Seumas Gagne

Happy Birthday to Me

2008-09-05T00:01:00.000-07:00

For many years, my circle of friends has had the habit of asking what we refer to as The Birthday Questions at birthday parties. They are:

1) What was the best thing that happened to you at ?

2) What was the most difficult thing that happened to you at ?

3) What are your goals for ?

Since I won't be having a birthday party this year, I'm going to answer the questions here on the blog.

1) The best thing that happened while I was 41 was starting to work on my solo CD. I'm enjoying the process, feeling hugely enthusiastic and energetic about it and improving as a musician.

2) The most difficult thing that happened while I was 41 was by a country mile the 10 days I spent under the threat of having my federal contract slashed to the point that I wouldn't be able to support myself. I have spent the last 8 months recovering from that week. I developed central serous retinopathy, heart arythmia, and degraded pulmonary function. My doctors assure me that I can recover from all these conditions, by the way.

This experience, however, has had a couple of positive out comes. My future mother-in-law spontaneously reassured me that if I were in desperate straights that she would help. That offer of help was a game-changing event in our relationship.

I also got super-motivated to pay off my second mortage (the kind you get when you don't have enough for a down payment) which I did last week.

3) While I'm 42 I intend to:

a) lose 42 pounds
b) release my solo CD

Wish me luck, everyone! Thanks in advance for your birthday wishes. If you forget my birthday, however, you are on my list; Watch your backs.

Greek Pagans Defend Their Heritage

2008-09-02T12:15:00.001-07:00

So, you might not have heard, but some slimy real estate dude wants to build a gods-awful museum (read: elaborate gift shop) on the fraking Acropolis.

Ellinais, however, isn't going to let that happen without making a fuss. See the story on CNN for full details.

Irish pagans are defending Tara, Greek pagans are defending the Acropolis, and what are North American pagans doing? I shudder to think what the answer to that might be.

More Information

Greek Acropolis plan draws religious backlash The story on CNN that caught my eye this weekend
Dodekatheism "a handful of miserable resuscitators of a degenerate dead religion who wish to return to the monstrous dark delusions of the past." — Father Eustathios Kollas
Are Greeks Closet Polytheists? Some earlier musings on Greek pagan stuff

Punch In, Punch Out, Clean Up

2008-09-02T12:10:00.001-07:00

Much of the weekend was spent behind the Tweed Curtain, taking counsel with Lingoman's Aged Maternal Fossil (a pseudonym she coined for herself). It was lovely. For the first time she and I acknowledged that our first impressions of each other were dubious, in the context of having firmly changed our minds on the subject. Very nice.

Monday was spent back with my friend GarageBand. I found out how to do a "punch in" on a previously recorded track. In standard Apple fashion, it was easy and elegant.

I cleaned up all the fiddle flubs in Hella Gay Gordons and got a first draft down of a tuneset for Baile Ard, Mo Rún. Both of the tunes in the new set (Hut on Staffin Island and The Clumsy Lover) are copyrighted, so I'll have to do some research on how to deal with that before getting too attached.

I can't believe how much fun I'm having working on this.

Hella Gay Gordons

2008-08-29T09:52:00.001-07:00

Living in 21st century North America our ears are insanely narrow. If there's a 4/4 drum beat behind something we like it, if not it's weird.

Turns out it works with Scottish dance music as well. Just a couple drum loops and my cheesy fiddle and harp rendition of a set of dance tunes for Gay Gordons sounds all cool.

Crazy

Update OK. Maybe "cool" was an exaggeration. "More accessible to modern pop-music sensibilities." Yeah, I guess that's closer.

Half Way Back

2008-08-28T10:02:00.001-07:00

Well. Almost half way anyway! Recording went well last night. I re-did all the instrumental tracks for Is Truagh Leam ar Scàradh and they came out so well I popped a vocal mic on the line and gave it a shot.

I'm not yet back to my respectable-but-not-amazing vocal chops, but I'm on the way!

Vandalism and Prejudice

2008-08-25T09:51:00.000-07:00

Among the interesting things that happened last weekend in Vancouver, was the apparent vandalism of my car. The passender-side mirror was busted off and left dangling by its wire.

There's no way to know what the person's motivation was. They might just hate red cars. It was parked on the correct side of the street, with the passenger side toward the curb, so this was done by a pedestrian. None of the other cars on the block were disturbed, just the one with Washington plates.

Over the last seven plus years I've dealt with only a small amount of anti-American prejudice pointed directly at me. I have, however, listened to many hours of it from Lingoman's friends and relations pointed more generally at Americans.

It was such a shock after having been raised with a very positive attitude toward Canada to find out that our 'friends' up North take every opportunity they can to slag us off. I try to warn people who plan to vacation in Vancouver not to expect anything but their money to receive a warm welcome.

I guess being the child of immigrants with relatives in three countries, I have always felt able to separate my opinions governments and people; to acknowledge national stereotypes but not use them to evaluate actual human beings. I find it ironic that the Canadians I frequently hear lumping all Americans together under very ugly names are themselves indulging in stereotyping and prejudice.

It reminds me of 9/11 when a Canadian said to me "Well, that's awful, but America deserves it." I replied, "So, that young married couple who chose between being burned alive and jumping to their deaths holding hands deserved it because they stupidly allowed themselves to be born in America?"

OK. I need to stop writing about this for a while; I'm getting too mad. I've also met lots of Canadians who aren't like that at all.

Destroying the Evidence

2008-08-22T10:19:00.001-07:00

After a day of listening to the CD of my disappointing vocal track I've decided to delete the track from Garage Band and destroy the disk. I've learned what I can from it and now I'm just torturing myself.

I know I can do better than that, and I will do in the near future.

The Diva Has an Off Night

2008-08-21T11:33:00.001-07:00

Setting up and tearing down the recording equipment is getting quicker and easier, but re-building my faded vocal technique isn't quick or easy.

The plan last night was to record the 'final' vocal track on Is Truadh Leam ar Scaradh but unfortunately the pipes weren't cooperating. I was getting progresively more discouraged, so I decided to stop fairly early. Listening to the track this morning in the car, it wasn't terrible, but also wasn't something I would play for someone with pride.

In the WTF category was the fact that there are two places in the melody of the song where it goes up to the D above middle C (not impossibly high for a baritone like me). The first one I nail every single time. The second sounds like someone is jabbing a fork in my thigh. Grrr

Cut back on the smoking, walk around Greenlake more frequently and keep trying.

Dance, Cracker! Dance!

2008-08-20T11:39:00.001-07:00

Last weekend, while getting ready for my gig as fear an taighe for some nice people's summer ceilidh, I realized that I had no appropriate recorded music for social dances. I thought I had a ready-made solution in the Féis Shiàtail songbook teaching CDs, but quickly realized that they were (for very good reason) limited to just the melody being played by an electronic piano.

Ooops.

Being pretty good at last-minute inspiration, though, I came up with the idea to rip MP3 files from the teaching tracks on the Féis songbooks and import them into Garage Band and then use them as guides. It worked really well! I recorded myself playing the tune sets on the fiddle multiple times (for that forgiving chorus effect) then added harp and bòdhran parts.

Sin agad e! My own self-produced CD of tune sets that I know inside and out designed for the specific versions of the dances that I know and teach. And the name? Dance, Cracker! Dance!

I know; I'm bad.

Weekend Recording

2008-08-18T10:22:00.001-07:00

Boy, it's hard to add a post after the one below. How do I put a chatty, about me one above my announcement of the Grand Plan to unite polytheistic religions in an urban framework?

Oh well. Maybe doing this will inspire me to write another First Restored-themed post afterward.

Anyway, I stayed in Seattle last weekend to do a gig as fear-an-taighe. I decided that since I was going to be here anyway, that I should make some progress on scrach tracks for my solo CD. I really want to get all my creative decisions on solid ground before paying a recording engineer.

It went pretty well! I'm realizing that each track is going to have its own unique issues around sequencing and I just have to jump in and get started in order to figure that out. For example, in a big epic song I would normally want the vocals recorded first so that as accompaniest I could respond to the singers treatment of the melody. But, if I'm the singer, then I need some kind of a reference track to keep myself on pitch. Kind of a chicken-and-egg problem.

So, I got a decent rough-draft of Is Truagh Leam ar Scaradh done. I was hoping to have more than that to show for the weekend, but there was a complicating factor; I spent three hours on Saturday recording dance music for the gig that night. More on that later!

First Restored Temple of the Gods

2008-08-05T14:16:00.000-07:00

What do you think? Snappy, eh? Just to get this out of the way, the 'short' version will be "First Restored" not "FRTG." Acronyms are nasty. The name took a lot of thinking. I want it to be explicit that this is a new chapter in polytheistic religion, not an attempt to recreate a bygone era. However, I also want to be explicit about the fact that it won't be a Wiccan temple, neither Druid nor Dodekatheist. Everyone who honors the multiplicity of divinity is welcome.

So, the general idea is to create a framework which will allow polytheists of many flavors to meet and honor all the old gods with rituals old and new. I'm calling it "Big Tent Polytheism." Unlike many neo-Pagan efforts, I want to start with the building! I was discussing this with my friend x-Father X and after describing the temple of my dreams, he pointed out that I had just described the Pantheon in Rome.

Inside the temple there would be niches in the walls for statues of gods. I think it would be cool to group them together, but some kind of an organizing principle would have to be created.

A crazy dream? Maybe. Even if it doesn't happen in my life time, thinking about it and imagining it makes me happy.

A Line in the Sand

2008-07-25T01:00:00.000-07:00

I think that in the previous post I may have answered the underlying question that has been bugging me for so long. If Abrahamic monotheism is so poisonous, why has it been so successful for so long? I think the answer is the same as the one to the question social workers, families and friends have so long asked about the victims of parental and spousal abuse; why does she (or he) stay with him?

Undermine their self-esteem through the doctrine of original sin and convince them they have no other options through monotheism.

If that's really the answer, then it's time for me to move on from diagnosing the problem to envisioning a future that I would like to live in. Maybe it will never come to pass, but one might as well try.

Now... for a really catchy name....

No One Will Ever Love You But Me; Yahweh as the abusive parent

2008-07-16T11:32:00.000-07:00

Did it ever strike you as strange that the Christian right wing (not to mention Islam) are always flipping out about single parents and gay adoption when they themselves condemn the entire universe to being from a single-parent family for all time?

We know from the Ugarit texts that Yahweh once had a consort and was part of the Caananite pantheon headed by his father, El. Current Abrahamic monotheism, however, makes out that there is no Mrs. God. So, not only did Yahweh ditch his spouse, but he tells us that we never had a mommy. Nice.

So let's look for a second at some of the typical patterns in the relationship between an abusive parent or a spouse and their victim and how they are paralleled in the ways that monotheists want us to see their god.

No one will ever love you but me

Central to the abuser's success in controlling their victim is convincing her or him that she or he has no other options. If she or he were to run away, or divorce that she or he would be alone and helpless and most likely die. Because the victim believes this, he or she follows the logic that accepting the abuse is her or his only option.

"Thou shalt have no other gods before me [to which I can be compared unfavorably]" — Yahweh (paraphrased)

But he's really a good person when he isn't burning me with an iron

Abuse victims who are caught in the cycle of low self-esteem will sometimes defend their abusers because there is a component of caring in the relationship. The abuser wants the victim to continue to accept them, and that is a kind of caring even if a very twisted one. For someone who has been convinced by an abusive parent or spouse that they are unlikely to get love anywhere else, even that poisoned kind of caring is preferable to the utterly bleak landscape that has been painted around them.

Abrahamic apologists (Hi Pete!) will respond with variations on "Well, we can't prove that God isn't there, so we should all worship him just in case he's real.". Which, of course, assumes that the only choices are to worship Yahweh or be an atheist. I hope it's clear, dear readers, how strenuously I disagree with that view.

I'm the only one who really understands him; you don't know what you're talking about

Right.

Alexandria Library. Witch burnings. Inquisition. Crusade. Extermination of native peoples around the world. Women subjugated.

If he acts like an abusive parent and the institutions inspired by his stories commit atrocities for centuries without any effective resistance guess what? Yahweh is an abusive god and he belongs in rehab. Asclepius might be able to help, but better not let Brìd anywhere near the guy or he'll wind up getting a Bobbet.

We're All Experiments

2008-07-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

One of the subtitles that's been given to the United States is "The Great Experiment." I think that all efforts at organizing society are experiments, and that if we viewed them that way there would be less motivation for armed conflicts.

It seems to me that we mostly view nations as organisms competing for resources and dominance, and I think that is true to a certain extent. (that's my social darwinism peeking out) On a larger scale, though, I think humanity is carrying out multiple concurrent experiments which are intended to answer the question: "What would society be like if it were organized this way?"

If we view nations that way, then it is in everyone's best interest that all the experiments continue uninterrupted until all useful data has been collected. Then we will assess the results and start the next experiment based on what we have learned. After lots and lots of tries, we'll eventually arrive at the conclusion that if society is organized this way, then almost everyone is OK almost all of the time. Check! Done!

The only way an experiment can really fail is if it produces no new data. The Soviet Union, for example, was not a failed experiment in my opinion. We learned that when enough power is concentrated in a central government to erase most economic inequality, that it is too vulnerable to manipulation and corruption. Good to know!!

So, perhaps we can hold these this paradigm in balance against the social darwinist one and reach our ultimate goal in less time with less suffering along the way. What do you all say, shall we try?

We Made the Seattle Times Pride Coverage!

2008-06-29T21:42:00.000-07:00

Whew-hew! Watch this video from the Seattle Times; right at the end there is a show of myself and LCD Seattle judging pride parade participants!

My Gods, I'm Seumas X!

2008-05-23T00:33:00.000-07:00

Picked up my new glasses today. Realized I'm the reincarnation of Malcom X. We do have a few attitudes in common; just substitute the word "gay" for the N-word he used. I'm definitely more of a field gay than a house gay. My Gods.

A New Old Era

2008-05-17T16:08:00.001-07:00

Yes, this blog is mostly about monotheism's effects on culture, but I am a person as well as a polytheist.

And I broke my glasses last Friday. They were a dozen years old, and getting a bit wonky, so that's not so much of a tragedy, really. I had an eye exam in February after my vision felt different at the end of the Great Budget Crisis of 2008 (trust me, if you don't know what I mean, you don't want to). Turns out my vision had not changed substantially since my last exam ten years ago, so I didn't bother getting new glasses.

But I had to yesterday. Right now my old glasses are taped together and I'm feeling waaaaay too ghetto for my own comfort. So, I'm just going to hide at home this weekend and wait for the call that my new ones are ready. Picking out new frames I decided to go in a new direction.... backwards! I found some frames that look just like my Dad's did. I'm also considering giving up my Caesar haircut and going for a 50s Dad-style one. What have I got to lose at this point?

Update

The hair didn't come out the way I hoped....

A Catholic Priest and a Wiccan Priest Walk Into A Restaurant

2008-05-07T11:28:00.000-07:00

Sounds like the start of a mildly funny joke, doesn't it? It's true, though. One evening last week I had a fantastic re-acquaintance dinner with a former Catholic priest I knew over a decade ago when I was a volunteer chaplain at an AIDS hospice in Seattle. To protect his anonymity, I'll call him x-Father X.

Meeting x-Father X was a real turning point for me. It gave me a tremendous sense of validation to be invited to volunteer as a Wiccan chaplain. I guess that the fact that I was raised as a Catholic contributed to buzz I got when a man in a clerical collar asked for my opinion on a ceremony he was planning. x-Father X treated me as an equal, despite the fact that his own priestly training included all kinds of things that were absent from mine. He also helped me understand why smart, educated, reasonable people maintain self-identification with an institution like the Catholic church; it's the people, art, music, buildings, bells, and smells. In my secret, uncompromising heart I know that those are the tricks that the thought system uses to keep its hosts distracted, but I also have compassion for those hosts.

The chaplaincy work turned out to be too much for me to handle in my late 20s, and after a couple years I had to stop. I felt myself slipping further and further away from life. How I got back out of that place with help of a Siberian shaman will be the subject of another post at some point in the future.

Off I went into the Gaelic and Celtic music scene, leaving my life as a public Wiccan behind me. Fast forward over ten years. I'm still deeply involved in Gaelic, but a part of my mind and heart is turning back toward religion and spirituality. I develop this wacky idea that it's having just one god that makes people so easy to manipulate. I start digging into the roots of Islam and Christianity. I start writing this blog. My compassion for Abrahamic religionists is a distant memory.

Then, because the Gods love me and want us to succeed in restoring their worship, the phone rings. It's x-Father X, wondering if I want to represent Wicca in an interfaith dialogue on children's welfare. I decline, since I don't have children and am so completely out of touch with the local Wiccan community that I don't know who to send him to. However, we do set up a dinner appointment to get re-acquainted.

So, over a fantastic chicken Marsala, I remember my compassion, and my admiration for this man who gave up his position in the Catholic Church to keep his integrity. He loves Jesus. He believes there's only one god. He sings for the parish he belongs to. They have a PFLAG chapter that invited him to come and speak. His integrity and clarity makes me ashamed of the pettiness that still clings to my reasoning sometimes.

OK Gods, I get the message. I need to be as evolved as x-Father X. I'll get right on that. Thanks for the guidance.

Are Greeks Closet Polytheists?

2008-04-17T12:14:00.000-07:00

I have a dear friend and folk-harp colleague, Patrice Haan, who shared a vacation story with me once at a folk harp weekend that I found very interesting.

How do you describe a goddess? Patrice, in addition to being a very talented harper, singer, and performer, is a woman of striking beauty. I am about 5' 11'' tall, and the top of my head comes up to her chin. I'll let the photo cover the 1,000 words of florid description that I could have written about her, and stick to the things that the photo can't show you. She moves with precision and a reserved grace that makes everyone around her seem a little schlumpy in comparison. No one minds, though, because within minutes of meeting Patrice, they all know that they're in the presence of a great spirit. She elevates you just by being herself.

Υποδοχή στην Ελλάδα! Welcome to Greece! Patrice was vacationing in Greece, and had just arrived in an out-of-the-way village. A man picked her out of the crowd, approached her and knelt before her in reverence, exclaiming "Athene! Athene! We knew you would come back to us! We never stopped worshipping you!" Apparently, he thought that the dark age of horrors Christian Era had passed and the Olympians were coming back to set things right. Anyone could be excused for mistaking Patrice for an avatar of the Goddess of Wisdom, but it went a bit beyond that for this guy. He seemed convinced that her denials were a kind of test of his devotion. For the duration of her visit, he continued to worship her.

Patrice and I have never discussed her own religious leanings explicitly, but I get the strong feeling that she herself wouldn't be opposed to throwing a pinch of incense on the brazier at the altar of Hera. I might be speaking out of turn there; wouldn't be the first time.

More Information

Patrice Haan Learn more about The Avatar of Athene and buy her CDs
Dodekatheism "a handful of miserable resuscitators of a degenerate dead religion who wish to return to the monstrous dark delusions of the past." — Father Eustathios Kollas
Religious freedom in modern Greece Give it a read. Doesn't sound too free to me.

So here's my question: given the choice, would Greeks (some? a bunch? a majority?) return to their native religion? Rebuild the Acropolis? Spark up a few doobies at Delphi and finally get some good advice? There are some folks, notably in Greece itself, who are working to re-establish the worship of their own Gods. The Greek Orthodox Church has noticed, but doesn't seem too threatened just yet. What do you think, Corps of Discovery?

My Favorite Rant Ever: Thank you, Matt from Oklahoma!

2008-04-16T16:20:00.000-07:00

I got this from a newspaper comment stream. The poster was called Matt from Oklahoma. I don't know if he wrote it, but I'm super happy that I have it, no matter who the author.

You guys make a lot of great points about the radical homosexual agenda of wanting to be equal. It got me thinking of the biggest threat of all, gay marriage. Here are the reasons why we must never allow such an un-American act to be recognized.

First, Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.

Second, Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

Third, Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

Fourth, Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn’t changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can’t marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.

Fifth, Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Britany Spears’ 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

Sixth, Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn’t be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren’t full yet, and the world needs more children.

Seventh, Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

Eight, Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That’s why we have only one religion in America.

Ninth, Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That’s why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.

And Finally, Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven’t adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.

As Above, So Below: King-solidation

2008-04-12T00:38:00.000-07:00

Have you ever, in reading Arthurian stories or the like, encountered the term "High King?" Ever wonder why the qualification was necessary? Well, I find the story interesting.

Back in the day, when Nordic people honored Odin and Thor and Freya, and Celts prayed to Lugh and Brìd and their peeps, (the Tuatha Dé Danann) there wasn't just one king in a country. And also, countries weren't quite so firmly defined. Really more like territories; strongly held in the center filtering out to disputed areas on the periphery. By the way, we're really only talking about a few hundred years into the Common Era here - not back in the Bronze Age.

As Europe was gradually infected with converted to Christianity, things began to change. Instead of one king for something like a bioregion in federation with other similarly-powerful monarchs, we start to see a vertical relationship. Bioregional kings start to report to a national (sort-of) high king.

The squeeze is starting to happen.

In the monotheistic cosmology, there is a finite amount of power available, and the more people who are sharing it it, the less powerful each is. Just like Yahweh demanding supremacy among the Semetic gods, we start to see high kings demanding supreme power over their formerly sovereign sub-sovereigns.

Note to Self

I need to get some good citations going for this particular point, since I don't expect anyone to just believe me. I'll get right on that.

Pretty soon after that, none of the local thugs nobility are called kings anymore. They've all been demoted to lower ranks, just like when Yahweh handed the entire Cananite pantheon its collective hat in one swell foop.

So, how did this thirst for absolute power find its way so far West? Is it just a natural step in the evolution of society? Not in my opinion. It's the thick edge of the monotheistic wedge. If your whole cosmology is based around the idea that there's just one sovereign power in the whole universe, which direction to you think society is going to go in? Pluralism? Democracy? Ummm. No.

As Above, So Below: The Rise of Yahweh

2008-04-05T00:00:00.000-07:00

I'd like to take some time to explore what I think are parallels between the emergence and evolution of monotheism from the pre-Mosaic period through the destruction of the second temple and the rise and consolidation of monarchy in medieval Europe. The changes are separated by a good couple thousand years, with that whole Roman period in the middle, but there is a similar shape that has struck me as significant.

E Pluribus Unum Let's take a page from our Christian friends and start off with the Book of Genesis. The first words of the Bible in Hebrew are breshit bara elohim. That word, elohim, is an ancient one and has had plenty of time to accrete irregularities. On the surface, it looks like a plural derived from its root, eloah, meaning "god." So, you might jump ahead and say that elohim means "gods" and not be completely wrong. The verb bara, however, is singular. A superficially plural word being used as a singular sounds to me like a remnant of an older tradition poking its head through, and in fact most Biblical scholars (actual scholars, not religious zealots) think the same. The late Bronze Age texts of Canaanite Ugarit use the word to denote the entire pantheon of the father god, El.

What did that burning bush say again? Next little clue. When Yahweh delivers his commandments to Moses, he orders that the children of Israel shall have "no other gods before me." In Hebrew, the word elohim is used in that sentence for "gods." Hmmm. Pretty clear indication to me that Yahweh is recognizing that people have other gods while asserting his supremacy.

You're All Fired! In a fresh, bold translation of the Book of Psalms by Robert Alter (see link below), we are shown a mythological, poetic vision of the moment at which Yahweh succeeds in vanquishing all the other gods of his pantheon:

God takes his stand in the divine assembly
in the midst of the gods he renders judgement
"How long will you judge dishonestly
and show favor to the wicked?
Do justice to the poor and the orphan.
Vindicate the lowly and the wretched.
Free the poor and the needy
from the hand of the wicked; save them!
They do not know and do not grasp,
in darkness they walk about.
All the Earth's foundations totter.
As for me, I had thought you were gods,
and the sons of the Most High were you all.
Yet indeed like humans you shall die,
and like one of the princes, fall.

More Information

Elohim
The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary (Hardcover) by Robert Alter (Author)

Whoa! Did Yahweh just have a total Donald Trump moment, strip all the other gods of their divinity and make them mortal? Harsh!

In the next segment, I'll go into the ways that feudal Europe paralleled this change in its concept of what a king is.

Democracy and Monotheism: A Match Made in Tartarus

2008-03-29T12:00:00.000-07:00

For most of human history, we've been polytheistic, or at least animistic. Many archaeologists believe that monotheism makes its first appearance in Egypt in the 18th dynasty under Pharaoh Amenhotep IV (who changed his name to Akhenaten in deference to his exclusive worship of Aten). Sigmund Freud even argued in his book Moses and Monotheism that the exposure to the cult of Aten was what inspired the worshipers of Yahweh in Mosaic ancient Israel to struggle to elevate their tribal god to the same stature. They were successful at it a bit later, but Akhenaten was not. Egypt reverted to its polytheistic ways and Akhenaten got all of his cartouches chipped off his monuments for his trouble.

Monarchy, in one form or another, is a method of social organization that far predates our emergence into sentience. Any random pack of dogs thrown together will select an alpha dog and proceed about their canine business quite happily. Given that, we can safely assume that as world-organizing concepts go, polytheism and monarchy were the norm for many thousands of years. They probably jostled each others shoulders from time to time, but that was likely about it.

Long about 500 BCE, the lovely city of Athens in Greece came up with a new idea for organizing society called democracy. Athenian democrats (yes, I decided to phrase it that way to poke any Republicans reading this blog) were fairly extreme in their application of the concept. They didn't elect representatives to vote for them, all eligible voters voted on everything! One of my favorite things to point out to patriotic Christian Americans is that their beloved democracy was invented by people who worshipped Zeus, Athena, Apollo, etc. I'm just mean that way.

Anyhoo. While all this was going on in Attica, over in ancient Israel, the followers of Yahweh were doing a pretty fair job of elevating their deity to a supreme position. I suppose I ought to mention that there is extensive documentation of the fact that the pre-Mosaic (and some post) Israelites were polytheistic. That's where most of the exotic-sounding demon names in the Bible come from. Ba'al was the deity of the Yahwist's chief political rivals, so a special place in demonology is reserved for his name.

More Information

So now in a human society that was comfortably used to being organized by polytheism and monarchy, we now have competing models. Polytheism versus monotheism, and monarchy versus democracy.

I smell trouble

And Now, In The Center Ring! Orthodoxy versus Orthopraxis!

2008-03-28T09:47:00.000-07:00

Comparative religion has been an interest of mine for a long time, so when my partner explained this basic division of types of religions it seemed completely intuitive to me. What do you know? There's a word for the kind of religion I practice: orthopraxic! We don't really care so much about what you believe, as long as you do the rituals (properly).

I had an experience a few months ago, however, that showed me how non-intuitive the concepts are to some. A discussion broke out in my workplace which was vaguely concerned with changes in language usage. I happened to bring up how disturbing I find it that the words faith and religion are becoming synonymous. Where does that leave religions that are not primarily concerned with belief?

The guys in my office never heard of orthopraxis (not surprising, I hadn't either until recently) and it was such an alien concept to them that they accused me of making it up. Lying. They said I, a devout ENFJ, was lying.

Creepy Sidebar

Adding to my paranoia, the Blogger spell checker apparently doesn't know the word either. It's underlining it as if it doesn't exist. At least Wikipedia is on my side.

Their reaction to the idea that a religion based on action rather than faith was explosive. They shouted over each other; insisting that it couldn't be true. Seriously, it was bizarre. Despite carefully trying to explain the terms orthodoxy and orthopraxis as they are used in cultural anthropology, both of them continued to insist that it was impossible that a religion could exist that was not faith-centered.

In all honesty, part of the reaction could have been to my manner. It never occurred to me that the concept of orthopraxis needed careful presentation. I just stated the facts as I was aware of them. In my opinion, though, the more emotional component arose from a kind of memetic immune response. In simple terms, they flipped out because the orthodoxy meme in their heads perceived an incoming threatening idea and was defending itself.

The scarier thing to me is that I don't think either of them would consider himself religious. That's how deep a hold the monotheism meme has on our collective psyche. It's like we're possessed.

What I'm Not Saying About Monotheism

2008-03-26T18:00:00.000-07:00

I think I'm going to write about monotheism and its effects on culture often, so it's best if I get a few things out on the table right away. Might prevent some unnecessary angry comments. I should probably link back to this post from each one critical of the effects of monotheism. Yup. Think I'm going to do that. OK.

Things That Are Definitely Not My Opinion:

Monotheists Are All Bad People That would be daft. There are millions of people following any number of monotheistic religions who are good, kind, smart people. I just don't think that their religion made them good. I think in some cases, it helps them stay good despite the battering that life gives all of us.

Nothing Good Has Happened Since The Advent of Abrahamic Monotheism Another daft idea. Lots of good things have happened, and are happening right now. Women voting, the end of state-sanctioned slavery, the invention of the weekend, the birth of Steve Jobs just to name a few. Oh yeah, and the Internet! Yay! None of these things, however, were the doing of Abrahamic monotheism in my opinion.

Every Aspect of Monotheism Is Bad You guessed it; daft. I think that it will take some time, and some conversations with my Corps of Discovery, and some writing, but sorting out what is good about monotheism is a necessary step for my criticisms to be worth considering.

A Law Must Be Passed Banning Monotheism Daft. I believe that society is on an evolutionary path. Human discourse is one of the forces shaping that path. So is biological evolution and every environmental factor you can name. After forty-odd years of kicking around the place, I'm ready to enter the fray officially on the side of polytheism, but I want the universe and the meta process of social evolution to decide if I'm right or wrong - not a legislative body.

I guess that's about it for now. Gotta go make some offerings to my ancestors.