7 'Ancient' Forms of Mysticism That Are Recent Inventions

[bijou]

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 ...
#7.
Yoga


Ask anyone wearing a leotard and staring off into the middle distance how long yoga has been practiced, and chances are they'll tell you that it's around five thousand years old. In other words, people were stretching and posing serenely several hundred years before aliens secretly built the Egyptian pyramids.

The Reality:

Yoga as we know it today -- a set of postures (asanas) combined with breathing techniques -- dates back to around the grand old year of 1960.

Read more: 7 'Ancient' Forms of Mysticism That Are Recent Inventions | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/article_19283_7-ancient-forms-mysticism-that-are-recent-inventions.html#ixzz1RghxgtyN

I'm just off to invent an 'ancient' (and lucrative) ritual. BRB. :D

[Articulate_Ape]

That's great! :D

[noonwitch]

I have a firewall that prevents me from seeing cracked's website.


I would hope wicca is on the list. It's pretty much made up in the 2nd half of the 20th century. Unless someone was given a book of shadows by their grandma, who got it from her grandma-those witches always call themselves witches, and don't use the term "wicca". They might use a term like "The Green Witches of Scotland" or something like that. Gundella the Good Witch, a local persona in Detroit who died a while back, was that kind of witch, not a wiccan.

Otherwise, Gerald Gardner pretty much invented what most people think of as wicca, in the 1950s and 60s. He borrowed a lot from "ceremonial magicians" like Crowley and Dion Fortune. Marion Zimmer Bradley wrote The Mists Of Avalon (a King Arthur tale that tells the story from Morgan Le Fey's POV) and sparked american feminist interest in wicca. This is the book that got me interested as young adult, not any boring book by some british freak wanting to get naked with a circle of women. It led me to other books, like Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Adler and The Spiral Dance by Starhawk, which are more how-to books.

[Rockntractor]

I'll have to see what the bones say about this.

[bijou]

I have a firewall that prevents me from seeing cracked's website.


I would hope wicca is on the list. It's pretty much made up in the 2nd half of the 20th century. Unless someone was given a book of shadows by their grandma, who got it from her grandma-those witches always call themselves witches, and don't use the term "wicca". They might use a term like "The Green Witches of Scotland" or something like that. Gundella the Good Witch, a local persona in Detroit who died a while back, was that kind of witch, not a wiccan.

Otherwise, Gerald Gardner pretty much invented what most people think of as wicca, in the 1950s and 60s. He borrowed a lot from "ceremonial magicians" like Crowley and Dion Fortune. Marion Zimmer Bradley wrote The Mists Of Avalon (a King Arthur tale that tells the story from Morgan Le Fey's POV) and sparked american feminist interest in wicca. This is the book that got me interested as young adult, not any boring book by some british freak wanting to get naked with a circle of women. It led me to other books, like Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Adler and The Spiral Dance by Starhawk, which are more how-to books.

Wicca isn't one they've covered, though they have got tarot and satanism.