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21 May 2007
Update and rant (only for those who wish to bother)
Elizabeth in Paris at the same time when I wrote to her after how many decades and after Nancy recently came across her email address! Tom's unsatisfactory 'reasons' for defeating the Neptunian rationale against global warming! The implosion of the American presidential junta or the coup d'êtat's next stage of implemented control? These are the parameters or context within which the discovery of the Flame of Liberty shrine along the Seine has occurred for me. I had come to a realization that we need a third alternative to both the terms 'religious' and 'spiritual'. "I am not religious; I am spiritual" is the recurring phrase of the day. By 'religious' is generally meant 'institutional': the affirmer stresses her/his non-affiliation to any church or denomination. But 'spiritual' still has that same transcendental thrust – air being the element that primarily metaphors for 'abstract', 'transcendental', 'non-worldly', 'gnostic' and the like. My train of thought led to wanting to find a new alternative to both those terms, and I thought for a moment of 'flammable' but decided that 'pagan' would do it just as well – paganism as a third generic alternative.
For at the heart of pagan ritual is the sacred fire – an institution that paganism bequeathed to many of her competing daughter religions as well. In my Unabridged Webster's dictionary dating from the 1940s, the Statue of Liberty has an entry under the Goddess of Liberty. She is, in fact, among the biggest pagan idols around these days. And, with the Parisian 'Diana shrine', one is confronted with an exact replica of the flame aloft Liberty's torch. Vive la France! They are still doing something right. Yes, this is a country that is remarkably divided by the recent Presidential election. We find our friends here split right along that divide – to the point that they tend to socialize separately as well. But it is a time that each must learn to talk and communicate with the other; this is more crucial currently than it has been. Could la France provide an example for the necessary communication – communication on all levels (from the cyber world to the real, from the neighbourhood to the assembly and parliament all the way to a global plebiscitic forum) that must be the starting point for any necessary 'Great Awakening' (what I like to call the 'pagan avalanche' – though any label would do)? But if Liberty is a goddess, it is her flame that is this goddess' essence; it was fire that provided humanity her first great freedom – the first perhaps of a long line to come, and it is that freedom that is the core of paganism. The hearth is the centre of every home and community.
After I had said that "The hexed breed the hexed," Richard asked, "What would prevent paganism from also being an instance of being hexed?" (and after I had also said that the Abrahamic hex is like the enslavement of the alcoholic – both represent the same qualitative loss of freedom). My answer was that the pagan is one who puts freedom before all else – even its god; or goddess. In our task of communication, we challenge anyone to explain why whatever they put first is to be placed before liberty. That needs to be the start.
Rituals are venues of communication – maybe traditionally but not exclusively with whatever gods we entertain. The communication that is now needed is one that is fully inclusive, that is, communication per se. In the very least, the gods are vital concepts – but ones that perhaps resist definition. This is what allows us the freedom to converse with those 'concepts' in any effort to understand both them and ourselves.
The goddess Vac 'Speech', the first of the Vedic transcendental abstractions, became too enticed with herself and forgot her context in the process. Communication/Vac is the 'highest' to which we can attain, but there's also the danger the lie is born and that is what becomes communicated. The only way through the lie is total, unrestricted self-examination – within of course the context of communication.
The one area that I have presently come across on both sides of the French divide is the unified response of delight and agreement and national pride when I mention that Chirac's best moment was his stance against the invasion and war of Iraq. There is hope! For the rest, I remained stunned by Bush et al. representing the epitome of colossal stupidity: decades of minority Sunni rule over Shia resentment – a most explosive situation to anyone not blinded by the goofo-buffo of "We're going to save American lives!"
And to my atheist friends, new and old, I can say that I still suspect that on some macro-level, damn it, even religion is not a delusion. But that is another story and another thread for another day. For now, after Paris, it has been our Provençal 'hideaway' and especially those moments with our 'longest' friends – sometimes electronically (as with Joop); sometimes while sharing tapenade and whisky (as with others of us who no less face an eventual extinction though perhaps a little less imminently). This is an area that literally bursts with beauty – perhaps as an echo of the souls that have chosen to live here.
But within days, these nomads are off through the country to London, Bath and beyond – with the Kerry court date looming ahead in full uncertainty. What will be will be, but what has been has been more marvelous and wonderful than any words could possibly convey. This always remains my wish for everyone.
Pace amoreque deorum,
Michael
PS: In response to Richard at one point earlier today, I had to declare: "But 85% of our life if not more is missing something. I think we had better just get used to it."