A topic that’s interested me for a while is the theology of polytheism, and specifically theological defenses of polytheism. Over the centuries, Christianity has provided numerous defenses of monotheism, and Atheism has provided numerous counter-arguments in the centuries since the Enlightenment. Arguments for the validity of polytheism seem to have lagged a bit, although there do seem to be a few interesting beginnings. I admit that I haven’t read all of these, so I can’t say whether their ideas are worth pursuing or not. However, it seems to me that one reason that there isn’t a body of theological arguments for polytheism already is that, in a certain fashion, it has generally been readily obvious to people across the world, from the beginnings of human religiosity, that the world of the divine is populated by many gods.
Some of the defenses of polytheism that I have read have insisted that polytheism is just a way of understanding what is, essentially, a single thing: in essence, approaching a single god by relating to the god’s many facets or “masks”. This strikes me as wrong-headed, as it accepts that monotheism is somehow “truer” and ascribes the “truth” of monotheism to polytheism as well, without clearly showing the advantages of polytheism.
Yesterday, while out driving, I had a thought: that, even if the Holy is “one” on some level or in some sense (which I am not convinced of, at least not in the way usually posited), that level is one pretty far removed from the actual experience of most people. In seeing the Holy as multiple (and here, I’m starting to think that “the Holy”, a singular term, is awkward for my purposes), people seem to rely on their direct experience, which sees holiness in many things, and perceives many kinds of holiness; the obvious explanation for this is that there are many gods, each of which has a kind of holiness different from, but related to, others of the same kind. This is how people naturally approach the Holy, which is why, I believe, that most religions throughout history have been polytheistic.
Monotheism or monism, on the other hand, is an abstraction, the result of a cerebral exercise; or else it comes from a rarefied sort of mystical experience, the intuition of the underlying oneness of all things, that is far removed from the ordinary experiences of the common man. It seems to me that the insistence on the worship of and understanding of the Holy as singular has a damaging effect on religion in a general sense: it weakens and attenuates the experience of the Holy available to most of humanity, who have always naturally understood the Holy as comprising multiple gods.
I see it like this: From a distance, something can look like a simple, unitary thing; but when one looks at it from up close, one can see that it is a number of individual things in a complex interrelation. Just so with the Holy; if one insists that the Holy is one, that there is one god, or that all gods are aspects or “masks” of a single god, that requires one to look at it, as it were, from a distance. The main (Abrahamic) monotheistic traditions exacerbate this “distancing” of the Holy by insisting that the Holy is separate from the world, i.e. transcendent and not immanent. Polytheistic religions, conversely, tend to see the gods as both immanent and transcendent, and don’t insist on keeping them at arms length, so to speak. By relating to gods as different personalities (or, one might say, different "centers" or "sources" of holiness), that are present in the world as well as existing beyond it, it seems to me that polytheists enter into a much closer, more direct relationship with the Holy.
This line of thought suggests to me that the right sort of defense of polytheism would start from the sorts of ideas being developed by Alvin Plantinga, which are along the lines that a belief in God is “properly basic,” that is, the belief is true because the existence of God is able to be directly experienced. The belief in many gods seems even more “properly basic” than a belief in only one, based on the overwhelming number of polytheistic religions in history as opposed to monotheistic ones.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Friday, April 9, 2010
The Holy, part I: Basic Definitions
Any understanding of religion has to start with an understanding of holiness. Ideally, such an endeavor would begin with an explanation of "holy" to those who are completely unfamiliar with it, starting from a discussion of sensations like wonder and awe. I may get to such an explanation at some point, but for now, I’d like to start a bit further on.
In the theoretical framework of Mircea Eliade (which I find quite compelling), something is holy if it presents a break with the normal structure of time and space; that is, if it seems to belong to another, different kind of reality. This “different reality” is what I refer to as “the Holy” (borrowing Rudolf Otto’s term “das Heilige”), and is what I aim to discuss, along with that reality’s interaction with this one.
“The Holy” is an intentionally vague term: it has to be so when discussing general aspects of religion, because different religions define it differently. To Abrahamic monotheists, it is the god of Abraham. To polytheists such as myself, it is: the gods, the “world” (or “plane of existence”) in which they live and have their origin; and the “time” in which they live and in which their myths occur (Eliade’s ‘in illo tempore’).
From this, it seems that “the Holy” has a temporal and a spatial aspect. This is important, because it provides a clue to two unversal religious ideas: the concepts of “Sacred Time” and “Sacred Space”. Eliade discusses these concepts at length in The Sacred and the Profane, and I rely on those concepts in my explanations.
It’s easier for me to explain “Sacred Space” first. “Normal” or “profane” space is undifferentiated , chaotic, without “place” or orientation. It is only when there is a break in profane space, an eruption into it of the “other world” of the Holy, that it becomes differentiated as a place, and oriented with other places; only then is there a “there” there. Hallowing a space can create this breaking-through, and the holy space is thereafter a source of orientation, of a sense of place and meaning: “thereness.”
In the eras before the modern decline into a purely materialistic understanding of the universe (and Cartesian concepts of the nature of space), every house, temple, and village was founded by such a sanctification of space. Furthermore, houses, temples, and villages were built to reflect a people’s understanding of the structure of the universe; to found and build a house, temple, or village was to reenact, actually to re-experience, the creation of the universe. To re-experience that creation was to be in the time that it occurred, the time of that myth.
Sacred time, in a similar way, was a breaking through of the “then” of myth, of the Holy, into profane, undifferentiated time; i.e. into time as mere meaningless duration. Such a breaking-through gives meaning to time. The time of any ritual (such as the sort of foundation-ritual alluded to above) was held to be a breaking-through of the time of a myth into “profane time,” thus sanctifying it and giving it meaning. The time of a seasonal holiday, for instance, was the regularly recurring eruption of the time of a mythic event into the time of our existence. To give an example: end-of-year holidays, like the Germanic holiday Yule, coincided in many cultures with the time of the eschatological myth: end-of-year is equivalent to end-of-world (albeit, perhaps, in microcosm). This relates to many other things, such as the importance of retelling myths as a way of bringing the time of those myths into the present (making it “present,” literally); but the one thing I wanted to mention now is that the time of myth, sacred time, does not “wear out” like profane time. The time of any myth can be re-experienced however often, and it is always the same; unlike profane time which, once experienced, is gone forever.
One quality shared in common by sacred time and sacred space is the ability to give meaning. This, I think, is a quality of that “other world;” that it is a source of meaning, and gives its meaning to this world. Thus, the meaning, even the “reality” of this world is conditional, dependent upon the meaning and reality of the “other world,” which are absolute. Such a statement is likely to be confusing to someone who defines “reality” in terms of what is perceptible to the senses: isn’t “this world” real because it can be perceived, whereas some “other world” of myths and gods must be less real because of its relative imperceptability?
The difference lies in what has meaning. In most pre-modern cultures, only that which has meaning is perceived as being fully “real.” Typically, that which has meaning is that which shows a breaking-through of the events, figures, and time of myth, including natural phenomena and parts of the natural world that relate to myths and gods. One could say that anything that has meaning is, by definition, sacred in itself or in relation to some source of sacrality, i.e. to “the Holy.”
In the theoretical framework of Mircea Eliade (which I find quite compelling), something is holy if it presents a break with the normal structure of time and space; that is, if it seems to belong to another, different kind of reality. This “different reality” is what I refer to as “the Holy” (borrowing Rudolf Otto’s term “das Heilige”), and is what I aim to discuss, along with that reality’s interaction with this one.
“The Holy” is an intentionally vague term: it has to be so when discussing general aspects of religion, because different religions define it differently. To Abrahamic monotheists, it is the god of Abraham. To polytheists such as myself, it is: the gods, the “world” (or “plane of existence”) in which they live and have their origin; and the “time” in which they live and in which their myths occur (Eliade’s ‘in illo tempore’).
From this, it seems that “the Holy” has a temporal and a spatial aspect. This is important, because it provides a clue to two unversal religious ideas: the concepts of “Sacred Time” and “Sacred Space”. Eliade discusses these concepts at length in The Sacred and the Profane, and I rely on those concepts in my explanations.
It’s easier for me to explain “Sacred Space” first. “Normal” or “profane” space is undifferentiated , chaotic, without “place” or orientation. It is only when there is a break in profane space, an eruption into it of the “other world” of the Holy, that it becomes differentiated as a place, and oriented with other places; only then is there a “there” there. Hallowing a space can create this breaking-through, and the holy space is thereafter a source of orientation, of a sense of place and meaning: “thereness.”
In the eras before the modern decline into a purely materialistic understanding of the universe (and Cartesian concepts of the nature of space), every house, temple, and village was founded by such a sanctification of space. Furthermore, houses, temples, and villages were built to reflect a people’s understanding of the structure of the universe; to found and build a house, temple, or village was to reenact, actually to re-experience, the creation of the universe. To re-experience that creation was to be in the time that it occurred, the time of that myth.
Sacred time, in a similar way, was a breaking through of the “then” of myth, of the Holy, into profane, undifferentiated time; i.e. into time as mere meaningless duration. Such a breaking-through gives meaning to time. The time of any ritual (such as the sort of foundation-ritual alluded to above) was held to be a breaking-through of the time of a myth into “profane time,” thus sanctifying it and giving it meaning. The time of a seasonal holiday, for instance, was the regularly recurring eruption of the time of a mythic event into the time of our existence. To give an example: end-of-year holidays, like the Germanic holiday Yule, coincided in many cultures with the time of the eschatological myth: end-of-year is equivalent to end-of-world (albeit, perhaps, in microcosm). This relates to many other things, such as the importance of retelling myths as a way of bringing the time of those myths into the present (making it “present,” literally); but the one thing I wanted to mention now is that the time of myth, sacred time, does not “wear out” like profane time. The time of any myth can be re-experienced however often, and it is always the same; unlike profane time which, once experienced, is gone forever.
One quality shared in common by sacred time and sacred space is the ability to give meaning. This, I think, is a quality of that “other world;” that it is a source of meaning, and gives its meaning to this world. Thus, the meaning, even the “reality” of this world is conditional, dependent upon the meaning and reality of the “other world,” which are absolute. Such a statement is likely to be confusing to someone who defines “reality” in terms of what is perceptible to the senses: isn’t “this world” real because it can be perceived, whereas some “other world” of myths and gods must be less real because of its relative imperceptability?
The difference lies in what has meaning. In most pre-modern cultures, only that which has meaning is perceived as being fully “real.” Typically, that which has meaning is that which shows a breaking-through of the events, figures, and time of myth, including natural phenomena and parts of the natural world that relate to myths and gods. One could say that anything that has meaning is, by definition, sacred in itself or in relation to some source of sacrality, i.e. to “the Holy.”
Friday, April 2, 2010
A short conversation on religion
The other day, I had a chat about religion and my views on it with an old friend of mine, D. D has known about my religious inclinations for about fifteen years, but we'd never discussed in in any great depth. D. describes herself as an "Insouciant Agnostic Theist." The following is our conversation, edited somewhat for clarity. I expect to touch upon many of these themes in more depth in the near future.
D.: I am really curious about your beliefs. And what "believe" means to you. Do you believe in your religion literally? Is it just the most right "shape" for your beliefs and needs to take?
me: Well, there's what I believe, and there's what I believe about what I believe.
D.: It's a weird thing for me to get my head around, as I just don't think anybody can know. Me, you could boil it down to, "I believe in wonder."
me: That's beautiful. And very important.
Where to begin?
From the beginnings of humanity, people have had religions, which I'll define as "a relationship with the Sacred." "The Sacred" is harder to define; you can feel it, though.
D.: Sure. wonder.
me: Yes, and awe. So, as people have changed and migrated and diversified, their understanding of that whatever-it-is has changed, too. So have their expressions of that relationship. "The Sacred" is big and ineffable, and permits of numerous interpretations, but cannot be exhausted by any of them. There's no final definition. Each people has it's own history of interpretation of and relationship to it, which is appropriate to that people.
That sort of regional diversity is a good thing, I think: Regional diversity in the understanding of the Sacred, and in the relationship to it, is a good thing: it tends towards seeing sacrality in what is familiar; experiencing the transcendent through the immanent, if you will. That sort of situation leads, among other things, to an intimate relationship with one's surroundings: seeing oneself as part of an environment, as opposed to seeing one's environment as material to be used.
That sort of overall religious diversity is good because it is also a diversity of worldviews. Too many people thinking the same way leads to a situation where one's interpretation of reality can be mistaken for reality itself, because there are no opposing interpretations.
So, religiously, I'm doing my part to reinstate that sort of regional diversity. I'm learning and doing my best to practice the religion that my ancestors practiced, and trying to understand and incorporate their worldview. At the same time, I'm interested in religion as an overall phenomenon.
As for the literality of my beliefs... I think gods are real; the way we think of them, in terms of images and myths and such, must be understood as both art and metaphor. Thunor (aka Thor) is said to have a red beard. This isn't just a brute fact: that would make it meaningless, and nothing about myth is meaningless. His red beard has to be understood as being metaphorical, symbolic of something, but there's not necessarily any straightforward answer or concordance as to what each detail means.
The entire picture and character and deeds of Thunor, as well as his relationship to the rest of the pantheon, and to people, and to others, and to certain plants, animals, birds, symbols, weather, etc. is all part of a big, mysterious bundle of meaning. That bundle of meaning is the core of a cultural heritage. That cultural heritage is important, I think, and I want to pass it down to following generations.
It's also interesting that I can see my gods in the gods of other religions, particularly those that sprang from a common source: Thunor is the same, in a sense, as the Lithuanian god Perkunas, the Russian Perun, the Gaulish Taranis, the Roman Mars, the Indian Indra; there are one-to-one correspondences between other of my gods and the gods of these pantheons, too. There are also some differences: not all of these religions interact with and understand the same gods in the same way, nor do they represent them through the same metaphorical imagery. In the Vedas, for instance, Indra is covered all over with eyes. There might be other correspondences outside of that family of religions and mythologies, that are harder to see. What it underlines is that the gods can be real, and yet interpreted in very different ways by different peoples. And that's a good and right thing. And those "interpretations" are real in their own way as well.
The difference in interpretation between "many" and "one", however, is a bit problematic for me. I tend to dislike the "there is one, and only one, and all others are false" sorts of interpretations.
D.: I am really curious about your beliefs. And what "believe" means to you. Do you believe in your religion literally? Is it just the most right "shape" for your beliefs and needs to take?
me: Well, there's what I believe, and there's what I believe about what I believe.
D.: It's a weird thing for me to get my head around, as I just don't think anybody can know. Me, you could boil it down to, "I believe in wonder."
me: That's beautiful. And very important.
Where to begin?
From the beginnings of humanity, people have had religions, which I'll define as "a relationship with the Sacred." "The Sacred" is harder to define; you can feel it, though.
D.: Sure. wonder.
me: Yes, and awe. So, as people have changed and migrated and diversified, their understanding of that whatever-it-is has changed, too. So have their expressions of that relationship. "The Sacred" is big and ineffable, and permits of numerous interpretations, but cannot be exhausted by any of them. There's no final definition. Each people has it's own history of interpretation of and relationship to it, which is appropriate to that people.
That sort of regional diversity is a good thing, I think: Regional diversity in the understanding of the Sacred, and in the relationship to it, is a good thing: it tends towards seeing sacrality in what is familiar; experiencing the transcendent through the immanent, if you will. That sort of situation leads, among other things, to an intimate relationship with one's surroundings: seeing oneself as part of an environment, as opposed to seeing one's environment as material to be used.
That sort of overall religious diversity is good because it is also a diversity of worldviews. Too many people thinking the same way leads to a situation where one's interpretation of reality can be mistaken for reality itself, because there are no opposing interpretations.
So, religiously, I'm doing my part to reinstate that sort of regional diversity. I'm learning and doing my best to practice the religion that my ancestors practiced, and trying to understand and incorporate their worldview. At the same time, I'm interested in religion as an overall phenomenon.
As for the literality of my beliefs... I think gods are real; the way we think of them, in terms of images and myths and such, must be understood as both art and metaphor. Thunor (aka Thor) is said to have a red beard. This isn't just a brute fact: that would make it meaningless, and nothing about myth is meaningless. His red beard has to be understood as being metaphorical, symbolic of something, but there's not necessarily any straightforward answer or concordance as to what each detail means.
The entire picture and character and deeds of Thunor, as well as his relationship to the rest of the pantheon, and to people, and to others, and to certain plants, animals, birds, symbols, weather, etc. is all part of a big, mysterious bundle of meaning. That bundle of meaning is the core of a cultural heritage. That cultural heritage is important, I think, and I want to pass it down to following generations.
It's also interesting that I can see my gods in the gods of other religions, particularly those that sprang from a common source: Thunor is the same, in a sense, as the Lithuanian god Perkunas, the Russian Perun, the Gaulish Taranis, the Roman Mars, the Indian Indra; there are one-to-one correspondences between other of my gods and the gods of these pantheons, too. There are also some differences: not all of these religions interact with and understand the same gods in the same way, nor do they represent them through the same metaphorical imagery. In the Vedas, for instance, Indra is covered all over with eyes. There might be other correspondences outside of that family of religions and mythologies, that are harder to see. What it underlines is that the gods can be real, and yet interpreted in very different ways by different peoples. And that's a good and right thing. And those "interpretations" are real in their own way as well.
The difference in interpretation between "many" and "one", however, is a bit problematic for me. I tend to dislike the "there is one, and only one, and all others are false" sorts of interpretations.
Opening
Welcome to my blog. To start with, I thought I'd write a bit about what you can expect to read here. Largely, this is where I plan to write the sorts of things that I talk people's ears off about until they tell me that I should write a book. I do plan to write a book or two, and this blog will hopefully serve to get my thoughts in order for that project.
I'll be writing about: Theodism, including Theodish history, thinking, and critiques of Theodish scholarship; Heathenry and other ethnic religious revivals; the problematic nature of Abrahamic monotheism; comparative religion and mythology; and the art, music, poetry and books that inspire me.
I hope you find what you read here interesting, and hopefully challenging. I welcome comments, and I regard discussion as a necessary part of this blog; conversation fuels my thinking, which results in more posts.
I'll be writing about: Theodism, including Theodish history, thinking, and critiques of Theodish scholarship; Heathenry and other ethnic religious revivals; the problematic nature of Abrahamic monotheism; comparative religion and mythology; and the art, music, poetry and books that inspire me.
I hope you find what you read here interesting, and hopefully challenging. I welcome comments, and I regard discussion as a necessary part of this blog; conversation fuels my thinking, which results in more posts.
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