Talk:Genius (mythology)

message: Thus title any supernatural as mythology, like Allah, Krishna, God, El, etc.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:2149:8AE9:F000:CDC8:6BD5:7B:112A (talk) 05:11, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  You titled it: Genius (mythology) 

message: Could an argument be made to say that the Roman Catholic tradition of having a "Patron Saint" come from this Ancient Roman belief in "Genii and Junones"? Ryan Albrey (talk) 03:47, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No, too broad, too speculative. This would have to be defended in a professional article or book. Maybe there is one - non-original research topic for you if really interested. Otherwise no speculations allowed.Dave (talk) 08:24, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Roman Catholicism

message: Can we add a section about the speculation among scholars that the Ancient Roman concept of "Genius" has an etymological link to the concept found in Islam of Jinni: spirits that follow humans around meddling in their lives? Ryan Albrey (talk) 03:47, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: See under Genius (disambiguation). I'm putting in a hatnote. If there is any such scholarship still considered valid it might be nice to have a brief statement under an  etymological section or a section showing how Roman mythology influenced middle eastern mythology but meanwhile there is really no article here, only a box and a few speculations. Serve up the meal first, then offer the desert. I left the "See also" item for the time being on the presumption that someone will want to do this article. Bonne chance.Dave (talk) 08:47, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Islam

message: Fairly sure are you? Get ready for a shock young man. Most of things you are fairly sure of at your age are 100% wrong, true it is tis pity, and pity it is tis true. You are wrong. There is no Catholicism in here. If a doctor of the Catholic church says two and two are four, would you believe him? Your prejudice is obvious. You have much too narrow a concept of "the Catholic church." Gregor Mendel was a Catholic monk. What about him? Believable or not? Nevertheless I am going to fully answer your tag. I regard it as popular demand. For your information the topic is a large one and deserves additional articles but they are not there yet. The article on polytheism is below par. I knew that such a generalization might attract attention but I could either generalize or go into much more detail. I see now the thing to do is to expand it, nor will you find any Catholicism in the expansion. How about if I use a Protestant and some classicists? (Is classics a religion?) I could just cut out that statement and allow the preceding and following references to fill the gap. But, I don't think that is the Wikipedia way. You brought up a legitimate question and it deserves a legitimate answer. And one more thing. I would appreciate it if you would stop attacking Christians just because they are Christian. I'm not saying your question is related to the previous attack but the reasons are certainly very similar. Try to expand your mind a little. Christians are strong in classical studies because the Christian populations descended from the pagan ones. However questions such as this are certainly better than the previous vandalism. You asked a question and I will be glad to answer it, which any fair-minded person of any religion could certainly do. On with the show.Dave (talk) 12:57, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: The doctor of the Catholic church

message: I've got some issues with this page being titled 'Genius (mythology)' - to me it's more of a Roman religious topic than a mythological. Given that a fair bit of the evidence for the 'Genius' is via inscriptions (eg to Genius Augusti etc). GermanicusCaesar (talk) 15:29, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree (belatedly) that this is not a concept of mythology, but of religion. I don't know of any narratives in which a Genius is a 'character'; the genius has to do with cult and with ideas and beliefs. "Mythology" is a valid (but not the only) approach to many deities of ancient Greece and Rome, but it's the study of narratives and representations in the classical tradition. Cynwolfe (talk) 17:21, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I also agree. Nearly every article on a divinity is given as X (mythology), even if there's no mythology attested for that deity. Most other Wikipedias use something like X (god/goddess) in their respective languages. In this case, genius (divinity) seems like a better home for this article. Q·L·1968 ☿ 19:25, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

text: Its a good point but where it relates to Roman religious history its probably difficult to make the case since its not clear that the collection of so called mythological information about their various religions,cults and deities could be made or interpreted to represent a singular "state" or cultural religious body of traditions. In other words it'd be tough to make an article titled "Roman Religion" because for the most part it seems they didn't have just one system of worship, or even only a few. Furthermore their citizenry often expanded to include other foreign cultures and they made little or no effort to impose their primary spiritual concepts on the conquered subjects. Therefore IMO its likely that such a sweeping idea of "Roman Religion" didn't truly exist until the Byzantine or Christian-Roman era. Still it might be wise and worthwhile to do the work(outside of and within wikipedia where appropriate) to find the distinctions between evidence of the culturally Roman (as well as Greek and many others) religious practices and mythology and update the various articles accordingly because if you look at the mythology article it doesn't do much to explain when/if/how the term became interchangeable with actual theologies surrounding those cultures. The current result could be technically interpreted as if we today regard these cultures as having had no actual religions(as we currently define them) but only mythologies ie strong theatrical storytelling cultures with no "true" religions.73.176.113.121 (talk) 16:28, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
replies: text:  it seems to me that such a sweeping transformation would require the efforts of a new or existing wikiproject that can focus on cataloging info about ancient religious cultures , since I'd imagine to prevent messy editing of many existing and inviolable encyclopedic pages in wikipedia,in some cases It'll probably best to begin from scratch with new entries for each historic/prehistoric religious culture needing this treatment (or a sweeping set of entries covering all of them as a single subject) and expand them naturally to subsume or reference/link to existing entries,while outlining the scope,purposes and references needed for making the distinctions. A wikiproject would make this possible and be a good option to set up a system that could make the kind of determinations of what needs to happen to what entries to make this kind of transitional and arguable information shift clean and definitive when appropriate.SoNetMedia's Alfred O. Mega (talk) 17:30, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Title of page 

message: Why is the image -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:August_Pio-Clementino_Inv259.jpg -- of Augustus, togate, with the cover head making a libation the "genius" of Augustus? Surely this image of Augustus is just exactly that, an image of Augustus as a priest - it's simply a conventional statue conveying his religio, his restoration of the mos maiorum.  There's a very similar image on page 128 of Paul Zanker's The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus  (fig 104) which is described as merely "Statue of Augustus in toga with veiled head". If he was in cuirass you wouldn't call it a genius, it would just be a cuirassed statue of Augustus. Zanker and other authors are very clear that after the "Restoration of the Republic" when Octavian became Augustus, the cuirassed statuary stops and Augustus is nearly always depicted togate (and he tells us himself in the Res Gestae that he melted his equestrian statues down and dedicated the result to Apollo). In other words, it's a standard part of the Augustan program to depict himself as a priest and not a general. I don't think there's any evidence that the depiction is regarded as a Genius, I will remove it in a week or so if no-one comes up with any argument otherwise. GermanicusCaesar (talk) 00:03, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Images 

message: The whole thing looks like a mess and seems to be coming from some kind of neo pagan position.  Also who is Garth Fowden, and why do we care that he feels maligned by the use of the term pagan?208.125.137.194 (talk) 20:51, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Religious Context?

message: Cardano's chapter 47 in his book De propria vita is about spiritus; the word "genius" is not used. See here. Cynwolfe (talk) 17:14, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: An internal search using genio yields two occurrences. I can't figure the context. Haploidavey (talk) 17:40, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: He does have reference to Genius (even upper case), but I'm not seeing any in Chapter 47. Secondary sources are needed, I'd think, in presenting claims of what Cardano's view of the Genius was. Cynwolfe (talk) 18:10, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, on closer if still cursory inspection, these seem to be not Cardano's, but the introductory matter not by him. Cynwolfe (talk) 18:13, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cardano 

message: I can't help but notice a similarity between the two concepts, as both are spirits, and considering that "genie" was used in the English/French translation of "1001 Nights" instead of "jinn". Perhaps something could be mentioned in this article about this usage and/or similarity? -- 66.92.0.62 (talk) 07:45, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Genius/Genii and Jinn/Genie? 

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