Orthodox church as an image of the world. Material (8th grade) on the topic: Lesson origins on the topic "Temple as an image of the divine world."
As a rule, such a question is asked by a person who believes in God. Perhaps even a church-going Christian or a practicing Muslim. Sometimes reading holy books or communication with clergy seems useless or ineffective, especially in difficult everyday situations. Man is weak, few can trust God and allow events to simply happen, gratefully accepting God's will. Most people try to somehow resolve or at least clarify the situation for themselves, and for this purpose they resort to the help of various fortune-telling.
Why is fortune telling considered a sin?
It should immediately be noted that any fortune telling is considered sinful in official monotheistic religions. But first of all, fortune-telling that predicts future events is considered sinful. To bring the future into our world, i.e. what should be known (and known) to God alone, the fortuneteller resorts to help otherworldly forces. Simply put, demons. As you know, demons use every opportunity to harm man, God’s beloved creation. Therefore, when a person listens to a fortune teller, he is listening to a demon, according to the official position of the church.
The fortuneteller and the one who goes to the fortuneteller fall away from God, stop believing and trusting him, and become obsessed with pride. As you know, pride is the worst of sins. A person begins to consider himself equal to God (if he knows what only He knows) and finds himself completely in the power of Satan.
Orthodoxy and fortune telling.
In Orthodoxy, fortune telling is considered an undeniable sin, and a considerable sin at that. For sorcery and fortune telling, the Orthodox Church prescribes six years of repentance with excommunication from Holy Communion. In confirmation of the justice of such a severe punishment, representatives of the Orthodox Church most often quote passages from the Bible: “Do not cast spells and do not guess” (Lev. 19, 26), “Do not turn to those who call the dead and do not go to wizards, and do not bring yourself to the point of desecration from them" (ibid., 31), "Whether a man or a woman, if they call the dead or cast magic, they shall be put to death: they shall be stoned; their blood shall be on them" (Leviticus 20:27), "Thou shalt not leave sorcerers in alive" (Exodus 22:18) and others.
The Orthodox Church warns its flock: fortune telling will not bring any good. Fortune tellers mislead people, they blindly believe what is said and stop doing God’s will, become inert or, on the contrary, devote too much time to unnecessary things just because the fortune teller said so. Meanwhile, their life, a gift from God, passes by.
All fortune telling is a legacy of ancient pagan mysteries. The Orthodox Church condemns fortune telling even in the form folk traditions, such as Christmas fortune-telling. Any type of fortune telling is recognized by the church as an exercise in occultism and, as a consequence, a denial of the Divine will, and its own too. A person, having received some information about his future, finds himself, as it were, “bound” by this information; he can no longer imagine that anything will be different. Christ came into this world to free man. And man makes himself a slave to some predictions slipped to him by demons.
The sin of fortune telling in Islam.
According to the Koranic teachings, the Prophet Muhammad said: “Whoever comes to a priest or a fortune teller and believes him, he denies the book revealed to Muhammad.” Turning to fortune tellers is considered a prohibited action for a Muslim, i.e. is haram, and money that is given to a fortuneteller is also haram.
Anyone who tells fortunes is considered a sinner. He tells what the shaitan, eavesdropping on the angels, whispered to him. He stops believing in Allah because only Allah can know the future. He falls away from Islam. Not only the fortune tellers themselves sin, but also those who go to them.
Islamic theorists believe that it is ignorance of the basics of Islam, as well as weak faith (or its absence at all) that leads a Muslim to sorcerers and fortune-tellers. The Koran says: “O you who believe! Indeed, wine gambling, idols, divination with arrows are an abomination from the works of Satan. Beware of them” (“Meal”: 90). The Prophet Muhammad said that whoever went to a fortune teller, Allah would not accept prayer for forty days. If a person goes to a fortune teller, this indicates his weak faith or lack of trust in Allah. Anyone who practices fortune telling falls into kufr (unbelief). Such a person, by his actions, not only harms his own soul and moves away from Allah, but also undermines the foundations of Islam. Although fortune telling should not be confused with istikhara (fortune telling on the Koran). In the second case, this is not an attempt to find out the details of the future, but a humble prayer to Allah for help, a hint in a difficult situation through the Koran.
In other words, for official Islam, as for Orthodoxy, fortune telling is an absolutely prohibited action that entails various religious penalties.
Fortune telling and psychology (the principle of synchronicity by C. G. Jung).
The phenomenon of fortune telling was also explained by the representative of the school of “depth psychology” Carl Gustav Jung. From Jung's point of view, it is absurd to apply the word “sin” to fortune telling, since it is based on a natural psychological principle - synchronicity. Manifestations of this principle can be observed not only in relation to fortune telling - synchronicity underlies the organization of our world.
Jung says that with scientific point In our world, there are cause-and-effect relationships. But at the same time, there are many phenomena that are inexplicable from this logical point of view. It's about about chance, coincidence, when the world around us suddenly makes us understand that we are invisibly connected with him. Jung gives numerous examples: stories of lost and mysteriously found things; prophetic dreams; a scientist is writing a chapter on the power of wind, and suddenly an unexpected gust of wind blows away all the papers from his desk; Jung himself is dealing with the symbol of the fish, and suddenly his patient brings him drawings of her dreams, which depict fish; another patient tells him a dream in which she is given a golden scarab, and suddenly a beetle begins to beat on the window of the room... Examples of synchronicity also include various types prophetic dreams, clairvoyance, premonitions and fortune telling. These phenomena are not synchronous (do not occur simultaneously), but rather synchronic: one of the events is a normal, causally determined state, and the other is not causally related in any way to the first.
According to Jung, these external “semantic coincidences” are the result of the generation of energy contained in the collective unconscious, archetypes. The unconscious exists outside of time and space, but stores information about any of the “chronotopes”. It is contact with the unconscious that also makes it possible to “travel” through any segment of space and time. What, in fact, is what fortune tellers do. With the help of heightened intuition (or dreams, or meditation), the fortuneteller comes into contact with the energy of the unconscious, which conveys to him information about the past or future.
Where does it say that guessing is a sin? The view of tarot readers.
The famous tarot reader Sergei Savchenko, the founder of the Russian School of Tarot, claims that fortune telling is not mentioned in the list of sins. Jesus did not mention that fortune telling is a sin (this statement can be refuted, since Jesus was a Jew, and what the ancient Jews thought about fortune telling and witchcraft - see above). In the Middle Ages, fortune telling was not under such a terrible ban and in official church. For example, even the popes practiced astrology. A modern church, being a rigidly hierarchical organization, strives for complete, absolute control over its flock. The ban on fortune telling became just another effective mechanism by which the church could induce guilt in its flock and thus control the people. If a person tries to think independently, without the mediation of the church to communicate with higher powers, such a person is naturally condemned by the church. In addition, Sergei Savchenko absolutely rightly speaks about the eclecticism of his beliefs modern man who at the same time believes in Last Judgment and into karma. If you are consistent and recognize Tarot cards (and not the church) as a mediator in communication with God, then fortune telling cannot be a sin. He who asks God questions, receives answers, moves on.
Is fortune telling a sin?
So, what can you answer to a person who has wondered whether it is possible to guess whether it is a sin? Such a person can be answered that this is a problem of choice, which entirely depends only on his decision. No one will be able to make a choice except himself, and only he himself will have to pay for this choice. A person must realize that the choice made in favor of fortune telling or against it is only his personal responsibility. And the burden of an incorrect choice will fall only on his conscience. What is a wrong choice in such a situation? You need to listen to your inner voice, plunge into the depths of your own “I” in order to understand what will distance you from the divine principle and plunge you into darkness. Because it is sin in monotheistic religions that is identified with darkness.
If for a person they have a strong real value the words of a priest or mullah, if he tries to build his life in accordance with very strict religious rules, then fortune telling will not bring him happiness. Only remorse and regret for what he has done awaits him. If a person expects the Orthodox Church or Islam to bless him for sin, then he definitely will not receive this. As has been said, the “religions of the book” are united in their condemnation of fortune telling. Regardless of what difficult situation a person finds himself in, all the clergy say: do not go to a fortune teller, she will not help, but will only involve you in sin. Because your life is entirely in the hands of God, and it is to Him that you should turn in difficult situations.
Sometimes a person does not consider himself to belong to any particular monotheistic religion, he does not observe religious precepts, in a word, he does not live strictly religious life, but believes in higher powers. In his consciousness there is the idea of sin as something bad, bringing.
On Christmastide, Russian girls traditionally told fortunes, although this activity was always condemned Orthodox Church. And people have long spoken unflatteringly about this “fun”: “To guess is to guess your fate.” Of course, it is not good to prohibit or condemn anything without explaining the reason. Therefore, let’s try to figure out what fortune telling is from a Christian point of view.
Yuletide fortune telling: betrothed mummer, show yourself!
The fact that various fortune telling and divination originated from pagan practices is a well-known fact. And, although God is the God not only of Jews, but also of pagans, in the words of the Apostle Paul, although all people are His children and everyone has the right to their own path, God’s chosen people were always strictly forbidden to borrow pagan religious customs. The warning for Old Testament Israel is contained in the 18th chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy: “... you shall not have anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, a soothsayer, a soothsayer, a soothsayer, a sorcerer, a charmer, a conjurer of spirits, a magician, and one who inquires of the dead; for he is abominable to Everyone who does this is Lord” (Deut. 18:10-12). And in the second letter to the Corinthian believers, the supreme shepherd Christian Church, the Apostle Paul, warns the children: “Do not be unequally yoked with the unbelievers, for what fellowship has righteousness with iniquity? What fellowship has light with darkness? What concord is there between Christ and Belial? Or what partnership is there between the faithful and the unfaithful? What fellowship does the temple of God have with idols? ?" (2 Cor. 6:14-16).
This was already said not to the Jews, the seed of Abraham, but to the Hellenic Greeks, hereditary pagans. After they turned to Christ, contact with their old way of life simply became dangerous for them. How does the pagan worldview, which includes fortune telling as a ritual of penetration into the future, radically differ from the Christian one? First of all, the attitude towards a person and his place in the world around him. We can say that the goal of the God-man, the Messiah, with whom He came to earth, is expressed in one single line of the Gospel of John: “... if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36). This is why a Christian becomes a servant of God, so as not to be a slave to anything earthly.
In the classical variations of paganism, everything is completely different: even the gods there are not free, but are tied to their elements or other universal forces. For example, ancient greek Zeus unable to resist Cupid's charms. The Old Norse Balder dies, struck by a mistletoe branch, and his divine origin does not save him from fate. Fatum, fate in pagan perception is a force that neither people nor gods can resist. In language modern science, static quantity. Therefore, it can be “measured” by some fortune-telling method, although not without danger to one’s own life, but still. In Christianity, there is no predestination, no curses that dominate a person, or, conversely, “innate luck” and there cannot be, because this is absurd. The future is a dynamic created every day by the joint efforts of man and God.
Everyone receives retribution for their sins (and even the sins of their ancestors affect a person only to the extent that he is similar to these ancestors) and, at the same time, these sins are cured by the holy Sacraments: baptism, confession, communion of the Holy Mysteries of Christ, unction. Based on this, try, bypassing God and His Church, to get into spiritual world using some mirrors, maps, combs, etc. means offending the Almighty. And the Lord, as you know, cannot be mocked, even if retribution does not come at the same moment. That is why the Church warns against flirting with those from whom fortune tellers receive information, even if it is reliable. These powers, of course, are not God’s, because God cannot create something disgusting to Himself. But he wrote excellently about who exactly is behind the fortune-telling (during Christmas time, probably trying to denigrate this holy time for Christians as much as possible) St. Augustine: “In general, people’s opinions about the importance of certain fortune-telling signs, established by human prejudice, should be looked at in no other way than at some agreement and condition with evil spirits.
People who are addicted to the destructive science of fortune-telling, which, in fact, is only the science of mocking others and deceiving them, for such addiction, according to some secret judgment of God, often fall under the influence of fallen angels, who are sometimes allowed to have some influence on the lower part of the world. From these ridicule and deceptions of evil spirits, it happens that the superstitious and disastrous art of divination sometimes actually reveals to the soothsayers something from the past and the future and tells them a lot of things that are later partly justified by events.
Such small successes excite and feed curiosity, due to which they become more and more entangled and entangle others in the network of malicious delusion. Even loyalty similar predictions does not in any way justify science's prediction. Therefore, the sacrilegious art, with the help of which the shadow of the deceased Samuel was summoned, is worthy of all disgust and curse, although this shadow, being shown to King Saul, predicted the truth for him." Better than this father of the Church and truly the wisest man, you can't tell.
The Byzantine picture of the world corresponded to the medieval one. The world was perceived as the image of God, and every thing bore the sign of “creatureship” - that is, a degree of perfection. A hierarchy of perfections was established and, according to it, a hierarchy of genres and types of art, the composition of architectural structures, the symbolism of color and light in monumental painting and icons.
Yes, myself architectural form religious building modeled existential-cosmogonic ideas.
The history of Byzantine architecture is connected with the development of domed architecture, which appeared in Ancient Rome(remember the pantheon). The Temple was perceived as the embodiment of the universe, and the Dome - firmament. In the 7th - 8th centuries. dome architecture has already received a complete cross-dome solution.
The space under the dome was limited by four massive pillars on which the dome was supported. The four pylon-pillars were so massive that, due to their thickness, they began to make four arches under the dome of the same depth, so large that a cross appeared in the plan, inscribed in the general square of the plan:
The central part of the building (except for the altar) is covered by a two-tier gallery with choirs:
From the apse (this is a semicircle protruding beyond the square of the plan in the eastern part of the building, where, as the first Christians believed, the center of the Earth was located - Jerusalem), the center of the building moves precisely to the center. Unlike ancient temples, there were rooms for a statue of God, the Byzantine temple was a place for the prayer of believers, for the very word “church” (“ecclesia”) meant in Christians not a building, but a meeting of believers.
The first temples of this type:
Cathedral of St. Sophia in Constantinople by the architects Anfilius from Thrall and Isidore from Miletus:
The Scythian structure of the temple and all its parts are marked sacred symbols: chairman, dome - symbol of divine power; three-hour apse - the trinity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The temple ensemble also included its most important component - the Word, which is considered as the incarnate Logos, divine truth, and is the top of the Christian hierarchy of values, for the Bible says: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Everything began to be through him... Academician Likhachev D.S. emphasizes that it (the Word) permeates the entire microcosm of the cult ensemble: it appears both in a sound image during services (prayers, hymns) and in a visible image (inscriptions on icons, texts on scrolls in the hands of saints).
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