Thread: Witches & Druids in the Services

I knew a REME lad attached to 1PARA who was either Pagan or Druid or some other type of weird religion like that. He shared his wife with another man as they were both married to her as was the norm for that religion.
I think im right in thining that it is the custom for Woman to marry more than one man in the Pagan or druid religions?
Eitherway, he shared his pad with his wife and this other bloke. All three dossed in the same bed. Blokes always used to try and wind him up when out on excercise about his wife getting a seeing too back at home from her other "husband" while he was away but he would never bite and it all seemed normal to him.

I saw them all out in town once, dressed up as if they were extras from a Lord of the Rings film.

Feckin weirdo's.

Maybe he just liked sloppy seconds.

Originally Posted by sunami

Maybe he just liked sloppy seconds.

Mate, he said he was a PARA already... :P

Originally Posted by Private_Pepper

I knew a REME lad attached to 1PARA who was either Pagan or Druid or some other type of weird religion like that. He shared his wife with another man as they were both married to her as was the norm for that religion.
I think im right in thining that it is the custom for Woman to marry more than one man in the Pagan or druid religions?
Eitherway, he shared his pad with his wife and this other bloke. All three dossed in the same bed. Blokes always used to try and wind him up when out on excercise about his wife getting a seeing too back at home from her other "husband" while he was away but he would never bite and it all seemed normal to him.

I saw them all out in town once, dressed up as if they were extras from a Lord of the Rings film.

Feckin weirdo's.

Polygamy is not the norm but does happen, there is (as far as I am aware) no Pagan path that specifies that polygamy is compulsory.

Originally Posted by Cuddles

Originally Posted by sunami

Maybe he just liked sloppy seconds.

Mate, he said he was a PARA already... :P

Nah, he was REME picking up Para habits.

Originally Posted by FrankCastle

Hannibal, who gave them the Mother of All Shoeings...

If the Second Punic War counts as the 'mother of all shoeings' for Rome, I'd love to know what your definition of a victory is...

Originally Posted by FrankCastle

Originally Posted by Invictus_88

I know probably more than my fair share of Pagans, two druids amongst them, and I can't help suspecting that even accounting for pisstake answers there are probably more genuine serving Pagans than would admit to it.

Simply not worth the flak, apparently. A Pagan friend, now out of the army, got a bit of bother from a CO over it, and others he knew whilst in preferred to keep schtum about their Paganism.

Ha, and to whoever it was a couple of pages back who asked how Pagans square their faith with their military service - Mithraism!

"Mithraism was emphatically a soldier religion: Mithra, its hero, was especially a divinity of fidelity, manliness, and bravery[...]"

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10402a.htm

IIRC, Mithrasim was the religion of choice for the Roman Legions...although Mithra did'nt do them much good against the Picts(9th Legion)Germanic tribes(3 Legions slaughtered in the Tuteberg Forest)Sparticus(another 3 Legions massacred)or Hannibal, or gave them the Mother of All Shoeings...

Mithraism didn't allow women to particpate and anyone who has ever been part of any organized religion knows the ladies are the one's who make the kids participate thus without them, Mithraism had no chance to do anything but wither away.

Originally Posted by Blokeonabike

Originally Posted by RearWords

Well at least the different religions on the list co-exist with their beliefs in the Army. How about someone who is into Buddhism who wants to be in the Army? Definitely a contradictory statement.

Not really, he/she could be a medic quite easily.

I agree the only choice available. Wonder if he will take it.

Originally Posted by re-stilly

Originally Posted by Private_Pepper

I knew a REME lad attached to 1PARA who was either Pagan or Druid or some other type of weird religion like that. He shared his wife with another man as they were both married to her as was the norm for that religion.
I think im right in thining that it is the custom for Woman to marry more than one man in the Pagan or druid religions?
Eitherway, he shared his pad with his wife and this other bloke. All three dossed in the same bed. Blokes always used to try and wind him up when out on excercise about his wife getting a seeing too back at home from her other "husband" while he was away but he would never bite and it all seemed normal to him.

I saw them all out in town once, dressed up as if they were extras from a Lord of the Rings film.

Feckin weirdo's.

Polygamy is not the norm but does happen, there is (as far as I am aware) no Pagan path that specifies that polygamy is compulsory.

This is POLYANDRY not POLYGAMY

Originally Posted by RearWords

Originally Posted by Blokeonabike

Originally Posted by RearWords

Well at least the different religions on the list co-exist with their beliefs in the Army. How about someone who is into Buddhism who wants to be in the Army? Definitely a contradictory statement.

Not really, he/she could be a medic quite easily.

I agree the only choice available.

So Samurai and Sohei must never have waged war then? Fascinating.

Originally Posted by Khyros

Mithraism didn't allow women to particpate and anyone who has ever been part of any organized religion knows the ladies are the one's who make the kids participate thus without them, Mithraism had no chance to do anything but wither away.

So how do you explain procreation by Masons ;)

Originally Posted by FrankCastle

Originally Posted by Invictus_88

I know probably more than my fair share of Pagans, two druids amongst them, and I can't help suspecting that even accounting for pisstake answers there are probably more genuine serving Pagans than would admit to it.

Simply not worth the flak, apparently. A Pagan friend, now out of the army, got a bit of bother from a CO over it, and others he knew whilst in preferred to keep schtum about their Paganism.

Ha, and to whoever it was a couple of pages back who asked how Pagans square their faith with their military service - Mithraism!

"Mithraism was emphatically a soldier religion: Mithra, its hero, was especially a divinity of fidelity, manliness, and bravery[...]"

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10402a.htm

IIRC, Mithrasim was the religion of choice for the Roman Legions...although Mithra did'nt do them much good against the Picts(9th Legion)Germanic tribes(3 Legions slaughtered in the Tuteberg Forest)Sparticus(another 3 Legions massacred)or Hannibal, or gave them the Mother of All Shoeings...

You are right about the popularity of Mithraism in the army of the Roman Empire, but three of the four examples you give all pre-date its period of popularity. Second Punic War - any Roman would just have given you a very funny look if you wittered on about some Syrian deity. By the time of Spartacus, yes, the legions had tramped around in the East (and plenty of the servile rebels were slaves taken on Eastern campaigns), but cultural assimiliation was still in its infancy. There probably were not too many eastern veterans in Varus' legions. Which leaves us the Ninth Legion - which probably wasn't destroyed in Scotland at all, but had been posted to another, much dodgier theatre and been lost there.

Mithraism probably became significant in the Roman forces in Britain, for example, during the middle empire, when you had the likes of Syrian archers posted in to man the Wall.

Of course, a devotee of Mithra would be perfectly entitled to argue that the very reason for Trebbia, Trasimene, Cannae, Teutoberg et al was the absence of Mithraic faith in the army at that time... :D

Originally Posted by Khyros

Eh? Haven't found anyone who could explain to me what these modern druids are and where they get their ideology and rituals from. Considering that the Romans did a thorough job eradicating the original cult over a couple thousand years ago and that even the most educated scholars are still doing guesswork on 'em it's kind of odd.

I doubt the pagan romans did any eradicating at all, most of the poly god religions were fairly tolerant of other religions. Jesus was accepted as another god which in many cases was their undoing - this is the fabled 'peaceful' conversion of the pagans.

What's normally missed from the conversion process is most christian adopted a very efficient religious, political and military structure - the single god brought conformance/standards whereas poly gods brought choice. (In Rome and Greece - early democracies tended to follow poly gods, dictators/emperors/kings tended to come in with christianity).

If you do try to look into pagan religions you need to look at the words of early christians, much of this is based on blending pagan ideas into christian ideas of Jesus - so in England, early Jesus is in fact Thor.

If you replace the word Roman with christian, then I roughly agree with your statement. Like in England you can normally replace conversion with genocide - see where tolerance gets you!

May Thor be with you always - Obi Wan Kenobi

p.s. I follow Heathen/Asatru ideologies.

Originally Posted by Khyros

Mithraism didn't allow women to particpate and anyone who has ever been part of any organized religion[/fraternity] knows the ladies are the one's who make the kids participate thus without them, Mithraism had no chance to do anything but wither away.

...which, ladies and gentlemen, is why there are no more Freemasons anymore.

(Italics mine. I imagine there was a bit more than proto-feminism behind the end of Mithraism; the rise of Christianity, for one thing.)

Originally Posted by polar

Originally Posted by Khyros

Eh? Haven't found anyone who could explain to me what these modern druids are and where they get their ideology and rituals from. Considering that the Romans did a thorough job eradicating the original cult over a couple thousand years ago and that even the most educated scholars are still doing guesswork on 'em it's kind of odd.

I doubt the pagan romans did any eradicating at all, most of the poly god religions were fairly tolerant of other religions. Jesus was accepted as another god which in many cases was their undoing - this is the fabled 'peaceful' conversion of the pagans.

The distinction here is between eradicating the Druids (which the Romans most definitely did) and eradicating the religion (where the Romans preferred to assimilate the Celtic gods into their own patterns of worship). Caesar and Tacitus liked to present Roman emnity to druidism as moral repulsion over human sacrifice, but of course the real motive was to get rid of an irreconcilable thread of Celtic culture - given enough wine, gold and nice horses you could always win the Gallic aristo round to your way of thinking eventually, once you had got rid of his spiritual adviser. Then reward the compliant tribe by building a nice Graeco-Roman temple to their local deity to replace that copse of oak trees which you sadly had to cut down back in the day when Getafix was lurking there running advanced raffia-work classes.