I am not a theologian, nor do I play one on TV.* But as I watch the kerfuffle over Triumph of the Moon (still, after ten years!), I wonder what happened to Pagan theology.
In the 1920s, Margaret Murray claimed that “the Old Religion,” a self-conscious underground Pagan cult(s), persisted in Western Europe until at least the 17th century. (Her thesis, however, has not stood up well to further examination, and even many Wiccans abandoned it by the 1980s. But it retains its appeal in some quarters.)
Others wish to trace a different story, to the Middle Eastern city of Harran, to a tiny handful of late-Byzantine intellectuals, or whatever. The myth/story/legend of the unbroken transmission is a powerful one.
Writing in the 1950s, Gerald Gardner, the chief founder of modern Wicca, claimed that underground Pagan religion had endured right into the 20th century—and Murray backed him up.
Once Gardner opened the door, through press interviews and by writing Witchcraft Today in the mid-1950s, suddenly other people appeared saying, mirabile dictu, that they too were heirs to a underground traditions: Robert Cochrane, Alex Sanders, and so on.
It is as through without a person-to-person connection back two thousand years, Wicca or other forms of Paganism could not be “legitimate” religions.
Where are the gods in all this? Have they no agency? Does no one take them seriously?
Monotheistic theologians spend a lot of time on “How God manifests in history and to whom.” Modern Pagans tend to say, “Oh, it’s all cyclical. Everything comes around again. Tra la la.” (I can’t cite a source here, sorry, but I have seen it argued that the Ragnarök story was influenced by the Christians’ Final Judgment teachings.)
But suppose that it was not the Pagan religionists but the god who went “underground,” into the collective unconscious, staying in touch only through art, literature, dreams, whatever, only to emerge (in the English-speaking world, at least) through late-Victorian and early 20th-century literature?
Three articles in the Pomegranate have discussed this issue, and I should note that Jennifer Hallett was a graduate student of Ronald Hutton’s, so she was building upon his earlier work.
• Freeman, Nick. “The Shrineless God: Paganism, Literature and Art in Forties Britain.” The Pomegranate 6, no. 2 (2004): 157-174.
• Freeman, Nick. “A Country for the Savant: Paganism, Popular Fiction, and the Invention of Greece, 1914-1966.” The Pomegranate 10, no. 1 (2008): 21-41.
• Hallett, Jennifer. “Wandering Dreams and Social Marches: Varieties of Paganism in Late Victorian and Edwardian England.” The Pomegranate 8, no. 2 (2006) 161-183.
Just three. Research might reveal other sources in other places.
We do not have many formal theologians, a vocation not necessarily synonymous with priest or priestess. Starhawk is often labeled one, but her primary concern is social justice, it seems. Constance Wise sets up a framework that might be helpful but does not tackle this particular issue, as I recall.
As I said, I am not a theologian. But it seems to be that an intellectually grounded Pagan theology of the gods in history might take some of the pressure of those people who think that they must have an unbroken person-to-person religious transmission in order somehow to be real.
If that is not enough, here is another list of possible topics for Pagan theologians to think about.
As a religious leader who is not also a scholar, John Michael Greer may not have the ethos you require, but I loved his polytheological book A World Full of Gods: An Inquiry into Polytheism.
I’ve written several pieces on why Christianity may have gained the ascendancy, where the gods were in the meantime, and what a thoughtful polytheist ought to make of all this. So there are some of us willing to look at history through a theological lens. Sadly, that number is pretty small, as you point out.
I would recommend Greer’s work and also Jordan Paper’s The Deities are Many (SUNY Press, 2005).
Hi Chas – I like your move of shifting the burden off our (human) backs. But perhaps the burden could be a shared one between us and the gods… Didn’t Jung argue something like that (and Hillman and others after him)? I think matter (images, icons, idols, altars, temples, ritual implements, ritually trained/patterned bodies, bodies ‘possessed’ by the loa, etc) doesn’t get its fair share of credit either. What if the gods were as material as anything else?
This isn’t about the need for theology, but I’ve been thinking about actual or claimed secret religious continuity. There are several other than Paganism, and I think the analogies could be helpful:
1. Pre-Reformation Protestantism: A lot of Evangelical fringe-Protestant groups claim that their church never died out, but persisted underground from Constantine to Luther. I have heard Baptists claim this sort of thing, and I once saw an article in The Plain Truth (Armstrong’s group, started in the 1960s) that argued that the Judaisers of mediaeval Spain were all PLain Truthers.
If you look at these claims in a sweeping manner they’re absurd. For one thing, pre-Constantinian Christianity did not remotely resemble modern Evangelicalism. For another thing, Evangelicalism now seems to require enormous effort to preserve doctrinal purity, and it is difficult to see how this could be achieved in the midst of a persecuting, Catholic society. On the other hand, ideas that might be thought of as Evangelical did regularly appear in mediaeval Europe, and some seem to have survived. For example; the Lollards survived underground until the Tudor Reformation. Also, the Waldensians survived in Alpine valleys until the Reformation, when they were absorbed by the Calvinists, but their earlier doctrines may not have had much in common with Calvinism, so the claims to continuity might be the result of back-dating later beliefs.
2. Kakure Kirishitan: Japanese Catholics went underground after 1603, and especially after the 1640s. When Catholicism was legalised again in 1872, some Kakure Kirishitan rejoined the Catholic Church, but some remained underground. I think most of the information on these groups, in the Goto Islands, Nagasaki Prefecture, is in Japanese, but their religion now has little in common with Catholicism. There were some Kakure Kirishitan in areas other than western Kyushu, and I have visited the Kakure Kirishitan Museum in a mountain village near Osaka – they were not “rediscovered” until the 1920s, but their Catholicism consisted solely of holding crucifixes, and so on, without doctrinal content.
Although the Kakure Kirishitan are factual, Japanese Christian history shades off into a lunatic fringe. There is some evidence that Nestorian Christians arrived in Japan several times between about 500 and 800, and one of the empresses may have been a convert, and Christianity may have influenced Japanese Buddhism. However, some people claim that some Buddhist temples had secret churches for more than 1,000 years. There are also claims that, because Shinto shrines resemble the OT Temple in some respects, the Japanese are descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. There is also a burial mound in northern Japan that is supposed to be the grave of Jesus, because he survived crucifixion, and made his way across Asia to his relatives in Japan.
3. Jews: I have vaguely heard accounts of Jews who converted to Christianity, and managed to keep their religion hidden for hundreds of years. I also once read about a whole village in Italy that converted formally to Judaism, claiming that they had secretly practised the religion since Roman times. I have no idea about the truth to these claims.
Another one I’ve just thought of:
4. Christians under Islamic rule: I once talked to an Evangelical Christian who had lived in Morocco, and spoke Arabic. She told me about a British pastor who was writing to everyone in Morocco, telling them about Christianity. She said that numerous people had written back, stating that they already were Christian, having practised in secret since the Arab Conquest.
Adrian, I have often recommended on this blog that more Pagans read Hillman and other of the post-Jungians for a deeper understanding of whatever we mean by “the gods.”
Ginette Paris is one of my favorites of that crew: her Pagan Grace and Pagan Meditations. Once I heard her say in a lecture that Aphrodite could manifest as the display window in a shoe store. Love it!
Rombald: the difference between your examples and the Murrayite claim is that all of your examples (except maybe #1!) left traces in the historical record, both in texts and in material artifacts. For example, I have seen a Japanese portable shrine that unfolds to show a secret Christian interior.
There has been some talk of “crypto-Jews” in the American Southwest — the Inquisition did operate here until the Great Pueblo Revolt of 1680 — but a lot of the contemporary “evidence” appears to be wishful thinking. “Grandmother never served pork: We must be crypto-Jews!”
The point of my post, however, was to wonder why more attention was not paid to theology rather than desperate raking through historical trivia in search an unbroken underground Western European Paganism.
Chas: “The point of my post, however, was to wonder why more attention was not paid to theology rather than desperate raking through historical trivia in search an unbroken underground Western European Paganism.”
Yes, I appreciate I was being tangential.
However, I think examples such as these are interesting on several levels:
1. They MIGHT show real historic continuity.
2. In the case of the Kakure Kirishitan, they raise the issue of when is something really continuity; if someone waves a crucifix occasionally, and crosses themselves before meals, but is doctrinally entirely animist, are they in any sense Catholic? Do Pagan-derived traditions without overt doctrinal content constitute Paganism? Hutton insists that they do not, but isn’t that assuming that the heart of a religion resides in its conscious doctrines?
3. Psychologically, they raise the issue of why continuity is important. This relates to your question as to why Pagan “theologians” don’t emphasise direct contact with the Gods, Nature, etc., and thus deemphasise continuity. Well, of any religion, Evangelicalism must have one of the weakest requirements for institutional continuity, certainly less than Catholicism, yet Evangelicals seem very keen on probably spurious claims to such continuity.
4. The example of Japan shows how remarkable but factual claims and ludicrous claims can exist alongside each other, and be discussed and emphasised by the same groups of people.
Thanks for the post and blog, Chas 🙂
@Rombald. I do think you raise some interesting points. I am not equipped to respond here academically in any way. But your 3rd point re Jews. I have read a bit on the Marranos of Spain who through persecution were forced to continue their faith underground. The thing is within only a few generations, cut off from the main Jewish culture, the faith changed. In fact it changed so much then when persecution ended many Marronos felt completely alienated from the rest of the Jewish world. The traditional Judaic rites made so sense to them.
This occurred within a few generations in a very socially cohesive culture, bound together by persecution. So, even if there were pagan survivals from, say the 11th century ce (that for some reason do not show in the historical space-time record), they would likely be unrecognizable as pagan by the 20th century ce.
Thanks 🙂
I hadn’t thought of it until I started mulling over your post. Gardner did not claim an immediate encounter with Deities as the basis of his emergence as a Witch. He claimed to have joined an existing multi-generational covert organization of Witches. He took the Apostolic Succession concept and installed it at the base of his growing of Craft. And since most of the rest of us who took up formalized Craft post-Gardner, we have to contend with the claim.
But, at least for practitioners who did come to Neo-Pagan Craft via immediate encounters with Deities and Guardians, the matter of lines of transmission through humans appears not so central.
So for some there is a theological consideration that for others is primarily a historical consideration. Maybe that’s why some kerfluffles arise over accounts of the recent past–what is primarily historical for some is primarily theological for others.
But, of course, I (favoring the direct experience recruiting) am less given to theological speculations about Paganism these days than I was before, and I never was, all that much.
I don’t disagree with your point that paganism(s)can and do exist without direct human to human transmission. There is something though about direct transmission of initiation in many religions, including the paganisms. The example that comes to mind is the British Magical Tradition with folks like RJ Stewart talking about receiving initiation from Ronald Heaver and William Gray. I gather, but do not know for sure, that there is an initiation involved with the spiritual descendants of Dion Fortune. And while not a paganism, reiki has an initiation that has actual spiritual effect.
In some of the above cases, there is a known starting point, like Mr. Usui on the mountain. In other cases, the starting point is lost but the transmission of something that is still considered important. The mechanics of reiki transmission have been exposed by a number of writers. How the mechanics of other initiations work is not known. This seems to me to be something worth an academic study – or perhaps there is some work out there already?
David: Get thee to a library. A quick check in two article databases, JSTOR and Academic Search Premier, gave more than a hundred hits each on “reiki.” Many are medical, of course, but there are some from more of a religious-studies perspective:
1. Review: [untitled]
Susan Sered
Reviewed work(s): Women and Reiki: Energetic/Holistic Healing in Practice by Judith Macpherson
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
Vol. 48, No. 1 (Mar., 2009), pp. 203-204
2. The Aura of Wellness: Subtle-Energy Healing and New Age Religion
Catherine L. Albanese
Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation
Vol. 10, No. 1 (Winter, 2000), pp. 29-55
3. Susan Sered
History of Religions
Vol. 47, No. 2/3, Festschrift for Jonathan Z. Smith (Nov., 2007 – Feb., 2008), pp. 221-238
(article consists of 18 pages)
4. Seeking Security in the New Age: On Attachment and Emotional Compensation
Pehr Granqvist and Berit Hagekull
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
Vol. 40, No. 3 (Sep., 2001), pp. 527-545
Chas,
As a professor of philosophy, some of my books *do* address theological questions, including many of the questions noted in the list that this article of yours linked to.
My latest book, “Loneliness and Revelation”, is directly intended to do the work that you are saying here needs to be done. If you are interested in writing a review on your blog, I will be happy to arrange for a review copy to be sent to you.
Cheers,
Brendan
This is not in anyway a verifiable idea, Chas, but here it goes anyway. I’m wondering if the legitimacy of revealed religions has slowly been eroded since the 19th century and the rise of the scientific method. The more our society values proof, the less of an influence revelation and visions hold sway on large populations. When was the last time you saw a major revealed religion take firm hold on a very large population that has stood the test of time (i.e. made it’s own roots?) I’m thinking the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was the last such revealed religion to do this.
After this, more people seem to demand more concrete reasons to join a new religion. We do not trust people who have revelations and visions because for the most part they’ve been revealed to be psychopaths or delusional by science. The one line to the divine that we’ve relied on for most of human history has suddenly been proven to be untrustworthy and at times dangerous. We see those who follow men and women who claim to have revealed truth as delusional and gullible, not inspired by God.
Enter the new Pagan religions and beliefs. If anyone of our leaders in the past had claimed revelation as a verification of the veracity of their faith few would have listened and fewer would have joined. Instead, these people turned to what they thought were verifiable proofs of the legitimacy of their beliefs: history. A history that, like the dominant religions of the day, they could use to legitimize their beliefs and practices.
In the age of science, no one trusts personal experience as valid. So we turned to what was thought to be verifiable history and archeology to ground our beliefs into something solid and respectable. Ergo, what someone does may look bizarre to outsiders, but if it’s got a history of being done by many others in the past, then for whatever reason humans tend give it respect and take time to learn about it.
As to the most recent worldwide revealed religion, I think that the Baha’i faith is slightly younger than the LDS church, but it has no more than half as many adherents, if that. Both date from the nineteenth century. (And the Iranian mullahs would probably like to kill all of the Baha’is in Iran, where it started.)
That aside, a substitution of history for revelation might make sense. Let’s just not make “history” the driving force, or we will have an uncanny echo of Marxism. 😉
But where is the agency of the gods in all this? Have they any?
Chas: DAMN! you are good. I looked it up and Baha’i was founded in 1844 and the LDS faith was founded in 1830!
The Gods live in our desire to understand our world in relation to ourselves; to find meaning in our relationship with all that is. According to one of my favorite authors Loyal Rue, religion is not about God, but about what is and what matters. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLFVDB-35gw That is where the God live and how they chose to manifest. That is why the old Gods have changed through time; locations have changed (what is) and values have changed (what matters). That is how we shape the Gods. How the Gods shape us is through the long-view: changing our view of what Is and challenging us to give it meaning. That is why stagnant religions eventually either change or decline to nothing. If a religion does not change with our discovery of what Is, then as a tool, it becomes useless to both humans and the Gods. But humans like consistency and reliability in the institutions they rely on for their sense of safety and rightness so the change over is decidedly violent. (oh, and it took me a while to figure out what Rue meant by “personal wholeness”. He defines it to be someone who can function in a healthy way in society and in their personal lives.)
This little “sermon” by renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is to me an example of how the Gods work on a personal and societal level. This is the best cut of the sermon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRuSCl30ByY&feature=related However, I do recommend the whole speech because it illustrates the vital nature of art in the creation of a creative scientist.
This four part Terry Lecture series is also very interesting as it shows Rue’s theories in action via the scientific community. I’ve read the book that the lectures are based on; awesome stuff. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akQfew1EGXY&NR=1
An older version of a similar idea can be found in Brian Swimme’s work and his collaboration with Thomas Berry. Here’s a pretty and short version of his basic ideas http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRykk_0ovI0
Here’s a more recent lecture from Brian that may help as well http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeX8Tzt8ur0 with your question about the roll of the Gods. I’m watching it now and he’s said something that I can translate easily to be the following: The Gods had to step back so that we could discover what the Universe is really made of. It is now our job to rediscover Them in what we’ve found. It is Their job to present Themselves in new-old ways so that we can better find Them in conjunction and context with what Is.
Yet there is at least one branch of modern paganism, a very influential and historically important branch, in which the direct revelation of a supernatural being is, in fact, one of its major claims to legitimacy. That branch is called Thelema, and its claim to legitimacy is strongly rooted in the “Law” revealed to Crowley by a being named “Aiwaz. There have been various attempts to add to the original message; for instance other people have subsequently claimed to have been visited by Aiwaz or other beings.
Looking a little beyond paganism, we could also notice how direct communication from supernatural beings informs much of New Age thought: there are “ascended masters” of the “celestial heirarchy” who come to guide humanity to a new age of peace. Or, we could look at UFO cults, like Raelism, which started as recently as 1974 and whose leader claimed to have been visited by an alien.
Both of these groups are wildly more popular than modern paganism, and while their larger numbers doesn’t make them right (the ad-populam fallacy applies, of course), still it does suggest that the idea of supernatural revelation, as a source of legitimacy in religion, is still alive and well.
In that light, Chas’ observation that it doesn’t seem to play much of a role in modern paganism is thus very interesting indeed.
Brendan: Interesting stuff. Although I can see your point, it seems that Thelema isn’t really advertising itself as a revealed religion, nor is it very popular in the States. I’ve seen maybe one book or two about it and I’m just now becoming more aware of it via Sorita d’Este. Maybe it’s more prevalent in Europe. And you know, now that I know it’s revealed, I’m not going to touch it with the proverbial ten foot pole. I might learn about it so I’m informed, but there’s no way I’d get involved. I think many people feel the same way as they’ve had bad experiences with revealed religions including the New Age channelers (that are a crock.)
As for the alien religion, I’d say that aliens are the new, safer way to claim revelation because aliens are not supposedly spirits, but actual beings, albeit more highly evolved that humans. Their evolution is generally chalked up to being more scientifically advanced, so even if they exist in the realm of energy and are energy beings, it wasn’t done by magic, but through science. Therefore, in my opinion (not to be confused with the truth), this makes them closer to being provable than say, God coming down and giving someone the Golden Plates that no one can now produce as evidence. Therefore, it is more grounded than traditional revealed religions, even though it’s so highly improbable to be almost impossible.
Rose
The classic work, to me, on revealed UFO cults is Jacques Vallee’s Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults (1979, republished 2008), although scholars of new religious movements have done a lot on various groups, such as the Raelians.