Porphyry April, 2011

Pagan Theology:  A Practical Path

In thinking about recent world events and the terrible suffering many are facing, I found myself asking, “what would a ‘Pagan’ make of all this?”  What would, or should, our response be?  I kept thinking that my answer would be: “we are a practical path.”

What do I mean by saying we are on a practical path?  How might that relate to what is going on in the world, not just in Japan but also in North Africa and the Middle East, and, to a far lesser extent, within the US and our economic difficulties?  How might a “practical path” give us courage and strength amongst so much suffering?

The term “practical” lends itself to many different interpretations.  We could mean simply that we are a path of practice.  It is common to say that one is a “practicing” such and such, meaning that you are actively engaged in worship.  I am, for example, a “practicing Pagan” because I go to circle (at least) once a month and keep an altar at home.  But, theologically speaking, Paganism is also a practice, or a craft, that you do.  Instead of just attending someone else’s work, Paganism and Witchcraft allow you, yourself, to actively become engaged in the process of deific action in the world.  In other words:  we do stuff.  We do magic.

I think that doing stuff as part of our religious practice makes us different than many other religions.  While many Pagan traditions have a Priest and Priestess responsible for running the circle, once an individual is accepted in the circle they are expected to carry their weight.  Without all of us working magically and practically such a numerically small faith would not have progressed very far.  At the same time the ability to practice magic and invoke the deities independently of a Priest or Priestess gives each and every Pagan the opportunity to practice first hand what happens within circle.

We could also mean by “practical path” that Paganism is a “common sense” religion.  On the surface that really appears to be the opposite of what Pagans are.   We do tend to spend a lot of time with flowing robes, incense, magical devices, and mystical ideas.  We seek the Shaman’s experience of travelling with the Gods and Goddess.  And because we can do magic and interact directly with the deity, we are closer to the other side of the veil than many other religions.  But by “common sense” we can also mean “close to reality.”

Our deities are in the natural world.  They are our friends, our mentors, and our guides.  They are in the land and the air, in the sky and in the fields.  They are within us, and all around us.  We are grounded in the world, not in some far off divine paradise that may or may not come to us through good behavior and considerable luck.  We are here.  Now…  We are close to the world and the world is close to us.  We feel the cycles of nature and the comings and goings of all things.  We are part of the world, the same world as the Gods and Goddesses.
This practical aspect of faith grounds and ties us to the world.  What happens in the world, for good or ill, is part of us.  And so we know that when the earth shifts or an ill wind blows that it is not a judgment against us, it is not alien or different or “unworldly” but rather it is what the world does.  This acceptance of the world and all that is in it gives us a practical base from which to defeat despair.  The same world that changes and touches us can be changed by our touch.  Our actions, magical or temporal, change the world just as it changes.

The “practical path” says that, while you cannot, and should not, fight the world, you can work it and change it to the better.  Circumstances that are given can be changed, but those changes require our energy and attention and work [1].  We are not the busy, industry-focused, Puritans by any stretch of the imagination, but when it comes to setting up camp, pulling up the Maypole, or cooking a collective dinner, we get it done.   Spiritually we have a faith that encourages change through positive action, its called magic.   I will claim that the belief we can change the world through magic will makes us a very optimistic, pragmatic, and centered religious practice.  We believe we can shoulder the burden and change the world.

A practical path can also be interpreted as one that does not brook much nonsense.  And I would also argue that Paganism is a pragmatic religion.  Guilt, sin, and all of the other features of self-blaming are not part of the Pagan tradition.  Paganism tends to emphasize the positive virtues of loyalty, doing no harm, and respect for life.  Instead of telling us what we should not do, Paganism points us toward what we should do.  Instead of making us feel guilty, Pagan traditions empower us to create and change.

This tendency to emphasize positive action may arise from the underlying acceptance of duality in nature.  Instead of seeing disasters or misfortunes as punishment, imposition, or “something that god let happen,” Pagan theology would interpret misfortune differently.  Misfortune is not “evil” in the sense that it is created and deliberately directed by the will.  Instead the world contains within it both dark and light, both suffering and happiness, and one always changes into the other through the cycles of the seasons.

While this in no way endorses misfortune, it produces a mindset that says misfortune today will be followed by fortune tomorrow.  Perspective gained through the knowledge of the circles and seasons of the Goddess stops us from despair or hopelessness.  Instead we know that the Goddess reshapes the world constantly, and we suffer because we are in that world, not because She wishes us harm.  We, and She, fall under the rule of the world, and the inevitable changes that are required means sometimes we suffer, sometimes bad things happen, but always we remember that everyone is in it together.

Knowing that the Gods and Goddesses are in it with us and we all have the power to constantly remake our circumstances gives us the basis for a pragmatic response to tragedy.  We help those who have been traumatized through our words and rituals.  We give our time and resources to help those who are rebuilding to recover.   We can do our spiritual and practical work in order to keep things going and help everyone muddle through the event.  But we don’t see shifting plates or runaway reactors or despotic responses to attempts at freedom as something personal.  Tragedy is never the fault of the victim, never something brought on willingly by those in control of their fate [2].  Instead it is the nature of the world to shift and change and sometimes bring birth and sometimes bring death.  But it is how we respond to those shifts of fate that really defines whether they are ultimately “good” or “evil.”  If we respond in faith and charity with loving hearts and strong arms, we know that the circle will turn and good will come again.  We are a hopeful people that look forward to the next cycle, to the next turning, even as we mourn for what is lost.

So what might a Pagan response to all this tragedy be?  First to acknowledge suffering and send energy, prayers, and workings in support of those harmed, in harms way, or who have been indirectly harmed by the events; fate speaks, people suffer, and we console, support, and mourn.

But it also means we should get involved.  Do something.  It could be as simple as speaking truth about what is going on in Bahrain or Saudi Arabia [3] or as complex as travelling to the disaster in order to lend a hand (as many have done in New Orleans).   It might be sending our prayers or positive energy in support of recovery efforts or protestors [4].  This positive, optimistic, aspect of Pagan practice is something that the world could really use right now.  And we could benefit from acknowledging that it lies deep within our faith.

[1] An example of such a pragmatic approach is the Pagan Japan Relief effort, which can be found here: http://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/Pagan-Community/doctors-without-borders

[2] Obviously people with mental conditions that prevent a realistic assessment of their situation often bring harm to themselves.  For them the tragedy begins earlier with the onset of disease.

[3] They don’t much like Witches in Saudi Arabia http://blog.amnestyusa.org/deathpenalty/saudi-arabia-set-to-execute-soothsayer-for-sorcery/ and Bahrain, and the entire region, is struggling with freedom http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/ml_bahrain_protests

[4] Like Selena Fox from Circle Sanctuary did (see http://wildhunt.org/blog/2011/02/pagan-community-notes-protecting-a-sacred-altar-in-athens-selena-fox-in-madison-american-mystic-and-more.html or http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150097997169285&set=a.104902039284.95857.50006939284&comments&ref=mf)

Tags: paganism

• Articles

Ian Elliott April, 2011

Elements of a Personal Cult

There is a sense in which the favorite deity has already chosen the devotee, and an early step in establishing a devotional relationship is to examine any unusual dreams or waking experiences that seem to be messages from someone.  Think back through your past, looking for experiences that preceded important turning points in your attitude and approach to life.  The experiences themselves need not have been unusual in any obvious sense, making their influence on us all the more mysterious.  I can remember one morning long ago when I was up at dawn walking to breakfast.  I had had a personal disappointment the night before, when suddenly a bright-eyed old lady, the only other person around, looked at me as she walked vigorously by and said “We’re the only ones up!”  I am unable to account for why that event has stuck in my memory, but my life seemed to take a different direction after that; I felt healed where I had felt injured within, and my attitude changed to hope from despair.

In some ways a devotee is like a fan of a movie star or rock musician, in a state of enthusiastic identification.  The Greek historian Herodotus wrote about a Scythian (the Scythians lived in what is now southern Russia) named Anacharsis who traveled widely and came to adopt Greek religious customs.  This fellow was a devotee of the Mother of the gods, and when he was back in Scythia, as it was a sacred occasion, he celebrated the mysteries of the goddess in a clearing in the forest, pinning the sacred pictures to his clothes and dancing around ecstatically.  A Scythian got wind of him and reported to his local king, who declared he would not tolerate Greek religious ceremonies in his realm and ordered the devotee killed with an arrow. [1]

Like a fan, a devotee will put up pictures or an idol of his deity.  He will study his deity’s myths and celebrate or mourn them as appropriate, following whatever rituals still survive.  He will celebrate the birth of his god or goddess on the appropriate date. He will follow the preferences of his deity if these are recorded in the myths.  For instance, in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the goddess comes to Eleusis and is offered a drink of wine, but declines it in favor of kykeion, which was a sort of barley-water flavored with mint. [2] A devotee of this goddess will therefore abstain from alcohol, at least during his re-enactment of the wanderings of Demeter in search of her daughter Persephone, drinking kykeion instead as a sort of communion with the divine. [3]

Thus through prayers, offerings, examination of dreams and omens, ritual enactment of myths, assumption of the deity’s preferences and perception of the deity in nature, the devotee seeks to be as close to his god or goddess as possible.  The key practice, however, is repetition of the divine name, often with the deity’s titles included.  The Hindus call this japam; it might be called a way of taking the color of the deity, coloring one’s own experience with his or her divine presence.  That japam was performed in the West as well can be seen from Jesus’ preaching against praying “as the heathen do; for they think that by much repetition they will the more readily be heard.”  This of course is a misunderstanding of the purpose and results of japam.  Japam is performed at set   times, [4] as well as at random moments when the mind is idle.  During the set periods, a devotee will often make use of a string of beads or dried seeds as a way of ensuring that a certain number of repetitions are done without bothering the mind with counting.  Hindus call these beads rudraksha, and it is so effective an instrument that Catholics have adopted it in the rosary, and even muslims make use of it.  Among witches it was known as a ‘witch’s ladder’. [5]

Herodotus’ tale of Anacharsis is a cautionary one, and in general pagans thought little of excessive devotion to a single deity, or even to deities in general.  Euripides’ play Hippolytos warns against devotion to emis at the neglect of Aphrodite, while his play The Bacchae warns against the rejection of the worship of Dionysos and thus of ecstatic religion per se.  Here, as always, the Greeks believed in pursuing a balance, in the latter case a balance between religious sobriety and religious intoxication.  So whichever god or goddess takes your fancy, be careful to set limits to your devotion.  One way to ensure this is to have second and third favorites among the gods, practicing minor devotions to those deities as well as generally attending to all gods, demigods, and spirits.  This was common in antiquity, with devotions to one’s special god or goddess balanced out by devotions to family or clan deities or a patron deity of one’s trade. [6]

Nor should the pagan devotee expect to be always especially devoted to the same god or goddess.  It was a practice since late Sumerian times [7] to switch allegiance to another chosen deity if one felt betrayed or somehow let down by the old one.  But even if there has been no let-down, our needs shift as we go through life and Aphrodite will understand if a middle-aged man turns his attention at some point to Hermes or Demeter.  In that case, the pious pagan made a special offering to the god or goddess being left behind, signifying a voluntary surrender of his or her divine gifts.  Thus, young girls entering on puberty hung up their girdles in the temple of emis; perhaps that is where the expression ‘better hang it up’ originated!

Reflecting on my own practice, I have identified five elements that must be present in any fully developed relationship with a pagan deity.  These could be called the deity’s

(1) locus, (2) signs, (3) myth, (4) discipline, and (5) occasion for prayer.

The locus is the external dwelling or vehicle of the deity, whether outside or inside.  Some deities, like the sun god or goddess, have a single locus (the sun, obviously); others have a generic locus, such as the oak tree for Cernunnos or Thorr and other cognate deities.  These would be outdoor loci, whereas an idol or shrine would serve as an indoor locus.  The traditional indoor locus for Thorr (judging from 17^th century accounts of Lappish religious practice) was the house pillar, which held an iron nail at shoulder height; the head of the household would sit next to the pillar and grasp the nail during thunderstorms, to feel the power of the god.  The locus, whether indoor or outdoor, would be the proper place to pray to the god and leave offerings.  In case of a generic locus such as an oak tree, the worshipper should select that oak (if any) that seems to contain the most power and direct his or her devotions to it on a regular basis.

The signs of a deity are more ephemeral, being omens or communications from him or her to the worshipper.  These can be external (weather signs, sacred birds) or internal (dreams, sudden inspirations, moods).  The reading of bird-omens was common among the ancients, the raven for instance being associated with Othinn and Bran, and the dove with Aphrodite.

Dreams were commonly channels of communication with one’s partner god or goddess, and can still be used as such by anyone attentive to dreams and their figures.  They are also effective ways to talk with the dead.

Internal psychological events were regularly regarded by the ancients as links to deity, especially at times of crisis.  Thus, when Achilles is about to draw sword in wrath against Agamemnon, Athena restrains him; a moment of sober restraint, putting off retribution till the right moment, was regarded as an epiphany of that goddess, as was saying the right thing at the right time, or being inspired with a winning stratagem.  Another example would be the sudden quiet that sometimes descends on a gathering, which caused the Greeks to say “Hermes is in the room,” an expression later changed by the Church to “an angel has passed through the room.”

The myth of a god or goddess is often linked to the calendar, and provides special sacred occasions for worshipping a deity and celebrating his or her exploits.  Cernunnos, worshipped by Celtic witches as the year-god, has a myth tied very closely to the change of the seasons, with special celebrations at the winter and summer solstices, when he changes his aspect from the god of the waning to the god of the waxing year, and vice versa.  The Greek deities each had a ‘birthday’ celebrated on a particular day of the lunar month; some deities’ births were celebrated on the same day.  The festive or sacred occasion is a sort of locus in time.  Some deities’ myths, such as that of the sun in Tuscan witchcraft, also involved the worshipper’s view or his or her own destiny.  The Tuscan witch expects to reincarnate on Earth until reaching a certain stage of spiritual evolution, at which point he or she will go to the astral world of the sun and there be transformed into a being of light, possessing a ‘stellar’ body. [8]

The gifts of a god or goddess generally depend on a certain ongoing discipline on the part of the worshipper who hopes to receive them.  No amount of worship and offerings to Aphrodite will win her gifts without attention to personal attractiveness, for instance.  And if a pagan is already committed to a certain discipline, finding the appropriate deity to serve as its sponsor is an effective way to integrate him or her into one’s religious life.  Thus, as Cernunnos is depicted shamanistically on the Gundestrup cauldron, I have dedicated my own shamanic practices to that god, and thank him whenever I am reminded to do them.

Finally, the occasions for prayer and offerings to one’s chosen deity will depend on the other elements and whether they are all present in one’s life.  If one’s god or goddess has a locus like an oak-tree, being by the oak-tree will provide an occasion for devotion.  The same is true of a special date in the calendrical myth of that deity.  Lacking a spatial locus and at other times than festivals, one may select a time of day appropriate to the bodily or mental occasion to pray.  For instance, if the devotee holds communication with the deity through dreams, praying just before going to sleep will be an obvious choice, as will praying when awakening in the morning.  Occasions when one or more signs of the deity are evident will also serve, such as sudden windfalls for Hermes or inexplicable moments of panic in the woods around noon for Pan.

In addition to elements pertaining to the object of a personal cult, the attitude or posture of the devotee will enter into the character of the cult as a whole.  I myself lack an ecstatic devotional temperament, and my relationship to my personal deity is one of pupil to master.  From antiquity, the Hindus have recognized five different attitudes one can take towards one’s personal deity, depending on temperament.  These are called ?anta, dasya, sakhya, vatsalya, and madhur.

?anta, a characteristic attitude among the sages of ancient India, is the serene attitude.  It does not involve intense feelings of love, and for that reason is rejected by the more devotional Hindus as genuine; but it might suit many of us nowadays, and in any case is a logical starting-point for anyone choosing a personal god or goddess.  For this attitude, it is enough to know (and bear in mind) that the god or goddess is there.

Dasya is the attitude of a servant towards his (or her) master (or mistress).  This is an appropriate attitude for someone who feels a need to accomplish some great work or task for the personal deity, such as organizing a coven, and also comes closest to my own attitude of pupil.

Sakhya is the attitude of friendship.  One sits before the idol as one sits with a friend, just hanging out.  This is also an appropriate view to take nowadays, as we may not feel love for our deity but may come to like him or her, especially over time.

Vatsalya is the attitude of a mother towards her child.  It could also apply to a father or other parent figure.  It is protective and nurturing, and perhaps entered into cults of the infant Hermes and Zeus, the latter especially in Crete.  One can imagine it being the attitude of a pagan towards little idols and fetishes.

Madhur is the attitude a man or woman has for his or her paramour; it is said to contain the other four attitudes.  It is not necessarily sexual (that would be hazardous with the Olympians) but is definitely romantic or, in cases of deities of the same sex as the devotee, is like hero- or heroine-worship.  This was no doubt the attitude of Hippolytos towards emis, and of Anacharsis towards the Mother of the gods.  As we have seen, this last attitude can run into trouble if not kept moderate. [9]

I hope these observations prove useful to those who wish to bring one or more deities more fully and intimately into their lives.  And one note more: it goes without saying that pagans, being polytheists, will not have time or energy for building cults of devotion to all the gods and demigods in their pantheon.  In this matter we do not differ from the pagans of antiquity!

Bibliography:

ATHANASSAKIS, Apostolos N., trans., The Homeric Hymns, Baltimore and London, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.

GUPTA, Mahendranath, or ‘M’, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, New York, Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1952.

HERODOTUS, The History, trans. By David Grene, Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 1987.

NIKHILANADA, Swami, trans., The Upanishads, in four volumes.  Reference is to Volume 2. New York, Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1952.

---

[1] Herodotus, The History 3: 76 – 77, p. 308.

[2] Some scholars also believe the kykeion contained hallucinogenic herbs or fungi, at least during initiation into the mysteries at Eleusis.

[3] Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 205, p. 7. See bibliography.

[4] Japam may be done mentally, or silently with the lips moving, or aloud.

[5] The witch likewise will practice chanting spells, such as the cord-spell, perhaps adding an invocation of the Lady.

[6] Scholars have noted that ancient Mesopotamians often prayed to deities other than those whose name formed part of their own given name, suggesting that they began in life attending to a family deity and later took up with one they chose themselves.

[7] Around 2000 BCE.

[8] A similar myth can be found in the Hindu Prasna Upanishad I:9 – 10, pp. 158-9.  See Bibliography.

.

[9] The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, p. 115.

Tags: paganism

• Articles

Ian Elliott December, 2010

Principles of Paganism

Lesson 6:  Greek Domestic Religion

Introduction

Those of us interested not only in studying but emulating ancient religion naturally take an interest in the domestic religion of ancient peoples, for unless we live among surviving or revived pagan communities, we are reduced to celebrating ancient piety in solitude, or with our families.  Judging by recent scholarship, there has been a steady increase of interest in sacra privata, the sacred privacies, and though evidence for such is scanty compared to that available for ancient civic religion, more is being revealed by the efforts of archæologists, epigraphists and scholars as time goes on.

The information available on domestic religion in ancient Greece and Rome, though fragmentary, is far too voluminous for a single lesson, and I have limited the topic to those things that apply to the home and its immediate environs, and to those activities most adaptible to modern use.  Thus, while both the Greek guardian of the family storehouse, Zeus Ktesios, and the genii loci or genius and juno of the Roman household were depicted as snakes, and there is ample evidence of household snakes (harmless grass snakes where the species is known) from ancient Crete to medieval Lithuania and even later, most of us are unlikely to take up this age-old custom of keeping one in the house or under the front porch.  So passing mention will be made of the practice only to illustrate certain features of the guardian spirits later conceived, at least in Rome and partly, in human form.

Allowances must also be made for the differences in ancient and modern architecture, especially as regards the hearth, when seeking to import Greek or Roman domestic religion into today’s homes.  Those of us who are fortunate to have a fireplace can set up a shrine there to Hestia or Vesta and the ancestors and guardian spirits, but in most modern homes fireplaces are ornamental even when fully functional, and do not replace the stove or central heating.  Currently I have no fireplace and so maintain a small shrine in the kitchen, getting it as close to the stove (and as far from the smoke alarm) as possible.

Finally, I have limited this study to Greek and Roman households, even though the material from other cultures (for instance, the Ainu of Sakhalin before WWII) is richer, in some cases assigning sacred meanings to all features or areas of a home.  Those who have ancestral or far memory links to other cultures are encouraged to extend this study to those peoples.

I had originally intended to present both Greek and Roman domestic religion in a single lesson, but the material is too extensive.  So this one will be on Greek domestic religion, and the Roman will appear in January, after the mid-term examination.

Greek Domestic Religion

The material presented in this section is derived from a recent Master’s thesis presented to the University of Cincinnati by the scholar Katherine Swinford.  Her primary interest was in the implements employed in Greek household religion, but her introductory material on the religion itself is well presented and documented.

Household Gods

The Greeks differed from the Romans in installing the major deities of Olympus in household worship, giving them domestic epithets indicating their functions there, whereas the Romans tended to identify their domestic deities by function alone.  For this reason, H. J. Rose preferred to characterize Roman (and Italic) religion as a polydaemonism (concerned with little, or demi-gods) rather than a polytheism, at least at the domestic level.

In Greece, the gods whose household cult is mentioned prominently in ancient sources include Hestia, Zeus, Hermes, Hekate, Apollo Agyieus (Apollo of the Streets), and Herakles.

Hestia is often invoked both first and last among the gods, in private as well as public rituals.  If an animal was slaughtered and a sacrifice was performed in the house, the first pieces of the sacrificial meal were offered to her, just as at all meals a few pieces were laid on the hearth. This is the reason why it seems to have been customary to offer the first pieces of all sacrifices, even public ones, to Hestia. The position of Hestia is also reflected in semiphilosophical speculations, in which it is said that Hestia is enthroned in the middle of the universe, just as the hearth is the center of the house.

Hestia is the Greek goddess of the hearth and is the metonymic symbol for an entire household.  The typically Greek explanation for this is that she invented living in houses.  For this reason, a house was regarded primarily as a hearth, just as the community of houses was symbolized by the public hearth, in Athens located in the Prytaneion.

In the middle of the great living room of the Greek house, the megaron, was a fixed hearth. The hearth served not only as the locus for domestic activities such as cooking and heating, but also as the sacred center of the household, or oikos.  Sacrifices took place there, and oaths sworn upon the hearth or to Hestia were powerful.  The newborn babe was received into the family by being carried around the hearth, a ceremony which was called amphidromia and took place on the fifth or tenth day after birth.

As the guardian of the hearth, Hestia served as the protector of the household and its occupants.  The hearth, as an altar of the goddess, functioned as a refuge for suppliants, and those who sought refuge at the hearth were protected, just as those who sought haven at altars within temples were inviolable.

The Greeks before a meal offered a few bits of food on the hearth and after it poured out a few drops of unmixed wine on the floor. The libation was said to be made to Agathos Daimon, the Good Daemon, the guardian of the house, who appears in snake form. It is not stated to whom the food offering was made, but if someone is to be mentioned it must be Hestia, the goddess of the hearth.

To overthrow the house, to demolish the altar within it, incurred a punishment which struck at the same time at the living generation and at all the line of dead ancestors and of descendants yet to be born.  Thus, the hearth, as an altar of Hestia, represented and preserved households past, present and future.

Zeus Ktesios, Herkeios, Kataibates

Zeus Ktesios, or Zeus of the property, guarded and increased the provisions and wealth of the Greek house.  The ancients used to install Zeus Ktesios in their storerooms.  He was kept in a kadiskos, a small, two-handled, unadorned earthenware container.  The handles were wreathed with white wool and a saffron thread, and ambrosia, that is, water and olive oil and a variety of fruit, was poured in.  The depiction of Zeus Ktesios as a snake led Nillson to speculate that the physical guardian of the stores was a snake used to frighten away thieves, and the contents of the kadiskos were a sacred meal provided to it regularly.  We’ll get back to snakes when we discuss the Romans.

Zeus also appeared in two other guises in or around the Greek house.  The Greek word for fence is herkos, and herkeios is an epithet of Zeus. According to Homer, the altar of Zeus Herkeios generally stood in the courtyard before the house, where sacrifices and libations were offered to him.  By the classical era, houses in towns were built wall to wall, and the shrine of Zeus Herkeios was usually found in the megaron, or large living room common to Greek homes.  As Zeus Kataibates (he who descends), Zeus protected houses against strokes of lightning, and his altar was found before the house or within, next to that of Zeus Herkeios.

Doorway Gods

While Hestia and Zeus were venerated within the house, a few gods, such as Hermes, Apollo Agyieus, “Apollo of the streets” and Hekate, received their due directly outside the Greek home. Literature describes the shrines or altars to these gods, who were guardians of the pathways and of traveling, as standing before the doorways of private dwellings. These shrines functioned as protection against illness, enemies and other types of evil.

Doorway gods were significant to the ancient Greeks. Klearchos of Methydrion, a pious man, took care to garland and clean his Hermes and Hekate each month. This indicates that individuals may have had more than one doorway shrine which may have been dedicated to more than one god.

The herm, the embodiment of the god Hermes, was a square shaft topped with a head and was always ithyphallic. Herms were often used as boundary markers and stood outside of public sanctuaries, between the city and the country, as well as before the doors of private dwellings.  An Attic red-figure loutrophoros depicts a procession coming home from the fountainhouse.  Standing before the doorway of the house is an altar and a bearded herm. The altar may have been an altar to Hermes, or perhaps it functioned to represent one of the two other doorway gods. In Wasps, Philokleon mentions the altars of Hekate, set up before the doors of every citizen (Aristophanes, V. 804). The scholia to Aristophanes note that the altars erected to Apollo Agyieus were square in shape.  A shallow recess near the street-side door, a feature common to many Classical houses, may have served as the locus for such shrines.

In later times, Herakles was regarded as a guardian of the house.  Above the entrance to the house was placed the inscription “Here the gloriously triumphant Herakles dwells; here let no evil enter.”

Rites of Passage

As mentioned above, a newborn child was carried around the hearth in a rite called the amphidromia on its fifth or tenth day of life (which is uncertain).  Heidrun Rose suggests that this exposed the child to the “beneficent radiation of Hestia,” and emphasized the connection between the baby and the adults who were to be his kin.  On this day, too, those who were involved in any way with the birth performed ritual washing. This was to eradicate the birth pollution.

Robert Parker states that the amphidromia probably served to unite symbolically the newborn with the sacred center of the house, much like the katachysmata, a ritual which served to join brides and newly-bought slaves to their new homes.

The wedding procession, or gamos, began and ended with the hearth and marked the bride’s transition into her new oikos. Vase paintings often show both mothers; the bride’s mother carried torches lit from her home-hearth, which protected her daughter during the procession, while her mother-in-law, who held torches lit from her respective hearth, received the bride into her new husband’s home.  Carrying the wedding torches was a significant role for Greek mothers.

After the bride left her mother, and thus, the protection of her household hearth, she joined her new oikos in the rituals of incorporation. The first ritual, the katachysmata, is mentioned in a fragment of the 5th century B.C.E. comedian Theopompos: “Bring the katachysmata; quickly pour them over the groom and the bride!”  This ritual took place at the hearth. The katachysmata was also poured over the heads of another category of household inductees, newly-bought slaves. This mixture contained dates, coins, dried fruits, figs, and nuts and was meant to represent good seasons, and thus good auspices for the new member of the household. The groom led his new wife to the sacred hearth of her new oikos, where Hestia waited, sceptre in hand, to unite her with the hearth and thus receive her into the household.  This is an artistic representation; Hestia herself had no religious image.

Several rituals associated with death and burial preparations occur in the ancient Greek home. First, when a family member dies, the home is polluted. This pollution requires its own cathartic rituals, which I will discuss below. Second, the washing and laying out of the corpse takes place within the oikos. Third, after the funeral, the oikos must be cleansed of the death pollution, and the sweepings of the home are offered to Hestia in the hearth-fire.

Several tragic characters have prior knowledge of their deaths and carry out some of the necessary rituals beforehand; they bathe in ritual water, array themselves in the proper funereal attire, say a prayer to the goddess of the hearth, Hestia, and bid farewell to their loved ones.

After a member of the oikos died, the surviving members of the household washed the body. Often, women were charged with this task. The prothesis, or the laying out of the body, also occurred within the house.  The body was laid on a kline, or couch, and lekythoi, or other small jars of oil, were placed around it.

After the funeral took place, it was necessary to cleanse the house where the death had occurred. For example, an inscription from Keos, dating to the second half of the fifth century B.C.E., states that the house was purified the day after the funeral with seawater and the ceremony terminated with offerings to Hestia at the hearth.  This final rite, the offering to Hestia, must have concluded an ancient Greek’s “circle of life.” From the first rite of life, the amphidromia, which centered around the hearth, to the last, the final cleansing of one’s soul from the house in which it died, returned back to Hestia.

Miasma (Pollution):

Ancient Greek houses were considered polluted when a death or birth occurred within. In order to avoid these types of pollution, the Greeks created cleansing rituals. Water is the most widespread agent of purification in Greek cathartic rituals. It was required that a person was ritually clean before sacrificing or pouring libations, and by extension, this requirement probably applied to other religious activities.  One prescription for purification was to wash one’s hands or bathe. The water for ritual washing often had to be drawn from a specific source, most often a source from outside the house.

Outside of homes where a birth or death had occurred, the household set up a perirranterion, a basin which stood on a pedestal, filled with water.  Not only did this basin serve as water for the purification of those entering and leaving the house, but it also served as a token of warning to those who wished to avoid coming into contact with impure, or polluted, households.

While the birth of a child temporarily polluted the ancient Greek household, pregnant women were sometimes the cause of, and also subject to, miasma. During the first forty days of pregnancy, a pregnant woman was not allowed to enter a shrine. However, in the later stages of pregnancy, women were urged to visit the sanctuaries of those deities who oversee childbirth. When outside of her oikos, a pregnant woman was not a source of pollution to others, but instead must be wary of incurring the pollution of others.  Pregnant women and those who are about to marry are two classes of people who stand on the cusp of an important transition and are thus susceptible to pollution.

Those who came into the house where a pregnant woman lay were polluted for three days. This birth-pollution could not be passed on and after three days the impure person was cleansed of the miasma. Other purificatory measures were taken in order to eradicate the household of birth-pollution. A baby’s naming ceremony and its amphidromia took place on either the fifth or the tenth day after birth.  Each of these initiation rites for the newborn was accompanied by rituals and sacrifices. These rites, which probably took place in the courtyard of the house, might have served not only to introduce the child to the oikos, but also to purify anyone involved in the birth, as well as the entire oikos.

The ancient household was polluted when a death occurred within. Similar to childbirth, at this time a basin of water, drawn from a specific source, was placed before the door of the house as a token of warning to those who wished to avoid miasma. It also functioned as water with which visitors could purify themselves after having encountered the pollution within the house.

In order to eliminate the pollution incurred after coming into contact with a polluted household, one needed only wash his or her hands with purifying water. This was similarly true for the house which was polluted by death. After their family member was buried, the family cleansed the house with seawater. This rite served to purify the house of residual miasma.

Ritual Washing

Several domestic rites have a component of ceremonial bathing or hand-washing. During her wedding preparations, the bride’s ritual bath required elaborate ceremony. The loutrophoros, which literally means “one who carries bathwater,” was a vessel used specifically for transporting the water for prenuptial baths from the source prescribed for religious ceremonies.  The women of the family joined the bride to parade to the fountainhouse, usually with a young girl carrying the vase.  After the procession, the bride would bathe in preparation for her upcoming nuptials. The loutrophoros, which symbolized the ritual prenuptial bath, became synonymous with ancient Greek marriage. For this reason, the vessel shape, either ceramic or stone, came to be used as a grave marker or funerary offering for someone who died before he or she was married.

The death of a family member also necessitated ritual washing. The corpse was given a ritual bath by the women of the oikos.  Seawater was the primary cathartic element in funerary rites, and so, it was the type of water used for washing the body.  This rite could be compared to the ritual bathing of the bride and groom before their marriage. While the latter bath serves as a ritual in the transition from one stage of life to the next, the bathing of the corpse marked the end of a life, itself a transition.

Bibliography

Swinford, Katherine M,  The Semi-Fixed Nature of Greek Domestic Religion,

Master’s thesis submitted to the Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati, 3 February 2006.  http://etd.ohiolink.edu/view.cgi?acc_num=ucin1155647034

Internet site: Greek Popular Religion, The House and the Family.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/gpr/gpr08.htm

Study Questions for Lesson 6:

1.   What was the Greek explanation for the prominence of Hestia in household religion?

2.   Where was the fixed hearth located in a Greek home?

3.   What was the Greek rite before a meal?

4.   Who guarded and increased the provisions and wealth of the house?  How was he depicted?

5.   Five outdoor or door guardians of the Greek home are mentioned.  Name 3.

6.   Name and describe 3 rites of passage performed in the home.

7.   What was miasma?  How did the Greeks typically purify themselves of miasma?

8.   Name 2 sources of miasma.

9.   Name 2 occasions on which Greeks performed ritual washing.

Answers to Study Questions for Lesson 5:

1.   What was the religious error of the people of the Ur III Empire?

Assuming that the gods would always promote their own political interests.  They thought they had them ‘in their pockets’.

2.   According to Woolley, how did the residents of Ur react to the fall of empire and the Elamite occupation?

They withdrew from whole-hearted participation in the civic religion and began practicing a private religion centering on the ongoing spirit of the family.

3.   Why were the ancestors buried in the family vault not provided with grave furniture?

Because they resided in the house right alongside the living inhabitants.

4.   What did the teraphim in Abram’s family represent individually?  What collectively?

Individually each probably represented one of the ancestors.  Collectively they represented the ongoing spirit or god of the family, the future Yahweh.

5.   When did Abraham’s family stop worshipping temple deities?

When they passed beyond the borders of those deities’ land, traveling to the Mediterranean coast.

6.   Why did his family refuse to integrate with Syrian worship when they reached the Mediterranean coast?

Because their worship included human sacrifice, considered barbarous by the Hittites and their subject peoples.

7.   Why, according to Woolley, were the Hebrews segregated from Egyptian society?

Because they were shepherds, and shepherds and sheep were abominated by the Egyptians, possibly because of their association with the Hyksos.

8.   What religious identification did Moses make in Midian?

He identified the nameless family god of the Hebrews with the popular west Semitic Yahweh, derived from the Canaanite (and before them the Eblaite) pantheon.

Exercise:

When you first move into a house or apartment, it seems cold and unfriendly.  After you have lived there awhile and personalized your surroundings, it feels warm and hospitable.  According to the ancient view, this is because your household guardian spirits have taken up residence there with you.  Try burning incense to the threshold and hearth guardians, radiating back to them the same friendliness you feel from your home.  In other words, make the warm atmosphere of your home reciprocal.  Bask in the warmth awhile and see if any subtle changes occur in your perception.

This concludes the first half of the course.  There will be a mid-term exam, consisting of a question from each of the six lessons presented so far.  It will not be difficult if you have worked the study questions.  If you want a certificate at the end of the course, you will have to submit the mid-term to me via email and get at least four of the questions right.  I will also require a one-page (minimum 3 paragraphs) account of what this course has meant to you up till now.  You can respond critically if that is your sincere feeling.  Include also a recommendation for the final six lessons.  I will try to consider your wishes.  The mid-term should appear in about a week on paganpages.org.  You can send in your copy with responses anytime before February 1^st.  Send your mid-term to me at the following address: quicksilver101445@yahoo.com.

Tags: paganism

• Classes

Ian Elliott November, 2010

Lesson 5: Why the Hebrews Ceased to be Pagans

In his monumental contribution to UNESCO’s History of Mankind, volume 2, The Beginnings of Civilization, Sir Leonard Woolley presents an interesting hypothesis regarding the origin and early development of Judaism.  Because the ancestors of the Hebrews were pagans, we should concern ourselves with the question, How did they lose their religious allegiance to ancestor-worship and temple worship of many gods and goddesses?

The Book of Genesis, which is full of pagan traditions from the earliest stratum of Hebrew oral tradition (and which is a political hot potato if a scholar attempts to translate it honestly), states that Abram (later Abraham) came from Ur ‘of the Chaldees’.  After 1100 BCE, southern Mesopotamia was overrun by an Aramaean people whose descendants are still called Chaldæans.  This ended the Middle Babylonian period, during which much of Mesopotamia was ruled by an Asianic [1] people from Iran called the Kassites.  In all likelihood, Abram lived before or during the Kassite period, [2] so that the qualification ‘of the Chaldees’ is for the benefit of people living some centuries later in the 1^st millenium BCE, in the time of the Chaldæan kings of Babylon.

It was necessary to distinguish the very ancient city of Ur, in southern Mesopotamia not far from the Persian Gulf, from a more recent town in northeastern Syria. [3] This later Ur was apparently founded late in the 3^rd millenium BCE by the Neo-Sumerian Ur III Empire, the capital of which was the Ur of southern Mesopotamia, a city dating back to prehistoric times.  The northern Ur was a colonial emporium of the Sumerians (who by that time were at least half Akkadian) established in Syria because that land had become disunited and was divided into a number of petty kingdoms; thus it was infeasible for the kings of the older Ur to try to regulate trade with Syria by treaty.  Syria had become disunited some 200 or more years previously when the Akkadian king Naram-Suen raided the northern Syrian capital (the land was called Yamkhad in those days) of Ebla, burning it to the ground and thus earning the gratitude of archaeologists by baking the more than 100,000 clay tablets in that city’s archives.  These have been unearthed and are still being translated, and are gradually revealing the cultural background to the Aramaean civilization which followed, including much religious material that later wound up in the Old Testament.

Perhaps the single most arresting find at Ebla was a map of Syria in the late 3^rd millenium.  This baked clay tablet map shows many towns in Syria, indicating that the land at that time was far more populous than scholars thought.  One of the towns marked on the map is another Ur.  It wasn’t far from another town called Harran.  Both Ur and Harran were emporia of the southern capital Ur, and both towns were under the same city deity as that capital, the moon god Nannar.  Nannar’s name in the Semitic Akkadian language was Sin (earlier Suen), and in the Hurrian language or Hurrianized dialect of Harran and (presumably) the northern Ur he was called Terah.

This latter detail is very important for Sir Leonard’s theory, for Abram’s father was also named Terah, and he was a fashioner of temple idols.  Sir Leonard concludes from this that Terah and his family left Harran (or perhaps the northern Ur) and moved to the old capital in the south, where Abram was born and grew up. [4] The southern Ur in those days was Sumerian in culture only. The Sumerians lost their hegemony when the empire of Ur III was overrun by Amorites (‘Westerners’) in the north [5] and the capital itself sacked and partially razed by Sumer’s ancient enemy, the Elamites of Susa, from southwestern Iran.  Many temples of Ur were destroyed in the hundred years or so while the city was occupied by an Elamite garrison.  The leadership of southern Mesopotamia passed first to an Akkadian city called Isin, and later to an Elamite-ruled town called Larsa.  This was in what is called the Old Babylonian Period, when northern and central Mesopotamia was ruled by Amorite kings from their new capital of Babylon (raised from an unimportant village) who eventually, under Hamurrapi, conquered Larsa and most of the land.  By this time the Sumerians were disappearing as a people, becoming gradually absorbed into the general population.

Archaeology from the Larsa period [6] reveals that not all the old temples of Ur had been rebuilt, but a curious architectural feature begins to crop up in private houses. [7] As you entered a private house in Ur, a short walk down a corridor led to a door, generally on the right, through which you passed to enter the parlor and the rest of the house.  But if instead you proceeded straight to the back of the house, you would come to a family shrine.  The near half of the shrine was roofed, the far half open to the sky.  Woolley describes the shrine in his own words, for he was the chief excavator of Ur:

“…under the pavement of the open half was the brick-built family vault (it might contain a dozen bodies), and the roofed hall was a chapel dedicated to the worship of the family god…after the door of the vault had been sealed up, a platter and a clay water jug might be set against its brickwork, but that was all, and inside the vault there were no offerings whatsoever…The dead man continued to inhabit his familiar home…he required no tomb furniture because everything in the house was still at his disposal.” [8]

Evidence of inscriptions in the temples of Ur suggest that the temple worship, while it continued, was increasingly the province of the temple staff themselves, though no doubt the populace attended the festivals.  From this scanty and therefore highly conjectural evidence, Sir Leonard hypothesizes that the failure of the god Nannar to protect his city led to a decline in confidence in the great deities of the pantheon and favored the growth of private family religion.

Be that as it may, we know from the account in Genesis that at one point Abram was called out from the old capital of Ur by his nameless family god, and bidden to travel north back to the land of his forefathers, to the city of Harran.  Harran at this time was under the rule of the Hurrians (another ‘Asianic’ people). Hurrian law prescribed for custody of the figures of the family god (or perhaps of the ancestors) to belong to the eldest son. In Abraham’s family these were called the ‘teraphim’ (meaning ‘the family of Terah’; probably Abraham’s father rather than the moon god).  While living at Harran, Abraham and his relations would naturally continue to worship the god Terah and the other deities of the Hurrianized Sumerian pantheon of the city.  As the Canaanites later reminded the Hebrews, “thy fathers worshipped strange gods beyond the river.”

Then, perhaps because they joined a chartered royal caravan of merchants to the Syrian coast (modern Lebanon) [9] or traveled under some other official seal, Abraham and his uncle Lot and their families left Harran and moved to what much later was called Palestine.  When they crossed the river forming the western boundary of Hurrian land, they had to leave the moon god and the rest of the pantheon behind, for these were local in character and had to be properly housed in temples; only the nameless god who was the family deity and the teraphim could be taken along.  That the patriarchs continued to worship the family god is easily seen from the covenant Jacob made with his cousin Laban in the name of ‘the god of Abraham and the god of Nahor, the god of their father.’

The usual practice for migrating people in the ancient Middle East who had left their homeland and its gods behind was to take up the worship of the people who were their new neighbors.  But these, the Syrians of the coast, practiced human sacrifice, which did not appeal to the more civilized sensibilities of Abraham and his family.  Accordingly, after fulfilling any royal commissions, they avoided the cities and took their flocks of sheep into the hills, living that rural existence in tents familiar to us from old Sunday school coloring books.  The teraphim were probably retained until Moses delivered the Decalogue, which as we know forbids idols.

When the Hebrews settled in the Egyptian delta their assimilation into Egyptian culture was incomplete, owing to the fact that they were shepherds, for sheep and shepherds were abominated by the Egyptians, perhaps because of their recent memory of the hated Hyksos conquerors. [10] So when Moses became a fugitive and fled Egypt into the land of Midian (in the Sinai peninsula) and married among the Midianites, he found it easy to adopt his father-in-law’s worship of Yahweh, a former member of the Syrian pantheon (with antecedents at Ebla) very popular at the time among western Semites.  There he took the revolutionary (and, from our viewpoint, unfortunate) step of identifying Yahweh with the faceless and nameless family god of Abraham, and Judaism was born, a religion entirely portable in nature.  From then on, wherever the Hebrews went, they could take their national god Yahweh with them, and though they later settled in Canaan and many adopted the local fertility religion, there remained among them a prophetic strain of protest from their nomadic past.  A god who is entirely portable is cut off from the Earth, and had it not been for the influence of the Canaanites, the Hebrews would have been entirely cut off from that ultimate source of pagan spirituality.  It took their later capture by Nebuchadrezzar to divorce them from the Canaanite worship, so that when they were allowed by Cyrus to return to Palestine and by Darius to rebuild their temple, they had truly become a people removed from the rest of mankind.

Note: This ingenious theory suffers from the shortcoming shared by most theories of the Bronze Age, namely chronology. The Larsa period is much too early a setting for the Abram story, and if we place the patriarch in the Kassite period instead we must assume a long continuity to the family religious tradition at Ur.  By Kassite times Harran would have been under the Hittites, but could have retained its local Hurrian dialect (the Hittite capital of Hattusas, in northeastern Turkey, spoke eleven languages).  We know the Hittites chartered merchant expeditions to the coast, and Genesis states that Abraham purchased a family burial ground in (the later) Palestine in a cave belonging to the Hittite Machpelah. This brings the late part of Genesis up to the Amarna age and within reach of the post-Amarnic Pharaoh Merneptah, in whose time we read the first inscriptional reference to ‘Habiru’ in the Palestine area.

References are to Woolley, Sir Leonard, The Beginnings of Civilization, New York and Toronto, the New English Library, a Mentor book, 1965.

Study Questions:

1.   What was the religious error of the people of the Ur III Empire?

2.   According to Woolley, how did the residents of Ur react to the fall of empire and the Elamite occupation?

3.   Why were the ancestors buried in the family vault not provided with grave furniture?

4.   What did the teraphim in Abram’s family represent individually?  What collectively?

5.   When did Abraham’s family stop worshipping temple deities?

6.   Why did his family refuse to integrate with Syrian worship when they reached the Mediterranean coast?

7.   Why, according to Woolley, were the Hebrews segregated from Egyptian society?

8.   What religious identification did Moses make in Midian?

Suggested Answers to Study Questions from Lesson Four:

1.   What were the two general meanings attached to the word daimon in the Archaic Period?  An undetermined god or divine agency; a being intermediate between gods and mortals.

2.   What is the meaning of the adjective daimoni in Homer?  Strange.

3.   According to Hesiod, what happened to the humans of the Golden Age after they died? They became guardians and observers of later humanity.

4.   What was the personal daimon? A spirit born with an individual who served as a guide throughout life.

5.   When did Pythagoreans expect to become daimones?  After a number of incarnations of living according to Pythagorean rules.

6.   When did followers of Orphism or the Bacchic mysteries expect to become daimones?  After death in the Underworld.  How was this achieved? By observance of ethical, ritual, dietary and hygienic purity.

7.    How did Zoroastrian and Mesopotamian religious ideas reach Greece? By the Persian conquest of Ionia along the Ægean coast; by trade contacts.

8.   What effects did Mesopotamian astrology have upon Greek mythology? Name two effects. Some Olympian deities were identified with the visible planets. Thereafter the major deities were held to have heavenly and earthly aspects, the latter coming to be thought of as daimones.

9.   Did early Greece seek to rise above the human condition? Not in Homeric times, at least so far as the evidence goes.

10.   What was proto-puritanism, and where does E.R. Dodds think it came from? The view that faculties peculiar to humans, such as reason or ethical purity, were the only ones deserving of human focus.  Dodds thought the notion of becoming supra-human may have derived from contact with shamanic cultures among the Getæ of the northern Black Sea coast.

11.   According to later classical Paganism, where did daimones come from and were they good, bad or mixed? Daimones were held to live between the Earth and the Moon, in ‘the upper air’ (which was thought to extend as far as the moon).  They were regarded as ethically mixed at first, but christians believed them to be universally bad.

12.   How did the deities of the later classical Pagans differ from those of heathen peoples outside of the Empire? The late classical Pagans thought of the heavenly deities as being ethically pure and incorporeal, while the heathens outside the empire retained the more ancient idea of the gods as being at times beneficial, at other times harmful to humans, and as having physical corporeality.

13.   What were Paul’s two theories about Pagan deities?  That they were either errors or devils, i.e., bad daimones. Which theory was favored by early missionaries and why? Early missionaries favored the idea that they were devils because the peoples they were trying to convert had undeniable experiences of their gods and other spirits.

14.   When did Paul’s other theory come into favor and what allowed this to happen? The church induced a fear of ‘demons’ in its subject peoples and this led to the gradual disappearance of Pagan religious experience.  Still surviving Pagan traditions could then be characterized as erroneous human speculation by those who wished to preserve them for cultural reasons.

15.   What were the pre-Christian deities of heathens like in relation to humans?  They followed and epitomized the seasons and were ethically neutral towards humans, as humans are towards each other.  See also the answer to 12 above.

Exercise:

The late President Ronald Reagan, when he was governor of California, was infamous for making the statement, “When you see one tree, you’ve seen ‘em all.”   A few years ago when I was living in North Carolina, I decided to drive up into Virginia to visit cousins.  I drove up the coastal highway, which is bounded on both sides by belts of trees, and for quite a stretch has trees up the center island as well, with occasional breaks for exits and turnarounds.  These were not recently planted California saplings but good, east coast old-growth trees, towering overhead and nearly touching, so that I felt as if I were driving up the aisle of an enormous temple.  I noticed that the trees in the middle formed the shapes of ships or waves when seen in the aggregate.  I recalled the ignorant statement by Reagan and extracted the drop of truth from it, as Spinoza would have us do.  I looked at trees in groups, saw them leaning towards each other like friends, or standing resignedly apart.  I saw them as aware of themselves, and of each other, and read attitudes and expressions into the way they leaned, and reached for each other.  After all, this was not total fantasy; plants are aware, in a way, of their surroundings, and no doubt the roots of many of these old trees were intertwined together.  So perhaps that old governor was right without knowing it, right in an unexpected way: When you see one tree, you’ve seen ‘em all, but when you see them together in groups, they become persons.

I still look at trees the way I did in South Virginia, sometimes straight on, sometimes peripherally.  I can’t prove it, but I believe this is how my Pagan ancestors saw them.

---

[1] ’Asianic’ is a designation scholars use for ancient peoples whose language bears no discernible relation to any others known.

[2] See Note at the end of this article.

[3] Perhaps the same as one called Urfa today, which muslim tradition erroneously identifies as the Ur of Abraham.

[4] Woolley, pp. 492 – 4.

[5] c. 2000 BCE.

[6] c. 1920 – 1800 BCE.

[7] Woolley, p. 458.

[8] Woolley, p. 458.

[9] A much later charter of this sort, of the Hittite King Suppililiumas, has been recovered.

[10] But the hieroglyph for ‘Hyksos,’ once read as ‘shepherd kings,’ has since been reinterpreted to mean ‘rulers of foreign countries’.

Tags: hebrews, paganism

• Classes

Toriach November, 2010

One Mage’s Opinion: If You Complain About It They Will Come.

Pagan’s have an uphill battle when it comes to being understood and respected by the mainstream.  Because there aren’t really a single set of tenets that all Pagan’s agree upon it can be tough from the outset to get people to understand what we are about.  The tendency of the media to focus only on the most surface of images of Paganism usually not caring to let anything as petty as fairness or dare I say research get in the way, gives us an additional hurdle to clear.  Add other factors like the tendency of many to equate Magick with delusional thinking, and the fact that in the United States at least discrimination against us tends to be fairly subtle and low key and awfully tough to prove, and it can sometimes seem like a pretty to road to walk.

But unfortunately all of that is starting to seem to be the least troubling of the problems we face.  After all to an extent this is nothing new, and most of us are fairly used to it.  But now we have a growing problem from within our own ranks.  A phenomenon that lacking a better term I have come to call Self Hating Pagans.

If you read Pagan themed blogs, or listen to Pagan themed podcasts you most likely have seen an example of the work of a self hating Pagan.  Basically it seems that lately any time that there is something that troubles Pagans, whether it’s discrimination, or hateful images, or harassment, or any of the other many things that some Pagans have had to deal with at some point in their lives, and an individual or a group speaks out against that troubling thing, there will be someone or several someone’s to tell them they are making a big deal out of nothing.

Now I’m not going to deny that sometimes my fellow Pagan’s can get good and het up over things that maybe aren’t that big of a deal, and maybe sometimes it’s not that the issue isn’t worth being upset over, but that the approach to talking about the upset is out of proportion to the offense.  But some times there are things that need addressed.  When there are portrayals of Pagans and Paganism that are unbalanced, or just plain wrong, there is a need for voices speaking up, saying “That’s not us”.  When imagery of hate crimes committed against people accused of Witchcraft in the past is used to sell products, there is a need for voices speaking up saying “I do not appreciate you using that image on your product, or in your adverstising.”  When someone encounters discrimination whether it’s from an employer, or from a city’s government there is a need for voices saying, “You do not have the right to discriminate against anyone because of their religion, and when you do and attempt to cover it up with a lot of hot air we will call you on it.”  When someone running for office makes denigrating and marginalizing Pagans part of her ad campaign, there is a need for voices speaking up and saying, “We are here, and we are every bit as much a part of this society as anyone else.”

Pagans are really no different from Christians, or Jews, or Atheists.  We all want to have our beliefs treated respectfully.  We all want to see images in entertainment and culture that we can identify with.  We all want to be able to believe and worship as we see fit and not have to worry about whether our lives are going to be negatively impacted by bigotry.  We all want not to have images related to wrongs done our community used to sell products.  In short we all want to be treated with dignity and respect.

Telling us to sit down and be quiet and not make a fuss does nothing to help us achieve these goals.  It is only by refusing to be ashamed of who and what we are and speaking out against those things we consider wrong can we hope to ensure a free fair future for Pagans, and Paganism.  Of course that’s just one Mage’s opinion.

Peace
And
Long
Life

Toriach

Tags: paganism

• Articles

Gaias Wisdom November, 2010

Language is powerful. Words carry connotations and conjure images that are sometimes correct … and sometimes not. One such word is ‘pagan‘.

The word pagan for many people conjures images of animal sacrifice, devil worship and inverted pentagrams. My family generally doesn’t announce our paganism for precisely this reason. As most people don’t fully understand what it means to be pagan, or have grown up believing the church’s definition, they fear what they don’t fully understand. This leads to one of two responses: avoidance or vilification.

Additionally, as words carry definitions, applying the label ‘pagan’ applies those standard sets of rules and beliefs carried by the definition and prevents me being or doing something different or outside of that definition. So I choose not to apply the label. I am what I am and it doesn’t need a word to describe it.

In any event, this misunderstanding of a simple word became apparent to us this week when our child came home from school with an interesting tale…

‘Heathen’ was a word in their challenge spelling list. When completing a crossword the clue was ‘Another word for pagan’. (Technically this is incorrect as a heathen is someone who is godless; pagans can have one, none or many gods.) One of the children asked “What’s a pagan?” Our child’s hand shot up, she was told to put it down and the teacher then explained that pagans were around before Jesus was born. Naturally enough our child protested “But I’m pagan!” (This announcement in the past has actually led to her being picked on by her classmates and told in no uncertain terms that she was ‘going to hell’. Side Note: Pagans actually have no hell. ‘Hell’ is a post-Christian construct.)

After class – luckily – the teacher took an interest and talked to our child about what that meant – Did we do rituals? (Perhaps she was thinking goats and chickens?) – and then told our child “You know that means you’re wiccan?” Our child tried to argue but the teacher then told the librarian “Did you know they’re wiccan?”

So consequently I’m off to school to ‘right some wrongs’ before the whole place gets a perception of us that’s totally off the scale!

But this highlighted for me the misconception people still have about the word ‘pagan’ and how they happily interchange it with words like ‘heathen’ and ‘wiccan’.

Of course all wiccans are pagan – but not all pagans are wiccan. And pagans are definitely not ‘godless’ as the word heathen suggests.

So what is pagan? Pagan means different things to the various people who classify themselves as such.  For me being pagan is not a religion but a way of living. It’s not something that can be defined by anyone but the individual who chooses to be it and follow that path. But here’s the definition before the Crusades made paganism something to be feared and reviled.

Pagan comes from the Latin paganus - meaning country dweller or rustic. Later this developed into ‘peasant’ – again meaning one from the countryside, and when these areas were Christianised it became a word with religious connotations but generally used in derogatory terms to symbolise the ‘victory’ of the church over the ‘heathens’.

Once upon a time all people were pagan. It is the oldest ‘religion’ (though I prefer the word ’spirituality’). Post-ascension of the church it defines anyone who is not part of one of the Abrahamic monotheistic religions (the three majors being Judaism, Christianity and Islam) – so technically this would cover Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism, Druidism – and the possibly hundreds – if not thousands – of dissenting religious views.

For my family ‘being pagan‘ means simply that we walk lightly on the earth – who is revered as Mother – respecting Her bounty and honouring her changing seasons by marking the Sabbats – eight festivals that celebrate the solstices and equinoxes (Lesser Sabbats) and the harvests and midpoints between seasons (Greater Sabbats). And no, we don’t sacrifice goats or chickens to do so! Celebrations generally involve getting together with friends for feasts and enjoying each other’s company and the place we hold in each other’s lives. It involves teaching our children respect for the Earth, for each other and for themselves.

Our beliefs are, I guess, ‘typically Christian’ – though unfortunately not always practiced by those who define themselves as such. We don’t differentiate on the basis of colour, sex or religion but accept all people as people of the Universe – all made up of the same particles as the Universe, and all part of each other. (This is a concept picked up by metaphysics: As I breathe out, small particles of me are carried into the atmosphere to be breathed in by others, and vice versa. Therefore, we are literally each part of the other. If you don’t believe this … think of how airborne viruses are transferred.)

We also believe in the cyclical nature of life: birth-life-death-rebirth. We believe the Earth should be honoured – not plundered for greed or power – but sustained, nurtured for the future generations.

(Any of this sounding familiar?)

We love life, beauty (in all its forms), nature, all people regardless of differences – and in our house at least tend not to use the word ‘tolerance’ because it pre-supposes one school of thought is right whilst another is wrong. We believe there is room for all thought.

Some of our friends believe in one god; others in many; and some, like us, in no ‘god’ as such at all – meaning no ‘Deity’ sitting in a ‘heaven’ … and conversely no ‘Devil’ sitting in a ‘hell’. We definitely acknowledge good and evil – but as part of the duality of nature:  good/bad; light/dark; day/night; male/female. We don’t consider human beings as the top of the pyramid but view all life as equally valuable, and the planet as a living, breathing organism.

One of the best, most complete, ‘definitions’ (for want of a better word) that I have read is by Norman G Geldenhuys, penned in 1975. Due to its length I am going to reproduce it as a separate post.

‘I am Pagan’ The link to that is: http://www.earthgoddesswisdom.com/2010/10/i-am-pagan/

Tags: paganism

• Articles

Ian Elliott October, 2010

Lesson 4: Daimones

Daimon. This Greek word has a long history, and the surer people became as to its meaning, the further they were from its original senses.  In Homeric or archaic times (ca. early 8^th century BCE) it seems to have had two primary meanings: a being higher than a human but less than a god or goddess (nymph would perhaps be an approximate female equivalent); and an expression meaning ‘some god or other,’ where the identity or name of the spiritual agency is unknown.

Daimoni in Homer is an adjective meaning ‘strange’.   The presence of a daimon or a spirit was uncanny, and the sign of a spirit’s presence was a sudden change in consciousness.  Psychoactive substances (including the wines of antiquity, which often contained psychoactive herbs) were believed to contain spirits or to open the door, so to speak, to spirits (we still use the word ‘spirits’ in this sense metaphorically).  Any sudden happening that seemed mysteriously significant, such as a sneeze in council, was believed to be a communication from ‘some god,’ i.e., a daimon.  Of such were omens.

Hesiod says that the men (humans) of the Golden Age, the long first phase of the current world-cycle, when they had died became daimones who made it their business to help living mortals. [1] This resembles the Vedic teaching that the most advanced souls are reborn at the beginning of a new cosmic cycle as divine sages.

The Latin term genius, which originally meant inherited sexual vigor, was later conflated with the Greek belief in a personal daimon, acquired at birth and serving as a guide through life for its human host.  The personal daimon was thus a messenger from, or link with, the gods. [2]

Pythagoras and his school believed that by following school teachings one could, after a certain number of reincarnations, become a daimon and thereafter cease to reincarnate in a gross material body.  Initiates into the Bacchic and Orphic Mysteries likewise expected an apotheosis after death, transformation into a sort of daimon after a life lived carefully according to certain precepts covering rituals, diet, hygiene and ethics. [3] There are several possible sources for this religious innovation, none of them traditionally Greek.

When Cyrus the great conquered Croesus’ Lydian kingdom, the way was opened to the Greek cities of Ionia, along the western coast of present-day Turkey.  These were absorbed, not without revolts and upheavals, into the Persian Empire, and gradually influences from Zoroastrian and Mesopotamian religion filtered into the Greek world in Europe.  The notion of an ethically perfect deity demanding human striving for ethical perfection began to appear among Greek thinkers like Xenophanes, and Socrates and his pupil Plato gave the concern with goodness and right behavior the primary place among serious human endeavors.  Socrates’ pupil Xenophon, in his historical romance The Education of Cyrus, pictured the Persians at the time of the foundation of their empire as being moral athletes, [4] much as he (mistakenly) viewed the Spartans of his own day.  The actual behavior of the Persians of his own time he attributed to decadence. [5]

E.R. Dodds, in his informative albeit biased study, The Greeks and the Irrational, looks elsewhere for the origins of this moral athleticism.  Noting that the quest for rising above the human condition was not present in early Greece he hypothesizes that it may have come in via reports of shamans among the Getic peoples north of the Euxine (Black Sea). [6] We can read of them somewhat in Herodotus (v. Abaris et al). [7] From this, he says, a sort of proto-puritanism arose, in which faculties humans did not share with the animals were attended to exclusively in the attempt to rise to a suprahuman level (in Aristotle the faculty of reason is singled out thus).  This was probably emphasized in opposition to the age-old effort to blend in with natural processes by imitating the actions of animals, as in the periodic ‘orgies’ of the Mossynoecians [8] (similar to those of the Picts and other barbarians), lying out in the woods and fields on specific nights, copulating, in imitation of the seasonal matings of animals, in order to participate in and encourage the overall fertility of nature and therefore also of crops, flocks and herds.

The spread of the Persian Empire to the Ionian coast brought other religious ideas to the notice of the Greeks.  Mesopotamian religion identified the gods with the planets, the ‘wandering stars,’ and astrology traveled west.  Around the late 6^th century BCE the names of some of the principal Olympian deities were assigned to the planets.  Aphrodite was associated with the planet we call Venus today, following the Romans.  Previously the planet had been called Hesperus, the star of evening, as well as the star of morning, and the two were not clearly identified as one by the Greeks. [9] The old Mesopotamian civilization, still speaking and writing and reading Akkadian (the Empire had adopted Aramaic as its lingua franca), enjoyed a last flowering in astronomy and mathematics in the temple schools and the Greeks learned from it in the last centuries BCE.

The identification of Aphrodite with the planet we call Venus today meant that there was a heavenly Aphrodite, Aphrodite Urania, [10] as well as the earthly one that appeared to Anchises and other mortals of legend.  These projections of heavenly deities began to be identified with the demigods or daimones.  Astronomical observations suggested that everything above the sphere (we would say the orbit) of the Moon was eternal, and change was confined to the space enclosed within the lunar sphere (because of the Moon’s phases), including the Earth. [11] Thus, in the last centuries BCE, it was believed that daimones lived in this infra-lunar world and came periodically to Earth to conduct their affairs.  Unlike the celestial Gods who were morally and physically perfect, [12] the daimones were a mixed lot; but until the Christians addressed the topic they were not all considered evil.

‘Saint’ Paul changed all that. He speculated that Pagan Gods and Goddesses were either demons or else simply errors, tales with nothing behind them.  The former explanation was prominent for the first nine or ten centuries of Christian missionization, for the monks were confronted with peoples who had thousands of years of religious experience behind them and well-elaborated systems of sensory interpretation to take to that experience.  The Pagans really saw and heard and spoke with their deities, at least from time to time.  It was necessary, therefore, to begin the conversion process by making them fear nature spirits.

It was only after this work had been accomplished and generations grew up insulated from Pagan religious experience, that Paul’s second explanation could be employed.  The Norse scholar Snorri Sturluson, who lived in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, wanting to preserve what remained of the old bardic poetry and its significance, wrote a compendium of Norse myths we call The Prose Edda, prefaced by a prudent introduction explaining that all of these fables were based on human error. [13] He had Paul as an authority for this, and though he encountered a good deal of ecclesiastical opposition from those who accused him of trying to teach young people Heathenism, this approach to the subject worked and the book was allowed to survive.

Meanwhile, the church’s program of vilifying nature spirits as evil continued in the less ‘converted’ areas of northeastern Europe.  The Finnish Kalevala, relating what survived into the early 19^th century of the folk songs of the Karelian peninsula (a part of Russia today to the east of modern Finland), exhibits a culture that has only been partly Christianized.  Sacred groves and sacrifices have been suppressed, but the Gods and Goddesses are still prayed to alongside ‘God Almighty,’ and magic of a poetic sort is still employed.  The name for the ‘Evil Demon,’ Hiisi, is derived from a term for the old sacred groves, and the Lapps are said to still serve demonic forces. [14]

The last country in Europe to be conquered by the Christians and officially ‘converted’ (though they would remain in a dual faith condition for a number of centuries thereafter) was the Pagan Lithuanian state.  Enough of their traditions (many written down) have survived into modern times so that the ancient faith of that country, and of its neighbor, Latvia, is today in a vigorous process of revival.  A modern Lithuanian scholar has recently commented on the nature of pre-Christian belief in nature deities before the missionizing monks came on the scene:

”Jonas Balys wrote: ’There is no information to affirm that ancient Lithuanians, before coming face to face with Christianity, had known of evil gods or evil spirits. It looks like the same gods could help man and also harm him.  This is why the gods had to be appeased and made to be well disposed towards man, by offering sacrifices to the gods.’ “ [15]

From this brief survey of the history of the word ‘daimon’ it would appear that demons were the first entities to become demonized.  Their importance to us latter-day Neo-Pagans cannot be exaggerated, though, for it is only through re-establishing contact with more immediate spirits that we can hope to reach out to the greater Gods and Goddesses of nature.

Bibliography

BURKERT, Walter, Greek Religion, transl. John Raffan, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1985.

DODDS, E.R., The Greeks and the Irrational, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, Universoty of California Press, 1951.

FRAZER, Sir James, The Golden Bough; a Study in Magic and Religion, one-volume abridgement, Hertfordshire, Wordsworth Editions, 1993.

HERODOTUS, The History, transl, David Grene, Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 1987.

HESIOD, Works and Days, in Hesiod and Theognis, transl. Dorothea Wender, London, Penguin , 1973.

LÖNNROT, Elias, compiler, The Kalevala, transl. F.P. Magoun, Jr., Cambridge, MA and London, Harvard University Press, 1963.

ROSE, H.J., Religion in Greece and Rome, New York, Harper and Row, 1959.

STURLUSON, Snorri, The Prose Edda, transl. Jean I. Young, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Longon, University of California Press, 1954.

TRINKUNAS, Jonas, ed., Of Gods and Holidays; the Baltic Heritage, Vilnius, Tvermé, 1999.

XENOPHON, Anabasis, transl. Carleton L. Brownson, Cambridge, MA and London, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1998.

__________, The Education of Cyrus, transl. H.G. Dakyns, London and Vermont, Everyman’s Library, 1992.

Exercise: Take some time every day to rest your eyes and just listen to the sounds of the world.  If you find your mind wandering, pay attention to your phosphenes, that is, the lights and squiggles you can see when you shut your eyes, which are produced by the light pressure of your eyelids on the optic nerve. Divide your attention between sounds and phosphenes.

When you lie down at night to rest and eventually sleep, practice this same exercise for a few moments.  You may find dream images starting to form in place of the phosphenes.

We are conditioned to start thinking when we close our eyes, and this contributes to the nervous habit of insomnia.  We also spend our waking hours pretty much focused on seeing; taking time out for listening and giving the eyes a rest also gives the mind a rest and helps to recover a degree of ‘early morning freshness’ in our awareness.

Study Questions:

1.   What were the two general meanings attached to the word daimon in the Archaic Period?

2.   What is the meaning of the adjective daimoni in Homer?

3.   According to Hesiod, what happened to the humans of the Golden Age after they died?

4.   What was the personal daimon?

5.   When did Pythagoreans expect to become daimones?

6.   When did followers of Orphism or the Bacchic mysteries expect to become daimones?  How was this achieved?

7.    How did Zoroastrian and Mesopotamian religious ideas reach Greece?

8.   What effects did Mesopotamian astrology have upon Greek mythology? Name two effects.

9.   Did early Greece seek to rise above the human condition?

10.   What was proto-puritanism, and where does E.R. Dodds think it came from?

11.   According to later classical Paganism, where did daimones come from and were they good, bad or mixed?

12.   How did the deities of the later classical Pagans differ from those of heathen peoples outside of the Empire?

13.   What were Paul’s two theories about Pagan deities? Which theory was favored by early missionaries and why?

14.   When did Paul’s other theory come into favor and what allowed this to happen?

15.   What were the pre-Christian deities of heathens like in relation to humans?

Suggested Answers to Study Questions from Lesson 3:

Reading Between the Lines:

1.   Name two assumptions scholars feel obligated to make when examining the world views of other cultures.

Psychic unity and the subjective nature of religious phenomena.

2.   What is ‘paradigm creep’?  What is ‘paradigm imposition’?  Give an example of each.

Paradigm creep involves confusing one’s own explanations with what indigenous peoples believe.  Paradigm imposition ignores what they believed and simply asserts that our own explanations are what ‘really’ happened.

3.   How might the idea of ‘projection’ falsify the details of an experience?

By ignoring the actual feelings the experiencer had prior to receiving very different feelings from outside.  In the example given, I was feeling rather cheap after giving the man five dollars and subsequently received a feeling of warm approval, which overlapped the prior feeling so that there were two contradictory feelings occurring simultaneously.

Our Two Souls:

1.   Give an example from your own experience of the life soul; of the dream soul.

Answers can vary.  The life-soul faces outward and deals with the outer world through language and the personality.  The dream-soul faces inward but experiences the outer world through the eyes of the life-soul.  Answer from your own experiences, bearing in mind these distinctions.

2.   Has your life soul ever suffered injury?  Describe how it healed.

Here again, answers can vary.  Shock or bereavement or even just long, dull routine can make us feel dispirited, unreal, empty of zest and enthusiasm.  Choose an example from your own experience and tell how you recovered from it.

3.   Why has nature provided for the occasional partial separation of our two souls?

This provides us with a safety valve so we can occasionally stand back from disappointments and misfortune and regard them calmly.

4.   How did the Pagan institution of the elgeta (holy beggar) prepare one for the eventual separation of the life soul from the dream soul at death?

The elgeta, like the Hindu sanyassin, owns virtually nothing and is all awareness.  The same is true of the feeling we get when we are in the dream-soul, and therefore, presumably, that is how we shall feel when the dream-soul separates from the life-soul after the death of the body.

A Note to Students: As you know by now, I don’t believe in tests.  If you want to send me your answers to the Study QQ, feel free to do so and I will evaluate your answers.  In other words, you are on your honor to work this course hard for your own benefit.  The Bibliography is also (as called in the first lessons) a ‘Suggested Reading’ list.  You owe it to yourself to get as much as you can out of this course as well as anything else you take up in your precious, unique lives.

What I do ask each of you most earnestly is to send me at least one e-mail telling me what you think of the course, and asking any questions that occur to you.  Feel free to criticize; anything is better than silence.  I’d like to know how I’m doing.

My e-mail address is quicksilver101445@yahoo.com

Bright blessings!

Ian

---

[1] Hesiod, Works and Days, 110-125, p. 62.

[2] Rose, Religion in Greece and Rome, p. 193.

[3] Burkert, Greek Religion, p. 295 et seq.

[4] Xenophon, The Education of Cyrus, Book I.

[5] Op.cit., Book VIII.

[6] E.R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, Ch. V.

[7] Herodotus, The History, IV:36, p. 292.

[8] Xenophon, Anabasis, V:34, p. 417.  For other cultures see Frazer, The Golden Bough, abridged, pp. 135 et seq.

[9] Burkert, Greek Religion, p. 326.

[10] Op.cit., p. 155.

[11] This cosmic view persisted throughout late antiquity and the Middle Ages until the observation of a nova in Elizabethan times brought it to a sudden and dramatic end.

[12] This view of the Gods was confined to the Pagans of the Roman Empire.  Heathen peoples who lived beyond the Empire continued to believe in deities of the Homeric type, who had passions and faults.

[13] The Prose Edda, pp. 23 et seq.

[14] The Kalevala, p. 388.

[15] Of Gods and Holidays, p. 159.

Tags: paganism

• Classes

Ian Elliott September, 2010

Principles of Paganism

Lesson 3:  Pagan Psychology

Part One: Reading Between the Lines

I am currently re-reading a very interesting book, The Greeks and the Irrational, by E.R. Dodds, that throws a lot of light upon ancient Greek religious psychology.  Like many other accounts of ancient and “primitive” religion, it interprets the evidence in terms of our own cultural prejudices, such as our assumption of psychic unity and the subjective nature of religious phenomena.  By being alert to certain expressions, however, we can catch the instances where a scholar or anthropologist is wearing his cultural blinkers and discount his self-imposed limitations of understanding.

For instance, in chapter 1 of Dodds, footnote 37 (p. 21), in speaking of the goddess Hera’s erinyes or avenging spirits, he says “The erinyes of Hera have exactly the same function as those of Penelope – to protect the status of a mother by punishing an unfilial son.  We can say that they are the maternal anger projected as a personal being.”  Exactly – presuming the erinyes do not exist, an assumption which Dodds, like all approved (and funded) scholars feels called upon to make.  What is good about Dodds is that he makes the assumptions explicitly, so they are easy to spot and discount.  He is careful to avoid anachronisms, for instance, when he says that trying to decide whether people in Homeric times believed in free will or determination amounts to posing a question that hadn’t yet been asked and that, if posed to them, they would find very hard to understand (page 7).  Thus, he gets quite close to what we can know of their thought processes without importing our own, beyond the assumptions we are noting here.  And if we look out for words like “projection” we shall be able to get those assumptions out of the way so that we can attempt to feel the world from within the ancient skin, as it were.

Reading between the lines in the above case does not involve a simple reversal, in which we would say that the maternal anger felt by Hera is merely an introjection of her experience of her erinyes’ enmity.  The maternal anger is there as well; what can be discounted, for our purposes, is Dodd’s remark that the erinyes represent a mere projection of that anger.  There is nothing in the experience of maternal anger to provide evidence either way for his assumption that a projection is involved (but see my note at the end of this section).  This is simply a matter, then, of preferring the modern perspective to the ancient, a custom among scholars similar to that of calling all ancient games “checkers” or “chess” rather than presenting a description of the actual games being played.

If we, on the other hand, prefer the ancient perspective we needn’t worry that in so doing we would be offending against Occam’s razor by “multiplying entities beyond necessity.”  For, in the first place, it is not at all clear that positing the unity and isolation of the soul makes fewer assumptions, in the face of all available psychological evidence, than the more ancient viewpoints that allow for multiple souls and psychic permeability towards the world of spirits.  In the second place, however, we are approaching the matter from a different standard of necessity, that of seeing and feeling the world as the ancients did, or as nearly as we can get to that.  We want to be like the anthropologists who “go native” and thereby, in the eyes of their colleagues, vitiate the objective value of their observations.  As we are not trying to be objective anthropologists, we needn’t worry about that.

As long as we are speaking of anthropologists, here is an example from an excellent anthology of monographs called African divination Systems.  In the book’s introduction, the editor praises the more objective approaches of anthropologists, some of whom happened to be missionaries but nevertheless did not feel compelled (as other missionaries did) to color their accounts with deprecatory remarks (page 7).    Nevertheless, here too we find the same horse-blinkers of soul unity and assumption of subjectivity of religious experiences, which can, to varying degrees, be as easily elided from their accounts as from those in Dodds.

In the course of describing divination, an anthropologist sometimes confuses his own explanation with what the indigenous peoples believe.  Discussing Atuot divination in the southern Sudan, John W. Burton explains that the word for diviner, tiet, is derived from tet or “hand:”

“During the divination ritual the tiet holds a rattle in his hand, but it is said to be the jok, the suprahuman power within his body that shakes the rattle, not the tiet himself.  As the Atuot say, ‘this is the jok moving within him.’  His own consciousness apparently becomes subordinate to the jok that is presumed to control his behavior…Because jao [the plural of jok] are considered to be spiritual manifestations of an individual’s inner state of consciousness – manifestations that may enter and act upon another individual – they can be spoken of as active spiritual agents.” (page 46).

The use of the passive voice in the above passage – “are considered to be spiritual manifestations,” etc., conceals the lack of a clear subject.  Who considers them to be such?  Not the Atuot, surely, for they believe the possessing jok to be an entity existing on its own, not an externalization of the diviner’s “inner state of consciousness.”  If pressed to reply, Burton would have to admit that it is he who considers them to be such, he and his professional colleagues.  This gradual surreptitious change in viewpoint could be called a case of “paradigm creep.”

The most blatant example of paradigmatic arrogance on my shelves occupies a pivotal chapter on religion in what is otherwise a wonderfully reasoned scholarly account of Mesopotamian civilization by A. Leo Oppenheim called Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization.   The chapter itself bears the cautious title “Why a ‘Mesopotamian Religion’ Should Not be Written.”  In it, Oppenheim proceeds along similar lines to Dodds but is more thoroughgoing in his interpretations of the four protecting spirits addressed in prayer as “externalized” aspects of the “personality:”

“All this can be characterized as the expression of a psychological experience in mythological terms.  To the student of comparative religion or the cultural anthropologist, the several “protective spirits”…represent but another example of the widespread concept of multiple and external souls.  The four protective “spirits” in Mesopotamia are individualized and mythologized carriers of certain specific psychological aspects of one basic phenomenon, the realization of the self, the personality, as it relates the ego to the outside world and, at the same time, separates one from the other (pages 199-200).”

Here again, the scholar doesn’t mean to imply that the ancients praying to the four protective spirits “really” mean the abstract psychological terms employed in his explanation.  He is not so naïve as to commit such an anachronism; what he is doing instead is to arrogantly impose concepts from our own cultural paradigm on experiences from four millenia ago in the apparent assurance that that is what was “really” happening at the time, and also assumes that our explanations in turn will outlast our time and still be valid four millenia hence, because they are somehow objectively true.  This is not paradigm creep, it is paradigm imposition.

Further examples of our cultural condescension in these matters would not be hard to produce.  The literature of anthropology, classics and archaeology is rife with them.  Enough has been shown here to illustrate how to spot such interpretations and, with a little ingenuity, to separate the wheat of ancient or “primitive” sensibility from the chaff of modernist debunking.  By reading between the lines of such accounts, we can begin to enter imaginatively into other worlds of experience and thereby enrich our own.

A Note on “Projection”:

The other day I gave five dollars to a man who said he was broke.  We were outside a diner in a parking lot.  I turned to go to my car when I felt a curious tap on the shoulder, a tap that was at the same time a feeling of warmth.  Looking back and up, I saw that the Sun was shining with unusual brilliance and I felt a feeling of gladness coming from it towards me.  I had not been feeling particularly proud of myself for giving the man money (if anything, I felt rather cheap and was wondering what he could buy these days for such a small sum).  My feelings at the moment could be described as grave sobriety.  The feeling of gladness, of having pleased someone or something else, came last in the experience I had at that moment.   I was not feeling it, something else was.

In like manner, Penelope (or Hera) might have felt the presence or social gesture of an erinys (singular of erinyes) coming from without, and then received the feeling of maternal anger.

I am not arguing for the veracity of these explanations, merely illustrating how dismissing such events as “projection” can misrepresent the dynamics of the experiences themselves by reversing their direction.

Bibliography

DODDS, E.R., The Greeks and the Irrational, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1951.

OPPENHEIM, A. Leo, Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1964.

PEEK, Philip M., ed., African divination Systems, Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1991.

Part Two: Our Two Souls

As Michael York points out in his recent study, Pagan Theology (NYU Press), most pagan cultures posit at least two souls, and many posit more than two. These two souls are not separate in embodied life, but are closely associated, and only separate at death. York calls them the life soul and the dream soul. In Mongolian-Siberian culture they are called the suld and the ami. [1] In pagan Baltic society the life soul was called the sielas and the dream soul, the vele. [2]

The life soul is most closely associated with the personality and one's feeling of connection with natural life. The dream soul is closer to the identity of the person, the "who", and it is the dream soul that goes on dream or shamanic journeys and that goes to Dausos, the Otherworld, at death, there to await rebirth in the family or clan line. The life soul lingers by the grave for a season and receives grave-offerings.  Our custom of placing flowers on a grave (even though later religion teaches the soul is not there) goes back to this belief in the lingering life soul.

Pagan cemeteries were frequently planted with trees, in the belief that the life soul or sielas, after lingering around the corpse for a while, would pass into that person's individual tree, which was associated with him/her throughout life. According to the Mongolians and Siberians, the life soul or suld does not reincarnate but after a while goes into nature as an elemental and in time [3] forgets its once-human existence. I do not know the Baltic teaching on the subject. Perhaps they believed that the sielas reunites with the vele when the latter reincarnates, or perhaps a new sielas is supplied.

It may sound strange to say we have two souls, but this is because we associate the word "soul" with our identity. Only the dream soul or vele is involved in one's identity. But much of what we think of as ourselves, such as long-standing habits of thought and feeling, actually belong to our sielas. The proof of this is that they change throughout life, and can fade when we are ill or grief-stricken.

There is an old vaudeville joke which illustrates the difference between the two souls. One person says "Pay no attention to Mr. X today; he's not himself." The other replies, "Who is he, then?" The seeming contradiction is resolved by realizing that the statement pertains to the sielas or life soul, and the question to the vele or dream soul.

When we receive a shock or a great bereavement in life, we can feel as though we had died, or very nearly so, and that we are now just going through the motions of living. What has happened is that our sielas or life soul has been injured and has shrunk, as it were. Our zest and enthusiasm are not gone, but they are very small. Sometimes one recovers from this condition, at other times one dies in it.

If the shock is sufficient, the dream soul may separate from the life soul before the body dies and may have to be retrieved from the Otherworld by a shaman. This condition is known as soul loss. Modern psychologists refer to it as dissociative trauma.

If you feel you are living posthumously, your sielas has been injured by grief or shock, and you must slowly and carefully nurture it back to health. Each day treat yourself to simple pleasures, and do not make large demands on your nerves or strength. Your spirit is convalescing, and you will know you are regaining your vitality when you really begin enjoying life again.

The occasional partial separation of the vele and sielas, allowing the vele to explore the spirit world, is a safety valve provided us by nature that helps us deal with disappointments and failures in the material world. Pagan religion taught its adherents to cultivate both souls, the outward and inward. The overall cultivation of the sielas was  associated with the waxing half of the year, and of the vele with the waning half, but attention was also paid to the lunar and diurnal cycles.

When the vele partly separates from the sielas without dissociation, we feel as though we own nothing and are pure awareness. This was expressed in pagan Baltic tradition by associating the vele with the elgeta or holy beggar, a sort of wandering ascetic found in pre-christian Lithuania. [4] "What you do for an elgeta, you do for a vele," goes the old saying.

Bibliography

SARANGEREL, Chosen by the Spirits; Following Your Shamanic Calling, Rochester, Vt, Destiny , 2001.

___________, Riding Windhorses; A Journey into the Heart of Mongolian Shamanism, Rochester, Vt, Destiny , 2000.

TRINKUNAS, Jonas, ed., Of Gods and Holidays; the Baltic Heritage,  Tverme (city), Tverme (publisher),  1999.

YORK, Michael, Pagan Theology; Paganism as a World Religion, New York and London, New York University Press, 2003.

Exercise: When I was very small, I liked looking at ‘the baby in the mirror.’  At this age I experienced myself as headless.  When I was told (after some adult laughter at my expense) that the baby was me, and the reflection of my head was the same as my head (it isn’t), I began to ignore the sensations of my headlessness, that is, the little I can see of my head without the aid of a reflecting surface, just as I later learned to ignore the moon following me home when told it was an illusion.  I internalized the reflection of my head and acquired the culturally implanted viewpoint of living inside a box looking out at the world, the view influencing the scholars mentioned in Part 1 above.  When Indians and other indigenous peoples complain that the white man thinks with his head instead of his chest, they are referring to this implantation.

Try keeping your headlessness in view.  You can do this even in front of a mirror, as you did when you were little.  You will see a little of your head, of course: a blur for your nose, your eyelashes in strong sunlight.  But  in place of your head you will have the world, your visual field.  Thinking will begin to seem to come from your chest, the closest part of your body you can see completely.  This exercise  is described (and then over-analyzed) in an important little book called On Having No Head, by Douglas Harding (Arkana, London and New York, 1987).

The practice of headless awareness promotes a quiet mind and opens our feelings to the world of spirits.

Questions for Lesson 3:

Reading Between the Lines:

1. Name two assumptions scholars feel obligated to make when examining the world views of other cultures.

1. What is ‘paradigm creep’?  What is ‘paradigm imposition’?  Give an example of each.

1. How might the idea of ‘projection’ falsify the details of an experience?

Our Two Souls:

1. Give an example from your own experience of the life soul; of the dream soul.

1. Has your life soul ever suffered injury?  Describe how it healed.

1. Why has nature provided for the occasional partial separation of our two souls?

1. How did the pagan institution of the elgeta (holy beggar) prepare one for the eventual separation of the life soul from the dream soul at death?

Questions from Lesson 2: Suggested Answers

1. If the future is fated, in what sense do we have free will?

At birth our fate is only sketched; as we go through life making choices, our fate is drawn in greater detail.

1. How do the gods seek to help us within the limits of our fate?  Name two ways.

The gods help us to optimize our possibilities, within the limits of our fate, by providing us with opportunities.  They send us omens and otherwise help us to be aware of our alternatives at critical turning-points in our lives.

1. What are turning-points?  Why is it best to recognize them clearly when they arrive?

These are points at which we still have the freedom to choose either of two paths in life.  Recognizing them clearly leaves us free to choose one or the other, instead of feeling, as we sometimes do, that we really have no choice.

1. What does it mean to say that one’s fate is sealed?  Do the results of such a sealing always happen right away?

When we have chosen one alternative at a turning-point, circumstances begin to close in on us, leading to some final result.  The result may not happen right away because the circumstances involved may be complex.

1. Give an example of a triggering event in the case of a sealed fate.

When Hector killed Patroclus, Achilles’ cousin, his death at the hands of Achilles was assured.

1. Why is will limited?  How is will self-limiting?

Will is spiritual and spirit for pagans is a subtle form of matter; as with gross matter, there is only so much of it available at a given time and place.  Every decision involves some rejection of alternatives, limiting future choices.

1. As we age, we receive less vital energy, including will-energy.  In what other way is usable will-energy diminished?

Will-energy can be bound up in habits, which are like knots.  It takes energy to unravel habits, but the result  is often a net increase in available energy.

Note: I am always happy to receive your answers to study questions, but their main purpose is to promote reflection on the lesson and some of its main points.  I welcome your queries and comments.  You can email me at quicksilver101445@yahoo.com.

---

[1] Mongolians divide the functions of the dream soul between the ami and suns, the conception of the latter most likely derived from Tibetan Buddhist influence.

[2] ‘Ami’ is pronounced ‘em’, and ‘vele’ is pronounced ‘vwele’.

[3] The Mongolians and Siberians say that the suld forgets its human existence after ten years.

[4] The condition of being an elgeta was temporary, undertaken for a season only.

Tags: paganism

• Classes

Ian Elliott August, 2010

Lesson 2

Will and Fate

In pagan religion the future is fated, but this should not be understood in a straight-line sense.  The mind of Moira, [1] the dark goddess of fate in Greek religion, is incredibly complex.  She does not prescribe one series of events only, but allows for certain forkings to occur for each person at certain critical moments.  When one is born, his or her fate is merely sketched out by Moira; in the course of life one will make decisions, and in response to these she will begin filling in details in the picture of one’s future.

Will is of the spirit, and spirit, like everything else, is material, though it is subtle matter rather than the gross matter we see and feel every day.  Being material, there is only so much of it at any one time or place.  When we are born, we have the possibility of many different forking paths, but as we choose first this fork and then another, our possibilities close in on us.  This is the same as to say that we gradually use up our will-substance, or, if you prefer, our will-energy (for matter and energy are interchangeable), [2] and what we receive is often bound up in habits and so rendered less directly usable.  We generally know when these critical junctures come to us, though we may pretend to ourselves, out of habit, that we have no real choice at that moment.   At one point one is still free to fulfill certain possibilities in his or her life, but if the other fork is taken then those possibilities go away.  With respect to those possibilities, one’s fate is then sealed.

When seers or seeresses foretell the future, they foretell it in terms of those parts of fate that are already sealed, and then add in their knowledge of which critical turning-points lie ahead.  A person with a clear mind will see a fork in his or her path and the two fates to which each fork leads, even though he often has a strong disposition to choose one of the alternatives.  Thus, Achilles saw clearly that he had the choice to go to the war against Troy or not, and following his warlike heart chose to go, even though it was predicted that he would die young.  In going, he chose a short life with renown.  [3]

Choosing certain forks in the road can gradually seal one’s fate in advance, until all that remains to happen is the event which will trigger the final sealing.  Thus,  when Hector mortally wounds Patroclus, the latter while dying declares that Hector’s fate to be killed by Achilles now stands over him. [4] And indeed, when Achilles is pursuing Hector, Zeus weighs the fates of the two heroes in his scales and the fate of Hector is borne down and departs wailing into Hades, which is another way of saying his fate is sealed. [5] Against such the gods themselves strive in vain; but until one’s fate is sealed, they do their best to help us optimize our possibilities within its limits.  They also send omens foretelling turning-points to come, so that we can take the better forks in the road with full mental clarity, as Achilles did.  They do this for those mortals who treat them with respect and reverence, acting towards them in a friendly manner.

An omen sometimes tells one that a critical turning-point has just been reached, sealing off certain possibilities which it would be futile to pursue any further.  When Leif Ericsson’s expedition to Vinland in North America was ready to sail from the Greenland colony, his father Eric the Red intended to sail with him.  However, on his way down to the harbor he slipped and fell, injuring his thigh.  Recognizing the omen, he had himself carried back home again, declaring that it was not his fate to discover any more new lands.  [6]

The gods, for the most part, do not foresee all the future.  While Odin’s wife Frigg knew the full future of men and gods, she would not prophesy.  [7] Odin himself had to consult a seeress, as is told in the Voluspø of the Elder Edda.  [8] Zeus heard a prophecy that, just as he had supplanted his father Kronos, so he in turn would be supplanted by a future god.  The titan Prometheus, who had the power of forethought, knew the identity of Zeus’ supplanter but refused to reveal it, even under torture. [9] It appears to be a universal pattern in paganism that the few beings who know the full tale of possibilities for the future never reveal all of their knowledge.

Nevertheless, partial glimpses of the future may be had through oracles, omens and dreams.  As mentioned above, these are prophecies of fates which are already sealed and only await certain triggering events to become manifest, or else of critical turning-points where one or another fatal course will emerge as the result of a decision taken.  It is because will is a function of spirit and spirit, like all forms of matter-energy, is limited, that these turning points and sealings take place.  To make a decision is to cut away all other possibilities except the one chosen at that moment.

Moira operates on many levels, for each cosmos contains smaller cosmoses within it.  Many pagan cultures recognized this fact, and each person is a cosmos in miniature, with internal gods and spirits serving as counterparts to the greater gods of our common cosmos.  Just as our cosmos, often pictured as a great world tree, [10] draws its nourishment from an underlying sea of chaos, so each of us draws on a store of vitality from a source beyond our control.  And just as a cosmos in decline will gradually receive less ‘water’ or vital energy from the underlying sea, so each of us is born, develops, reaches a peak of vitality, and then begins to decline towards death, as our own store of vital energy gradually runs out.

On the highest level, Moira governs the cosmic cycle itself, which worsens in time until she is ready to bring it to an end.  The vølva or seeress in the Voluspø described her [11] and the end-time thus:

“In the east sat an old woman in Iron-wood

and nurtured there offspring of Fenrir;

a certain one of them in monstrous form

will be the snatcher of the moon.” [12]

Ironwood can mean a tough wood like hornbeam; but it also refers to a type of tree that takes on a rusty hue when it dies; hence this is probably a death symbol.  Fenrir’s children were a monstrous brood who would fight the Æsir at Ragnarøk, the final battle closing that world-cycle.  Moira and Urd’s Hindu counterpart was the dark goddess Kali who also brought a cosmic cycle to an end, preserving the gods and other spirits (including the spirits of mortals) in a seed in her womb, until it was time to bring forth a new cycle. [13] The archaic Greek poet Hesiod, who seems to have known only one cycle, also represented the cosmos as worsening in the course of four ages of gold, silver, bronze and iron, with an interregnum of demigodlike heroes between the third and fourth ages to account for the heroes of the Iliad and Odyssey. [14] He seems to be harmonizing two traditions here.

Moira sometimes appears as a group of three goddesses, especially when assigning fate to one just born.   We see later versions of this in fairy tales, where a harsh fate foretold by the older fairies is somewhat ameliorated by the youngest of them. [15] The gods, in optimizing our fate, can often draw upon this minor strand to render some fated restriction a little more flexible, or provide the one fated with an unlooked-for compensation or consolation; but it is generally up to us to recognize, grasp and make use of our boon from the youngest fairy.

Questions for Lesson 2:

1. If the future is fated, in what sense do we have free will?
2. How do the gods seek to help us within the limits of our fate?  Name two ways.
3. What are turning-points?  Why is it best to recognize them clearly when they arrive?
4. What does it mean to say that one’s fate is sealed?  Do the results of such a sealing always happen right away?
5. Give an example of a triggering event in the case of a sealed fate.
6. Why is will limited?  How is will self-limiting?
7. As we age, we receive less vital energy, including will-energy.  In what other way is usable will-energy diminished?

Questions from Lesson 1 with Suggested Answers

Lesson 1, Part 1:

1. One barrier to understanding ancient religion is anachronism, the tendency to read into ancient ideas the meanings of later ideas.  What is the other?  Give an example of both hurdles.

Deliberate mistranslation.  An example of anachronism is the much later idea of creation from nothing, which leads translators to interpolate the word ‘And’ at the beginning of Gen. 1:2, thus making the account of bringing form into pre-existing matter seem as having taken place after the act of creation, instead of describing how that creation took place.

Examples of deliberate mistranslation are ‘God’ for ‘Elohim,’ which means ‘the gods of the family of El;’ and ‘void’ for the Hebrew word meaning an abandoned ruin or desolation.

1. Why are the Sumerians unsuitable as a source of information on root paganism?

The many cities of Sumer all had a common pantheon of gods, suggesting that their religion was already well-established when they arrived in southern Iraq, perhaps c. 4000 BCE; and it was a sophisticated, urbanized religion.  Thus we lack information about Sumerian religion in its formative, tribal phase when the people were pastoral.

1. What is meant by root or robust paganism anyway?

Religion based on personal experience which is open-ended in its development and controlled loosely through tribal custom instead of by urban political forces.

1. Concepts are attempted answers to questions.  How does the ancient question about creation differ from the later question?  How do the answers differ?

The ancient question was something like “How did local conditions come about?”  The later question is “How did everything come about originally?” The answer to the former differed according to terrain, weather, and other local factors.  The answer to the latter depends on philosophical thinking.

1. How can modern scientific knowledge be reconciled with ancient views of the world?

The ancients, prior to the advent of philosophy, sought to describe the world as it appeared to the senses.  Modern science builds upon sensation with the use of precision instruments and controlled experiments to explain and predict phenomena.  Where such explanations and predictions are necessary to our everyday lives, we can draw upon science; but in the moment-by-moment living of our lives our experiences will be enriched by paying attention to the world simply as it appears, with the sun rising in the east in the morning and setting in the west in the evening, and so forth.

Lesson 1, Part  2:

1:  Name one way in which cosmos and chaos are relative to each other.

Every cosmos contains within it wilder entities that have penetrated its boundaries, and generally lie in peripheral areas out towards those boundaries.  Every cosmos is contained within a larger cosmos that is organized more loosely, containing wilder entities and more virulent energies, but which are nevertheless organized after their own fashion, as a wilderness operates by its own laws of kill or be killed and surrounds a settlement in a clearing that enjoys a more ordered existence.

2:  What does the dark goddess do in favor of chaos?  How does she   help cosmos?

She gradually lets chaotic elements accumulate within a cosmos as it declines, finally letting them overwhelm it at the end of a cycle.  She helps preserve cosmic entities in a seed in Her womb between cycles until it is time for a cosmos to be reborn.

3: Sometimes chaos within cosmos makes a positive contribution.  How         does this come about?

Trickster gods like Loki or Coyote spike the well-laid plans of the gods of cosmic order, forcing them to develop new methods, often with the help of the trickster god himself, who shows them how to circumvent the harm he has caused by introducing new powers and magical weapons.

Bibliography (Suggested Reading):

HESIOD and THEOGNIS, transl. by Dorothea Wender, London and New        York, Penguin , 1973.

HOMER, The Iliad, in 2 vols., transl. by A. T. Murray, Cambridge, MA &            London, Harvard University Press, 1993,

HUNT, Margaret, transl., Household Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm,      London, George Bell, 1884, 1892, in 2 vols.

JONES, Gwyn, transl., Erik the Red’s Saga, in The Norse Atlantic Saga,             Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1986.

KERENYI, C., The Heroes of the Greeks, London, Thames and Hudson,             reprint, 1997.

LIND, L. R., ed., Ten Greek Plays, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1957.

NIKHILANANDA, Swami, transl., The Upanishads, vols. 1 – 4,  New      York, Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1977.

POETIC EDDA, The, transl. Carolyne Larrington.  Oxford, New York,      Oxford University Press, 1996.

Exercise:

When I was a boy I spent a week out of each summer vacation visiting my cousins, who lived farther out on Long Island, where it was more rural at the time.  One evening we were returning from a walk when I noticed that the moon seemed to be following us home.  I mentioned this and was told that it was an illusion.  I can remember feeling embarrassed when told this.  Many years later, when my younger son and I were on a similar evening walk, he pointed to the moon keeping pace with us, and I realized that I had ceased to notice this sensation ever since that time in my boyhood.  I said nothing about it being an illusion, and just kept the moon in view out of the corner of my left eye.  Including a long-ignored sensation in my attention rendered all my perceptions more vivid, and I felt a sort of energy flowing from the moon into my head.  When I turned to face the moon, the flow of energy ceased.  Evidently the habit of ignoring the moon following me home was implanted in my frontal vision; but when I fixed my peripheral attention on it again, the energy flow and vividness of sensation resumed.  Try this out yourself on the moon.  It works on the sun as well, of course, but the sun is too bright and dazzling, and the light of the moon is soothing and stimulates alpha rhythms in the brain.

---

[1] For simplicity’s sake, we will refer to fate as the Greek goddess (or Titaness) Moira, except when making specific reference to figures from other traditions, such as the Hindu Kali or Scandinavian Urd.

[2] The denser the matter, the lower the frequency of energy; the higher the frequency of energy, the subtler the matter.

[3] Kerenyi, p. 347.

[4] Iliad XVI: 855.

[5] Iliad XXII: 210.

[6] Saga of Erik the Red, pp. 207-35.  See Jones in bibliography.

[7] Loki’s Quarrel, 29.  See The Poetic Edda, p. 89.

[8] See The Poetic Edda in bibliography.  Voluspø is called ‘The Seeress’s Prophecy in this edition.

[9] Æschylus, Prometheus Bound.  See Lind, Ten Greek Plays.

[10] Voluspø 19.  See The Poetic Edda, p. 6.

[11] In Norse religion Fate is threefold, called the three Norns.  The eldest, Urd, is probably meant here.

[12] Voluspø 40.  See The Poetic Edda, p. 9.

[13] Nikhilananda, vol. 1, pp 67-8.

[14] Hesiod, Works and Days 105 et passim, pp. 62 – 65.  See Hesiod in bibliography.

[15] See for instance ‘Little Briar-Rose’ in Brothers’ Grimm Household Tales (Hunt in Bibliography).  There we have 13 wise women, the 13^th is left out (because she is from the old lunar calendar) of the baby’s christening and appears, pronouncing her curse of death.  The 12^th and youngest wise woman cannot undo the curse, but now she speaks her gift changing it to a magic sleep.  The milder fate always manifests later.

Tags: paganism

• Classes

Ian Elliott July, 2010

Introduction

In this course we shall be concerned with getting to the roots of pagan religion.  We shall clear away anachronisms and

deceptions in an attempt to uncover the historical origins of nature religion before these were obscured by empire-builders

and hierarchical priesthoods.

I say ‘the historical origins,’  because it is no use trying to get hold of the religion of prehistoric peoples.  Marija

Gimbutas has made a valiant effort along those lines in her Language of the Goddess, but until we come to written records

we really have only shards of pottery and old bones, and not much else to deal with.

Writing in the Western world began with the Sumerians, during a period of foreign domination named by archaeologists after

the location of its principle site, the Jamdat Nasr period.  Jamdat Nasr is on the middle Tigris.  Before that period,

perhaps around 3000 BCE or a little earlier, we get picture writing but nothing we can tie to spoken language.  And what we

get thereafter are what are known as laundry-lists, that is, inventories of animals and crops for temples, the centers of a

storage economy. 1 For anything religious we have to wait for the ensuing period, when the Sumerians threw off the yoke of

the Jamdat Nasrites, a time called ‘the Period of Warring States.’

However, though the Sumerians present us with the earliest written records, their religion was already sophisticated and in

its finished form when they first appeared on the scene in southern Mesopotamia in the early 4th millenium BCE.  They were

already urbanites, and the religion we learn about is largely that of the court, not of the common people, though we can

deduce a lot of the latter from cylinder-seals and burials.  This is not paganism in its nascent form, for which we shall

have to go to the barbarians of more recent times.  And most of the earlier written records we shall consult must be taken

with more than a grain of salt, because they were written by people who were either hostile to the indigenous faiths and

determined to wipe them out, or else by conquerors like Caesar who wished to produce propaganda promoting their own

political ambitions.

At the outset I mentioned two hurdles we shall have to overtake to get at much of our evidence for robust (that is to say,

root) paganism as being anachronism and deceptions, by which I meant deceptive translations.  For a good example of both,

let us consider the first two verses of Genesis, in the Old Testament:

Gen. 1:1 is usually translated “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”  The word translated ‘God’ is the

Hebrew ‘Elohim,’  which is plural, 2 and in fact means ‘the family of El’.  El, as Elya, was a god of the Canaanite

pantheon, and is found as El among the baked archives of the city of Ebla in North Syria, destroyed by Naram-Suen the king

of Akkad (in Mesopotamia) around 2200 BC.  Another of the gods of Ebla was Yah, who later became Yahweh.  Yah and El were

separate deities.

Gen. 1:2, as usually translated, starts with the word ‘And,’ but this is always put into italics, meaning that it has been

added by the translator.  The reason it is added in is to create the impression of passage of time, that the second verse

is describing an event after that described in the first verse.  If we leave out the word ‘and,’ it becomes probable that

the second verse is simply expanding on the first, telling how the creation came about.

The verse as translated then says: “The earth was without form and void…”  Here we come to the crux of the matter.  The

word translated ‘void’  actually means ‘a desolation’ in Hebrew.  It is the same word used later in the Old Testament for

the ruined temples of Baal and Asherah, which were described as ‘the abomination of desolation.’  It didn’t mean there was

nothing there; it meant it had been abandoned and was no longer inhabited.

If you travel in Iraq outside the cities (not recommended in these dangerous days), you will see tells scattered here and

there in the desert.  These tells are mounds of earth of interest to archaeologists, for they were once cities and towns. 3

A common reason they were abandoned was because the river changed its course.  For instance, the ancient city of Ur in

southern Iraq, once a thriving port linked with the Persian Gulf, is now 17 kilometers out in the desert from the present

course of the Euphrates River.

Interestingly enough, if you were to go back in time to deep antiquity and walk through the same countryside, while some

parts would be greener, you would still see tells.  Towns were always being abandoned from time to time.  The Akkadian or

east Semitic word corresponding to the Hebrew ‘desolation’  was applied to these once-inhabited mounds.

This tells us something about creation in Gen. 1:2.  We are not starting with a void, but with the ruins of an earlier

world.  The beginning mentioned in the first verse is not the beginning of time, it is the beginning of this particular

world – this cosmos.  As we shall see, ‘cosmos’  and ‘world’ are synonymous.  One of the meanings of ‘cosmos’  in Greek is

‘order’.

Creation, then, is an ordering and a reclamation of an older world in ruins.  It begins to look like the ancients, in

describing the beginnings of their world, were not asking the same questions asked by later philosophers and theologians

concerned to know the absolute origin of everything.  This is the main thing to bear in mind when attempting to reconstruct

original paganism: it is asking, and attempting to answer, a different set of questions.  It is neither theology nor

philosophy nor science in the modern sense.  It is in a category of its own, for which we do not possess a label.  We must

examine and consider it on its own terms.  That is what I propose to do in this course.

Suggested Reading:

Ancient Mesopotamia, Portrait of a Dead Civilization, by A. Leo Oppenheim, Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press,

1977 (revised edition).

The Beginnings of Civilization, by Sir Leonard Wooley, New York and Toronto, a Mentor Book published by The New American

Library, 1965.

Exercise:

The sky was once thought to be a crystalline dome, lit by the sun during the day, through which one could see the moon and

stars at night.  This is the meaning of the word ‘firmament’ (‘welkin’ in Anglo-Saxon) in the first chapter of Genesis.

Not a bad guess for 5,000 years ago.  We know better today, of course; but now that we know the blue daytime sky is only

apparent, we tend not to look at it, except to check the weather.  Specifically, we do not look at it as one single thing,

a blue dome or vault overhead.

Paganism is about perception, about being alive to the world as it appears and feels.  Try including the sky in your

everyday awareness.  See it as a great dome or vault of blue.  It’s all right, you won’t get a letter in the mail from

scientists denouncing you as a traitor.  You can go on knowing about diffraction while still enjoying the sensation of

being in an enormous building roofed with an azure dome.  You can be modern in your knowledge and ancient in your

perceptions.  This is what neopaganism and post-modernism are all about.

Questions:

1. One barrier to understanding ancient religion is anachronism, the tendency to read into ancient ideas the meanings of

later ideas.  What is the other?  Give an example of both hurdles.
2. Why are the Sumerians unsuitable as a source of information on root paganism?
3. This course presents root or robust paganism.  What is meant by root or robust paganism anyway?
4. Concepts are attempted answers to questions.  How does the ancient question about creation differ from the later
question?  How do the answers differ?
5. How can modern scientific knowledge be reconciled with ancient views of the world?

Lesson 1, Part 2

Cosmos and Chaos:

Cosmos and chaos are relative terms.  The universe at large is not uniformly organized; instead, it is corpuscular,

consisting of units of greater organization surrounded by areas of a looser, freer organization.  The corpuscles contain

within themselves greater- and lesser-organized areas, and exist within larger corpuscles containing both them and the

surrounding, less-organized areas.  In other words, there are corpuscles within corpuscles.  Each corpuscle is what the

ancients called a cosmos, an ordered world.  The Milky Way is more ordered than the intergalactic space surrounding it, and

the space within my home is more ordered than the outside, which is subject to the ravages of weather.  My body is a

cosmos, striving to maintain itself against the forces of disease and aging; and my mind is a little cosmos, with its

illuminated circle of thoughts surrounded by shifting feelings and half-conscious urges.

Pagan religion pictures the world, to the limits of human perception and reason available at the time, in terms of this

template of cosmos and chaos.  Instead of providing an overview, like the later revelatory religions, it applies the

template of relative cosmos and chaos on whatever scale we are examining at a given time.

Thus, ancient Egypt, which was continuously inhabited through all four Ice Ages, was a cosmos, centering on the Nile and

surrounded on both sides by desert.  In the desert lived bedouins, and Egyptians knew that their lives were ordered as

well, but considered that order to be less orderly, less civilized than their own.  When the noble Sinuhe, in the Middle

Kingdom period, had to flee Egypt and live among the bedouins, he achieved great fame in their kingdom (for one Egyptian

can beat ten bedouins, hands down, any day) but in his old age longed to return to Egypt.  He was granted a pardon by the

reigning Pharaoh and given a place at court.  In the end he died happily, knowing he would be mummified and buried in the

proper manner, not covered with sand like a wretched Asiatic. 4  For Egyptians, to die outside Egypt was a sort of

damnation.

We see the same thinking in Norse myth.  The nine worlds ranged along the boughs of the World Ash-Tree are not equally

ordered.  Åsgard, at the top, is protected against the depredations of the Jøtuns or Giants, but Midgeard – Middle earth,

where we live – is a spottier affair.  I live in Norway  now, and six hours by car north of Oslo are very high mountains –

one approaches them gradually ascending –  called Jotunheim, the home or realm of the Giants.  The Giants, like the Greek

Titans, were older than the Gods, survivors from an older, wilder, more chaotic world; and through Gods like Loki, who were

part Giant, their destabilizing influence tended to undermine the efforts of the Æsir, the Sky-Gods, to build up and

maintain a civilized order. 5  At the same time, the struggle between order and chaos leads to development and evolution in

the world,  and many of the treasures and weapons of the Æsir came from Loki as reparations to the Gods after being caught

in some mischief.  Yggdrasil, the World-Ash tree, itself draws its nourishment from an underlying sea of chaos.

The Hindu Vedas, ancient sacred writings from the 2nd millenium BCE, teach that each cosmos, including the souls inhabiting

it, has existed from eternity and will always exist, but goes through endless cycles of creation, growth, decay and

eventual destruction, followed by a period of quiescence when it rests in a seed-state, waiting to be reborn.  The seed

rests within the womb of Kali, the dark Goddess of fate, the active principle of the ultimate reality, an impersonal or

trans-personal sea of blissful sentience called Brahman. 6 Brahman and Kali are implacable, unlike the Gods; that is, it is

no good praying to them.  Kali’s empire begins where prayers fail.  Some of her Western counterparts were Skadi, the

Cailleach, the Norns, and ‘the Old ‘Un’ of the Eddas.  It is she who turns the wheel of cosmic cycles and decrees when a

world will founder.  As the prophetess says in the Younger Edda:

“The ancient one lives in the east / in the Wood of Iron / and there gives birth to Fenrir’s brood; / one of them all /

especially / in form of a troll / will seize the sun.” 7

Ironwood is a type of tree that turns rust color when it dies; thus this is a death symbol pertaining to Ragnarøk, the time

of the end of the world-cycle.

Ragnarøk, however, is the end of a cycle for Middle-earth only, though the old Gods go down to destruction in our defense.

But Åsgard itself is untouched, and when the new cycle begins, the game-pieces the Gods were playing with on the lawn

before Åsgard are found undisturbed.  The game, incidentally, is hnefatafl, not chess, as scholars, following an idiotic

academic convention, often mistranslate its name.  This deception is doubly ignorant, for chess is of all games

quintessentially Zoroastrian (that is, anti-pagan), depicting a battle between matched but opposing armies, the very image

of the forces of Ahura Mazda squaring off with those of Angra Mainyu on the field of the Earth; whereas hnefatafl is a

siege game, with the forces maintaining order in the center under attack from the forces of chaos coming in from the side.

It is that easy to conceal pagan symbolism by deceptive mistranslation.

Suggested Reading:

The Upanishads, vols. 1 – 4, translated by Swami Nikhilananda, New York, Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1977.

Tales of Ancient Egypt, Roger Lancelyn Green, London, Penguin , 1967.

The Prose Edda [The Younger Edda], translated by Jean I. Young, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, University of California

Press, first published 1954.

The Poetic Edda [The Elder Edda], translated by Carolyne Larrington, Oxford, New York, Oxford University Press, 1996.

Questions:

One: Name one way in which cosmos and chaos are relative to each other.

Two: What does the dark Goddess do in favor of chaos?  How does she help cosmos?

Three: Sometimes chaos within cosmos makes a positive contribution.  How does this come about?

Exercise:

When the wind or a breeze is blowing, become aware of your own breathing.  Your breath and the wind are connected.  Your

breathing is a little wind, and the wind breathes life-giving air into your face, nostrils and lungs.  They are one breath.

Feel them as one thing.

Tags: paganism

• Classes