Friday, July 12, 2024

Trees of religion

This is the most elaborate "tree of religions" I have found. The work of an obscure foundation based in Vienna, it traces all manner of contemporary religious groups (including a solar flare of Shinto in yellow at left) to a common trunk of coiling "Early Vedic Period" (brown), "Shramanic Traditions [Non-Vedic]" (purple), "Ancient Israelite Religion" (magenta), "Chinese Folk Taoism" (green) and "Japanese Mythology" (grey). Monotheisms fill out about two-thirds of the tree on the right, with Judaisms at the center. A little different and both more pluralistic and less inclusive than an earlier "evolutionary tree of religions" we've seen, which traces everything to animisms, but similar claiming a kinship of all traditions - all but a few of which are derivative.