SubscribeJanuary 12th, 2012
American history_delightful passages
I’d never read the US Treaty with Tripoli, 1797 before today. My loss has now been rectified. Here’s my favourite passage:
Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
This was passed through Congress in 1797 by a unanimous vote. Imagine what would happen today!
ROTFLMAO
December 8th, 2011
attend to the world not your angst
Do an experiment for me. Because science involves getting your hands dirty (sometimes literally). Go for a walk outside and clear your mind. Don’t think about work or school or whatever your friends are doing. Just clear it out so you have room to appreciate what you’re seeing. Look at trees, clouds, shadows. Animals if there are any around. Flowers. Take a close look at plants and try to find insects on them. Look at lamp posts, at fences, at cracked bits of paving, at bicycles. Go up close and have a good look at peeling paint, spots of rust, chips, and cracks. Look at dirt. Look at water.
Think a little bit about how each of these things came to be there, how it works, what makes it look the way it does. In some cases you might know. Think about metal and its interaction with oxygen in the air, the exchange of electrons that leads to chemical bonding, and how that forms spots of rust. In some cases you might not know. But have a think anyway – wonder why the shadows of things close to the ground have sharp edges, while the shadows of things further away are softer and blurry. And if you find something that you don’t understand deeply, remember it when you go back inside and look it up and try to find out why.
Now when you look at the world in this way, don’t you find it more amazing and interesting and wonderful than when you wander around in a daze thinking about work or school or not missing your bus or whatever?
Cathy sent me a link to this article on Irregular Webcomic!. It’s essentially an explanation of why knowing science adds to your sense of awe and wonder with the world instead of detracting from it as (apparently) so many claim and/or fear.
The key sentence:
Understanding leads to appreciation.
Yes it does.
But it also requires a certain level of comfort with change because new understanding also leads to new ways of thinking. And that can be scary.
But there’s another critical thing here. People often seem to assume that feelings are irretrievably linked to a specific narrative. So if you’ve found or created a life narrative (an explanation that explains your situation to yourself – that makes sense of it and thereby gives you some little sense of control) that provides moments of hope, or awe, or wonder, the threat in losing that narrative (of having it proved wrong, for example) is that we will simultaneously lose those precious feelings. And sometimes it is only that hope that we will, in some future moment, feel that awe or wonder that keeps us going.
Feel lousy this morning? You can get up and move through the morning work routine because your story tells you that there will be a payoff at some point in the future. In times like those it’s really hard to give up the story – even when the narrative is itself the reason you feel so frakkin lousy (which btw is often the case).
That’s really the point underneath the article. And it is important.
Our feelings are a critical point in any narrative, but the narrative is an ephemera compared to the feeling set. No matter how awful things get, we as a species still have the same set of feelings. We do hope and awe and wonder if we are slaves or if we are masters. It doesn’t matter what narrative we construct, those same feelings will find a home within the story.
So if feelings are not a useful criteria for choosing which narrative to live by, what criteria are appropriate?
Aha! Now that’s the question.
What’s your answer? (Mine was decided many decades ago, but I really do want your answers before I reveal mine. Post them to comments here or email me mary (at) tailfeather (dot) ca
October 13th, 2011
snigger worthy / religious “politicians” shoot each other in the foot
This is another of those snigger worthy moments in American Republican politics where, once the various right-wing religious wanna-be politicians get talking to each other that the fracture lines begin to pull apart. The human version of plate tectonics? Signs of the time? Making the world safe for 2012? The coming political apocalypse? Too, too funny. Wahoooo for wack jobs, and their version of a sharp object in the Republican life raft.
William Donohue, the head of the Catholic League, called on presidential candidate Rick Perry on Wednesday to “have a full break” with Pastor Robert Jeffress, the Dallas minister who introduced and endorsed Texas’s governor at the Values Voter Summit last week, and—in case you’ve forgotten—called Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith a “cult” in the process.
Donohue told The Daily Beast that Jeffress’ description of Mormonism “bespeaks dramatic ignorance”—but that he was calling for Perry to sever ties “not only for the pastor’s comments on Mormonism,” but because of the anti-Catholic statements the megachurch pastor made on his Pathway to Victory ministry show last September. On that show, Jeffress likened the Catholic Church to Satan, and called it a “fake religion.”
October 10th, 2011
US Atheism circa 1903, answer to a religious correspondent
Yesterday I posted a letter published in the Blue Grass Blade on October 11, 1903 from an atheist man who recounted why he had become an atheist. Today I’m posting an answer to a letter (also published in the same edition) that came in to the newspaper’s publisher (C. C. Moore) from Rev. Shearer. It appears to be the product of an ongoing conversation about religion, atheism and (sort of) related subjects.
I posted this in addition to the earlier letter because it is clear to me that the arguments have not progressed. Apart from some terminology specific to the time (i.e. prohibition), this could easily be some post on a site dedicated to atheism. I find that a little depressing. Still, it took 100 odd years from the Civil War to get to the civil rights of the people brought to this continent to labour in our fields and (later) factories and more than 50 years after that before Black people really saw an opening to equality (I’m talking about Obama, of course) and the Tea Party and related Republicans have shown us that Emancipation Proclamation or not, Blacks are still scary, scary shit to some of us and to be destroyed if at all possible. So I’m not really surprised that at 115 years after the death of the “father of American atheism” that we have not resolved the atheist/religious problem.
Answer.– I indicate your bad spelling to support my contention that a scholarly man is not apt to believe in a God.
It has been said of spelling that it is a thing which it is no credit to know, but a disgrace not to know.
The “burden of proof” in this instance rests upon you. You affirm that there is a God. I deny that there is a God.
Greenleaf says, “To this general rule that the burden of proof is on the party holding the affirmative, there are some exceptions.” Greenleaf on Evidence, vol. 1, pt. 2, ch. 3. p. 105—L. B. & Co. ’52).
You offer no reason why your case should be an “exception” to the general rule and I see no such reason. I think you will find that “Jefferson’s Manual” will decide that the burden of proof is upon you.
The Bible and Sir William Blackstone and the courts of Salem Massachusetts affirmed that there were witches. The consensus of the competent said that the burden of proof rested upon those three, and that contention never having been sustained by any of the three, modern intelligence has decided that there are no witches. I do not have to account for any phenomena of nature, “leaving God out,” or leaving him or it, in. That is the graft of the natural scientist, I don’t have to account for anything. All I have to do is hear your argument and answer I, if I can. You say to me: “If you say you can do this, the burden of proof is upon you.”
Your statement is correct, but I do not say, “I can do this,” and therefore the burden of proof is not upon me. You say it would be foolish for you to try to prove to me that there is a God when I decline to accept your “testamony.” If you knew in advance, as you probably did, that I would not accept the testimony that you would offer, you were certainly “foolish” to offer it.
The testimony that you offer is the Bible and nature. If I accepted the Bible as a “competent” witness in this case, it would be “foolish” in me to discuss the question with you, for the Bible certainly says there is a God. But the competency of the Bible is a matter in issue, and, of course, I can not accept the Bible as competent testimony. You argue that the Bible is true because God wrote it, and then you argue that there is a God because the Bible says so.
That is what is called, in logic, “reasoning in a circle,” and it is recognized by all logicians as a common fallacy.
If it be true that the Bible, “for four thousand years has furnished indubitable evidence” that there is a God, why are you still arguing that there is a God? The very fact that you are making this argument shows that you do not regard the argument for the existence of a God as being “indubitable.” The multiplication table is indubitably correct.
If any man would say the multiplication table is not correct, you would not write him a long letter to show him that the multiplication table is correct. We do not argue about indubitable things. You would regard a man who thought the multiplication table incorrect as being an ignoramus or a fool, and you would wast no time on him, or would make an ass of yourself if you did.
The Bible says that man is a fool who says there is no God, and that goes with people who think the Bible knows it all, but it does not cut any ice with people who don’t believe the Bible any more than they do “Arabian Nights.” You say that beside this indubitable evidence we have in the Bible, we have the “book or nature” bearing the same testimony.”
If the Bible’s testimony that there is a God is indubitable why mention the additional book of nature?
If Euclid proves a certain mathematical proposition to be true, what is the use of saying that some other man, or some other book, also proved it to be true? Granting that nature is a book, there certainly is quite a diversity of opinion as to what it says, and your mere assertion that it says there is a God does not count.
I think it is “the height of folly and presumption” for you to offer the Bible book and the “book of nature” to me as evidence that there is a God, and you say it is “the height of folly and presumption” for you to do so, then why do you do it?
You certainly must have known that that same old racket had been offered to Atheists million of times, and as often rejected by them, then what was the good sense in asking me to fill up my columns with a long rigamarole that you evidently knew in advance would not amount to a hill of beans to me?
What was the use of your saying anything to the 15,000 hell-bent Atheists that “blow” themselves in my paper unless you had some new argument?
You answer my question by saying that the testimony you offer is “the only testimony that can be brought to bear in this matter.”
Then what are you kicking about? The evidence is all in, and it’s a hung jury and we will go to the presiding judge and tell him we can’t agree on a verdict.
All that you say about what I would do or would not do if an angel were to come from heaven to Lexington is poppycock. You certainly cannot know what I would do under such circumstances, for I don’t know myself. You are merely talking through your hat. It will be time enough for me to consider what I would do under such circumstances when the angel gets here. I do not think it is commonly recognized as being dead certain that angels come to this country at all these times, and I don’t think an angel that had any sense would come to Lexington. He wouldn’t last fifteen minutes in Lexington. The “cops” would run him in for wearing woman’s clothes on the streets, or some Lexington fellow would shoot him because he would not come into Gus Jaubert’s and set up the beer, or, if he did go into Gus’s he would get drunk and the “cops” would get him anyhow. But I believe you are mistaken, or worse—lying.
Old man Bell, the manager of the cemetery, reported the other day that a man was buried in that cemetery who made just 15,000 people buried there in all.
If some fellow would come along and resurrect all of those 15,000 people buried, and they should come marching into Lexington, including some hundreds of old boys that I believed whisky killed forty years ago, and my precious little curly headed girl, whose death brought the first gray hairs to my head, I think it would shake my present opinions about the resurrection from the dead. If anybody will come to Lexington and even clear the whisky out of the town, by any means, natural or supernatural, I will give anything he has to say, on any subject, a very respectful hearing. I think you got that up wrong pard. I say “pard” because I think you are a Campbellite preacher. They are hell on “shearing Baptists and Methodists,” and they make the wool fly. I’ve been there.
I have nothing to say in defense of those fellows over in Jerusalem. I’ve been there, too. O, no, that’s not “mud-slinging”— nothing of the kind, all fair so far as decency is concerned. What does all that dissertation on the subject of “mind” amount to in this connection? That is the province of mental philosophy, in which Upham and Abercrombie are authorities, but you and I are discussing theology in which you and Moses, and the “book of nature,” are your authorities. Mind certainly “plays a very conspicuous part in everything with which man has to do” (unless it is preaching), but your remark is just as true of muscle and bread and butter and money and a million other things and so what is the occasion of a remark so self-evidently true?
We don’t look “within” us except with an X-ray and you’d better leave that out.
Your statements about the hop and the bean stalk would be well enough in a lecture on botany or horticulture, but are irrelevant here. We are discussing whether or not there is a God. As a “sky-buster,” you ought to stick to your text.
As a good Prohibitionist, I may recognize some relationship between the hop and lager beer to prove the existence of a devil, but I can’t see how a hop testifies for any brand of a God that is against liquor.
You say a great mind has had to do with the framing of this universe. The Standard Dictionary defines “mind” to be “the entire psychical being of man.” Webster defines “mind” to be “the intellectual, or intelligent, power of man.”
These dictionaries agree that “mind” is a part of man, and if “mind” had anything to do with “the framing of this universe,” then man must have had something to do with “the framing of this universe,” and I reckon he didn’t. Guess you are in water over your head and you had better try to get ashore.
The opinion of Mr. B.A. Wright, in the Blade may B. Wright, or it may B. Wrong, but even if man does stand at the head of the animal creation instead of the tail of the animal creation, as there seems some reason to believe, I don’t see how that proves that there is a God. All that about “mechanical arrangement” sounds well enough if we were discussing natural philosophy or dynamics, but we are trying to find out if there is any God. You ask me: “What is it that leaves the brain at death that renders it unable to think?” I give it up; ask me something easy. But what about it? We are discussing the existence of a God, and I am a theologian and not an physiologist. Same about the origin of life. I don’t have to know or even to have an opinion on that subject. We are not discussing biology. We are talking about the existence of a God.
You talk funny. You say: “If it is a fact (and a fact it certainly is),” etc. Why say, “If it is a fact,” which expresses doubt, when you say it certainly is a fact.” which affirms that there is no doubt?
They say that death and taxes are “certain,” but the domain of the certain is very limited, and you ought to go slow in asserting the “certain.” You want to know how an idea is carried over from the mind to the nervous system.
Not my graft; didn’t even know it was carried over; thought may be it just walked over. Ask some doctor. You ask me the same question a second time, but I don’t know any more about it that I did the first time.
Same about the pumpkin—give it up. Ditto about the pig and the lamb and the goose. I used to know that one about the fox and the goose and the corn that a mans had to take over in a boat, but I am not specially good on riddles. Same way about the oak and the acorn—which was first? I can’t give my 15,000 readers the origin of a single think in this universe, even with the “God idea” in, and you say I can’t do it with the “God idea” out, so why do you keep on asking me so many hard questions? Ask me an easy one.
You say I know that this world is made up of little things, but I don’t. I didn’t even know that it was made up at all—thought may be it had been here always.
I haven’t specially “limited” myself—could write this whole paper full if I wanted to, (missing text) I think five Blades full (missing text) be a little too much of a muchness. If you are going to write any more on this subject, I would be obliged to you if you would “limit” yourself some, unless you have some argument to prove the existence of a God. Please confine yourself to that subject and discuss pigs and geese in an article to some farm journal. This is a religious paper.
That joke about my hair and whiskers is pretty good—only trouble about it is that we old Blade readers had worn it out years ago, and had let up on it; but you are probably a new beginner on the Blade and didn’t know about that. But if I were you I wouldn’t say it any more.
September 30th, 2011
funny, funny, nerd, nerd
Really funny, especially at 2:08-2:12.
September 25th, 2011
Monastery library robbed, Satan involved they assure police
This is so funny I can hardly stand it.
It seems that a local reader found a secret map in a public archive that showed a hidden stairway into the monastery’s library. He let himself in. On numerous occasions. He visited their library, read their books, and was never disturbed. He got a little miffed.
In an atmosphere of general suspicion among the nuns and monks of Mont Saint-Odile, the librarian, Alain Donius, called the police to report that entire shelves had been cleared. But though the locks were changed and the library door reinforced with steel, books continued to disappear at a steady rate during the police inquiry.
Gosse was so confident he left a rose on the main entrance door to tease Father Donius after a particularly successful visit. Gosse told the court: “I’m afraid my burning passion overrode my conscience. It may appear selfish, but I felt the books had been abandoned. They were covered with dust and pigeon droppings and I felt no one consulted them any more. There was also the thrill of adventure – I was very scared of being found out.”
Covered with dust and pigeon droppings. Gack.
Science to the rescue:
The mystery was finally solved when police installed a hidden video camera while the monks and nuns attended their Pentecost services. As night fell, the police watched Gosse fill three suitcases with books. They arrested him while he was still carrying the rope he needed to climb down the outer walls.
This went on for two years. Years. Jeez. Religious people need to read more.
September 7th, 2011
dishonest in all sincerity
I read John Knox’s The First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous regiment of Women this morning. The delightful hatefulness of it had me browsing literary responses to it. I came across Stevenson’s John Knox and His Relations to Women. That’s where the title to this post came from.
He had more pressing concerns on hand; he had to save souls; he had to be about his Father’s business. This short-sighted view resulted in a doctrine that was actually Jesuitical in application. They had no serious ideas upon politics, and they were ready, nay, they seemed almost bound, to adopt and support whichever ensured for the moment the greatest benefit to the souls of their fellow-men. They were dishonest in all sincerity. Thus Labitte, in the introduction to a book in which he exposes the hypocritical democracy of the Catholics under the League, steps aside for a moment to stigmatise the hypocritical democracy of the Protestants. And nowhere was this expediency in political questions more apparent than about the question of female sovereignty. So much was this the case that one James Thomasius, of Leipsic, wrote a little paper about the religious partialities of those who took part in the controversy, in which some of these learned disputants cut a very sorry figure.
Don’t you think that brilliant? I mean it could be written today in response to the Palins or Limbaughs of our political world. One could replace “female sovereignty” with a number of other hot-bed concerns of the GOP and have it read as current political commentary. So much has not changed in the world of religious ideology or GOP “debates”. Sorry figures indeed.
If you haven’t read Knox he was “concerned” about the rule of women in his 16th century world. In particular, he didn’t much like Mary Tudor or Marie de Guise, the regent and mother of Mary, Queen of Scots. That’s what the “regiment” of women is, btw. “Regiment” here means rule and it’s “monstrous” (meaning “unnatural”) because, according to Knox, the rulership of women over men goes against God’s express punishment of women post-Eden debacle.
The Proposition. To promote a Woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion or empire above any realm, nation or city is
A. Repugnant to nature.
B. Contumely to GOD.
C. The subversion of good order, of all equity and justice.
Knox argues each element of this “proposition”. “B”, for example, has four points:
1. Woman in her greatest perfection was made to serve and obey man, not to rule and command him.
2. After the fall, she was made subject to man by the irrevocable sentence of GOD. In which sentence there are two parts.
(a) A dolour, anguish and pain as oft as ever she shall be a mother.
(b) A subjection of her self, her appetites and will to her husband and his will.
From the former part of this malediction can neither art, nobility, policy nor law made by man deliver women: but, alas, ignorance of GOD, ambition and tyranny have studied to abolish and destroy the second part of GOD’s punishment.
3. This subjection, understood by many to be that of the wife to the husband, is extended by Saint PAUL to women in general To which consent TERTULLIAN, AUGUSTINE, AMBROSE, CHRYSOSTOM, BASIL
4. The two other Mirrors, in which we may behold the order of Nature.
(a) The natural body of man
(b) The civil body of that Commonwealth [of the Jews] in which GOD by his own word hath appointed an order.
As an argument goes it sucks of course because you have to accept the assumptions first in order to prove their truth but I suppose that’s what it means to be dishonest in all sincerity.
Come to think of it, aren’t Knox’s three points in his proposition identical to Bachmann-style “thinking” about homosexuality?
September 5th, 2011
what do you do when…
you really, really publicly pray for rain and you get burnt down instead?
Possible responses:
ignore it and see if anyone notices
say that the fires prove that the devil is in control in the White House
say it is because god is pushing his faithful to work harder to get the “right” man elected
say it is because god is pushing his faithful to give Perry even more money for his campaign so he can get elected
Impossible responses:
I was wrong.
September 3rd, 2011
howlingly funny / Church rebukes Ireland
Vatican Rebukes Ireland Over Claims on Sexual Abuse
oh the balls on Ratzy…
VATICAN CITY — In a strong rebuke to the Irish government, the Vatican said Saturday that it had never discouraged Irish bishops from reporting the sexual abuse of minors to the police and dismissed claims that it had undermined efforts to investigate abuse as “unfounded.”
The Vatican criticized a speech in July by Enda Kenny, Ireland’s prime minister.
The statement was the latest salvo in a tense diplomatic standoff since the Irish government released a report in July accusing the Vatican of encouraging bishops to ignore guidelines requiring them to report abuse cases to civil authorities.
Days later, Prime Minister Enda Kenny assailed the Vatican as having tried to block an inquiry into sexual abuse by priests and placing its interests ahead of protecting children. The speech led the Vatican to recall its ambassador.
In its first public statement on the issue since then, the Vatican said Saturday that it “understands and shares the depth of public anger and frustration at the findings” of the July report, “which found expression in the speech” by Mr. Kenny. But it said both the report and the speech hinged on a “misinterpretation” of an important letter.
a “misinterpretation” – good solid word that. Does lots of good work.
The letter (youtube version) says:
and then they get told to follow “meticulously” the “Code of Canon Law” “under pain of invalidity of the acts involved if the priest so punished were to make hierarchical recourse against his Bishop.”
Yikes. Sure sounds like a letter that says make waves in the Church and chastise a fellow priest for sexual abuse and you will be found “invalid” should he complain.
I so do wonder about Ratzy’s predilections; and those of the compilers of the 1962 document.
Addendum:
Interesting report on Canon Law and Sexual Abuse by Sister Sharon Euart, RSM, JCD from 2010. In it she says:
Before focusing on the U.S. experience in addressing sexual abuse of minors by clergy, it’s important to note that the Church’s canon law has made provision for sexual abuse of minors to be a grave offense since the Middle Ages. Sins against the sixth commandment with a minor were considered criminal acts. Condemnation of this kind of crime has always been firm and unequivocal.
Uhhuh Sister. And verbal assurances of no sexual conduct are always followed by a limp dick.
A VERY SHORT HISTORY OF CLERGY SEXUAL ABUSE IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH by Rev. Thomas Doyle, J.C.D., C.A.D.C. Really interesting, especially Solicitation in the Confessional, section 19.
In 1962 Pope John XXIII approved the publication of renewed special procedural norms for processing solicitation cases. Like the 1922 document but unlike all previous papal legislation on this subject, this document was buried in the deepest secrecy. Although it was promulgated in the ordinary manner and then printed and distributed by the Vatican press, it was never publicized in the official Vatican legal bulletin, the Acta Apostolicae Sedis. The document was sent to all bishops in the world. The dispositive section of the document is preceded by an order whereby the document is to be kept in the secret archives and not published nor commented upon by anyone. No explicit reason was given for this unusual secrecy nor is any justification given for the document or some of the surprising changes contained therein.
Those changes are listed in section 21.
The 1962 document is significant because it reflects the church’s urgent desire to maintain the highest degree of secrecy and strictest degree of security about the worst sexual crimes perpetrated by clerics. The document does not include any background information about why it was issued nor is there any reasoning available for the imposition of extreme secrecy and the inclusion of the crimes in Title V. One can only presume that cases or concerns had been brought to the attention of the Vatican authorities which prompted the decree.
The Code of Canon Law as presented online (English) by the Vatican.
Note to Ratzy: no one but a brain dead moron is going to believe you didn’t want this all hushed up, and further, no one of sound mind believes you give a rat’s ass about the right of a child to go about his or her life unmolested.
August 29th, 2011
Jung, matter and the problem with worship
Plate 64, opening the egg (rebirth of Izdubar)
(This post is the result of a question in the comment section of this post. Thanks for the question Cathy.)
On first sight what caught my eye was the worshipful pose, and then the egg – and I laughed. Then grimaced.
I relate to the egg as “the cosmic egg” and my imagery for that comes primarily from the Thoth tarot. I don’t subscribe to Crowley’s meanings but the basic iconography is very Western and deeply embedded in our collective psyches. So I relate to Jung’s egg as the great cosmic egg out of which reality pecks its way into the mundane.
Now I am a materialist, in the sense that I suppose matter to be what the world is made of. (The subatomic world is something else, and what ever its constitution, it comes together to create the material universe.) However, I do not consider matter to be dull, passive, inert and this erroneous conception underlies every Western magical/imaginative/philosophical tradition as far as I know. Science tells us that passive-matter is simply not so. Thinking such is a bit like assuming the womb is a passive place made solely to receive the active male seed.
Herein lies my problem with Jung and his re-born god Izdubar. If you read the story that goes with the picture, Jung (his imaginary self) has met up with Izdubar on the road and has inadvertently poisoned the god. This has lamed Izdubar and caused him to shatter his great axe. The poison that lames? Science.
Such a dreadful misunderstanding of the world as-it-is. I’m a poet, I get how important imagination is, how vital our stories and our capacity to read our narratives out into the world. And really Jung’s saving of Izdubar by convincing him that he is a fantasy is brilliant, but at the cost of Jung’s relationship to the corporeal? No.
The deal is that reason and feeling are irrevocably together. Imagination works because of the mind that we call “science.” And science works because of imagination. Try running a car on half an axle, that’s the result of valuing one over the other.
The picture, that worshipful pose? It’s the Jung-imaginary with his face pressed to the ground in awe of the mightiness of the newly healed god, but it is also the beginning of Jung’s descent into hell. He has used up all his creativity, his “higher” self in the healing of Izdubar and all that is left is…
Does it give you a clue that Jung has had to become a mother to give birth to a god?
What remains of human nature when the God has become mature and has seized all power? Everything incompetent, everything powerless, everything eternally vulgar, everything adverse and unfavorable, everything reluctant, diminishing, exterminating, everything absurd, everything that the unfathomable night of matter encloses in itself, that is the afterbirth of the God and his hellish and dreadfully deformed brother.
There you go. And hence my problem with worship. This is the kind of thinking it brings; it is an example of valuing imagination over and above science. Matter is nothing, nothing, nothing like what Jung postulates and motherhood is not a descent into hell.
In my world this Agni, this fire born of the cosmic egg has a different meaning since for me matter is creative, self-actualizing and motherhood is not about giving all one’s “juices” to the newly born.
I can only relate to the dude’s position as it would be for me – the sensitive skin of my cheek against the wool, the smell of years of history, the lanolin of a sheep’s life, the delicate creamy shell of the spent egg. I would have me eye up to the world and not hide my face.
And the idea of giving birth? And the afterbirth? One dies once the new generation is old enough to take over, at least that’s the way it normally goes. So yes becoming a parent is a step on the road to death, but then so is birth, eating, shitting, bathing. It’s hard work being a parent, but one can see the adult child as one’s replacement, or as an extension of one’s world. Most mothers I know tend toward the second option.
If this second option is what one chooses, then all that energy given to the new “god” does not divest Jung of his Agni, his life energy, it expands him to the god’s horizon. Such a creative act doesn’t leave behind the dross, it makes of the world something richer, larger, more complex. Like Na and Cl coming together, no dross, but born is the capacity for saltiness; a more complex world, not one with a irredeemable pile of garbage and a shiny new toy.
And what of the moment after this image was recorded? Where Jung goes to hell, I watch the fire-bird form, the phoenix feathers coalesce and start beating the air inside the room. I’d run to the doors and spread them wide and watch as the bird found current and lift into the blue. She’d speak to me as she rose, and from that I would create a poem. And later, when she comes back to visit, I get to hear about the things she’s seen and done, and she gets to hear of this earth, this one where I continue to thrive and grow.
Jung speaks of re-fashioning the gods. He says we have killed them but cannot be fully human without them. I agree only if we can say that the gods are those narrative aspects of our species that reach out through metaphor to shape the world in which we take our lives. In that sense we cannot kill the gods, because we will always reach out and find ourselves in the world. It is really only the death of worship that Jung fears, I think; the death of those forms of god that come with axes, require worship, and do not give back, nor value us equally as we value them.
That prostrate pose is so old, and so deeply wrong for us.
There is a place for awe of course. No artist could really think otherwise, but that is not worship. One can be in awe of Agni without falling on one’s face. One need not turn away from our tool-makers mind, our capacity for science. It does not poison us. What hurts is our refusal to let go of an old story, one that makes of the creative source of our universe a dark material evil.
One last thing about “children”: yes they can kill. We can create those things that will end us. Take the USSR’s “Tsar” bomb exploded during the cold war. Take Nobel’s invention of dynamite. All the death and pain that caused. Sometimes we have children over which we have no control and yes Agni can kill us once released. It is the nature of fire to warm and burn. So? We know this. Look at all the stories and all the religious and cultural investment we put into rules like honour thy mother and father. Probably wiser to say, honour thy children for they will become your farthest horizon. Or even better, honour material truth in all things, for it will be the home that protects and the fire that warms both parent and child.
The balanced mind, the one in which science and imagination are equally valued will be the tool by which one can come to heal when the “child” breaks the body or the known world and pushes us to an even more distant horizon. And this will come. Better to face it with both feet, both axle’s intact.