Quinaria
Discordia
Entry Number: 00008
Prickle-Prickle, the 19th Chaos 3187 YOLD
Religious syncretism is a time honored tradition among all religions. Why build your religion from the ground up when you can borrow bits and pieces from other, already established religions? Not only does this make founding a religion so much easier, it can be quite a lot of fun shopping around for those beliefs and practices that you can adapt to your own devices. Discordianism is no stranger to this practice. Now, you may be asking yourself, "How may I too practice in this religious syncretimibob?"
Let's focus on the visual aspects of other religions and how you can adapt them to your own practices.
Symbols have been important to religions since time immemorial. We, as humans, seem drawn to symbols. We can't stop creating them and identifying with them. The great thing about symbols is that their meanings can change, based on the viewer's own interpretation. This can also be a bad thing as symbols are appropriated by some real grayface fascist types.
Why let one religion hog specific shapes, like the christians their cross or the muslims their crescent moon? Maybe the cross represents Eris' telephone pole that sits outside her house? This most wholly of telephone poles allows Eris to ignore robo calls and shitpost on the internet.
Feel free to make a symbolic mashup when you're feeling frisky. Just beware of going overboard and ending up with a coexist bumper sticker as your finished project. That's just tacky.
Statues are fucking terrifying. Are they watching us? Do they move when we aren't looking? Thanks Dr. Who.
People like shiny things. We decorate ourselves for many different reasons. Pagan religions have been pumping out jewelry in the name of their silly pagan gods for thousands of years. Discordians are at a bit of a disadvantage when it comes to nice jewelry to show off our affiliation with our lady of chaos. You can find a couple random items on etsy, but who really needs another laser engraved wood object? Any religious jewelry can have as much or as little meaning as you put into it and there are many options to choose from. It can even act as camouflage if you choose to go undercover to add a bit of chaos and discord to some unwitting pagan's lives.
I personally wear a St. Barbara pendant that I feel represents an aspect of Eris. If you are familiar with the story of St. Barbara, it's utter bullshit made up to prop up an already bullshit religion. It's full of towers, lightning, and grumpy fathers. Through bullshit I find my goddess chucking apples at the spags.
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