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 In my recent (as yet unpublished) work on the Machine, and anti-Machine theology, I have been asked numerous times "does the Machine have agency?"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 donтАЩt 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 donтАЩt 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 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 donтАЩt 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 donтАЩt 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.