A Sinner's Prayer: for John Beckett

A recent Patheos essay by John Beckett worried that conversations about piety and ritual impurity are bringing the concept of "Sin" into Paganism. For him this would be an unqualified Bad Thing since:

Sin is breaking the rules – even if those rules are arbitrary and outdated. Sin is transgression – even if the institution we transgress against is regressive and harmful. Sin is error and “missing the mark” – even if that mark is impossible to attain. The concept of sin tries to force a rainbow world into a black and white box. 

Avoiding sin requires perfection, and since perfection is unattainable, we’re told we’re bad and evil. We feel shame for shortcomings we could not possibly avoid, some of which aren’t even shortcomings. Christianity’s answer is that a god-man will vicariously impart perfection to believers. The proposition works for some, although by their own admission they never completely stop sinning.

A straw man nailed to a cross is a wonderful prop if you're staging Children of the Corn. It's less impressive as a debate tool. There is no shortage of Christian literature on Sin, and I wonder why Beckett didn't consult Fr. Google to see what actual adherents had to say on the topic.  Since I am a cultural Roman Catholic, I'll begin my search with the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia.  There is of course a good bit of RC-specific material here. But there's also a fair bit which could prove useful to people of any religious persuasion.  For example:

Sin is nothing else than a morally bad act (St. Thomas, "De malo", 7:3), an act not in accord with reason informed by the Divine law. God has endowed us with reason and free-will, and a sense of responsibility; He has made us subject to His law, which is known to us by the dictates of conscience, and our acts must conform with these dictates, otherwise we sin (Romans 14:23).

The pre-Christian world was quite capable of creating moral codes and of understanding these moral codes would be violated.  Centuries before Moses purportedly received the Ten Commandments Hammurabi's code was followed throughout Babylon. The codes of their communities certainly included proscriptions which appear silly to us, just as many of our "thou shalts" and "thou shalt nots" would seem odd and arbitrary to them.  But they would be puzzled indeed by the idea that "avoiding sin requires perfection" when it simply meant "behave in accordance with community standards." And the pre-Christian world certainly recognized "Divine law," though their take on said law admittedly differed from the Catholic vision. 

New Advent goes on to note that Sin must involve a conscious decision. The sinner is aware the action is wrong yet for whatever reason chooses to violate the moral imperative. This is useful in distinguishing between sin and ritual impurity.  You can be contaminated by willful wrong action but you can also be contaminated by proximity or contact: miasma involves no moral payload.  It's also useful in stopping the kind of free-floating anxiety Beckett describes. If you are honoring the Gods to the best of your ability with the knowledge you have at hand you are not going to fall into a state of Impietas. Christians may think everybody can do it -- but sinning really takes an active effort!  

We can even consult other experts on the subject.  In The Satanic Bible Anton LaVey repeatedly praised the Seven Deadly Sins and noted they led to self-gratification.  But the Church of Satan is really more about naughtiness than wickedness.  Satanists enjoy tweaking the bluenoses (and their founder wrote about the "Law of the Forbidden"), but their parties owe more to Epicurus than Hannibal Lecter.  LaVey distinguished between Indulgence and Compulsion. Throughout his career he condemned drug abuse and "druggies" and disparaged efforts to treat substance abuse or criminal misbehavior as a sickness rather than a personal failing. So while Satanists may make light of the John Beckett version of "Sin," they hardly reject the idea outright.  Current CoS High Priest Peter Gilmore has described their worldview as "I-theism." A religion of self-deification certainly can (and does) condemn acts of wrongdoing which cheapen the wrongdoer before the community and hirself.  

 The idea that "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23) is Christian: in the pre-Christian world it was expected that most would uphold community standards and honor the Gods, and violations were the exception rather than the rule.  And while castes and familial curses certainly exist outside Monotheism, the idea that we are all tainted by some sort of "original Sin" is hardly universal. That being said, it's ahistorical in the extreme to imagine "do whatever you want so long as nobody gets hurt" was the order of things before the Monotheists came in and spoiled the fun. They may not have split the world into "Good" and "Evil" but they certainly knew the difference between right and wrong. 

Conversations We Need To Be Having: An Ongoing Discussion with Galina Krasskova (Pt. 3)

Erin had an interesting question in the comments: what are some ways we can address ancestral debt? I agree that we are here to (among other things) work on cleaning up the messes our ancestors left behind. And I think that has to involve more than lighting candles and saying "I'm sorry." There has to be real work done in the real world to address some of the many real injustices out there. But where do we start?

GK: i think that it starts with significantly and consistently honoring your own dead. That's the starting point, because that relationship needs to be healed, healthy, and strong before we can move on to any effective work. Once that relationship is established, it starts to seriously change the way one views the world, the lens through which we engage. That's an important turning point. It's at the point that the ancestor worker will start to see ways in which they can engage in this healing process, in shouldering their part of the debt. It's impossible to say: at that point you will always do X because we don't all have the same ancestors. it's going to be different. we don't all have the same skills and abilities either. For me, when I hit that point, i started educating people not just about ancestor work but about fighting the filter. that was my "come to jesus moment' if you'll excuse the expression. When that personal ancestral relationship is healthy, it will point you toward where you can focus and act in the world. One thing flows out of another. I don't think ongoing elevations are amiss though.

With all the "Islamophobe" slurs flying around I wanted to state clearly that it is possible to be both a devout Muslim and a good citizen. The late Capt. Humayan Khan is a good example, as is his family: they are fine Americans and our country is better for having them as citizens. This isn't a question of Open Borders vs. Big Walls. We're talking about limited immigration and about immigrants being expected to conform to their new society's expectations instead of the converse. The fallacy of the excluded middle is not dead...

GK: Of course it's possible to be a good and devout Muslim and a good citizen! I've never contested that. My issue solely is with unregulated immigration into Europe. I think the wolf is at the door of Europe (just as it is with our polytheistic traditions thanks to the Marxist cabal chipping away at their integrity) and people are determined not to see that until it's too late. Just like all Christians aren't terrorists, all muslims aren't terrorists but the unregulated immigration does nothing to root out those that are radicalized and moreover, with people injured, scared, and hurting and feeling that their governments aren't listening to them, it's setting up a situation in which the seriously radical right is slowly gaining power. Do we want to see another WWII? Because that is very easily where this could lead. Moreover, I think European culture is something to be tended and protected. I don't think we should be expecting Europe to move millions of Muslims into an area the size of say Belgium. It's not their problem and they shouldn't be expected to sacrifice their future to solve it. A moderate amount of immigration is fine with the caveat that the new immigrants do not isolate themselves but learn the language and culture of their new countries and become active citizens. What is the benefit to each European nation of taking in as many immigrants as it is doing? and does that benefit outweigh the damage, not just now but twenty years from now?

I also note as a polytheist that Trump crossed a very real line when he started attacking Capt. Khan. There are very few universal rules in Polytheism, but "Do Not Defile the Dead" is one of them. Khan died a hero in the service of his country and deserves the respect due a hero: Donald Trump and Roger Stone aren't fit to shine his boots or weed the space around his headstone. When they spread lies implying he was a traitor and a terrorist, they defiled the dead. And even in our polluted and broken society people recoil from that behavior like it was vomit or rotten meat. (I hope America is not so polluted and so broken that a majority of us can overlook it).

I find defiling the dead in any way disgusting, revolting, and polluted behavior especially when it's done for political gain. If you defile the dead what the hell are you going to do to the living?

Impietas V: Omnis

[Artaxerxes] therefore gave orders that Mithridates should be put to death by the torture of the boats (σκάφη, skáphe).   Now, this torture of the boats is as follows. Two boats are taken, which are so made as to fit over one another closely; in one of these the victim is laid, flat upon his back; then the other is laid over the first and carefully adjusted, so that the victim's head, hands, and feet are left projecting, while the rest of his body is completely covered up. Then they give him food to eat, and if he refuse it, they force him to take it by pricking his eyes. After he has eaten, they give him a mixture of milk and honey to drink, pouring it into his mouth, and also deluge his face with it.  Then they keep his eyes always turned towards the sun, and a swarm of flies settles down upon his face and hides it completely. And since inside the boats he does what must needs be done when men eat and drink, worms and maggots seethe up from the corruption and rottenness of the excrement, devouring his body, and eating their way into his vitals. For when at last the man is clearly dead and the upper boat has been removed, his flesh is seen to have been consumed away, while about his entrails swarms of such animals as I have mentioned are clinging fast and eating. In this way Mithridates was slowly consumed for seventeen days, and at last died.

Plutarch, Artaxerxes

Even today scaphism is considered the apex of human cruelty. The idea of binding a man in his own wastes while vermin devour him alive fills us with horror.  But if this is a grievous crime against humanity, how much greater is the wrong we have done the Gods?

Like Artaxerxes we have bound the Divine fast. All the multitudinous Deities, all the Powers of Fire and Ice, all the spirits of sparkling stream and rushing river, of storm and sunshine, mountain and plain -- we have shoved them into a single boat and labeled it "One God."  We have buried Their holy places under cathedrals and churches: we have declared Them mere masks, empty images to decorate the Truth we torture.

We have gorged our captive with sweet praise. We declared him Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnibenevolent. Where have claimed our captive God mighty beyond all comprehension, beyond all measures, beyond all limits.  And yet even as we declared his might we tightened the bonds, leaving Him and His Church an ever shrinking arena while claiming more and more for a god-free society.  And given this treatment it is not surprising our captive has rotted.

An all-benevolent God could not stand by and allow suffering; an all-powerful God could accomplish any goal without causing suffering; an all-knowing God would be aware that this is an imperfect and unjust Universe.  A Creator possessede of all these powers who threw us into this world would be a bloodthirsty sadist, the Demiurge of the Gnostics with a particularly nasty imagination. He certainly would be nobody worthy of worship -- and it is such a short and easy step between One God and none at all.  And so it is that today we find people seeking to understand Deity through these lies, then turning away in disgust when they find only a fly-blown corpse.

If we are to move beyond this we must understand that our Gods are as bound to this World and this Wyrd as we are. Like us They must fight tooth and nail to carve out a place for Themselves and Their loved ones. Like us They err, like us They struggle, like us They create meaning where no meaning existed before.  Let us call Them powerful beyond our understanding and declare Them worthy of honor and respect (what the Anglo-Saxons called weorðscipe).  Let us give Them the veneration They deserve and honor that which They achieved through heroic effort.  But let us understand that we can only know Them by acknowledging both Their strengths and Their flaws; let us know that we do Them no kindness by poisoning Them with absurdity.

Still more on African "Witch Hunts:" For Yvonne Chireau

In response to my earlier post, Yvonne Chireau wrote:

Good stuff you write here. One thing that observers of "traditional" African religions neglect to understand is the historical role of iconoclasm as a vehicle of spiritual expression and power. This can express itself in African religious cultures as social (or sexual) repression, anti-witchcraft purges, and perennial revivalism, most often manifested in Africa's indigenous prophet movements. This is the ugly face of religious renewal in a transforming culture, and any anthropologist will tell you that it's not just in Africa, and its not just Christianity.

Given that I've been writing about Omar Khayyam recently, I definitely agree with Yvonne on this one.  Iran is a perfect example of a society in transition redefining itself by purging "decadent" Western ideas and implementing a government organized around a very Persian vision of Islam.  In the Arabic-speaking world we see reactionary movements against corrupt, despotic secular rulers which favors a society based on shari'ah rather than a Western economic and political model.  (Is anyone surprised to see that Egypt's Coptic Christians have come under increasing attack with the fall of the secular Mubarek government: will anyone be surprised when a similar fate befalls Syria's Christian, Alawite and Druze minorities after the fall of the Assad regime?)

A classic secular example might be Germany's reaction to its World War I defeat and subsequent economic collapse. In that case a country which was known for its tolerance of Jews - at least as compared to places like Poland and Russia - had a notorious spasm of anti-Semitic violence which was also aimed at homosexuals, communists and others who were presented as a threat to a truly "German" way of life.  Closer to home, although not nearly so bloody, I might point to the rise of Evangelical Christianity as a political force in America.  One hundred years ago the idea that politicians would take "Holy rollers" seriously was laughable. While mainstream Protestant churches wielded an inordinate amount of power, "speaking in tongues" and suchlike was generally reserved for the downtrodden and dispossessed. But since the 1970s we've seen people like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell - guys who would have been tent preachers at best in the Depression era - become kingmakers for the Republican party. And it's no coincidence that this rise started in the era of stagflation, Watergate, the Vietnam defeat and the rise of various civil rights movements. 

I don't want to come across as an apologist for Christianity or the various excesses of missionaries in the developing world.  I've written critically about monotheism in general: I acknowledge that there are Christians who would like to see an American theocracy and who are happy to push their vision of a "Christian government" in the developing world. But I also acknowledge a tendency among many Neopagans to yammer on at length about the "Burning Times" and "Christian persecution" as part of an extended live-action role playing game. These are the people who want to recast the deaths of the heretics killed during Europe's witch craze - people who overwhelmingly viewed themselves as Christian and who died praying to Jesus - as part of a great conspiracy against the followers of the Rede and the Threefold Law. And from where I stand it looks like they are fixating on the word "witch" - a word which means something very different to an African than to an American or European Neopagan - and trying to claim Africa's "witch killings" as part of the Great Conspiracy against them.  I find this, frankly, as distasteful as talking about the six million witches who went to their deaths wearing yellow pentagrams and singing "we all come from the Goddess." It cheapens the very real suffering of innocent people and reduces them to props in a Harry Potter v. Voldemort LARP.

Monotheism Ethical and Otherwise IV: for Dennis Prager

I | II | III | IV

In earlier installments, I've explored some of the problematic presuppositions underlying Dennis Prager's conception of "Ethical Monotheism." This post explores one of monotheism's greatest weaknesses, one which Prager avoids mentioning but which can clearly be seen in his first premise:

There is one God from whom emanates one morality for all humanity.

Polytheistic cultures may react to their neighbors' gods in a number of different ways. They may incorporate them into their native pantheons, as the Greeks did with the Thracean Ares and the Romans did with the Olympian deities. They may claim those gods are merely their own deities under a different name: Tacitus considered Odin to be a Germanic Mercury. They may travel to become initiated in the mysteries of a deity's worship, as the ancients did at Eleusis: they might bring those deities home and found new cults, like the Mithraic mysteries.  As the cultures incorporate foreign gods, so too do they incorporate foreign philosophy and science. 

A monotheist culture, by contrast, begins with the assumption that it honors the One God and follows the One Truth. Those who think otherwise are misguided at best and actively evil at worst. If they cannot be converted by reason or by force, they must be exterminated. 

But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, an seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practise regular charity, then open the way for them: for Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful. If one amongst the Pagans ask thee for asylum, grant it to him, so that he may hear the word of Allah. and then escort him to where he can be secure. That is because they are men without knowledge.

Surah 9:5-6, al-Q'uran

No war ever undertaken by the Frank nation was carried on with such persistence and bitterness, or cost so much labour, because the Saxons, like almost all the tribes of Germany, were a fierce people, given to the worship of devils, and hostile to our religion, and did not consider it dishonourable to transgress and violate all law, human and divine.

Einhard, Charlemagne's biographer, describing the Christianization of northern Europe

This is not to say that the polytheistic worldview leads invariably to sunshine, rainbows and moral relativism. The Romans were horrified by the Carthaginian practice of child sacrifice:  Buddhists launched genocidal attacks against Mongolian shamans.  But there is far more room for commerce and cooperation amongst people who accept a multitude of deities than amongst people who divide the world into the faithful and the infidels. 

Monotheism Ethical and Otherwise III: for Dennis Prager

I | II | III | IV

In his essay on Ethical Monotheism, Mr. Prager writes:

One morality also means one moral code for all humanity. "Thou shall not murder" means that murder is wrong for everyone, not just for one culture. It means that suttee, the now rare but once widespread Hindu practice of burning widows with their husband's body, is wrong. It means the killing of a daughter or sister who lost her virginity prior to marriage, practiced to this day in parts of the Arab world, is immoral. It means that clitoridectomies, the cutting off of a girl's clitoris (and sometimes more), a ritual practiced on almost one hundred million women living today mostly in Africa, is immoral. 

As I noted in my first post on ethical monotheism,  Prager's G-d, as set forth in Prager's Holy Scriptures, demands the murder by stoning of women who come to the bridal bed with ruptured hymens.  If anything, I would think that Prager would praise the Arabs who still practice "honor killings," as they are upholding the "one moral code for all humanity" more stringently than their secular cousins in Israel.  But as we see in this June 30, 2009 column at the conservative website Townhall.com, Mr. Prager has a serious problem with Muslims who stone adulteresses:

Yet, now, released as if by Providence the week after the fraudulent elections in Iran and the suppression and murder of Iranian dissidents, is a film about the nature of the radical Muslims who govern Iran. Titled "The Stoning of Soraya M.," the film depicts events based on the true story of a woman stoned to death in a rural village in Iran in 1986 for allegedly committing adultery. 

If you want to understand the type of people who run Iran, see this film. If you want to understand why men and women risk their lives to demonstrate against the fascist theocracy that rules Iran, see this film. The film is about the type of peoLple who become “supreme leader” (Ali Khamanei) or president of Iran (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad). It is about their mendacity, their use of religion to commit barbarity, and, of course, their despicable treatment of women.

We should also note that Prager's distaste for murder does not include a distaste for capital punishment. In this December 12, 2006 column Prager claimed "It is a cosmic injustice to allow a murderer to keep his life" and noted:

The most common objection opponents offer against capital punishment is that innocents may be executed. 

My answer has always been that this is so rare (I do not know of a proved case of mistaken execution in America in the last 50 years) that society must be prepared to pay that terrible price. Why? Among other reasons, because more innocents will be killed by murderers who are not executed (in prison, or once released or if they escape) than will be killed by the state in erroneous executions. 

So, yes, I acknowledge the possibility of an innocent being killed by the state because of a mistaken murder conviction. But we often have the tragedy of innocents dying because of a social policy. I support higher speed limits even when shown that they lead to more traffic fatalities. I support the right of people to drink alcohol even though the amount of violence directly emanating from alcohol consumption -- from drunk drivers to spousal and child abuse -- is so high.

The Innocence Project might have something to say about Prager's contention concerning proved cases of execution in America.  So too might those wild-eyed left-wing radicals at the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.  And the troubling issues of racism and classism in the death penalty's application have led many to compare it to lynching.  But Mr. Prager appears unconcerned by these nay-sayers.  He feels that the execution of murderers is a moral imperative, while the execution of adulteresses and whores is repugnant.  And yet the "one moral code" which he so zealously upholds is quite clear that adultery and wantonness is as deserving of death as willful murder.

But in case you might think I'm accusing Mr. Prager of being soft on sexual sin, let's look at his feelings on homosexuality:

Jews or Christians who take the Bible's views on homosexuality seriously are not obligated to prove that they are not fundamentalists or literalists, let alone bigots (though, of course, people have used the Bible to defend bigotry). Rather, those who claim homosexuality is compatible with Judaism or Christianity bear the burden of proof to reconcile this view with their Bible. Given the unambiguous nature of the biblical attitude toward homosexuality, however, such a reconciliation is not possible. All that is possible is to declare: "I am aware that the Bible condemns homosexuality, and I consider the Bible wrong." That would be an intellectually honest approach. But this approach leads to another problem. If one chooses which of the Bible's moral injunctions to take seriously (and the Bible states its prohibition of homosexuality not only as a law, but as a value --- "it is an abomination"), of what moral use is the Bible?

You might ask about those moral injunctions to stone harlots and homosexuals. Prager, one step ahead of you, follows up with these paragraphs:

Those who advocate religious acceptance of homosexuality also argue that the Bible prescribes the death penalty for a multitude of sins, including such seemingly inconsequential acts as gathering wood on the Sabbath. Thus, the fact that the Torah declares homosexuality a capital offense may mean that homosexuality is no more grave an offense than some violation of the Sabbath. And since we no longer condemn people who violate the Sabbath, why continue to condemn people who engage in homosexual acts?

The answer is that we do not derive our approach toward homosexuality from the fact that the Torah made it a capital offense. We learn it from the fact that the Bible makes a moral statement about homosexuality. It makes no statement about gathering wood on the Sabbath. The Torah uses its strongest term of censure --- "abomination" --- to describe homosexuality. It is the Bible's moral evaluation of homosexuality that distinguishes homosexuality from other offenses, capital or otherwise.  

This is fair enough. Yet among the other offenses which are condemned as toevot (abominations) are incest, child sacrifice, idolatry, usury... and, according to the Prophet Isaiah, adultery.  If it is a cosmic injustice to allow a murderer to keep his life, surely it's an even greater cosmic injustice to tolerate the continuing existence of a toe'vah.   And so our "one moral code for all humanity" brings us (and Mr.  Prager) back to the town square with a pile of rocks at our feet.

More on African Monotheism, Lwa, Orisha and Gods

In response to my earlier post on Orisha, Lwa, Gods, Monotheism, Polytheism and Morality, Tesla Quoyle asked:

Is it possible (I have no idea) that African beliefs concerning Olodumare, Mbomba, Nzambi, and presumably other distant Prime Movers, were influenced towards call it "Absentee Monotheism" during the period AD 800-1700? Does evidence exist that Absentee Monotheism was part of African religions prior to the earlier date?

I realize this could prove a touchy subject, but I ask this question even as I feel great respect toward many monotheists and polytheists, both ancient and contemporary. And neither do I believe Africans were incapable of discovering or inventing monotheism quite on their own, nor do I believe either "mono-" or "poly-" morally superior to the other. I see no cause for such feelings of religious superiority, neither on the parts of latter-day monotheists or polytheists, when I read any history of the Ancient World. 

If I'm not mistaken, the Arabic slave trade in Africa began around AD 700 or 800, and by (roughly) AD 1700 the European slave trade was peaking or slowing down. By that end date, a very large bilingual, bi-cultural Creole population had existed in Kongo itself --- (much larger than present-day Congo) for up to two centuries, and many African religions had experienced much European influence.

Before that, Islam had been gaining ground in parts of Africa for a millennium. (Not to mention possible Jewish influences long before that.) Does that evidence for what I just termed the Absentee G-d in African religions exist prior to the earlier date, i.e., approx. AD 800?

Please bear in mind also that absence of evidence does not suggest evidence of absence: if no such evidence survives from those ancient times, it proves nothing. Whereas if the evidence does exist for an ancient and wholly African monotheistic G-d, it would be (to me at least) extremely fascinating.

In search of an answer, I turned to Eoghan Ballard, a scholar of Kongo and Bantu history and culture and an initiate in several of Las Reglas de Congo.  Eoghan replied:

There are a couple of things to note in responding. First, it is impossible to know what religion was being practiced in much of Africa in 800 ce. We have records and more cultural detail for parts of Eastern Africa at that time. Christianity and it is assumed, Judaism were established in Africa before that time. Western and sub Saharan Africa is an unknown. We can speculate, but it is wild speculation. What we can say is that by the time the Portuguese made contact with the Bakongo in the 1490s, a dios otioso was a clearly defined aspect of Kongo religion, and it could be and was classified, apparently by both the Kongo and the Europeans as monotheism. Europeans noted the monotheism of the Bakongo because they were in equal measure pleased and surprised to encounter it. Of course, to me, the more fascinating issue is how many modern Neopagans are really monotheists without realizing it.

And while Ian Phanes found my post "fascinating:"

However, it wasn't really what I was asking about. The people I'm discussing this with are usually pagans, and most of us have read about the role of an ultimate creator above the orisa/lwa, so the God vs. gods issue isn't a problem for us. 

What we find ourselves discussing is whether the orisa/lwa fit into our usual European-derived categories, or if they need to be classed separately.

For example, I typically honor the holy powers as three kindreds: nature spirits who inhabit the living world (the Land); ancestors who inhabit the spirit world (the Sea); and gods who inhabit the shining world (the Sky). The basic tripartite cosmology underlies all of the Indo-European traditions, though this specific formulation is modern. 

I can make arguments for the orisa belonging to each of those three categories. If Osun is the Osun river, is she a nature spirit? If Sango was a human king and became an orisa, is he an ancestor? If the creator made Esu in heaven, is he a god?

What I was hoping you would talk about is your experiences of the lwa and the gods, especially with ritual possession of yourself and those around you. You've met these holy powers face-to-face. You have served as a medium for some of them. Does it feel to you that there is more difference between the lwas and the gods, or within the lwas and within the gods?

In my experience, these classifications are largely human constructs which are set up for our convenience.  This is not a bad thing: we regularly place things in categories so we can work with them more efficiently.  The division between land-sea-sky (inspired by Georges Dumézil and devotees of his tripartite division of Indo-European gods and cultural roles) is certainly workable and has many followers.  But in the end it is a human classification, created by humans for humans.  While one could classify gods according to this system, one could as easily classify them as gods of love, agriculture, warfare, etc. or as Hellenic, Germanic, African, etc. gods.

The problem arises when we begin to assume that these categories are something other than a convenient shorthand.  Instead of becoming a means by which we can begin to study an unfamiliar spirit, they can become pigeon-holes which limit our understanding.   Figures separated by time and distance are all conflated into "love goddess" or "fertility god" roles: instead of dealing with them in their full contradiction and complexity, we distill them down to a single purpose.

You can call Osun a nature spirit if you wish and you won't be wrong - but she is far more than that.  You can call Sango a deified ancestor or a god: the lines between these categories have alwasy been blurry.  And whatever you call Esu, he's certain to come up with some counterexample that will prove you completely wrong.   If you are using these classifications to understand the lwa or orisha more closely - if, for example, you want to explore the history of various honored warrior-kings in order to better understand Sango or if you want to meditate at a river in order to understand that aspect of Osun - there's no problem. But when you start trying to squeeze them into convenient categories, you'll only find yourself growing more frustrated as they refuse to fit into your classifications.

I've found that treating the gods with the same reverence and respect one shows for the lwa or orisha has great benefits and can help you grow closer to them.  I do not know where they all stand on the cosmic hierarchy.  (The closest I've received to an answer is watching Loki and Legba get drunk together and argue about which one was an aspect of the other... ).  In the end, I'm not sure it's important for my purposes.  What's important is establishing contact with the spirits and working with them for the healing of ourselves and our world.

More on Monotheism Ethical and Otherwise II: for Dennis Prager

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Speaking out against the horrors of nature veneration, Dennis Prager says: 

It is not possible for God to be part of nature for two reasons.

First, nature is finite and God is infinite. If God were within nature, He would be limited, and God, who is not physical, has no limits (I use the pronoun "He"" not because I believe God is a male, but because the neuter pronoun "It" depersonalizes God. You cannot talk to, relate to, love, or obey an "It.").

Who says God is 'infinite'? That assertion is unique to the Abrahamic faiths: what's more, it sets up a number of philosophical conundrums.  Some are interesting logical puzzles i.e. "Can God make a rock so heavy He can't lift it?" Others are more troubling, particularly the Problem of Suffering.  Sometimes it is worded in childlike terms: "If God loves us, why did He let my puppy get hit by a car?" A more sophisticated version of this question is posed by the Catholic philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas:

Objection 1. It seems that God does not exist; because if one of two contraries be infinite, the other would be altogether destroyed. But the word "God" means that He is infinite goodness. If, therefore,God existed, there would be no evil discoverable; but there is evil in the world. Therefore God does not exist.

****

Reply to Objection 1. As Augustine says (Enchiridion xi): "Since God is the highest good, He would not allow any evil to exist in His works, unless His omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil." This is part of the infinite goodness of God, that He should allow evil to exist, and out of it produce good.

When we strip away the fancy wording, we find that Aquinas has given us the same answer we got when we were standing over our deceased dog: "God has a plan, and sometimes we can't understand it. We just have to trust in His infinite wisdom, power and mercy." It does nothing to explain exactly what good comes out of the numerous ills which torment our world. It does not assuage the suffering of the sick, the starving, and the victims of injustice: neither does it bring Fido back from the dead.

Some blame Adam and Eve for their disobedience in the Garden of Eden.  But was their sin so great that an all-powerful and all-loving God felt it necessary to respond with the Black Death, the Holocaust and the Mongol invasions?  Others take refuge in a coming "Day of Judgment" wherein the good shall be rewarded and the evil punished.  This does nothing to explain why evil had to exist in the first place, nor does it provide any immediate comfort to those suffering in the here and now.  And some redefine "good" to mean "God's Word and God's Will," while "evil" is "that which goes against God's Word and God's Will." This may work for the faithful, but it doesn't hold up well under rational scrutiny. A moral code which says "genocide is wrong unless God orders you to do it" is hardly an improvement over "genocide is wrong unless the Führer orders you to do it."

This is far less an issue for a polytheist.  Polytheism sees the Gods as possessing great power and great wisdom, but acknowledges that even They have limits.  They are capable of error like we are; They share in our joys and our sorrows. Indeed, we might look to Their myths and to our history and conclude that suffering is the price we pay for sentience. To be a living and thinking being is to respond to stimuli positive and negative: a life free of discontentment and desire is a life free of meaning and purpose.   This world, with all its flaws, is what we have.  If we are unhappy with the way things are, it is up to us to change them.

More on Monotheism Ethical and Otherwise I: for Dennis Prager

I | II | III | IV

When I referenced Dennis Prager's essay on "Ethical Monotheism," I didn't expect so much interest in the topic. While I disagree with Mr. Prager (who, contrary to my original assertion, appears to be a scholar of Russian and Jewish history but not an ordained Rabbi) on theology, politics and just about everything else, I think he has done a great service with this essay.  He has laid bare many of the preconceptions and prejudices of Monotheism in a clear and concise manner.

From the opening of that essay:

Ethical monotheism means two things:

1. There is one God from whom emanates one morality for all humanity.

2. God's primary demand of people is that they act decently toward one another.

From the start we see that Prager believes morality emanates from one God. Compare and contrast this with the definition given by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

The term “morality” can be used either 

1.   descriptively to refer to some codes of conduct put forward by a society or,
      a.  some other group, such as a religion, or
      b.  accepted by an individual for her own behavior or

2.   normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons.

According to these G-dless philosophers, morality is a code of conduct which may be social or religious in nature but which should also be subject to rational scrutiny. Prager's first definition fits 1a and most people would say that his second fits 2, with the usual quibbling about what constitutes decent behavior.

But is "decent behavior" the primary demand of Prager's God? More from that essay:

A third characteristic of God is goodness. If God weren't moral, ethical monotheism would be an oxymoron: A God who is not good cannot demand goodness. Unlike all other gods believed in prior to monotheism, the biblical God rules by moral standards. 

From 1 Samuel 15:2-3

2 This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. 

3 Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’

From Deuteronomy 22:13-21

13 If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and hate her, 

14 And give occasions of speech against her, and bring up an evil name upon her, and say, I took this woman, and when I came to her, I found her not a maid: 

15 Then shall the father of the damsel, and her mother, take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel's virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate: 

16 And the damsel's father shall say unto the elders, I gave my daughter unto this man to wife, and he hateth her; 

17 And, lo, he hath given occasions of speech against her, saying, I found not thy daughter a maid; and yet these are the tokens of my daughter's virginity. And they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city. 

18 And the elders of that city shall take that man and chastise him; 

19 And they shall amerce him in an hundred shekels of silver, and give them unto the father of the damsel, because he hath brought up an evil name upon a virgin of Israel: and she shall be his wife; he may not put her away all his days. 

20 But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel: 

21 Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father's house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you.

The Roman destruction of Carthage at the end of the Third Punic War was as bloody - and successful - as the Hebrew campaign against the Amalekites.  A 7,000 year-old grave recently excavated in Talheim, Germany revealed the massacred skeletons of 18 adult males and six children: archaeologists speculate the women were carried away as booty.  A Vestal Virgin who violated her oath of chastity could be buried alive in the Campus Sceleratus.  I do not wish to single out the God of the Hebrews for particular scorn. But neither do I see any evidence that His primary concern is that people "act decently" toward each other - at least not according to any useful definition of "decent behavior."

Orishas, Lwa, Gods, Monotheism, Polytheism and Morality

In a private message, Ianphanes asked:

It occurred to me yesterday that you are one person who could speak with some authority on a question that has floated around the more experienced practitioners in the Central Illinois pagan/magical community for some time:

Are the orisa/loas properly classified as gods, or are they different?

This is a hotly-debated topic in many circles. Many Haitian Vodouisants identify as Roman Catholics and see their Vodou activities as an adjunct to their faith. They believe the world was created by Bondye ("Bon Dieu," or "Good God"), who then turned its daily workings over to les mistés (the Mysteries) - the angels, saints, and lwa.  While some think this is a European corruption, things are more complicated than that.  Many African stories feature a Creator who sets things in motion, then withdraws.  Olodumare, Mbomba, Nsambi - all are credited with being the First Cause and the Prime Mover. Yet they receive far less attention and worship than their children, who are among the most magnificent of all Creations.

Is this Monotheism? While these Creator Gods bear a passing resemblance to Allah or G-d, they are not seen as omnipotent, omnipresent or omniscient. Their knowledge and power may be far greater than ours, but they are limited: these limitations are generally used to explain the world's many imperfections. Still, they are seen as being greater than their servants: they may be absentee rulers, but they are rulers nonetheless. There certainly is none of what Rabbi and conservative pundit Dennis Prager has hailed as "ethical Monotheism."

The oneness of God is an indispensable component of ethical monotheism. Only if there is one God is there one morality. Two or more gods mean two or more divine wills, and therefore two or more moral codes. That is why ethical polytheism is unlikely. Once God told Abraham that human sacrifice is wrong, it was wrong. There was no competing god to teach otherwise.

The African Diaspora model generally treats the mysteries like the saints, angels and intercessors in the Catholic faith. They are venerated and honored, but not worshipped: worship is reserved for the Triune God.  (In theory at least: as with most strains of folk Catholicism, it can be difficult to tell where hagiography and veneration end and worship begins - a controversy which still plays out in the Catholic/Protestant split). Working within this framework offers the consolation of tradition and puts one squarely within a living faith. But it may not be satisfying for those who do not feel a particular affinity for Catholicism or who do not believe in One God, the Father, the Almighty.

The Orishas and the lwa (and the gods of most polytheistic pantheons) regularly struggle amongst themselves. There is no transcendent morality there: they, like humankind, are capable of great evil and of tremendous kindness. There are few universals: each spirit and each person must make their way as best they can, guided by tradition and by their own sense of good and evil.  It's an imperfect process - but so too is Prager's ethical monotheism.  (The ancient Amalekites and contemporary Palestinians might have something to say about the superiority of morality by YHVH's fiat...).

If you reject the tenets of Abrahamic Monotheism in favor of a polytheistic worldview, the spirits of African Traditional Religion certainly qualify as gods.  Chango and Ogun are definitely fitting company for Thor, Ares, and other warrior gods: Exu, Loki and Coyote could all be classified as Trickster Gods.  But this brings us to another question: do we worship a God in the same way we worship the One God? And if not, what are appropriate models for honoring and serving the Gods?   And that is a question which has only rarely been asked, and even more rarely answered.