Ancient Greek Religion

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Although religion is an widely argued topic regarding its true meaning, religion is one of those topic that its definition depend on the person using it. Due to the lack of its specific definition many scholars have agree to disagree on each others definition of a Religion, in which many argue that religion is subjective. Likewise, magic is also one of those topic in which many scholars argue what is and what isn’t and how it differs from religion. Today I will argue that difference between magic and religion as well as some common ground. In addition I will provide my own definition of religion from all the resource that was provide and that I learn from this class. I will also address the importance of how magic should be studied in the Ancient …show more content…
different feature of gods were worshipped by different city and only the citizen in that city were allowed to part take in those worshipping and celebration. However, there were those celebration where the whole Greece celebrated which were called the PanHellenic. This type of structure for the ancient Greece allowed for citizen in each city state feel sense of community and unity. Event such as sacrifice and the communal feast played an important role in demonstrating that gods were above human and that uneatable part of the sacrifice went god to show they were that powerful to consume something which human weren’t no able to. Apart from sacrifice, things such as myth, ritual, temple, sacred place, dreams, oracles and festival all combine to make the ancient Greek religion and therefore, no exact conclusion can be made when it comes to really defining the religion, be it a more modern western or ancient …show more content…
In addition, thinking religion and magic as two distinct thing allows us to see the role it played in culture and the society of the Ancient world. Religion was practiced more widely whereas to magic was practiced in an individual and more secretly way. Although we can see religion and magic being different the end result of some magic and some religious ritual are the same. Knowing that not all magic are done to cause harm to people, religious sacrifice and prayer in order to get something from god seems similar to the one that of magic. Yet, magic is often time feared and sacrificial ritual is not. If we were to put magic and religion in the opposite side of the spectrum the key thing that would make them difference would be that magic in a witchcraft and curse form is evil and it is intended on hurting someone. In addition, magic does not always involve god to let certain thing to happen like in religion, individual that practice magic forcefully make things happen through enchantment and objects or herbs. Whereas to religion always require gods to answer the prayer and allow for it to happen. If nothing happens that can still be taken as gods response thus leading to modern theory god
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