Interesting essay, as always.
One phrase comes to my mind as the most pertinent one about sacrifice ; it comes from Allegri's "Miserere" which I listen to often. The text must be very old, and I don't know who is speaking, but it is not essential. The speaker says at one point that the sacrifice that (the Christian) God wants is a repent…
One phrase comes to my mind as the most pertinent one about sacrifice ; it comes from Allegri's "Miserere" which I listen to often. The text must be very old, and I don't know who is speaking, but it is not essential. The speaker says at one point that the sacrifice that (the Christian) God wants is a repentant heart. That speaks to me radically. The repentant heart was meant to blot out a great deal of those smoking, bloody animal sacrifices in various temples all over the world, including in the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. The sacrifice of a repentant heart, coupled with Jesus's sacrifice in his bloody physical death by crucifixion, and Mary's trial at seeing her child suffer and die before her are the sacrifices that the Christian world offers in replacement of the old ways. The institution of the Catholic Church constantly reactualized Christ's sacrifice in the ceremony of the Mass. Very important.
That said... it seems to me that we are witnessing the birth of a new religion that is emerging from scientific scepticism. This has been coalescing maybe since the 19th century, the century that gave us the word "ecology", a modern construction from Greek etymons/roots. I don't like this religion at all, but what is emerging seems religious to me in its goals, and in its attempt at universal ? colonisation. Will it constitute... a transcendance ? Is it already attempting to constitute a transcendance ? It's funny how fast ideas can flip-flop in the Internet age.
Colonisation goes way back. The ancient Greeks were colonising, and the spread of their culture, their language is deeply responsible for where we are right now.
Speaking of the Greeks, and the Athenians... maybe some people here know that the cynicism, the hopelessness about corruption in democracy can be seen in Aristophanes, so there is nothing new about it, even if we would like to think that technology is radically changing us.
And on democracy : years ago, Konrad Lorenz wrote a book called the ten ? capital sins of capitalism, and he speculated briefly about democracy, comparing it to the phenomenon of schools of fish where identical individuals were grouped together in masses/schools, and maintained an identical distance between each other. In the school of fish there are no couples, no sexual reproduction between two partners, and no "child rearing" because there is no.. individual identity among the.. individuals.
Is the god who is tormenting us Moloch or... Dionysos ?
Probably Moloch is more straightforward than Dionysos. Dionysos is the god of the theatre, of wine... spirits, we could say. When he gets hold of people, they go berserk.
"All the world's a stage"... that is Dionysos' world. God help us when the theatre is everywhere BUT on the stage.
...
For sure, the slavery issue is sending us berserk right now. Trying to figure out who is a slave and who isn't, and hoping that WE aren't secretly slaves...
I am watching my kids raising their little ones, and it is hard sometimes. I have tried telling them that there is a world between saying "thank you" to a child who does something that you have asked him to do, or something that pleases you, and saying "bravo". There is a world of difference between the two responses, and the slavery issue is a big part of it, in ways that we have a hard time seeing.
If any of the Greek gods have power over us now, it would be Apollo, and Hephaestus,... and Athena. Dionysus is less the god of wine that the god of fecundity, resurrection, and renewal. Like Osiris, Dionysus was rent asunder, but he was *born again*. Dionysus is the god of frenzy, intuition, emotion, and visceral feeling, NOT of mind. We are so cerebral today: we are such egotists, that we are practically robots. Dionysus is the antidote to this, as are the saints of crazy wisdom, and holy fools. I can imagine Dionysus and Christ sitting down together and agreeing on most things. Christianity today is very little Christian. As David Bentley Hart stated in one of his articles, Christianity was never the religion of America, America was always the religion of America. Just look to American Catholicism, particularly as represented by groups such as Word on Fire, which put out repugnant videos on "God and gaming," and wholeheartedly adopt the consumeristic mentality. The Christ that many Christians worship today may very well be not Christ, but the anti-Christ. Chesterton hinted at this in some of his essays. Vladimir Solovyov and Philip Sherrard were more explicit; and Georges Bernanos, the great Catholic writer, came right out and said what needed to be said, namely that we are now idol worshipers in the grossest possible manner, with money and the Machine as our idols. In my recent (as yet unpublished) work on the Machine, and anti-Machine theology, I have been asked numerous times "does the Machine have agency?" to which I would respond yes, the Machine is one particular manifestation of the anti-Christ. Satan can be loved; Satan has a divine purpose; Satan, according to much mystical theology was a great lover of God and the greatest of monotheists, ... but the anti-Christ is an aberration, it is abnormal, a cancer upon the world, and the form it takes is the Machine. The antidote to the Machine is true religion, because true religion must always be anti-Machine. As Lawrence wrote "Eat and carouse with Bacchus, or much dry bread with Jesus, but don’t sit down without one of the gods." This is the hardest thing of all, since it puts one at odds not only with the secular materialist atheists, but also with the lower-case "o" orthodox religious of all faiths who nominally practice, but in reality have hearts filled with hubris, self-love, and an addiction to technology. We need to move away from progress, not automatically, not mechanically, but creatively, and in tune with the wisdom gleaned from trees, fairies, all the great Gods, and the primordial Fire that is beyond being.
The idea of worshipping idols is one that stems from pagan rituals of parading "GRAVEN IMAGES", statues that could be seen, through the streets in processions, for example. There is a link in most people's minds between the act of seeing, and images, graven images. (Writing is a graven image, by the way...)
The Jewish God is particular to the extent that He manifests himself as a voice, not as an image to be SEEN. Perhaps some people could be tempted to think that anything that doesn't take the form of an image to be seen could escape from the idolatry problem. What IS the idolatry problem, by the way ? I don't think it can be reduced to the devil, money and the Machine. I speculate that the idolatry problem arises from the temptation to circumcise, to encase the divine as movement into a static form, whatever that form may take. Life as dynamic, movement, becoming, refuses to be limited to a form that englobes it, and makes it static. I believe that the Jewish God, as he is "evoked" in His name in the Tetragram is life itself as dynamic, and unpredictable movement.
Maybe what the Jews did NOT foresee ? was that they could not escape this temptation by blotting out the WRITTEN (image...) name of God in their writing, and refusing to pronounce the Tetragram in speech. Even when Man finds crafty solutions to wiggle out of his temptations... the corruption of the best engenders the worst.
I find it capital that we reason with so many oppositions : can we do otherwise, but opposing Christ/Anti-Christ, heart/mind, intelligence/emotion, inner/outer, mechanical/creative, I want to question these oppositions, and why we want to oppose.
>As Lawrence wrote "Eat and carouse with Bacchus, or much dry bread with Jesus, but don’t sit down without one of the gods." This is the hardest thing of all, since it puts one at odds not only with the secular materialist atheists, but also with the lower-case "o" orthodox religious of all faiths who nominally practice, but in reality have hearts filled with hubris, self-love, and an addiction to technology.
Thank you so much for writing this part. I've recently moved to converting to Orthodoxy having never learned much about Christianity, and the nominal practitioners are the hardest thing to overcome as someone who still has doubt in their heart.
May your creativity and divine love continue to burn within you.
Have you read "The Immortality Key" by the Jesuit lawyer Brian Muraresku? He has some fascinating arguments around the influence of Dionysian mythologies on Christianity. Drugs too. Loads of drugs.
I'm glad you liked it. I have it in several versions, but the one that I like the best is the A Sei Voci version where you can hear it first in baroque, with freestyle improvisation in all the voices, and at the end, in the crystallised version that it ended up becoming when Mozart heard it in the Vatican chapel ? and wrote it up to make it... public for posterity.
Interesting essay, as always.
One phrase comes to my mind as the most pertinent one about sacrifice ; it comes from Allegri's "Miserere" which I listen to often. The text must be very old, and I don't know who is speaking, but it is not essential. The speaker says at one point that the sacrifice that (the Christian) God wants is a repentant heart. That speaks to me radically. The repentant heart was meant to blot out a great deal of those smoking, bloody animal sacrifices in various temples all over the world, including in the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. The sacrifice of a repentant heart, coupled with Jesus's sacrifice in his bloody physical death by crucifixion, and Mary's trial at seeing her child suffer and die before her are the sacrifices that the Christian world offers in replacement of the old ways. The institution of the Catholic Church constantly reactualized Christ's sacrifice in the ceremony of the Mass. Very important.
That said... it seems to me that we are witnessing the birth of a new religion that is emerging from scientific scepticism. This has been coalescing maybe since the 19th century, the century that gave us the word "ecology", a modern construction from Greek etymons/roots. I don't like this religion at all, but what is emerging seems religious to me in its goals, and in its attempt at universal ? colonisation. Will it constitute... a transcendance ? Is it already attempting to constitute a transcendance ? It's funny how fast ideas can flip-flop in the Internet age.
Colonisation goes way back. The ancient Greeks were colonising, and the spread of their culture, their language is deeply responsible for where we are right now.
Speaking of the Greeks, and the Athenians... maybe some people here know that the cynicism, the hopelessness about corruption in democracy can be seen in Aristophanes, so there is nothing new about it, even if we would like to think that technology is radically changing us.
And on democracy : years ago, Konrad Lorenz wrote a book called the ten ? capital sins of capitalism, and he speculated briefly about democracy, comparing it to the phenomenon of schools of fish where identical individuals were grouped together in masses/schools, and maintained an identical distance between each other. In the school of fish there are no couples, no sexual reproduction between two partners, and no "child rearing" because there is no.. individual identity among the.. individuals.
Is the god who is tormenting us Moloch or... Dionysos ?
Probably Moloch is more straightforward than Dionysos. Dionysos is the god of the theatre, of wine... spirits, we could say. When he gets hold of people, they go berserk.
"All the world's a stage"... that is Dionysos' world. God help us when the theatre is everywhere BUT on the stage.
...
For sure, the slavery issue is sending us berserk right now. Trying to figure out who is a slave and who isn't, and hoping that WE aren't secretly slaves...
I am watching my kids raising their little ones, and it is hard sometimes. I have tried telling them that there is a world between saying "thank you" to a child who does something that you have asked him to do, or something that pleases you, and saying "bravo". There is a world of difference between the two responses, and the slavery issue is a big part of it, in ways that we have a hard time seeing.
I like the idea of Dionysos being one of our modern gods. That makes sense too.
If any of the Greek gods have power over us now, it would be Apollo, and Hephaestus,... and Athena. Dionysus is less the god of wine that the god of fecundity, resurrection, and renewal. Like Osiris, Dionysus was rent asunder, but he was *born again*. Dionysus is the god of frenzy, intuition, emotion, and visceral feeling, NOT of mind. We are so cerebral today: we are such egotists, that we are practically robots. Dionysus is the antidote to this, as are the saints of crazy wisdom, and holy fools. I can imagine Dionysus and Christ sitting down together and agreeing on most things. Christianity today is very little Christian. As David Bentley Hart stated in one of his articles, Christianity was never the religion of America, America was always the religion of America. Just look to American Catholicism, particularly as represented by groups such as Word on Fire, which put out repugnant videos on "God and gaming," and wholeheartedly adopt the consumeristic mentality. The Christ that many Christians worship today may very well be not Christ, but the anti-Christ. Chesterton hinted at this in some of his essays. Vladimir Solovyov and Philip Sherrard were more explicit; and Georges Bernanos, the great Catholic writer, came right out and said what needed to be said, namely that we are now idol worshipers in the grossest possible manner, with money and the Machine as our idols. In my recent (as yet unpublished) work on the Machine, and anti-Machine theology, I have been asked numerous times "does the Machine have agency?" to which I would respond yes, the Machine is one particular manifestation of the anti-Christ. Satan can be loved; Satan has a divine purpose; Satan, according to much mystical theology was a great lover of God and the greatest of monotheists, ... but the anti-Christ is an aberration, it is abnormal, a cancer upon the world, and the form it takes is the Machine. The antidote to the Machine is true religion, because true religion must always be anti-Machine. As Lawrence wrote "Eat and carouse with Bacchus, or much dry bread with Jesus, but don’t sit down without one of the gods." This is the hardest thing of all, since it puts one at odds not only with the secular materialist atheists, but also with the lower-case "o" orthodox religious of all faiths who nominally practice, but in reality have hearts filled with hubris, self-love, and an addiction to technology. We need to move away from progress, not automatically, not mechanically, but creatively, and in tune with the wisdom gleaned from trees, fairies, all the great Gods, and the primordial Fire that is beyond being.
The idea of worshipping idols is one that stems from pagan rituals of parading "GRAVEN IMAGES", statues that could be seen, through the streets in processions, for example. There is a link in most people's minds between the act of seeing, and images, graven images. (Writing is a graven image, by the way...)
The Jewish God is particular to the extent that He manifests himself as a voice, not as an image to be SEEN. Perhaps some people could be tempted to think that anything that doesn't take the form of an image to be seen could escape from the idolatry problem. What IS the idolatry problem, by the way ? I don't think it can be reduced to the devil, money and the Machine. I speculate that the idolatry problem arises from the temptation to circumcise, to encase the divine as movement into a static form, whatever that form may take. Life as dynamic, movement, becoming, refuses to be limited to a form that englobes it, and makes it static. I believe that the Jewish God, as he is "evoked" in His name in the Tetragram is life itself as dynamic, and unpredictable movement.
Maybe what the Jews did NOT foresee ? was that they could not escape this temptation by blotting out the WRITTEN (image...) name of God in their writing, and refusing to pronounce the Tetragram in speech. Even when Man finds crafty solutions to wiggle out of his temptations... the corruption of the best engenders the worst.
I find it capital that we reason with so many oppositions : can we do otherwise, but opposing Christ/Anti-Christ, heart/mind, intelligence/emotion, inner/outer, mechanical/creative, I want to question these oppositions, and why we want to oppose.
What is wrong with an intelligent heart ?
>As Lawrence wrote "Eat and carouse with Bacchus, or much dry bread with Jesus, but don’t sit down without one of the gods." This is the hardest thing of all, since it puts one at odds not only with the secular materialist atheists, but also with the lower-case "o" orthodox religious of all faiths who nominally practice, but in reality have hearts filled with hubris, self-love, and an addiction to technology.
Thank you so much for writing this part. I've recently moved to converting to Orthodoxy having never learned much about Christianity, and the nominal practitioners are the hardest thing to overcome as someone who still has doubt in their heart.
May your creativity and divine love continue to burn within you.
and Nietzsche was his apostle
Have you read "The Immortality Key" by the Jesuit lawyer Brian Muraresku? He has some fascinating arguments around the influence of Dionysian mythologies on Christianity. Drugs too. Loads of drugs.
hey thanks for the Allegri recommendation...i just listened and is beautiful (almost as good as Pergolesi's Stabat Mater)...cheers!
I'm glad you liked it. I have it in several versions, but the one that I like the best is the A Sei Voci version where you can hear it first in baroque, with freestyle improvisation in all the voices, and at the end, in the crystallised version that it ended up becoming when Mozart heard it in the Vatican chapel ? and wrote it up to make it... public for posterity.