I think the difference between pantheism and panentheism is over which comes ‘first’ – nature or ‘God’. The pantheist holds that nature is the origin, the source, of all things; the panentheist finds instead the origin of the all – including that of nature – in some pre-existent entity. This does not preclude that the pantheist cannot accept the transcendental, but for her this last is an emergent rather than a pre-given. It is something that evolves. In attempting to understand how a panentheist understanding could conform to a pagan position, the transcendent could be seen as something akin to an aura that surrounds the cosmos. In that sense, the all could be pictured as within its aura. But for the pagan pantheist, the aura is not source but product. I will still maintain that panentheism in its seminal process theology formulation is a Christian attempt to ‘have their cake and eat it too’. Taking a more traditional Christian view, Colin Gunther at King’s College London insisted that panentheism “collapses” back into pantheism. I do not see how it necessarily does. We are still with ‘the chicken and the egg question’. Whilst there is an answer – thanks to evolution – to that last, there may not be when it comes to ‘God’ or nature. In some sense, it does not matter. We have what we have, and in the here-and-now we had just better get on with it. But I do feel that it takes a degree of theological courage for both the atheist and pantheist pagan to reject the idea of a comforting pre-existential transcendental and to start on without it. That stance places the burden of responsibility more fully and completely upon ourselves. For the panentheist pagan, by contrast, there is a dependence on the idea that the world appears by external, chiefly verbal, magic – the late Vedic Vac, the Logos of St. John the Evangelist, the Gnostic Demiurgic Mind, the Egyptian Ptah’s speaking the world into existence, the ‘Let there be …’ of Genesis, Brahmanical mâyâ, the Miria reflection of Starhawk, etc. And maybe it has been. I personally have not been convinced that this is the case and, though it took me sometime to wean myself from my Christian upbringing, do not feel that it is necessary. As far as beginnings, the natural is good enough for me. The problem with a panentheist creatio ex nihilo is to explain how the corporeal, allegedly secondary and born from the incorporeal, is still integrally part of a pre-existent ‘God/Goddess’ of transcendence. A ‘God/Goddess/All that is’ that is corporeal from the very start does not face this problem. 

In complexity theory there is the understanding that the universe is greatly more alinear than linear, and as such there is a greater allowance for the concept of spontaneous self-organisation in which the whole becomes more than the mere sum of its parts – e.g., a chemical reaction, the human body, a city, an economy or a culture. And whilst that whole becomes subsequently an influential agency sui generis, it is not the whole that caused its wholeness but something more tangibly magical and spontaneous and without outside help that either springs or evolves the greater wholeness into its being; something akin perhaps to that slight tilt or wobble with the big bang that allowed matter to predominate over anti-matter. If “transcendence is the primordial unity of the ‘unbroken circle,’ the life force beyond sexual differentiation” (John Cooper, Panentheism: The Other God of the Philosophers, from Plato to Present, Grand Rapids: Baker Academics, 2006:235), there is no circle in pre-big bang singularity – not even nothing. Transcendence becomes at best the goal; not the Platonic ideal and origin. For the pagan pantheist, the gods are nature and come into being with it. Even the void of chaos comes, as Hesiod put it, into being (genito).

9 July 2011

 

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Even as a non-gnostic pagan, I remain absolutely intrigued by the numerical. Numbers are abstract (‘drawn away’ from the material), magical and certainly seductive. They are also symbols and belong as such to the ‘co-natural’ along with the metaphorical, the preternatural, the supernatural, the imaginal, the numinous and perhaps even the animistic. Number alone, even without the rest, I see as an onotological ‘realm’ in which one could delightfully lose oneself, though that is also not to say that there is no risk and inherent danger as well in the otherworld of the co-natural. I simply do not see number as primordially causal or prior. It too arises with big bang emergence.

I do not deny that the Hermetic Qabalah has “a strong panentheist bent.” I think Steve Wilson in London once summed it up for me when he said that the Sefirot Tree is an upside down tree. I certainly can understand the appeal that a transcendental origin can have and does have. For myself, however, the more organic order of things is the opposite. The “divine mojo” is a gusher rather than a cascade – or even, preferably, a flower. But I fully agree with Jonathan Korman that “divinity(ies) are patterns found [in] the material Cosmos … and are not truly separate from it.” Apart from the physical phenomena that they are, they also represent these phenomena, and representation is precisely that, namely, a re-presentation of post-big bang realities as opposed to initial causal agents. And yes to Nicole Youngman, I definitely “mean ‘nature’ in the sense of the entire cosmos and not just earth-life.” The terrestrial perspective is itself a comfortable metaphor that we have inherited from our pagan past. In fact, the Greek word for the ‘world’ is cosmos.

As a pagan pantheist, I too resonate the most with process theology. I just wish that it were not so inevitably tied up with or identified with panentheism. One of the objections I have heard with regard to pantheism is that it identifies the self as ‘part’ of God/Goddess thereby making veneration, worship and adoration pointless. One is allegedly the same thing as God/Goddess. What this argument overlooks, however, is the plurality of godhead. I describe myself as a ‘deep pluralist’ and, rather than hard or soft, a dynamic polytheist. Apart from their more concrete avatars as sun, earth, lightning and so forth, the gods dance like the will-o’-the wisp through many different and difficult-to-catch forms. That is perhaps one reason we have idols to anchor them for more easily accessible ritual focus. In Olympus, Homer describes the gods as honouring one another. Humanity too is a god but not the only one. We can revere the moon, the oak, Artemis and Dionysus and still be separately different even as we are all divine. I think part of my objection to panentheism may be because its a priori ‘God’ renders the many gods secondary and inconsequential if not also inferior. The god of process is that to which we might all aspire rather than from which temporally and linearly descend.

Even if, as Vivianne Crowley mentions, “consciousness [may] be something that can exist without a physical body,” it does not necessarily follow that “the consciousness of the universe may have existed prior to its creating its physical self.” From a pagan pantheistic and yet process theological perspective, consciousness is an emergent. Through my own Indo-European studies, I have discerned a proto-understanding that pure will (not conscious will but unadulterated will alone) erupted as the big bang explosion, that is, will as the ‘first principle’ – the desire of the universe to see itself. But in order to see itself, it must be something to be seen – and hence the primordial big bang in which the universe comes into being. As Hartshorne understood, there is a creatio ex materia rather than a creation out of nothing. In other words, and I think this is the important point, matter has an intrinsic desire to become conscious. We humans, and perhaps other beings as well, are part of that process by which the universe becomes conscious. In its formative stages, consciousness appears to be a product of differentiating between pleasure and pain. Consequently, the more vulnerable and ephemeral forms that matter’s evolution assumes (from mineral to vegetable to animal), the greater the organic vehicle emerges that is capable of consciousness. If there are those among us who wish to hold to a pre-existent and a priori mind, that is fine. I just myself do not buy it and think it might just be missing the train.

Maybe that last might answer the inevitable objection and wisdom from our “certain nondualist of our mutual acquaintance.” But then again, as Steve Reich conceived it, we are probably all on ‘different trains’.

10 July 2011

 

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Jonathan, it's not for me or anyone to pronounce who is and who is not 'pagan'. I think that is a beauty in paganism. There is no authority and no provision for heresy or expulsion. Paganism itself is a multiple dialogue that includes its own opposites. That does not mean that we cannot have theological discussion - at least among those who so wish to engage. And granted, many if not most chose not to be bothered by the theological nuance and such ramifications at all. Personally, I think paganism has behind it a rich and important theological tradition and that this is important if we wish to enter into the world's religion roundtable of exchange. In your panpsychic position, you are by no means alone. I prefer an orientation based on, for lack of a better term, deep paganism rather than a gnostic pagan one. I struggle with locating a way to understand an Abrahamic-like understanding of an a priori mind that is somehow causal to creation as as pagan as a consciousness-as-emergent position and still have not found it. I think you may have in part answered your own question when you identify your panpsychism as "Buddhist-informed." There are, as you already must know, many who identify as pagan Buddhists or Buddhist pagans. I'm partly afraid that if consciousness is attributed to everything, it becomes tautological and meaningless. Stones do indeed speak to me and have psychic potency, but I am more hesitant to identify that as consciousness. And, finally, if the Goddess births multiplicity out of self-awareness, what happened to her womb? Are you not doing what many have done and simply put Yahweh into a dress?

10 July 2011

 

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What would that mean, Jonathan, that "Consciousness just always is"? I think I am a theopantist at heart. If consciousness is not causal but still primordial, what would be the point of it? And maybe for other than Einsteinian reasons I still agree that "God is unnecessary as a causal agent of existence." Even without being able to define consciousness, we recognise it in ourselves and others, but do we actually do the same with rocks - or do we project it as such? Do we not talk about consciousness because consciousness itself is reflective? "Perhaps with true Enlightenment these questions will no longer trouble me." Let us hope. However, this last I am not following: "Likewise when Feri liturgy references God Herself as where we 'live, breathe, and have our Being'. It is a refusal of the distinction between the womb and the birth, between the animating divinity and the manifest Cosmos." Could you explain further?

11 July 2011

 

 

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Hi Nicole. I did not get back to you as I had wished. I would not agree with MacMorgan on her rendering pantheism as basically the same as monotheism. For one, the latter is focused on transcendence; the former more on immanence. I can see why she says what she says – especially coming from a hard polytheistic perspective, and for some people she could be correct. However, I think panentheism works much better as a monotheistic substitute. And, of course, re. pantheism, there are several different takes. One is understanding it as devoid of the theistic altogether – sort of a non-supernatural monism perhaps. Another understanding, to which I resonate, sees a pantheistic outlook as providing a possible ground for polytheism – as something that embraces or includes the magical/imaginal/preternat​ural.

Your animism question is a more challenging one. I have difficulty with Graham Harvey’s ‘new animism’. It amounts to a pluralistic personalism, and personalism I understand as a more modern form of, at least a derivative of, Platonism. Relating to rocks, trees, etc. as persons seems to me to be less relating to them as actualities. The persona appears to be an Etruscan term for ‘mask’. As with the horoscope, the first house (our ascending sign) conforms to how we present ourselves to the world and others, our personalities, our masks, whereas our individuality is suggested by the sun’s position – sometimes the moon’s. So to render everything or most things into persons is a way of slipping Platonic transcendentalism in through the back door. But if we speak of traditional animism, the anima/animus is/are definitely inherent in the physical – the animating dynamic resident in and part of any pantheistic whole that includes enchantment. The non-human beings with whom we should have respectful relationships – the rocks and trees of the environment, the environment itself, the deific, the elvin, etc. I do see as emergent from nature. They may become something more, but I do not see them as prior to the Big Bang.

11 July 2011

 

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I like what Adrian is saying and especially the whole notion of process. The only difficulty is that ‘pre-Big Bang’ is singularity – not a pre-existent entity, not a process, not transcendence, not immanence, not even nothing. Time and space only come into being with the end of singularity. The notion that idea/consciousness/deity/e​nergy/matter explode as the Big bang, however, would work with the concept of singularity-Big Bang. And I thought the current consensus is the cosmos has already expanded beyond the point that a Final Crunch remains a possibility?

I agree with Jonathan “that the Cosmos must exist and must take this form, nothing else is truly possible.” And good point about asking what is the point of consciousness. That’s not the same as asking what is the point of gravity. Gravity is matter’s attraction to matter. It is probably part of the necessary form of the cosmos. However, consciousness I feel is part of the primordial desire of the universe to see itself, and the very instant that desire occurred, the Big Bang happened. I guess the rest is history – at least speculation and history. But can you explain for me how consciousness differs from thought? Do you mean that consciousness can be pure awareness?

If consciousness is an ongoing refining of pleasure-pain perception, does not evolution show how the intrinsic desire of matter to become conscious unfolds? The more precarious and vulnerable the entity, the more it can experience pleasure and pain and, consequently, consciousness. And so in the achievement of matter’s intrinsic desire, evolution moves from the mineral kingdom through the vegetable into the animal. And we humans are simply part of that process. That intrinsic desire of matter to become conscious could possibly be interpreted in Yvonne’s understanding of matter as a denser form of consciousness? In my more evolutionary take, I suppose that would have to be ‘pre-consciousness’.

A more if not the most parsimonious understanding might be to see consciousness in all things, but what good is that understanding if it does not explain anything? I agree with your pagan frame of mind, namely, “Divinity and all aspects of the material world are inseparable, that world is composed of a multitude of entities of different kinds, all compelling respect,” but I do not think respect is necessarily dependent on consciousness being by default in all things. Of all religions, Buddhism is the one for which I have the most respect, but I am not a Buddhist. I am wondering if the evolution/emergence of consciousness is not a more parsimonious explanation.

But I am so with you in the ‘Mother’ not as a demiurgic author but as the vehicle of an all-generative womb. I do not see her as transcendent apart from perhaps as a poetic idea, but the thrust of her poetry has to be that “all things, including ourselves, are” her flesh. Thanks for Acts 17:28. And your recognition of Yvonne’s Sufi poem and many of the mystical schools of even Abrahamic traditions as essentially pagan I am with as well. And thanks Yvonne for Aratus and Epimenides. I also wonder if the edge of the pantheist/panentheist blade is the edge of chaos?

With regard to Nicole’s hesitancy to project gender roles onto sexual deities as well as aspects of the earth/cosmos that are not sexed or gendered, our broader linguistic tradition saw some things female (earth, dawn), some male (lightning, celestial brightness) and some things male or female – not male and female as Mogg has in his Kemetic tradition – (the sun, the moon and fire). These are ancient metaphors that I find have their own numinous power. If they come to be declared old-fashioned, I fear that we could be throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

12 July 2011

 

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I am by no means expecting, Jonathan, that you will agree with me, but concerning “the idea of consciousness as the Cosmos' will to know itself,” it is I believe more to be understood as ‘pure will’, that is, desire before even consciousness has arisen from it. Combining the tenth mandala Rigvedic hymn on ‘creation’ concerning kama (10.129.4), with Hesiod’s Theogony mentioning an always-present Himeros (‘desire’) and the primordial passion-fire (Surtr) and the wish-cow Audhumla in Snorri Sturlason’s Gylfaginning, one can conjecture that the proto-Indo-Europeans recognised will as seminal to the very emergence of the cosmos. I do not think, however, that “the will causes consciousness” anymore than the carbon, oxygen, etc. cause a human body. Each is instead something that develops. I am going with complexity theory’s alinearity over linearity with this. Rather than saying “that the utterly necessary cosmic will to self-awareness is the true definition of consciousness,” I would put it that the utterly necessary cosmic will to self-awareness is the ultimate origin of consciousness,

Regarding panpsychism, I am wondering if it might not ultimately be a goal; and to assume that it already exists, a human arrogance and hubris. Do we need “an explanation for how, mechanically, consciousness arises from the processes of the brain”? And could it not be that the brain has evolved as a vehicle for the emergence of consciousness?

I do feel paganity marries well with other partners besides panpsychism. And speaking of marriage and offspring, yes, gender metaphors can lead and have led to bad places, but do we not again lose the baby if we ignore the richness of an ancestral legacy and simply abandon those metaphors? We know that the feminine takes precedence (as opposed to how the Abrahamic traditions would have it), and what follows needs rather to be kept in functional balance and in a viable and respectful valuing based on that knowledge.

13 July 2011

 

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You’re completely right, Nicole, about the imperative to move beyond “decidedly harmful gender roles.” I had originally thought to use the word ‘female’ but decided that ‘feminine’ was more accurate. What do you suggest I should have used? Are not most terms, however, ‘loaded”. In the sociology of religion for instance, there is an outspoken contingent that wishes to abandon the terms ‘sect’ and ‘cult’ – otherwise, within the field, bona fide terms for marginal religious movements. My argument with my colleagues has been that if we abandon these labels, we surrender to the media, psychologists and even the government in determining the politics of representation and have taught the wider public nothing in the process. In religion, the same dynamic lies behind the desire to reclaim such terms as ‘witch’, ‘pagan’ and ‘idolatry’ etc. Words have indeed been misused for millennia, but when you ask, “how do we work around this?” I suspect it is more an answer of not going ‘around’ but straight into the problem, confronting it squarely, making the vagaries of history as clear as we can, and moving on with that knowledge at the forefront. 

In English, we have rather fully neutered our linguistic heritage. Dutch now divides between the neuter and a common gender reduced from an earlier understanding of some words as either masculine or feminine, whereas German retains the designation of nouns as neuter, masculine and feminine. French considers people, places and things to be either male or female. Lightning, for instance, is la foudre, that is, a feminine noun. In Latin, the word for honour is masculine, but that for virtue is feminine despite virtu being derived from the word vir meaning ‘a man, male person’. And, besides honos, all the other virtues are feminine. Interestingly, all the words you used to describe the results from the perception of lightning as male/masculine, namely, power, force, anger, energy and punishment are in French feminine – respectively la puissance, la force, la colère, l'énergie and la punition. The ramifications of gender nuance are a complex legacy that have much more to tell us than their cultural and historical employments to foster and maintain sexist non-equality. There are differences, but that is not to undermine our goal of equality: different but equal. Is not one of the fundamental pagan affirmations of plurality the celebration of diversity? Here in France, the people invariably say, ‘Vive la difference’! My fear is that if we lose the gender nuance of nature and our deities of nature, we short-change and do ourselves a disservice. Our archaic rituals and understandings allow us important root connections that can by the increasingly mindful not only allow us access to spiritual renewal, numinous grounding and contemplative wonder but also encourage us to end gender ideologies rather than reinforce them.

So let me simply conclude that with panpsychism. I am understanding it as a monistic form of pantheism in which all things are held to have minds or mental qualities. In short, that all nature is psychical. Nicole asks, “How exactly can an entity will or desire something without first being conscious....? ” In the panthelistic understanding I am considering (theilen‘to will’), there is no primordial entity but an inaugural instant of pure will. I know it is difficult for us to conceive of wishing only as wishing rather than wishing for something. It may be akin to Jonathan’s awareness without thought of any kind. In one of my own contemplative evocations, I seek to begin by centring or focusing upon purely wishing but not wishing for anything in particular. That may come later. And it’s not easy but is probably similar to a Buddhist meditational effort to empty completely the mind from all thoughts. I am not a Buddhist and understand pan-consciousness as a goal rather than as an origin or something always present. As a pagan, I centre upon and begin with purely desiring without desiring anything in particular. In other words, I am doing perhaps the precise opposite of the Buddhist who seeks to eliminate desire; I am exalting it –either by seeking to attune, however briefly, with the primordial wish, or by endeavouring to become, again however briefly.

14 July 2011

 

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O com’on, Jonathan, everyone wants to avoid suffering – everyone apart from a few martyrs and masochists. But the Buddha’s ‘way’ is another throwing the baby out with the bathwater for, along with suffering, he eliminates pleasure as well. His method for ending suffering is to achieve a state of detachment and indifference which can only be translated as one of non-desire. Nirvana is a different goal than that of the pagan and her affirmation of pleasure from gentle delight to, when appropriate, the throes of passion. The Second Noble Truth identifies attachment as the cause of suffering. Eliminate that, and suffering is eliminated as well. Part of ‘correct thought’, accordingly, is the avoidance of covetousness.

And as far as ‘other precursors’ besides the cosmic will, i.e., will-to-self-consciousness​, being in the process as well, I suppose along the way somewhere, but the cosmic will itself is the precursor of the whole shebang. As the Vedic speculationists would phrase it, it is the ‘first principle’. For the rest, if we conceive of an organism’s capacity for the experience of pleasure and pain as engendering consciousness, the brain as a ‘radio receiver’ is not necessary. Consciousness becomes increasingly a necessity for a more evolved, complex and fragile organism’s own survival.

If gendered imagery is culturally embedded, when we dig deep into our collective linguistic heritage, we might find a radical/root cultural awareness/understanding that is to be shared today by many different daughter cultures – thereby assisting us in any cosmopolitan venture toward a more equable but still grounded world. 

Happy Ides of July!

15 July 2011

 

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With Adrian Ivakhiv (me in block lettering):

Michael - I don't think it's quite fair to ascribe the 'elimination of pleasure' to the Buddha (i.e. the historical figure, Siddhartha Gautama) simply because there's so much debate and uncertainty over what he actually taught and what accreted to those teachings in the years and centuries that followed. AGREED. I WAS USING THE BUDDHA AS THE NOMINAL/TITULAR EMBODIMENT OF BUDDHISM. YOU ARE CORRECT THAT IT IS BUDDHISM I AM DESCRIBING RATHER THAN NECESSARILY THE TEACHINGS OF THE BUDDHA. One of the pillars of Buddhism is the idea of a 'middle way' between extremes, so arguably the elimination of too much pleasure, or too many pleasure-bound activities, may be considered a teaching of his. There are certainly many pleasure-eliminating strands within Buddhism, and these aren't at all surprising given their Southeast Asian cultural contexts (less so for the Far East), but there are also numerous pleasure-accepting strands and even pleasure-seeking ones, in the case of the Tantric traditions. I’LL AGREE THAT THE MIDDLE WAY IS A MUCH MORE CONTENTIOUS AND EVEN CONTROVERSIAL AREA THAN I HAVE ALLOWED FOR. I HAVE SOME SUSPICION OVER HOW ‘MIDDLE’ THE MIDDLE WAY TRULY IS, BUT THAT IS VIRTUALLY A DIFFERENT SUBJECT THAN THE ONE AT HAND. AS FOR TANTRA, IT IS NOT ORIGINAL TO BUDDHISM AND PLAYS I BELIEVE MORE OF A ROLE LIKE BON PO DOES TO VAJRAYANA/MAHAYANA. IT HAS BEEN GRAFTED ON TO BUDDHISM BUT IN ITSELF IS SOMETHING MUCH CLOSER TO PAGANISM IN SPIRIT AND POSSIBLY IN ORIGINS. What's central in the latter is experience without attachment, since attachment is considered to lead to displeasure (i.e. suffering) and delusion, while non-attachment is considered to enhance the capacity for experience and for enlightenment. Attachment in this case means something like trying to stop or hold back the flow of experience; non-attachment means going with that flow. I AM STILL FEELING THAT ATTACHMENT IS INTIMATELY CONNECTED TO DESIRE. IS NOT THE EXPERIENCE THAT IS HAD WITH NON-ATTACHMENT TAYLORED TO THAT POSITION BY DEFINITION RATHER THAN EMPIRICAL FACT? IN OTHER WORDS, IT BECOMES A PARTIUCLAR KIND OF EXPERIENCE THAT IS HEREWITH BEING LEGITIMSED. WITH THAT LAST, ATTACHMENT COULD BE EQUALLY ATTACHED TO THE FLOW RATHER THAN RESISTENT TO IT.

These debates are, in any case, very useful... Paganisms have (in my view) much to gain from the practical psycho-spiritual sophistication of Buddhism (and also from philosophical nuance of certain strands of Mahayana Buddhism), but by the same token, Buddhism has much that could be shed in favor of a more world-embracing faith and practice. The two traditions could make for great allies. (And I think process philosophies offer a great tool for cultivating that alliance...) I AGREE TOTALLY WITH THE POTENTIAL ALLIANCE IDEA AND THAT PROCESS PHILOSOPHIES OFFER A GREAT TOOL IN THAT DIRECTION. ALSO WITH THE MUTUAL CONTRIBUTION EACH COULD MAKE TO THE OTHER.

15 July 2011