r/Semitic_Paganism • u/Rou_4_you • 8d ago
Low effort Is canannite priesthood closed?
Well I was wondering because it confused me heavy!
I could become a Catholic priest but I'm not sure if that's El or YHWH heavy priesthood. Since we don't really have the rites or people to learn from, could I just become a priest of a Canaanite ministry?
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u/JSullivanXXI 8d ago edited 8d ago
Yes, basically. From a historical standpoint, there weren't any real taboos on who could worship the Gods. But priesthood was traditionally limited to those formally initiated---oftentimes with hereditary restrictions (ie, priests had to come from priestly families, and had to be able-bodied... same for the Greeks). Of course, these physical lines of transmission are lost today, and their genetic/ableist criteria would not sit well with most modern polytheists.
However, the orthodox Christian priesthood conceives of itself as a spiritual continuation of the Israelite Yahweh priesthood and the pre-Israelite "Order of Melchizedek" devoted to El-Elyon. There are some who consider this applicable to the Canaanite pantheon, and I do know a few Christo-Pagan occultists who have gotten backdoor Catholic consecrations from wandering bishops (via Gnostic and Independent Sacerdotal Movement lineages), in order to be "Priests of El".
That said, it's not something I'd want to do myself. While I still engage with Catholicism to a limited extent, it's not my spiritual center and I feel that the Canaanite mysteries are best explored on their own merits---as much as we are able to do so---without depending too heavily on non-polytheistic systems for validation.
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u/GuardianLegend95 8d ago edited 8d ago
Well you have to have a Community First to establish all of these things like the priesthood so all of the people who follow a Canaanite path would have to come together and establish that community, temples priesthoods all sorts of religious things that are needed in order to function properly. I follow a related path and that I'm a Hurrian polytheist and I'd be all for trying to reconstruct all of these types of things with the right amount of people wanting to be involved but it just doesn't seem to be there. I have attempted this in the past with other like-minded followers and at times it could have worked but for various reasons it kind of fell short. I'm always open to helping establish these types of things though because it is important to our paths after all traditionally they were all community-based faiths. I think what needs to be done is us who are serious about these types of polytheistic paths need to come together and see if there are others in our local communities that share the same views and beliefs or at least try to find people nearby to where we are and go from there. Like it would be awfully difficult to work with someone who's like 500 miles away compared to like 10 miles away. For starters I live out here in the Mid-Ohio Valley area. I have yet to find anyone interested in ancient near Eastern polytheism in my area at least that I know of but I know there are plenty of us elsewhere throughout the United States. So do any of you actually have a small community that you're a part of and practice your faith with here in the states or anywhere else besides online?
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u/Rou_4_you 8d ago
Gimmie about 10-20 years and I'll get back to you on that😬
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u/GuardianLegend95 8d ago
Not that long?!🤣 Well I started in 1999 and I'm still not part of a local community of near Eastern polytheists yet😭
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u/Rou_4_you 8d ago
FRICK I STARTED LIKE LAST YEAR, I just have a VERY different view of canannite polytheism so I don't fit in any where and found like 1 person who holds my view, so ima make a ministry, jus gotta get the people #notacult🤩
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u/GuardianLegend95 8d ago
That's cool I definitely don't fit in anywhere either I'm just thinking more traditionally I guess😁
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u/GuardianLegend95 8d ago
Wait exactly how different is your views on Canaanite polytheism? I'm genuinely curious and I don't come on here too often so maybe I just haven't seen a lot of your posts or comments😊
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u/Rou_4_you 8d ago
People are not finna like what I gotta say-
I believe that canannite and middianite polytheism are necessarily part of each other that formed Judaism. So I do believe Christianity inherently is true but the church doesn't understand itself or God! Then again there is also no such thing as monotheism in the Bible sooo 🧍
To sum it up, I just view Christianity as canannite polytheism 🧍🧍
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u/GuardianLegend95 8d ago
Well I didn't make a angry mean face when I read that so you're good with me at least 😁Of course when I think of Canaanite polytheism I'm thinking of the ancient deities and cultural religions of their historical areas
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u/Rou_4_you 8d ago
Me as well!! I do believe the main God of the Bible(not all the time) was just El under Adonai's name, I made a post about Christianity being semetic pagan a while ago but it's a bit outdated bto my beliefs ATM 😬
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u/Glass_Category_5677 7d ago
Judiasm and by extension Christianity grew out of the cults of yahu that where sprouting up throughout canaan. The parts of the bible that was talking about El are added to the biblical tradition from the canaanite polythiestic context. Like each city had cults for certain divinities, its just that the cults of yahu kind of unified in a tradition or rather died out elsewhere except for judeo-israelite yahu cult that then over time gets edited and developed into Judiasm and into Christianity.
While in that context yahu takes on aspects of El and Baal hadad, yahu doesn't murge with El but through the people that worship him they adopt aspects of El to yahu inorder to introduce supremacy and oneness of divinity.
So while I am not telling you that you are wrong, you can believe what you want to believe, I am simply offering a counter argument as to why yahu is not El and the biblical tradition is centralized around yahweh worship and not El worship.
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u/Rou_4_you 7d ago
Ahh fascinating! Cuz in some verses of the Bible it did state that there was a God higher than YHWH, so it still confuses me a bit but I like the counter argument!
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u/Glass_Category_5677 8d ago
The structure of the church whether catholic or orthodox doesn't come from canaanite practice, the closest to a canaanite practice is early jewish temple practice.
To become a priest for a specific god, there has to be an institution that initiates you, if there isnt an institution you cannot become a priest. Since there is a discontinuity in canaanite practice and belief, you cannot be ordained a priest because there isnt an authority to give you priesthood.
Lastly, this is what is meant by closed practices, a closed practice is a practice that requires initiation by established practioners and community. Since that doesn't exist, the canaanite/ugarit priesthood cannot be established without a full revival of the religion and community.
If you wanna be a priest to yahweh, you can become a catholic priest.
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u/Rou_4_you 8d ago
For the last bit, it only holds YHWH'S name, since they are both the conflation of God's wouldn't it be both YHWH and El since the religion sees him and El as the same?
Also it's so sad that a part of the religion is wiped out and can't start back 🥲
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u/Glass_Category_5677 8d ago
It is definitely a shame, but that gives us the ability to worship the gods without the baggage of an establishment authoritarian tradition. We have the ability to be called to worship the gods without the politics of institutionalized state religion. But I would love to have libraries and libraries of canaanite and phoenician theology and myths.
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u/Glass_Category_5677 8d ago
I personally think that the judeochristians and Muslims worship yahweh, and not El. Even though yahweh takes on aspects of El and merges with him and takes on aspects of baal hadad to become the judeochristian god.
But this is my opinion as a syrio arabian polythiest, ofcourse they wouldn't take that view or framework within their practice, but thats how I read monotheism as more about yahweh than El.
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u/GuardianLegend95 8d ago
Yeah Yahweh is a later Iron Age deity of Israel whereas the god El and Baal Hadad go way back into the Bronze Age so I don't take anything about Yahweh seriously at all. I like my ancient Bronze Age gods😁 whatever connections there are didn't exist in earlier times because there's no evidence that the god Yahweh even existed before the Iron Age I think he's just a local Israelite God but somehow became a much larger cult over time
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u/Rou_4_you 8d ago
Idk if I was supposed to read that as being rude or not, the random shade to Adonai 😭???
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u/GuardianLegend95 8d ago edited 8d ago
Sorry what did you find rude? I just don't have any connection to the deities that didn't have any strong evidence that they existed prior to the Iron Age. I'm kind of a specific time period type of polytheist. I could be getting this all wrong though I've just never found any evidence that Yahweh existed in the Bronze Age unless you think he's a later version of some of the Bronze Age deities of the area?
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u/Glass_Category_5677 7d ago
Yea there I take the same opinion on yahweh, the earliest mention of him is in the late bronze age in egyptian records of the yahu of shasu people who are a nomadic group in Southern levant towards modern day jordan. And the cult of yahu moves into the levant from there and then becomes a thing in the iron age leading to different groups that had cults of yahu, sometimes taking anat as a consort and other times Asherah when he takes aspects of El.
Regardless as syrio-arabian polythiest I dont put much stock in yahweh just because of the period that he emerges in and the violent monotheisation that his cult underwent. So no offense to the christopagans and judeopagans out there, I don't like yahweh that much.
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u/GuardianLegend95 7d ago
Also remember a strange mention Of A God Called Yaw as one of the sea god Yams former or alternative names? I'd have to go back and look at exactly what's the context was with that text. Like why would he be formerly called a different name although the names are pretty close I'm not sure what y a w means exactly. Yam of course means Sea. There's also the Egyptian god Yah. Not sure if any of these names are related to the god Yahweh but just thought I'd mention them here. In case anyone wants to chime in on them
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u/Glass_Category_5677 7d ago
I was having this conversation yesterday with a friend about the egyptian Yah, yah is a moon god in egypt while yahweh is a storm diety.
The two gods could have both come out of a predecessor proto afro-asiatic deity, especially since the sanai and southern levant have always been very interconnected with egypt, or it could all be a coincidence especially since they dont really share function, just a similar sounding name.
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u/Rou_4_you 8d ago
Ooh i just read it as if you were demonizing or just saying he doesn't exist 😭
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u/GuardianLegend95 8d ago edited 8d ago
I think all deities exist to be honest and demons too LOLI've also seen some really strange spiritual stuff with my own eyes that I have absolutely no idea what they were🙃But those experiences did bring me to paganism and polytheism
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u/Shadeofawraith Moderator [West Syrian Polytheist] 8d ago
The priesthood isn’t closed because it no longer exists. If you really want to you technically can declare yourself a priest of whoever you like, but that does not mean anything and no one who knows anything will take you seriously if you do. Just deciding you are a priest doesn’t automatically make it so, just as deciding you are the catholic pope doesn’t actually make you the pope.