Much in a Name

I am interested in the opinion that the the seductrous goddess Circe (Greek goddess of magic and daughter of Hecate, and Helios, the sun god and in some people's opinions, the equivalent of the Hindu goddess Kali) gave her name to the word ' circus'. Circe is admired by witches today and seen as a personification of the ultimate universal feminine principle, worshipped under more names and guises than I care to list here, but a few are the (Babylonian) Semiramis, Astarte, Ashtaroth, Isis, Oestere, Gaia and Mary.

 The word circus gave its name to the word 'church' replacing the word ekklesia, which in earliest times, met in the round. The Scots word, kirk and German Kirche underline this. This of course would be vehemently protested by most church goers, but having experienced both the seductive and hypocritical effects of religion as well as the circus it can produce, I think the derivation can be accepted, both linguistically as well as spiritually.
See  'Church: From God or from Man?' by Dusty Owens

Circuses were round (hence the word 'circle') and theatres (dedicated to the god Dionysus/Bacchus - god of wine and fertility - ie. alcoholic abandon and sexual immorality) were also round. After the First Council of Nicea in 325 AD, the Hebrew and Biblical idea of the priesthood of all believers was replaced by a pagan-influenced, Greek-thinking professional clergy who were often trained orators and rhetoricians and who would stand at the front of a meeting of disciples and dominate the proceedings. Inevitably, these become a show. The 'priest' or actor, (Gk. hypocrates, from which we get the word hypocrite) at the front inevitably became a mediator and 'did' the religious 'thing' for the spectators, who had become little different to theatre goers. You can well imagine that it would have become normal for a 'priest' to have a fight with the wife and children on the way 'to church' - i.e., the building - (that is until the RC Church banned marriage and made clerical fornication and paedophilia a fait accompli) and then don a hypocritical mask to assure his listeners that he was a holy man. The masks, of course, are still an integral part of modern religion. The Babylonian principle is alive and well today.