions, and how bias was a bad thing, as a scientist, since it would color one's interpretations. These ideas stuck with me and I am so glad to hear them explained so well in this video. This teacher was well traveled, every summer he would go somewhere around the globe and stay with people and learn from them. This was back in the late 80s when I had classes with him. I am happy he shared these ideas with us, a well rounded education is essential, especially in these times. So glad to listen to this interview.

[@BOBANDVEG]

This guy basically traced satan

[@Fullyloaded_00]

Hey bro, what else did you learn from this teacher he seems like a very educated dude who maybe learnt some secrets along the way

[@stratometal]

@@Fullyloaded_00 The secrets of how to travel on the cheap. Back then at least. Some stuff still applies, travel light and how to save money while abroad. Common sense stuff, which he would call it uncommon sense, because how seldom people use it.

[@Fullyloaded_00]

@@stratometal fair enough bro lol n yeah nice use of that phrase

[@lendmeyourears7001]

Zzzzzz

[@dustybrand]

The idea of a common deity over a vast area shared by seemingly unconnected cultures doesn't shock me. The Underwater Panther deity was a Mississippian/Woodland concept spanned at least 1500 years in an area from what is now Florida to Ontario.

[@rugerraylewis2602]

We still find Statues and carvings of them in WV

[@thundermarkperun1083]

If PIE (Proto-Indo-European) fractured along the descendant cultures that we know are descendant b/c of lingual similarities (and we know that for a language to be organically "living," it has to be embedded in a culture), then it makes sense that _other_ cultural elements (like religion, which was a *massive* part of ancient culture) would fracture along similar lines, so it's no surprise to find the Proto-Indo-European of the chief deity "Deyus Pater" ("Sky-Father") echoed across many different cultures.

[@impala1977]

The plumed serpent from the olmecs to Mayans to Aztecs.

[@Med_Jedi]

Quetzalcoatl, Kukulcan, Viracocha, very very similar to Ningishzidda from Sumer and Toth from ancient Egypt. Very interesting connection, they all share a lot of elements.

[@_S0urR0ses_]

They’ve pretty have connected all of the gods around the world from history originated from Sumerian culture but were just called different names as language and times changed around the world

[@ucmeicu7063]

is this what the predator is based off

[@MagnusGalactusOG]

Bingo

[@AXharoth]

ahaha

[@adime8073]

Came back to earth to retrieve his lost sex puppy . A tail as old as time 🐶

[@Deezenuts19990]

thats the the preists.

[@markreynolds6715]

ET

[@ShubhendraSingh2808]

The Hindu god Shiva has snake around his neck. There are studies of Shiva being the same god as in the “Pashupati seal”. He also decapitated Ganesha, the elephant god.

[@drewp1974]

Hindu gods also have many arms. Like this

[@African_Rose]

Why don't you guys use toilets?

[@ribkan4759]

5:05 moche and nazca 6:44 shevine to mocha to inca 6:54 Pumapunku 7:00 proselytize 7:14 pachacamac 8:37 like the Hindu gods 8:59 healing ceremonies 9:29 has a little puppy 10:26 ancient moche shamanism

[@fanaticforager6610]

The Eternal Realm of the Subjective 👁️‍🗨️

[@teekandy]

=religion 😂

[@yoeyyoey8937]

@@teekandyyeah kinda but it also means your whole life and everything in your existence

[@Sammy-n2q]

The statue does also resembled a lot similar to India and South-East Asian culture of the ancient times. And you can still find ancient statue and image of these similarity.

[@valentinozangobbo]

Some mesoamerican decorative art always reminds me of Shang dynasty bronzes of ancient China

[@augcaes]

He’s actually talking about the Staff-God, Peruvian archaeologists and ethnologists have already pointed this trend. Not the picture that’s been shown for Chavin, (Google “Estela Raimondi”), but a figure holding two staffs is the constant in Andean civilization, not a fang-god.

[@DaveWasThereMan]

Oh so he's talking about one obscure reference out of hundreds. You guys still looking for Atlantis between the pillars of Boaz and Joachim?

[@augcaes]

@@DaveWasThereMan sorry, I don’t speak oligofrenian.

[@pebystroll]

Just for the record I don't speak oligofrenian either

[@Supranovas]

No he is talking about the same thing. They call it the staff God he calls it the fanged deity. It's a Were-Jaguar with snakes, saint Pedro Cactus, head hunting...

[@augcaes]

@ no. Representations of it for 1,500 years after Chavin have no fangs at all.

[@MathewSteeleAtheology]

Yahweh was part of a pantheon too, in Sumeria. He used to be called El, which he is still called in the first few books of the bible. Baal was another.

[@portastsic]

Close -my opinion El was a Canaanite cheif deity whose wife was Ashera (Ishtar). Baal means lord and was used as a prefix. It was later equated to and vilified as other city state patron deities (2 Kings 3:27 as an example of the city state thing) -as well as henotheism (polytheism perhaps…yes -certainly before the exclusion of Ashera) in early Abrahamic tradition. Interestingly, Baal Hammon whose roots are Phoenician -another Canaanite tribe- was equated with child sacrifice by outsiders -with good measure-and I believe in later tradition represent all foreign “Baals” as what would become “the devil.” Yahweh was a Midianite volcano god brought in by Moses, his Midianite new bride and her priest father. Look at all the references to how god appears to Moses when wandering. I mean a volcano eruption has to be the closest thing to god anyone could see. Perhaps it is. So El and Yahweh were combined to make everything make sense Wouldn’t it be amazing if girls liked this shit Anyhow, word to your mother, stay bout it bout, and always pour one out for Christopher Hitchens

[@yoeyyoey8937]

You mean the Canaanites. The Sumerians are related but Yahweh and el are more specific to Canaanite lineages

[@MathewSteeleAtheology]

@@yoeyyoey8937 Definitely an area I need to learn more about, yep. The takeaway, I hope, is that "God" is only monotheistic because that's the most popular definition, part of the package deal along with a whole slew of presuppositions.

[@1Kam011]

El Elyon

[@yoeyyoey8937]

@@MathewSteeleAtheology god is “monotheistic” because it’s a good way to set yourself apart from people that worship other gods. In fact the early Hebrews/Israelites were also polytheistic but took Yahweh as their patron god over time and eventually got to the point where they had to hard line the definition of it and therefore their religion and culture. That’s why in the OT you have a lot of instances of Israelites worshiping idols and otherwise deviating from Judaism (cause they were culturally/historically polytheistic and accepted the existence of other gods or other religions and ways of viewing/worshipping god)

[@aaddddiissoonn]

Love all the videos with this guy! He's incredibly likeable 👍🏻

[@scottp4062]

Is it a fanged deity, or 3-in-1 imagery of the 3-step process of life (on the earth plane = snake), death (jaguar, who hunts in the darkness at night), and rebirth (resplendent bird)? The sarcophagus lid of King Pakal seems to show this exact thing: IMO the lower portion shows the open jaws of a jaguar (not a snake - see the lower row of teeth compared to that of a jaguar); the snake spreads across the branches of the 'cosmic tree' (its body is in the shape of the course of the sun each day... 1 head of the snake in the east is sunrise, the other is sunset in the west); while the bird, representing heaven among the stars, is on top of it all (with a mirror image of Pakal 'attached' to the sky via one of its tail feathers). The imagery is different, but the mythology is incredibly similar across Mesoamerica, ancient Egypt, and beyond.

[@BlueHaze-iy3dx]

Yessssss❤❤❤❤❤ finally someone gets it 👏. Thank you for stand up and speaking.

[@pepperonish]

This is what Bert kreischer would look like with different facial hair

[@animalsofherewood]

The fanged snaked head deity makes his presence known to many on DMT and the natives sniffed a powder of a plant that had DMT in it, so stands to reason he's worshipped and still venerated.

[@thewindowsmaaane]

Interesting. I dont like much trippy nonsense talk and ive done alot of psycadelics. I was visted by what i intrepreted as some mesoamerican god figure. I thought it was because i saw something about incans a few months earlier.

[@euphoriarush16]

It is interesting, this theory has been proposed for some time now, and one of the most important aspects it mentions is that these time periods (500; 1000; 2000 years) between each culture-such as Chavin, Tiahuanaco, Paracas, and the Incas-essentially ignore the massive migratory processes within the territory now known as Peru. During these migrations, people carried their culture with them, or certain elements of it, such as music, religion, and ancestral techniques, like agricultural methods, remained with them. It is almost certain that Wiracocha (or the Sun God) was brought along with these groups during these migratory processes.

[@mexiwave]

Mexico has Quetzalcoatl. If you pay attention it is a jaguar with snake body and feathers. Or Tezcatlipoca also called the jaguar of the mountain. And it also looks a lot like the Aztec sun god. And both look quite a lot like the original Greek gorgon and the gorgoneion.

[@luissanchez2067]

Good observation, didn't notice

[@UsuarioAgustin]

If you examine mythology, it bears a strong resemblance to Jesus Christ's descent into the underworld and subsequent rebirth.

[@DionysusEleutherios]

@@UsuarioAgustin lol and id you examine mythology as well, you will see that the idea of a fertility god going to the underworld to be reborn is literally almost everywhere and predates Christianity by thousands of years.

[@UsuarioAgustin]

@@DionysusEleutherios Christianity is used as an example here because it's currently the dominant religion in Mexico. As you rightly noted, this has happened across all religions throughout history, as Joseph Campbell illustrated in The Hero's Journey.

[@fentonmulley5895]

Holy crap you have mixed so much nonsense together. Please just read an actual book instead of picking tidbits from podcasts and ancient aliens episodes.

[@papasitoman]

The Aztecs have the same/similar god(s) of a man or god holding snakes. They also used snakes in much of their art. They also cut off heads. Furthermore, Teotihuacan, located in the state of Mexico, was rediscovered later by the Aztecs and is covered in serpents. There was an obvious transfer or continous belief in gods and imagery.

[@DaveWasThereMan]

Snakes represent the apparent Sine wave pattern of orbits. Because earth wobbles.

[@tupacCarlin2223]

All cultures from the Americas came from peru ....so put inside ur skull

[@yoeyyoey8937]

@@tupacCarlin2223wym?

[@penguinsbusiness2344]

Look into the "Coatlicue" it's a deity represented in stone, stored in the "museo de antropología " in México City , same description and the stone is very detailed, it was found at the heart of the city, and it's also a fertility and death god, it's name means serpent dress, or something like that

[@impala1977]

And the chronicle of the Mexica Indian who encounters the Virgin of Guadalupe in the same place where Mother Earth or Coatlicue is worshipped. The hypothesis is that indigenous students and surviving wise men wrote the story in Nahuatl and criticized the invasion. The story is rich in symbolism.

[@twistpv]

I think it these comments are as painful as reading comments on flow state …

[@aaronbaca]

You suck.

[@Android-dg5ri]

You never reached flow state😢

[@yoeyyoey8937]

Huh?

[@twistpv]

@@yoeyyoey8937 mushashi rings waned too, I’m playing a game, slight time dilation It’s not even the same league it’s missing the mark so much imo

[@twistpv]

@@Android-dg5ri do you know the legend of the rings?

[@ptturboe5792]

I used to live in Peru. I have seen all of this in person. Amazing. Probably 10 civilizations over 4,000 years.

[@user-fv1jn1gw5w]

Good time for all the comparative religion and mythology fans to chime in!

[@DaveWasThereMan]

An ancient culture of mean white men traveled the world building temples and creating localize sun cults in order to instill civilization and agricultural amongst the savage brown people. As soon as the "white sky fish gods from the sky ocean with their sky ocean ships" left, the temples became ruins. Human history is racist at its core and that's the only reason everyone is so confused. The white angels who could only work at night, were not from outer space, they were from boats, and taught astrology.

[@general9064]

That's Śiva, Bhairava and Kālabhairava. Severing head is removing the tāmasic head, in simple words evil heads and giving sātvika heads or good heads. They all are different forms for different functions of the universe coming from the same formless one, who has to take a form to act. Kālabhairava has a dog around his as well.

[@jeremypfrost]

"People were basing their understanding of new world religions on their study of old world pantheons like the Greeks etc." Also, "this god is just like Zeus, able to change form but was still the same god." 🤔 😅

[@ChasquiSoy]

I LOVE THE CHAVIN THUMBNAIL. Greetings from Llama Land

[@infostudy101]

He is an excellent speaker (entire interview great to watch) but this argument about monotheism is very weak. Just because one deity pops up in different areas doesn’t mean it shows any form of monotheism. How do the so-called supernatural beings really differ from the fanged deity? Is there a clear hierarchy? Even with a hierarchy that by definition is not monotheistic. This particular segment deserves an entire podcast.

[@yoeyyoey8937]

Monotheism is kinda a fallacy. Plenty of religions with “multiple gods” worship or understand an ultimate reality which is one god basically

[@infostudy101]

@@yoeyyoey8937 Give examples. There aren’t plenty of religions with polytheistic beliefs that are really monotheistic. To start with Hinduism, Ramakrishna promoted a particular view of Hinduism to westerners that projected the ideal of monotheism. However, in reality, there are multiple deities and Hindus have their preferences whether Kali, Shiva, Vishnu or Surya, etc. The philosophy of Vedanta that promotes an ultimate reality is just one school within Hinduism.

[@yoeyyoey8937]

@@infostudy101 yea it’s one school but it’s part of Hinduism. Lots of “schools” within Hinduism are essentially monotheistic even tho they accept the existence and worship, etc of multiple gods. Most, if not all, Hindus in general have the concept of Brahman, the fundamental underlying reality. Problem is what we’re calling a “god”

[@yoeyyoey8937]

@@infostudy101 yea it’s one school but it’s part of Hinduism. Lots of “schools” within Hinduism are essentially monotheistic even tho they accept the existence and worship, etc of multiple gods. Most, if not all, Hindus in general have the concept of Brahman, the fundamental underlying reality. Problem is what we’re calling a “god”

[@yoeyyoey8937]

@@infostudy101 yea it’s one school but it’s part of Hinduism. Lots of “schools” within Hinduism are essentially monotheistic even tho they accept the existence and worship, etc of multiple gods. Most, if not all, Hindus in general have the concept of Brahman, the fundamental underlying reality. Problem is what we’re calling a “god”

[@TheTurbobond]

Killer cliffhanger on this clip

[@_H8ed_]

Ozzy Osbourne, crazy hair and face, bit off heads, rock n roll

[@jaywilson4321]

Thank you for the analogy of flipping the mirror on Christianity Dr Barnhart… I get what you mean and it changes my understanding. Very much appreciated!

[@bignatesbookreviews]

the incan shift to varicocha is similar to the shift from thoth to hermes trismegistus

[@meelash1]

"There is no nation of people except that we sent to them their messenger."

[@richardschafer7858]

I suppose in the same fashion, indigenous European religions (Germanic, Myconean Nordic, Baltic etc) share a common beliefs with the ancient Vedic religion from shared ancient Indo European ancestors.

[@Interspirituality]

you don’t say

[@anatorres-62]

Yeah because everyone was lookin at the same sky just making different patterns and stories outta it...Everyone has a Sun god because they all wworshipped it under different names....we still do today(Jesus,Allah,) are sun gods

[@Interspirituality]

@@anatorres-62 the purely animistic interpretation is a bit reductionist, as we have more abstract ones like the Ashvins/Dioscuri/Divine Twins etc where we can see a clear shared common origin (as opposed to different groups looking at the same sky)… moreover, Mitra, Indra, Vrtra etc are themselves far more nuanced, abstract and internal than just Sun, Lightning, Storm, etc. I think if you’d actually delved into it a little bit you’ll find the religion of the ancients was much more sophisticated than merely ‘circle in sky good’, that’s just our modern bias looking back

[@anatorres-62]

@@Interspirituality I Think if you research Astrotheology it all becomes alot clearer...Ancient cultures watchin the sky...Its pretty obvious that Zeus and Horus were the Sun gods...Mithras literally means the unconquered Sun God btw...

[@anatorres-62]

@@Interspirituality Indra and Baal and Jupiter are the same gods beinf wotshipped by different cultures...Gods of the sky wind and lightning are just their personification of the weather...its a mistake to be taking ancient text literally!! especially when its all written with the Zodiac wheel in mind...Its a little silly to think Horus was anything other then the Sun...

[@JayPhelps-vt5qy]

To answer Lex’s final question: yeah, you pretty much just look at the pictures over and over. Whatever pops up is what you go with.

[@Eric_Green]

This looks totally like Bhairava / Shiva: Fangs Decapitated Heads Snakes And always a puppy or a dog Then morphed into this guy… Bringing death to your old nature and fiercely manifesting through you… A lot of these traditions are about connecting with the deity and you taking on the deities attributes and forms. The deity is formless but takes form through you through the shamanic practices

[@paulsacramento5995]

The issue with monotheistic worldview is that it assumed that by saying mono (one) theistic ( god) it meant ONLY ONE God. It didn't, it means one SUPREME God. Even the OT and NT mention other gods and don't deny their existence, they simply state that YHWH is THE God over all other Gods (hence that battle between YHWH and the Egyption Gods- the plagues on Egypt).

[@__cooper__]

Well, maybe. Historically speaking if going off non from Scripture claims purely views of the a available data in terms of equal historicity, not dogmatic cannon/narrative, YHWH is potentially 1 of 12 sons of El, from the dead sea scrolls discovery of the physically oldest portion of Deuteronomy 32:8-9, older than masoretic texts fragments previously had, and closer in line with the Septuagint version, but still the oldest "copy" we have, so less time for evolution of the narrative over the centuries, closed to original intent. Some scholars have questions on if the verses such as in Genesis equating YHWH to El (elyon, Elohim, bene Elohim, etc), were added in later because the Gen 14 LXX version of the texts doesn't contain the equation part, implying it was a later edit to the texts after the fact. Or Psalms 82 being something of a vestigial remnant of similar strains of thought, so long as not using an interpretation that has the word judges vs gods for the translation of the texts. Which if going for one supreme god, why not Brahman? Thats technically a similar strain of monotheistic view from Hinduism, and much, much older with more refinement to the scripture, revelation perhaps.

[@paulsacramento5995]

@@__cooper__ The most natural reading of the OT leads us to a "council" of Gods in which YHWH is the supreme creator God. Changes to the interpretations of Genesis 5 and Psalm 82 had to do with the whole "only One God" view, which isn't historical for the ANE.

[@anatorres-62]

I thought Egypts started monotheism with the worship of Amun!...this in turn clearly influenced judaism and christianity as their books are full of egypt myths rehashed

[@tomfairbairn6762]

False. The other so-called gods are fallen angels, that is to say, devils. God alone made the heavens and the earth. Everything else is a created being. The mere fact that certain traditions get this mixed up does not prove your point. Idolatry has been rampant throughout human history, but the one true God is, and always has been, the sole Creator and Lord of all.

[@paulsacramento5995]

@@tomfairbairn6762 I think you might be confusing fallen angels passing themselves off as gods to be worshipped (false gods) with divine beings in God's council that are also referred to as Elohim (gods, with a small "g").

[@Cinimod-r3k]

You ask great questions lex

[@sorinpopa862]

Diddy is everywhere now

[@Mrch33ky]

oh snap

[@jeickmartinez4587]

good one

[@pauloneneve8561]

😂

[@salk4858]

I think there was one religion of animism. It branched off into two. One of appreciation of animals, animals who were result of one single creator. And another was worship of the animals themselves. Former resulted in monotheism and the latter resulted in polytheism. I had theory in college about simulation theory. What if we had a choice of a polytheistic multiverse. Each universe had its own physics and were creating consensus' and clashing with each other. What if a monotheistic universe provided a cure-all for this chaos as long as we trusted it wholly and voluntarily gave it all our power and technology. And it took over and stabilized everything. Or it is still yet to stabilize and is still in the process. Maybe the physics of monotheism vs polytheism manifested in our world is a representation of this bigger process like how moons going around planets are like electrons going around the nucleus. Not saying it would be good for us if it does finish this process. But our death could result in a universe teeming with complex life as it looks barren right now. There really is nothing objective besides your own ego.

[@SpiderPriestess]

Which came first the king or the god ? Or perhaps more correctly the queen or the goddess …

[@Schizosays]

I'm really surprised he didn't mention the demiurge of the gnostics

[@AlchymicusWizardikus]

"Processing and Analizing Art", by Ed Barnhart

[@paulschuckman6604]

Utu... recoded as Ubaratutu on the Sumerian King's list.

[@aeaf123]

I don't understand this obsession with anthropomorphizing G-d. Feels obvious to me that when we do that it is idolatry because we end up worshipping forms and killing others for worshipping different forms than the one that we worship. And it just becomes an endless cycle.

[@hmmlol-yi9kv]

Your bible literally says god said "Let us make man in our image" thereby anthropomorphizing god. Also it was the 3 Abrahamic religions that went around waging war against the pagan civilizations, it's not that the worshippers of multiple deities ended up killing each other in a cycle

[@aeaf123]

@@hmmlol-yi9kv When you think of an image, you think of a man. You have a Greco roman picture of man Gods in your head. Does G-d ever appear as a Man in the Tanakh? Also, what does after our likeness mean to you? Keep in mind, it's also Hebrew.

[@dr-johngy-brongen]

@@aeaf123not ‘likeness’, but image

[@MrJeffharper47]

@@aeaf123why can’t yall type out God? Lol

[@aeaf123]

@@MrJeffharper47 God.

[@CharlesDaniel7114]

Ed has gained a fan.

[@mikitz]

From the lizard god king to the Marvel pantheon, we haven't really changed all that much.

[@budungaunga]

Looks and sounds so much like the indonesian deity Barong who's primary form is a panther like creature, but also manifests in other different animal forms while retaining the same facial features, he also has the same fangs and a pair of round eyes . Barong is also the earthly manifestation of Siva (in the context of Siva as supreme being) who also carries a garland of decapitated heads and is referred to as Skull-Bearer because he cut off the fifth head of Brahma the creator god.

[@1krob]

Endless layers, but ‘now’ that all sounds like Oneness; “See the crab, know that it is me. See the fox, know that it is me. See any animal or person know that it is me,” It feels even more certain when even scary or evil things are depicted as such; “even when the demon warrior appears from the jungle carrying family, know still that this is me.” Brutal. Complex. I would imagine that for an individual that wasn’t drowning in content or frankly anything to do really, to be able to hear and grasp a deep philosophical concept must have been a life altering ‘perspective’. Realizing everything is connected is peaceful. A lot ‘unravels’ from here. I suppose it also connects dots to notice the recurrence in: a means of rationalizing [cultures chosen/manifested crazy behaviors]

[@ForrestGumpWR]

@1:44 Art Water 🎨

[@ErikGarcia07]

During my most difficult psychedelic trips I have had a reoccurring encounter with an entity (on different psychs). This entity sometimes resembles a clownish face but mostly dragon like features, such as fangs, eyes looking right at you, reddish colors, threatening, etc. I have actually only had a few experiences, but it makes me wonder if there is an underlying genetic connection towards predators with sharp teeth and aggressive features. I think these deities have engraved a genetic memory in humanity, likely most mammals. This relates to Carl Jung’s idea about archetypes, which I have doubted for a long time, but this video opened back up that same idea.

[@mabusestestament]

Yeah, not a deity but an archetype of animals to be instinctively afraid of

[@ErikGarcia07]

@@mabusestestament i agree, it’s probably something instinctual

[@Muhahahaaaaaaa]

Sounds like Nephilim

[@kaptainchewy1115]

I saw something similar on DMT. It didn't look like a clown, but it definitely was as vibrant. This sounds dumb but it really did look like carvings of what Quetzalcoatl (I call him Mr q) looked like, almost exactly, the head being somewhat square. It was floating in the corner of my room. It honestly scared me a lot, but it wasn't angry or doing anything to warrant that. It's kinda like the feeling of when you went to a friend's house when you were a kid, and they had a huuuuge dog that just kinda checked you out for a minute. Eventually I "broke through" and closed my eyes. That being took me on what I can only describe as a rollercoaster of light teaching me things. It knew I was going to forget when I came out, it was like it was telling me all the stuff I wanted to know. Really the only one I remember was about fractals being used to create limitations to infinity to create this universe and contain infinity within a finite system. I know it sounds really stupid. But theres so much I forgot. Anyways...it took me to the final place we went. A white room, at least that's how I saw it, and I met Mr. E. Which it feels like a blasphemy to write about so I won't. So Mr q took me to meet Mr e. There's more but honestly as I'm reading this, it just kinda doesn't do it justice. Most intense thing that has ever happened to me. I'm leaving out a lot tho.

[@BEHEMONAUT]

It is reminiscent of bahamut mythologically and dunkleosteous and other large ancient fish paleontologically. Maybe it was from a lake instead of the ocean, it emerged from lakes that were covered in ice for ages.

[@therealkillerb7643]

Interpreting art seems to say more about the interpreter, than it does the creator of that art. For many of the issues being discussed, we do actually have ancient texts that specifically tell us what those images are supposed to represent - and it ain't what this guy is saying.

[@jllammie444]

"I don't even know what the holy spirit is" it's the mother, the church removed her from the trinity. In my humble opinion this is the problem with being to close to the tree line.

[@nathanfoster1853]

Many of these cultures refer to the same thing but don’t call it by the same name. The San, Balinese, Navajo, it really comes down to a feeling and not a name

[@rogerlittlegeorgeii8516]

We call him "Disease Giver the spirit of the south" We would sacrifice puppies to him, to take it easy on our people. The puppies we used were from children that took well care of their dog, the dogs were young, so that they were innocent, puppies never hurt anyone they were pure beings to offer. Puppies are the disease givers children. Alot more to it but that's all yall get. HOCHUNK WISCONSIN ❤

[@sansoncardozo8115]

Thank you for sharing your people's information.

[@The_Letter_J6]

what’s particularly fascinating is comparative mythology: you’ll see the same gods in a multitude of cultures under different names. Zeus is especially interesting because in middle eastern mythologies -and the Bible-he is known as Baal.

[@yoeyyoey8937]

Zeus would be like Yahweh

[@TonyfromTO]

Mesoamerica🌄 and the Hellenistic🏛️ region were doing the same thing. That fanged god🐆 is the tecuani, man-eater, Tezcatlipoca, tepeyollotl, primordial urge, animus, great mystery, chthonic power animal, a "jaguar god", jungles top predator with a pelt like a starry sky. Dionysus is also a Panther. The cult of the Jaguar was replaced by reverence to Quetzalcoatl, not the young man demanding human sacrifice but the old wiseman who preaches self sacrifice who's credited with all things civilized.🐲

[@yoeyyoey8937]

TonyfromTO where you learn this?

[@themattmarchand]

Fang diety is an iteration of an even earlier serpent/dragon diety from around the world.

[@MagnusGalactusOG]

The Predator is based on this.

[@frankmcfarlane-e8m]

what about that amazon wall covered with mysterious glyphs?

[@vickinger]

Its true when you draw them you notice the eyes are nostrils tears arent tears they are fangs You have to cross your eyes and turn your head just right. And then you see the great lion of Egypt the Golden Sphinx as a lion representing the sol. The panther for the velvety darkness of night And the moon. You have to answer its riddle before you get to go to heaven. You can tell that all those cultures were familiar because they all wore the feathered headdress that they used like hunting decoys.

[@icebox_Intruder]

This seems beyond reasonable and undebateable.

[@atxmaps]

I’m still freaked out about the handbags. They are even on the big pillar at Gobekli Tepe.

[@DaveWasThereMan]

Why does an aspersorium scare you. It's for holding holy water (distilled water used to extinguish the temple light which represents the setting of the sun). The "banduddu and mullilu" are used on babies in the catholic religion, probably the least scary thing going on there.

[@gabrielv1856]

Those can be seen as baskets as well. Until a certain point the iconography was mainly a 2d interpretation of the object 3d. For example the egyptians, how certain elements are off perspective or anatomically wise

[@yvonnesmith6152]

The Collective Unconscious is strong…but we have moved away from it, and with it, we immersed ourselves further into rigid materialism.

[@dsharpness]

spot on...step fret triangle-twisted gourd

[@ribkan4759]

4:23 diagnostic elements

[@Freddy-Da-Freeloadah]

Columbus believed the Garden of Eden was in South America. Maybe Cusco Peru? And an island in Lake Titicaca has ringed mounds like Atlantis is supposed to have had, on the scale of a large city! IMHO

[@YipYop-w6i]

That fang diety lives were the wild things at

[@84knucks05]

The way he said jesus christ made me laugh! Like he wasnt even mentioning him, just complaining that he didn't know who the holy spirit was 😂😂😂

[@Breakfast_of_Champions]

The father Vespasian, the son Titus and the awful spirit Domitian, you're welcome.

[@84knucks05]

@@Breakfast_of_Champions didn't ask for anything, Thanks

[@robson6213]

based christian comment...

[@Johnny-jg2xp]

and he said it was monotheistic which is funny trinity is not a mono...

[@galacticcandycrumbs3245]

@@Johnny-jg2xpDoctrine of the Trinity = one God, 3 persons.

[@user-bm7kq7kf5n]

Lex’s sigh is the most exciting part of this conversation.

[@anthonyarcanumsanctumregnu9551]

Lol what was up with that?

[@collegesandcannibals241]

That sigh constitutes almost 78% of all his episodes.

[@1992zorro]

he's just braindead

[@DrHuxley-]

Nagas are all over the world too

[@impala1977]

What you say!?

[@DrHuxley-]

@@impala1977 naga please

[@impala1977]

@@DrHuxley- hahaha

[@phoboskittym8500]

The same thing happened in Egypt, the "Egyptian Gods" are not actually described as gods, "the Netter" are more akin to spirits this includes the spirits powerful people, many Egyptian gods are anthropomorphic representations of the Physical or spiritual world" or forces of nature, some gods were actually people who lived in ancient ancestral times. Not like 12 people up on a mountain somewhere

[@frankmcfarlane-e8m]

sounds like the fanged jaguar monodeity came from the amazon on up to the andes? did he say that?.. makes sense since there was a massive amazon culture?

[@RomansEye]

Looks like Kali too me…

[@malfeitor1349]

You used the wrong ‘too’. Instant disqualification of your opinion

[@RomansEye]

@@malfeitor1349 fire my text to speech AI Agent

[@triggered3159]

You can’t spell the correct form of “to”. Don’t think I’ll take your word for this one.

[@Anthony-ru7sk]

Manbearpig?

[@Maxrepfitgm]

Just say stuff, label it "controversial" and ooooo! 🙄

[@moormanjean5636]

Well the controversy is that south american religion might be monotheistic, the mainstream narrative is only the Judeo-Christian ideology is monotheistic as they are "more advanced"

[@soupstheman143]

Just roll your eyes and go “ooooo!” Sarcastically, and you too can immediately dismantle and discredit any and every argument! The pseudo intellectuals guaranteed win, no matter how little you understand it!

[@BVargas78]

I think ayahuascar was significant towards the religions of this region and also upon influencing the visual look of the deities and art of these cultures in general.

[@kevinallen8904]

Exactly, I'm not sure why these experts can't seem to make the connection. Essentially it was and is a form of collective possession.

[@UPRISING144K]

This sounds like the work of Dr Ammon hillman and I wish lex would share the secret Japanese text from HolyHydrogen, it saved my life and don’t understand why nobody talks about it

[@JohnnyRedpilled]

The South American gods were the same as the gods of India. They were the same characters. The religion spread by the travel of those gods and their subordinate deities.

[@Darisiabgal7573]

People misunderstand polytheism because they have no general idea how it came about. An excellent example is neodruidism. To understand the pentultimate polytheistic society you need to go to the polytheism in which all the major world religions come from, it actually not one, but two adjacent copper age cultures which defacto made the Bronze Age what it was. The place where all this begins is the upper Tigris River between 2 sites, lake van and tell Shemshara in the Zagros mountains. To give a background there are at least two belief motifs, gods if you like, but I can them sprites. One is the Venus, or Mother Earth goddess, Venus is a really bad name for the figurines since in ancient cultures Venus homolog are associated with seduction and not production. Whereas traditional earth mother is an idea of how the earth brings forth life and this transforms with agriculture (Giazentep, Türkiye ~ 10-12kya). The second motif was a masculine motif that appears to associate with ox husbandry (T1 taurids) and appears at CatalHoyuk a thousand years later. This motif later becomes a determinant of rank within the early pantheon. Another idea that is old is child status, in Sumer the word Anunnuki means children of heaven and earth. To the north in Kura-Araxas culture vine culture comes from Asia and associates with an auxiliary deity later call Dionysus in Greece. Child gods are often motifs in cyclical replacement, e.g. Ouranous (An, El, Elkinursa) -> Cronos -> Zeus, these motifs are often used to explain why invasive deities have authority in the older and more sophisticated culture. Zeus, however is not derived from El, but from IE Djeus pater Sky-Father or Heavenly Father and this notion comes from the IE migrations that took place through Eastern Europe from 1800 to 1300 BCE. From the starting point in the upper Tigris there is a fairly rapid progression to the south to the Persian gulf. We no little about these beliefs, but about 7300 years ago a temple, probably to a swamp god, Absu, was built in Eridu. The motifs of this cukture permeate in to the Abrahamic faiths. And while Eridu is only 12 miles from Ur, this is not the reason. Ur was actually contemporary, but was abandoned shortly thereafter and was reestablished in the copper age. At this point, probably each successful settlement attributed it success to some aspect of nature, the sun, the river, the moon, etc. This does not get us to polytheism. What gets us to polytheism is understanding Eridu. It’s a city in s swamp, built on a spot of sand, and surrounded by mud, reeds, flanked on the north by a river and the south an ocean. Entering the copper age, everything a copper age city needs is to the East’s in a different culture or up the Tigris. To get to polytheism you need to travel and exchange goods, trade. In this context when Kura Araxas finally settled in above the Tigris these two cultures are going to compete for territory and resources and this ushers in the Bronze Age. And as KA moves into the north, the response in the south is to reorient trade up the Euphrates. two villages unite, one probably was from Halaf and the other Ubaid, but they unite to form Uruk, and one of the village has a sky sprite and the other a young woman sprite. Together they have the foundation of a pantheon. The city manages to secure trade and creates a confederation of cities. In this confederation the recognize the authority of the priests of the sky, and the pyramid grows in base and height. This is the meaning of the sky-father. Each city is born of the mud, ki, and must establish itself and its deity to be recognized. Anunukki, children of the lord of sky and earth. We can also call them children of heaven and earth. But to be clear, when we speak of the heavenly sky it’s probably better to say the celestial sky. During this period trade was still active up the Tigris. But this Kura-Araxas culture is not a byline of regional evolution, it’s also expanding, it expands into Maycopt culture about 3200-3500 BCE and Yamnaya cukture about 2800-3300 BCE and over the next 1000 years develops into the major branch’s of Indo-European cultures. To basically make a long story short. The growth in dynasties and trade alliance by 1200 BCE results in 3000 gods in the pantheons of the trading partners during the Amarna period. The last Hittite king married a Canaanite high priestess and she essentially becomes his contract lawyer, making sure that all the gods that need to be recognized in the contract (written Akkadian cuneiform) are recognized. This all ends in the LBAC with the contraction of pantheons and the death of many gods. The sophisticated contract laws of the Amarna period was not something the migrants from the barbaric north are interested in. The original stories of the Greek gods, as Hesiod and Homeric epics are ill defined at this point, the old Aegean gods and new IE gods are in a mixing process and it would be the later philosophers who try to sort out what a god is (several thousand years late to the game) and by this time there is a significant influx of Egyptian gods. Essentially the philosophers are taking preexisting sets of belief constructs and trying to make sense of the constructs well removed from their original context. This created confusion and the platonic answer to the question was that there must have been an ideal understanding of a god, but earthly existence corrupted it. They of course were wrong. So let’s see exactly how gods are corrupted. Absu begat Nammu (a goddess possibly inserted) ENki (who killed his father). Nammu becomes the mother or wife of Anu who then becomes the father of Enki. Dinger An in Semetic is Ilu or Il Ilu. Enki has a brother in this pantheon Enlil, he is promoted to Supreme god during the dynastic period. Somewhere around Ebla An and Enlil are combined to form the Semetic ‘El with Hurrian and Hittite equivalents. ‘El is pushed to the high places of Canaan as kind of an over watching god with no temple. He becomes the father of Canaanite pantheon, even though the pantheon has many preexisting substrate deities (ba’al) including Hadad (later Ba’al in Phonecia and Aram). The other god of Uruk was Innana, Inanna is upgraded with Attar like qualities to become Ishtar, Ishtar is Astarte and Aphrodite and is syncretized with Venus. Buried under all of this is the fact that Inanna was a village sprite 6000 years go as was the sky-sprite. OK so having picked apart platonism it’s time to dissect Abrahamic faiths. While I could start with ‘El, let’s go back to the Absu stem. Enki is derived into Semetic Ea, who is that father of Marduk, the high god of Babylonian Amorites, unlike what the Bible tells us Babel was a nothing city with regard to Babylonian religions until well into the Bronze Age, no great tower in the 3rd millennium. As the Akkadians pushed back against ‘El in Ebla, Ea moves in but the Eblaites pronounce it Ia. Enki has two guardians, fertility gods Lahmi and his consort. Beyond Ebla we don’t see direct evidence of Ia worship but we see a lot of indirect evidence. Bethlehem’s original name in Egyptian records is Bêt Lahkmi, house of the guardian of Enki. When the Assyrians transliterated the names of the first kings of Isra’el a couple of them begin with the ‘Ia’ and the phonecian transliteration might be Yah or Yahu. This might be the god YHA/YHW that they are referring to in 12th century documents. The Sumerian/Akkadian stories concerning Enki are source material litered throughout the biblical foundation stories and wisdom literature. But scholars have determined that YHWH is not this god. YHWH primarily is an Arabian god that was merged with ‘El sometime in the the 8th to 9th century BCE. In the building of the Judean YHWH other gods were merged into YHWH, but there persisted a cult of YHWH at Luz/bethel in which ‘El (father bull), Asherah (mother goddess almond grove = Luz) and YHWH (golden calf) coexisted. Notice the similarities with the trinity.

[@yoeyyoey8937]

I agree they’re not “Venus” at all they’re more likely Mother (Earth) goddesses. Venus is about passion (love and war).

[@artstrology]

Fangs and claws with an axe is Ax deccan. It may be considered the ruler of the solar year because the year starts on the Vernal Equinox with Ax deccan. The calendar we use today is meaningless, and was known, but considered dumb. What culture starts their year in winter ? Nobody. Art is a product we can use to tell what time it is, because every successful artist will produce from the set of shapes in their time. The puppy at the door is the 20th day of the cycle, Tzi. That is very simple stuff, I just can't imagine why academia cannot seem to grasp these basic provable things. Every single artist and every single scientist has a product that matches their time. The first 20 hexagrams of the I-Ching are the 20 days btw. Anyone can check it. When you do check it, compare chapter 18 Genesis with hexagram 5 Legge Translation. Genesis was written by chapter in the order of the trecenas, and beginning with Ix, chapter 18 would be the 5th day Tzikin. The 3 guests. very specific.

[@sumitsahninyc]

It's kali

[@sancocho1718]

The statue in the thumbnail looks like a smilodon.

[@pandr3s]

Jaguar/Panther was also the symbol of dionysus/proto-jesus.

[@crapton9002]

There is a constant, civilization. It's easier to lead by proxie so leaders act as messengers of the great entity. Ingrained in children is fear of some imagined entity. Self affirmation of the tribe to maintain the tribal laws on message (prayer). Cohesion in difficult times tend to make this method necessary but the terrorizing at childhood is most important so it enters their dreams. Garbage in, garbage out.

[@RM-yf2lu]

That supreme deity with the fangs and rope hair looks awfully like shiva in the bhairava form

[@happyhugs]

Mr. Fridman, you certainly have many diverse guests.... from the most intelligent men on the planet, to.... this guy

[@LJ7000]

He's got "circular eyes"!! No way! Who could've thought that up? (Proceeds to anyway show an image of a carving with square eyes lol)

[@angelofbliss]

monotheistic vs creator God ; i wonder if these a distinction , especially when you realize some ancient cultures just used "religion" as a memory stick for knowledge not tradition. and that ancient game of telephone. At least this guy is willing to recognize there could be or is a distinction between creator God and god.

[@gamebredo8880]

I'm starting to like more this podcast than jre..let's be real Joe Rogan was great but he keeps recycling which is annoying af😂

[@imjustsam1745]

I listen to Joe to hear a conversation, I listen to Lex to hear someone out.

[@SimonSverige]

They both interview the same people.

[@gamebredo8880]

@@SimonSverige ik but Rogan been saying the same thing over how much years now?? 10 years and there is no improvement lol

[@SimonSverige]

@@gamebredo8880 Joe Rogan talks about different things with every guest. If Lex has the same guest on he talks about the same things. Most of the guests both have are experts in a particular field. Maybe you are just watching the same conversations over and over again.

[@tightbhole420]

​@@gamebredo8880 maybe you're dumbq

[@djciregethigher]

Vampire god? Dusk Till Dawn? JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure!?!

[@DavidGutierrez-dj2kk]

not too sure if ed is credible....

[@BOTCHIMHOT]

Why

[@mexiwave]

All of us in Latin America are jaguar people. Look at the fangs on all the Olmec heads. I’m amazed people are only realizing this.

[@93truewill]

cap.

[@JohnBaran-kw5jf]

*On the Atheist Museum* IT may reveal an incurable and indecent levity or frivolity in my character, but most information about Bolshevists, and especially by Bolshevists, makes me laugh. I know that some newspaper proprietors and such national leaders think that it should only make us shudder, and issue periodical summonses to the public, telling us to keep on shuddering. But I do not believe very much in shuddering as a way of fighting; I have never heard of any stupidity that was extinguished by shuddering; and I have heard of several that were extinguished by laughing. Certainly there are aspects of the case that are no laughing matter, as stated by some really responsible writers in their formulation of the case against the Bolshevists. But at least there is nothing but pure, hilarious, happy laughter for some of the Bolshevist methods of formulating the case for the Bolshevists. Thus, for instance, when I merely hear that some of the Russian atheists have pulled down a church, I am naturally distressed. But when I hear that they have turned it into something called an Anti-God Museum, then for the moment all other moods melt into innocent and unmixed merriment. So far as I can make out, you fit up an Anti-God Museum by getting hold of fragments and relics of all sorts of religions, or what you guess to be religions, and putting them in glass cases with little labels on them. I have heard that the embalmed body of a Saint, let us say, will be on one side, and opposite to it an Eskimo who has been kept in cold storage, for some reason known or unknown. Then there would be an ordinary Egyptian mummy and the bones of a Hindu monk, or what not; and so on. And when the brilliant, piercing, penetrating, intelligence of the New Youth has once discovered that it is possible to put the relic of a Coptic hermit in the same room with a fetish from the South Sea Islands, it will instantly draw the logical deduction that the cosmos is devoid of any design. When that powerful intellect has wrestled for a few hours with the fact that the glass case containing a reliquary is very much like the other glass case containing a ju-ju, it will be fully and finally obvious that there is no God. How any human being could think any other human being could be affected, in deciding any serious question, by such a ridiculous jumble of Jarley’s Waxworks I cannot imagine myself; but then I am of the old guard of the democratic idealists, and prefer to believe that all men are equal in the possession of human reason. But, in truth, there is really one sense in which such things can be taken seriously. Indeed, it has a moral against ourselves, which is sometimes more wholesome than a moral against our opponents. The very worst part of the Bolshevist bosh is that it is by no means confined to Bolshevists. Indeed, all the worst parts of it the Bolshevists have borrowed from the sort of economic and biological materialism that had already existed in Western Europe long before they turned it into a wild but belated riot in Eastern Europe. Thus, while the Communists may be called mad in many ways, what they are really mad on is machinery; which is exactly what our own grandfathers and great-grandfathers were mad on, in the time of the Manchester School. It cannot be said of us now that we are mad on it, or even wild about it. It can only be said that we are tame. But Moscow has the same stupid belief in mechanical action and dead matter supporting its extreme Communism which our fathers had supporting their extreme Individualism. And just as their machinery is borrowed machinery, so their materialism is borrowed materialism. It is the old nineteenth-century materialism of the stalest and stuffiest kind; the kind that nearly all scientific men in the West have now abandoned, because it is stale and stuffy. The stuffiness is apparent in all that stupid old notion of discrediting the high religions by comparing them with the low religions. The staleness simply stinks from the open doors of the Anti-God Museum. Supposing I were to set out to abolish the art of Painting, and thought I could do it by opening a gallery in which good pictures were hung on one side and bad pictures on the other. Suppose I were a Moslem and an Iconoclast, fanatically desirous of destroying all statues and statuary. And suppose I did it by opening a museum in which I stuck up the Venus of Milo opposite a wax lady out of a low-class hairdresser’s shop. Suppose I put the Madonna of Michelangelo side by side with a South Sea Island idol, little more than a lump of stone. Would it prove anything against Sculpture? And why should it prove anything against Religion? Would the earnest and cultured young Communist gravely go round my gallery, and deduce that men must be restrained from their too facile habit of carving great Greek sculpture, lest it should lead them to break out at last into making waxwork busts for shop-windows? Would that thoughtful young man infer that there was a serious danger of somebody beginning with something quite small and simple, like Michelangelo’s statues, and be thus encouraged to make formless little fetishes for cannibals? Or dare we hope that there would dawn on him the somewhat evident and elementary thought: that most things have a better form and a worse; that you cannot abolish a whole branch of human culture by showing that cultured people sometimes do it better than uncultured people; and that even when the two men are really aiming at the same thing (which is by no means always the case) you cannot prove from the unworthy example that the worthy example is worthless? Yet I am bound to say, as I have already said, that this obvious fallacy was not invented by the poor Bolshies; they only picked it up from the nineteenth-century materialists, along with a lot of other secondhand goods and third-rate theories. To this we must add a thousand other things, which the antiquated atheist has probably never heard of at all. There are endless complications of real and recent research, which have cut across the old simple lines of the rationalist theory of religious origins. There is the accumulating evidence of savages themselves, that they are not quite so savage as they were painted; the evidence about the deliberate simplification and voluntary convention in their religious art. There is what many old-fashioned people would call the increasing similarity between the highest modern art and the South Sea Island fetish. Then there is the whole department of demon-worship; and the cases in which idols were not beautiful because they were not meant to be beautiful, but deliberately meant to be ugly. There is the increasing comprehension of harshness and severity in certain schools of sculpture. Above all, there is the increasing interest in the higher religions, considered in an intrinsic and intellectual fashion, and not as they were considered by the superficial generation that mistook them for superstitions. All this is the result of real research as recorded in real museums, with real classification and real and responsible labels. And against all this the belated sect would set up what the Americans would call a Dime Museum, about as authoritative as a penny peep-show. I do not wonder that they have preserved the institution of a Censorship; lest the poor rustics, who look into the peep-show to see that there is no God inside, should be allowed to look outside and see what is going on in the world.

[@serpenticide_555]

There's reptillian shapeshifters in every religion and every mythology I've looked into. For the abrahamic faiths, Shedim, Naga, Djinn, and the satan in the form of a serpent in the garden of eden.

[@victorcode2075]

In Europe there is a similar pattern with the creator god being linked to the lightning god. The hypothesised root word is dyeus pater, sky father. Perkunos, thunor, zeus, jupiter, thor etc. In many religions with pantheons even the gods pray to the creator, so they often start monotheistically and branch out.

[@connorkloepfer3267]

Anyone else make the connection to Medusa? The snakes obviously but also because of how he says you can’t look at it and they start blurring out the face like Muslims do Mohammed. The indent in the crotch doesn’t seem like it’s a male either. Unless it changes back and forth.

[@Swerev]

The reason Muslims don't like depicting or drawing Prophet Muhammed is to avoid idolatry. It stems from the time of the Prophet and his teachings. Islam is very strict about associating anything with God(Shirk) is one of the biggest sins. The Prophet made it clear he wasn't God, wasn't the child of God, and not to worship/associate him with the 1 true God. I'm sure you know one of the things Muslims say about Jesus(Isa), in Islam he is a Prophet just like Moses, Noah, Muhammed, and therefore they also avoid depicting or drawing any Prophets not just Muhammed. One of the benefits of that in my opinion is clearly evident today among Christians, it is the fact that forever Jesus was depicted as a blonde hair blue eyed man. Which is clearly not the description of him in scriptures. Then you have black Christians who depict him as a black man, you see the pictures of Jesus that Putin released from their Orthodox church. You have Christians fighting over what Jesus looked like instead of paying attention/following his teachings/message. Idolatry is mentioned heavily in the Bible and the punishments for committing it.

[@richardbennettiii7182]

I like this theory. I hope you cam prove it

[@1amglenn910]

Looks similar to the Tiki god of the Maori too

[@MartinCraig-zt2sv]

Tiki god?

[@Latestmovies-lb8me]

What do you say lex? Religion may have a different face today but still an old meaning.Fear is the factor without forgetting imortality?how would if an alien race that has authority over galaxies view God would be vastly differ an in comprehensive to a small human brain?

[@callum4450]

humans #1 tho

[@emmanuelgarcia619]

00:16 that deep sigh says it all

[@yoeyyoey8937]

You think aliens wouldn’t have fear?

[@Outrjs]

"Satan, where have you been?"-God "Traveling about to and fro."- Satan