Not long ago Amazonian images were warmly received by "Pope Francis", leading to charges of idolatry. But what makes something an idol? And is the pattern occult?
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Raphael, The Sibyls, 1514, fresco, Santa Maria della Pace; Pachamama idol recently used as a monstrance in a Mexican church
Time for an occult post. It’s been a while because the Band is occupied with some fundamentally important philosophical issues that don’t fit the occult post profile. And so much of what the beast system tries to peddle as “factual" knowledge is inverted - ultimately satanic - lies. When entire domains like science, medicine, and sociology dance to fake narratives, it’s hard to distinguish "the occult" from "transparent deception the media expects us to believe".
This makes it difficult to single out symbols like obelisks and red shoes. But it does point to larger occult patterns that could be collectively identified and avoided. Here’s the first in a small series of occult posts looking something that may not seem to be of tremendous general interest. But it involves broad issues that reveal internalized occultism in out crumbling society.
There was some uproar a while back around “Pope Francis” and his reverential treatment of small statues of a fake Amazonian “deity”. This old news now – to us, it just looks like one link in a long un-Christian chain of events surrounding him. But it does raise important questions for understanding the occult. What is an “idol”? Why do they have negative reputations? How can different classes of ritual or “religious” images have completely opposite meanings? And most important, how does detect images & other symbols that point to lies and moral inversion?
The offical obfuscation and evasion around the veneration of these skeezy little idols is enough to indicate something is off.
Anyone with a modicum of familiarity with Catholic or occult practices can see that this isn't random respect-paying to environmental stability or some sort of indigenous insight into societal improvement.
The beast needs you to distrust objective, empirical observation. And it can spin hollow words forever. Ignore the words. Look. Is this a reverential presentation of a non-Christian figure in a church or not?
Remember, when dealing with the occult, we are dealing with master liars. They do seem to have to signal what they are doing, but will never come out and clearly explain. So look for discrepancies in the information patterns. Does the "explanation" not really fit what is happening? Is something clearly noteworthy inexplicably overlooked? That's when you look more closely at what is really going on.
Like a shaman performing a syncretic, non-Christian religious ritual, complete with genuflecting participants - including frauds in habits - and "papal" oversight.
It's easy to get sucked into endless dithering over what it "really means". Until you consider all the alternatives that could have been chosen that didn't involve inverted priestesses and demonic idols.
The correct question is not whether a "justification" can be lawyered up after the fact.
Ask why they chose to do this in the first place...
That's the part that often goes overlooked when beast-dancers try to pass off perverting a sacred charge. Why choose to do something that requires lies and evasion at all? If really the custodian of something as existentially all-important as God's saving grace on earth, it seems demented to even want to push the envelope. Why would you? We know the answer, but too many accept deliberate wickedness as if a random occurrence then try and parse the incoherent justifications. This becomes very different when you remind yourself that the entire thing was intentionally chosen out of the infinite number of alternative possibilities.
It worth repeating - when you see something iffy, ignore the justifications why it's really ok.
Whatever it is that is going on, it was by design. Right down to the inability to clearly and openly explain it within the rules and traditions of the Church.
Inversion is always a choice.
This round of papal idolatry isn't as shockingly egregious as the PST (pope’s satanic throne) because it was smaller scale and quickly over. But it is as profoundly inverted - with the same weird obfuscation and lack of in-depth analysis or explanation. In both cases, it is true that the Church has a deep and extensive culture of art and image use going back to the first Christian centuries. But this – as you may imagine – has been carefully argued and worked out over a long time. And at no point in the centuries-old history of Christian art has there ever been an argument for alien gods to be honored in churches.
And yet, non-Christian figures have a long history of popping up in unlikely places.
Like the inlaid marble mosaic floor of the Siena Cathedral in Italy. This was installed between the 14th and 16th centuries, and consists of 56 panels by around 40 artists. It's a uniquely extensive project of this type. There are scenes from the Old Testament and allegories of virtue, as well as more questionable subjects. Click for an overview.
The famous mosaic of Hermes Trismegistus by Giovanni di Stefano in 1488. We saw the nonsensical "founder of human wisdom" in a series of occult posts looking into this long-running hstorical fake.
Even if he was real - especially if he was real - what is a pagan sage with attributed beliefs that contradict Christian metaphysics doing in a freakin' cathedral?!!?
Hermes isn't alone though. He's accompanied by "the sibyls" - fake antique prophetesses that "Christians" used to adulterate Biblical teachings for centuries. The Libyan Sibyl shown here was by Guidoccio Cozzarelli shortly prior - between 1482-1483.
What's going on here? The short answer is that the Sibylline Oracles were popular among pagans. Early Christians - including legitimate ones like Augustine and frauds like Lactantius and Clement were attempting to appropriate pagan "intellectual credibility" to the Bible. Click for a link to a book that discusses in detail. There is also evidence ancient Jews and Christians made up fake "oracular" texts to disseminate their own ideas.
It's one thing when someone like Augustine addresses the sibyls to understand how they could be demonic and at times correct. As historians we have to understand that early Christianity was defending itself against popular and entrenched religious and philosophical schools. Contextually, late antique Augustine was writing to a late antique audience in late antique terms. But it can become a problem if "early Christian writers" are granted spiritual authority on faith just because of their age. In the wrong hands, all kinds of syncretic crap written by a crypto-pagan flacks like Lactantius can be spun into convenient "sources". And while definitely not mainstream, there was a push in early Christianity - and again in the Renaissance - to get Greco-Roman paganism into the Church.
Times change, but the impulse to pervert the Church with idolatrous fake gods lingers. What changes is the "broader wisdom" currently in fashion.
In the Renaissance it was Greco-Roman Humanism that drove the violation of Christian metaphysics. That's not the cool new learning anymore. The new hotness is a new-agey "environmental" occultism. Sow now it's Amazonian deities. Literally worship of this world. And yes, that's the prince of this world's music.
What is new is honoring the false gods in churches with popes presiding.
As usual, what you think about idols comes around to what you believe. We’ve written an earlier post on how your reaction to the occult will depend on your beliefs. Materialists are as blind to metaphysics as rabbits are to physics. To them, what’s the difference? They’re all just statues religious people use for superstitious reasons – none of which are real. This makes their opinions on the occult worthless - they can’t understand critical differences in meaning because they can’t even see them. Like asking the rabbit to troubleshoot calculations.
The Bible is explicit - Old and New Testaments - that there is only one God. Jesus makes it explicit that belief in him is the only path to salvation. Not only is there no external "wisdom" needed, pretending there is deprives its peddlers of the necessary exclusivity of the Christian message.
From a Christian perspective, Pope Francis' idols aren't looking so good. But there's more to it.
Believers in and haters of idols both recognize the supernatural. Or at least that the idol refers to something supernatural in a sincere way. So we have to take the claims at face value – see how they work or don’t by on their own terms. Do they make sense or are they inverted deception? It seems cut and dried from a Christian perspective – religious pictures depict religious subjects to teach or motivate. Idols depict demonic false gods and may even house their spirits.
The reality is more complicated because it brings in huge subjects. First of which is what exactly is an idol?
David A. Trampier, cover of the 1st edition AD&D Player’s Handbook
This chestnut sums up the sort of thing that comes to mind when someone mentions "idol worship". That or a tiki.
But what an idol is is just the tip of the iceberg. Consider all these...
1. The role of religious images – in theory and in practice and in and out of Christianity.
2. Mythology &what “gods” are.
3. Modern false assumptions about the nature of reality
4. Limited understanding of distant history.
5. What "worship" is.
There's no way to explore all of these – even if we link a few posts. We can make asides if needed – the different type seems to work well for readers to keep them straight. For now, just understand that it's actually a complex topic. The problem with that is that people want simple answers.
The "cursed idols" from The Brady Bunch and Scrubs.
The small idols in pop culture are statuettes or fetishes with magic powers of some kind. A curse, or an evil spirit, etc.
Unfortunately, sometimes complex things can't be simplified. Leading to the final problem – making it easy to fool the simple-minded with snake oil. But complex doesn't have to be hard to understand. It just needs to be broken down into it's component parts.
W could start from any number of places – the benefit of a complex topic is lots of options. For occult purposes start with what idols and/or idolatry are.
This painting captures the complexity of the idol as a concept. Here Constantine is shown trampling a broken pagan idol-statue while a statue of Jesus is erected in its place. Early Christians didn't put statues of Jesus on altars. But Pietro is painting in the 1600s and reflects the attitudes of that time. He is trying - with limited success - to make a categorical distinction between legit Christian statues and idols.
This touches on big topic #1. The role of religious images – in theory and in practice and in and out of Christianity.
This painting perfectly captures one of the things that makes idolatry and Christian image use complex. The idol and legitimate image are materially the same - physical representations of figures. But what they mean and how they are understood to be used are utterly different. This explains why it is so easy to confuse or misrepresent the two. And ultimately raises two big issues - what makes an image an idol, and what does it mean to worship or venerate something?
The basis of Christian opposition to idolatry - Abrahamic opposition in general - is rooted in the Second Commandment. Here's the text of it in full with a dramatic image from Gustave Doré's 1866 set of Bible engravings
This is a clear proscription - no exceptions are mentioned. The differences in interpretation all involve what the terms mean, because it can't be a reference to all likenesses - despite the clear wording. God is non-contradictory and before the end of Exodus has provided instructions for making... likenesses. That means there is a contextual distinction at work. It's complicated.
James Jacques Joseph Tissot, Moses and Joshua in the Tabernacle, between 1896-1902, gouache on board, The Jewish Museum, New York
Exodus includes instructions for making the Ark of the Covenant. This includes sculptures of two cherubim on the lid. One may distinguish between "graven" and "molten" images in the Bible. But regardless, it is a likeness.
Contextualize. The people of the Bible were surrounded with image-based worship. The worship of multiple gods with statues was standard from the Middle East of the Old Testament to Early Christian Rome. One problem is determining what worship means in reference to specific beliefs or ideas. Some ancient religious imagery was used representationally - as a signifier of something else and not itself supernatural. This is similar to Christian arguments for religious images. Not all Christians agree on imagery, but the ones that accept it absolutely forbid treating it as anything other than a depiction.
Crediting statues with actual supernatural properties was commonplace though. Variations on the cult statue - where the statue is a material body for the spirit of a god to act through.
El, the Canaanite creator deity, Late Bronze Age, 1400-1200 BC, bronze with gold leaf - Oriental Institute Museum, University of Chicago
Archaeologists have found hundreds of small statues of deities covering every period of Ancient Middle Eastern history. These are the kind of things the Old Testament was referring to. The exact theology is unclear because it hasn't survived in the historical record. It's assumed some form of spirit enters the figure when an activating ritual or prayer happens. This localizes the god in a physical body so the worshipper can get it's attention or interact somehow.
Different civilizations seem to have used cult images in different ways. But they share the idea the image isn't only a reference to an immaterial being - like a word.
It has some supernatural essence or property within it.
Praying to this kind of idol also brings in big topic #5. What "worship" is. If we understand an idol as having some sort of supernatural property or even temporary presence, prayers, requests, etc. are addressed to it. Not to an absent god that it only makes you think of. The idolater doesn't have to think the statue is itself a god. But they do have to believe that there is some sort of power in the statue. In Egyptian and Greek cult statues, the spirit of the deity manifests briefly in it. Even there, the priest or worshipper is talking to the statue. A Christian image is never supposed to be prayed to in this way. It is inert and without supernatural properties. In theory.
Prayer is also contextual. The bowing and kneeling in the Tissot painting above describes ancient Near Eastern devotional practice. The commandment is referring to taking worshipful attitudes to religious images. But the form of "worship" can vary.
Another matter is the transcendence of God.
Michelangelo, The Creation of the Sun and the Moon detail, 1511-1512, Sistine Chapel
If we thing of the likeness as the likeness of a god, God has no "likeness". Until Christ, but that's a later complication. Any picture of a transcendent God is inherently false.
The defense of something this is that it's purely metaphorical. No one could think they're actually depicting what God "looks like".
Some Christians avoid the complexities and pitfalls around idols and just ban religious imagery altogether. To them, any religious picture is at least potentially idolatrous and has no place in worship. This is the sentiment behind iconoclasm and is more or less the Muslim take.
With this much variation, a single consensus Christian position is impossible. But what they do all share is rejecting images - or worldly things in general - as the object of worship. Don't put an image between you and God.
In a modern context, idols are more than little statues. The satanic inversion - do what thou wilt - is the idolatry of being your own god.
We are now squarely in the occult pattern of thinking.
Getting back to "Pope Francis" - the questions are whether his statues are idols and if what he had done with them can be called idolatry. Some apologists have claimed that the statues are referential. They are representations of Pachamama - more on that in a moment - not cult statue or magic object. Since "Pope Francis" called them Pachamamas, that's what they are. "Good afternoon, I would like to say a word about the pachamama statues that were removed from the Church at Traspontina, which were there without idolatrous intentions and were thrown into the Tiber."
Since Pachamama is some sort of divine pantheistic earth spirit, we are running into another Commandment - the First.
Nowhere in the history of Christian exegesis or interpretation are other gods allowed to have a place. Even the Renaissance inverters didn't suggest venerating their beloved Greek myths. The sibyls and Hermes were inspired humans. When the gods turn up, they're used as allegories - like rivers or planets.
This is new.
Is it a representation or an "idol"? And in either case, does it represent a divinity other than the Christian God? It's still complex. Consider big topic #2. Mythology &what “gods” are.
This brings up syncretism - the mixing of religions together.
Remember the spray of symbols? It's like that, but with established religions, not random lies from individual hucksters. This is obviously absolutely forbidden in any Christian form, though there are occultic frauds like "Gnostics" that incorporate some Christian truths into their spray.
Incorporating an Amazonian whatever into Catholicism certainly leans into syncretic blasphemy.
Aphrodite/Astarte, Cypriote Terracotta, 6th Century BC, private | Astarte-Aphrodite from a mirror or lamp, probably Roman Syria, 4th-6th century AD, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Kansas City
Syncretism was common in late antiquity. Successive Hellenistic and Roman empires jumbled multiple belief systems together. Astarte was an ancient Middle Eastern goddess that was syncretized with Greek Aphrodite and later, Roman Venus. Astarte is also the Biblical Ashtoreth and has connections to Babylonian Ishtar. She had associations with fertility and war, but in late antiquity, her warlike character was played down for a more eroticized representation.
Syncretism was easy with polytheism. The gods are entities within creation that you try and sway with offerings and prayers. Adding or changing one has no effect on the larger system. Likewise claiming that new gods were just different names or versions of old ones. This was really common in late antiquity, when civilizations were jumbling together. We see the same impulse in late antique philosophy - Neoplatonism and Hermeticism are syncretic syntheses of older ideas.
Syncretism relates to Christianity in different ways. It's not so much adding gods to Christianity - one supreme transcendent God is the norm. Even balance-huffers tend to see the balance as a pathway to a higher unitary state. No one said they were good at math. When Christianity is syncretized, it's the basics of the ultimate Christian referent - Jesus' message of salvation - that gets changed. The difference between local customs that are incidental to the message and addenda that contradict it.
Vito di Marco, Phrygian Sibyl, 15th century, mosaic, Siena Cathedral
The sibyls and Hermes are typical of the mild version. Adding things that are incompatible with a scriptural world view. That they might be right - as Augustine noted. But it doesn't make them Christian.
The easiest way to sneak these types in is in an "unofficial" supporting role. Like in the pavement on a floor. The sibyls are here as supplementary prophets. Or they can be symbols - like Osiris for Jesus. What they share is some clear motive. The Renaissance was obsessed with Greco-Roman antiquity. So they wanted to get it into the church and raise it's status to metaphysical levels.
The more extreme form of Christian syncretism deviates enough to not even be ambiguously Christian. These are non-Christian occult movements that incorporate some Christian metaphysics into their own inverted systems. Things we've seen in past occult posts like Gnosticism and Hermeticism - ultimately monotheistic but set in a totally different conception of reality. What matters is that they're hybrids of Christian and other ideas.
Johfra Bosschart, The Vision of Hermes Trismegistus, 1985
Painting from a Dutch a-hole that demonstrates a Hermetic spray of symbols. It's noteworthy that the inverted filth uses the upward gesture that occult freaks appropriated from Christian painters. "Balance" somehow leading to ascent. It's as ontologically retarded as they are. As if "civilization" is "opposite" the "nature" it came from. If you aren't stupid, you understand mystery words like "continuity".
Note the sun and moon. Stupid people like pairing unalike material accidents and pretending they're supernaturally insightful.
This captures the difference between Christianity and occult idiocy. The Band may use harsh words, but we detest morons and liars that profess incoherent lies solely because they really want to believe them. Or deceive others. We've spent as much time as we have looking for consistencies in patterns across levels of reality because we are sick of the "we want this to be real" school of thought. Christianity requires it's claims about ultimate reality be accepted on faith, but the rest follows logically from that. It is internally consistent because it is based on external standards. This occult garbage isn't because it's subjective fantasy made up by limited chuds.
Pachamama and other colonial Christian-flavored occultisms like Voodoo fall into this group. Syncretic mash-ups of Christian and other beliefs.
New Orleans Voodoo openly mashes up Catholic and non-Christian religious elements. It's based on one supreme God, but an indifferent one like in Gnosticism or Hermeticism. Supernatural operations are carried out through spirits.
These non-Christian Christian syncretisms are basically monotheistic. The relationship to God varies and other spiritual entities are added, but there's one supreme being. Only the metaphysics are either not worked out very well or are clearly different from Christian ones. There will be some things that are superficially familiar - one way people can be easily sucked in. But the overall experience is very different, and any close logical analysis of how the parts fit will soon crash into fundamental incompatibilities long before the need to accept ultimate reality on faith.
Syncretic ritual is often unsettling to the non-inverted because of the fusion of incompatible belief systems.
If you are personally willing to rewrite the metaphysics of a religion, by definition you don't believe in - or belong to - that religion.
Another scrap of irrelevance that seems to fascinate stupid people is pointing out that Christians use symbols with non-Christian roots. Like Easter decorations, or the date of Christmas. This isn't an insult, but an objective observation. You have to be stupid to think communal patterns of celebration are metaphysically relevant unless they promote immorality. But globalists and materialists are functionally retarded because believe in magic words and objects. No one cares what the origins of a holiday were - so long as it doesn't require accepting or promoting false metaphysics. But that's a different problem - one that takes moral reasoning.
Neither the date nor lights have any bearing on the sincerity of an annual celebration of the Incarnation.
The inversion is the orgy of commercialism and gluttony.
Know what else has “pre-Christian roots”? Words! People always express new ideas in familiar forms. You have to – symbolic communication can't succeed if the symbols are totally unfamiliar. Every new idea you’ve ever had has to be articulated in the same tired old sets of letters and grammar.
Pictures make meaning differently, but same end result. Understanding something novel by understanding a new organization of familiar things. They communicate because they’re familiar.
Santa Maria Antiqua Sarcophagus, around 275 AD, marble, found under the floor of Santa Maria Antiqua, Rome
Like using the Classical figure of Endymion to represent the idea of immortality through "sleep" in the story of Jonah. Likewise the Good Shepherd for Christ. This isn't syncretism because the characters don't carry over. This isn't the mythic "Endymion".
Another litmus test - grasping the difference between using a classical figure to represent a Christian one and claiming the classical entity - in this case, Endymion, is Christian.
It's obvious if you've been to another country and seen churches there. Things look a little different. Same as pictures of old churches. The clothing, architecture, language, pictures if any, etc. Religion deals with inherently immaterial things. But it has to express them in material forms for people to see and participate. And since we don’t live in 1st-century Galilee, familiar expressions of the immaterial are necessary. They're what people know, can recognize, and learn from. But it also means that we have to exercise judgment when assessing the adaptation of old symbols. It is a reference to something Christian, or an attempt to insert non-Christian entities into Christianity?
Consider - churches formed in history. They are established by historical people in knowable places and times. In the West, Rome was the big cultural center, so it formed along late Roman lines. Even the “divine” emperor tried to position himself as a Christ on earth.
St. Paul's outside the Walls, original 4th century AD, nave rebuilt starting 1823.
That's why the big Early Christian churches starting in the 4th century are patterned after Roman basilicas. When emperors starting with Constantine began supporting Christianity, they funded huge new constructions. Basilicas were legal and administrative building associated with imperial power - so the connection between Christ and emperor was baked into the very form. This is what we mean by actually having to research into meanings. The syncretic conflation of Roman cult of divine emperor and Christianity was is screamingly, obviously implicit to an 4th-century viewer, but is lost to most visitors today.
On the other hand, usage transformed the basilica into a Christian symbol over time. A devout Christian worshipping there now isn't "secretly" venerating the emperor. But there was a syncretic symbolic meaning that has changed. Both are true.
Coin featuring Constantine and Sol Invictus, 316 AD, British Museum, London
Constantine's own religious position had stirred copious amounts of writing. Eusebius records he converted before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, but he continued using non-Christian symbolism for some time after. Like this coin showing him superimposed with the Sol Invictus from a few years after.
Religion was moving in a more monothestic direction in the late Empire - philosophical schools and foreign cults like Mithraism introduced notions of a supreme being. Prior to Christianity, Constantine seemed most committed to the Roman cult of Sol Invictus - the unconquered sun single. This combined attributes of older solar deities like Apollo, Helios and Mithra into a concept of Sol as symbol of an all-powerful divinity. Emperors depicted themselves as earthly representatives of this Sol Invictus.
From here, it was an easy shift to earthly representative of Jesus.
Ultimately the Western Church wound up with a pope at the head of a legalistic hierarchical bureaucracy. A sort of spiritual imperial court that no longer accepted emperors as religious authorities, but kept an absolutist structure. In fact, as the Middle Ages progress, the popes will make increasing claims to worldly authority. Something Jesus himself overtly declined to do. This isn't a representation of Biblical Christ. It's the syncretic imperial authority that asserted itself in the 4th century. The emperor as divine image absorbed into the Petrine succession - Christ's Biblical charge to Peter - that justify the imperial medieval papacy.
Niccolo di Giacomo da Bologna, Pope John XXII surrounded by clergy and doctors, 14th century, Madrid. National Library
The model is imperial hierarchy, not the Biblical last shall be first. It was inevitable that a Christian structure had to form. The Band has no objection to the necessity of order. The point is that the order that did form adapted what was familiar. Imperial hierarchy.
What this convoluted earlby history means is that meaning matters. The Church distinguished between legit religious images and idols. It's a generous interpretation of the Bible - and an adaption to image-rich Roman culture. But it's the interpretation they went with. So if we are to take them at face value - on their own terms - we have to take this seriously in our assessment. Because taking things on their own terms
is how their inherent problems become visible and where the big topics come in.
When applied to historical idolatry "on their own terms" can be hard to determine. Theoretically it's a simple process. Religion represents metaphysical relations, so check the rituals and symbols against that referent.
The youthful beardless Christ on this Early Christian masterpiece is typical of the period. The close-up shows the Traditio Legis - Christ enthroned and handing law and authority to Peter and Paul. This wouldn't be considered idolatrous because there is no devotion or worship directed to it and it doesn't contradict scripture. Christ does charge the Apostles with spreading the Word and Peter and Paul are the founding figures of the Church in Rome. It's not a "scene" that happened, but a symbolic representation of Roman Christian order.
The treatment of Jesus is a little close to emperor for our liking, but it's different from putting the emperor in there.
In practice, religions are complex assemblies of people in different times and places that involve a wealth of activities and beliefs. There are differences between specific practices and doctrines, even between the opinions of different participants. Some are ignorant, others dishonest. For our purposes, we will stick to the most basic tenets.
We've already mentioned the biggest distinction between Christianity and its neighbors - monotheism vs. polytheism - one God vs. many. This pulls in big topic #2. Mythology &what “gods” are, because it's not just a matter of headcount. The Christian God is ultimate reality - the alpha and omega, Creator of everything, and ultimately transcending even time and space. He enters the world through the Incarnation as a singular event.
Paganism is an idiotic name - we are referring to ancient polytheism. It's various gods exist within the universe and aren't tied to primordial Creation in the same way. The famous Greek gods are mostly third generation, with some second thrown in. They're powerful, but finite and temporal.
The closest thing to God in pre-Christian antiquity would be the ultimate reality of the philosophers - the Prime Mover of Aristotle or the One of Plotinus. The problem is that these are ambivalent to Creation - in human terms, they simply are. But it's why the thought structures can seem quite compatible with Christianity in certain ways. The ancient gods, if accepted as more than just allegories, are demons.
This is a hard distinction. There is no way to combine the exclusiveness of Christian monotheism with any other divinity. There are no demiurges between God and Creation, no other "emissaries" than Jesus, no independent, actually existing and not symbolic divine beings like "Mother Earth", or alternative sources of divine wisdom.
1919 Ford Motor Car and Truck operating manual
There's plenty of knowledge to be found in the world. The Bible doesn't tell you how to change the oil in your car.
But it's knowledge of material things. It isn't divine wisdom.
The "Amazon Synod" where "Pope Francis" broke out the idols supposedly represented some kind of Christian environmental protection movement. Were that sincere, there would be some sort of focus on... well... improving environmental stewardship. But that's ecology, not metaphysics.
There is a vast difference between a Christian considering environmental preservation and paying homage to an entity that considered a spiritual manifestation of a metaphysical nature god. One is technical and natural, one is pantheistic and supernatural.
One is just knowledge, the other a violation of the fundamental nature of God.
It's the difference between figuring out effective water management practices and lighting devotional candles to a "divine" spirit.
Oh wait...
Litergy, ritual, hierarchy, language, costume, setting - material expressions of Christianity - have all changed over time. Because there are no magic words, these don't actually matter in themselves. Any more than getting your name wrong fundamentally changes what you are. It's just a reference to someone that isn't you. Likewise, fake churches don't alter the nature of Christianity - they just refer to something that isn't Christian.
What matters is the message they transmit.
Bringing in other gods violates both the Commandments and the basic parameters of Christianity. Hence the charges that "Pope Francis" is heretical. The counter-argument is that the skeezy little idols weren't actually "worshipped". That is, big topic #5. What "worship" is.
Or even gods. #2. Mythology &what “gods” are. But that's for part 2...
