7 'Ancient' Forms of Mysticism That Are Recent Inventions

[mr blur]

So you want to add some meaning and depth to your life that just isn't provided by playing another round of Bananagrams. Why not adopt an ancient, mystical belief? After all, society offers us a wide choice of age-old practices and belief systems, the more obscure and foreign the better. After all, if something has been practiced for thousands of years, there must be something to it, right?

But take care when you're choosing, because some of these "ancient" practices are about as authentic as the ill-fated Chinese tattoo on your arm that the lady swore meant "pure warrior." For example ...

http://www.cracked.com/article_19283_7-ancient-forms-mysticism-that-are-recent-inventions.html

Who'd have thought it...?

[trotsky]

1. LOL

TOTALLY unexpected, I tell ya!

[dmallind]

2. Can't get this site at work. Quick list anyone?

I'm assuming Gardnerite Wicca is one - a mishmash of once were/never were nature-based pantheist and polytheist stories forced into one "ancient wisdom" in the mid 2oth Century...

[lazarus]

3. they left out Wicca

that's talked about a lot on Cracked.

In order:

Yoga
Tarot
Satanism
Ouija Boards
Ninjutsu
Friday the 13th
Viking religion

I quibble with the Viking religion entry. Yes, it's mostly all compiled from one work in the 13th Century (the Eddas), but it is supported by lots of ancillary documentation.

And some commenters are making distinctions between western yoga and eastern yoga in an attempt to salvage the antiquity of it.

[dmallind]

4. Cool thanks - yep the Norse myths are a strange inclusion, especially with Wicca excluded.

I consider both to be equally absurd of course, but the Norse myths have been around in their present form for centuries longer, and are clearly the beliefs of one set of actual people at one point in time rather than s strained amalgam pasted together with bits made up in the last few decades. Whether you stand on semantics and say that 800 years is not ancient (and neither in pedantic fact are the 7th-11th century scraps of the same material), it's certainly far older and far more applicable to a not-quite-ancient but long ago histotrical demographic.

[Iggo]

7. Best...

"No ninja recorded in history... They're freaking ninjas ! What did you expect ?"

:rofl:

[Odin2005]

5. They forgot Wicca, Which was invented out of whole cloth by Gerald Gardiner.

He made up a fake past involving a nonexistent "New Forest Coven".

[LeftishBrit]

6. Interesting; thanks for posting.

[Orrex]

8. Got to love the hostility in some of the comments