Asia Primitive Religions
Ancestors, Hindus, Babylon

China Ancestors:

 The way of life in China for thousand of years was around the "family": Disobedience of the ruling patriarch meant banishment from the family home; it was a crime almost greater than murder to dishonor the family name in any manner.

The worship of the "ancestors" at home, was the main practice of religion: They pray and honor them, because the death can help them in this life; and also they pray for the death, because their prayers in this life can help the death in the other life (something like the catholic Purgatory)... all the great "feasts" have the ancestors as the basic and most important fact of the feast.

These ideas will be the basis for Confucius ethical religious way of life: To live with honor, dignity, understanding, patience, love...

The concept of "balanced cosmos", means that opposing forces of creation an destruction, positive and negative, always finally strike a state of balanced harmony in the world... These ideas were taking by Tao, to promote the concept of "balanced society", with the Yin and Yang: "Yin" is the weaker force,, the negative, the hearth, the female; "Yang" represents the power,, a positive force, heaven, the male element... the humans have to obtain the balance of both forces to live in harmonic happiness...

As all the animistic religions, the Chinese had many gods, mythical gods, specially the ancestors of royalty... and for the practical purpose of life, every Emperor was a god... they will present gifts to the shines of the many deities, with ritualistic prayers, the seeking of good fortune in magical charms and rites, and observing the proper times as dictated by the stars for planting crops, arranged marriages, building homes... "astrology" was very important in the Chinese way of life.

The eldest son inherited the father's position and wealth upon his death... and every "funeral" was an impressive event... death was a time of joy and celebration, for now the soul of the diseased was free to enter heaven, with the other ancestors; and after death, for 60 days all family members would wear white clothes and shoes (in contrast with the black clothes used in the west!).

Today, the main religions in China are Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, and, of course, Communism... but almost every Chinese practice them in conjunction with the old way of the ancestors life... and even the Communists can do nothing about it.

Prehistoric Hinduism dates from 3000 BC and it was an animistic religion with honor to the ancestors, with magic rituals, spells, demons, divination, astral sciences... Hinduism came to India when the Aryans invaded India, in 1500 BC.

- The word "Hindus" is the way the Persians called the people living around the Hindus river.

- They have over one million gods!... and beautiful shrines... but they are not places for congregational worship; they are there to remind that the gods do live and are to be honored and served... the Hindu worship is primarily at home!.

- There are today 781 million Hindus, and we will comment Hinduism later.

In Babylon, the sun god, Marduk, was the major focus of worship... the heritage includes the use of "priests" to offer prayers and sacrifices of animals... the code of King Hammurabi, which used revenge as its basic principle of justice, "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth", had influence in the Mosaic code, and in Islam.

- Otherwise a host of superstitious beliefs in magical powers, astrology, numerology, divination from animal parts, ghosts, vampires and exorcism, has come down to us from Babylonian religions.

- As all animistic religions they were polytheists, with over 1,000 gods... the forces of nature became represented in human forms as superhuman beings... besides Marduk, the sun god, "Ishtar" was the most loved one, and became the forerunner of the Syrian Astarte, the Egyptian Isis, the Greek Aphrodite, and the Roman Venus.

- The "Epic of Gilgamesh" has the story of the Flood, and the human race saved in an Ark, as in the time of Noah... Eventually, Gilgamesh is given a "magic herb of immortality", but he leaves it on a shore while he bathes, and a serpent swallows it!... so, man is doomed to die!... the serpent!

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