The Greatest Blasphemy

What is blasphemy, and what would you consider to be blasphemous? When considering such a question, most of us might first think about the old adage of ‘taking the Lord’s name in vain’, that is: using the Deity or the forms of that Deity as an oath. But such oaths have become so common that they have passed into the language. Even an atheist will mutter ‘My God!’ or ‘Jesus Christ!’ in a moment of exasperation. No, the real blasphemies are to be found elsewhere. The blasphemies considered here are far more insidious, because they probably would not even be thought of as blasphemies by those who practice them, and because such blasphemies are committed within the context of, and in the guise of, religious practices.

A Muslim woman wearing a niqab. I have yet to find a single instance in which it can conclusively be demonstrated that such a religious dress code was instituted by a woman. In patriarchal societies it is patriarchal religions, patriarchal traditions and patriarchal values which predominate, it is men who decide on God’s behalf what either is correct or unacceptable to wear, and it is men who therefore grant themselves the greater freedoms of dress.

It is a human conceit to imagine that we know the preferences of God. And yet such a conceit is practiced on a daily basis in religious communities. We decide on God’s behalf what God either would or would not approve of. The hate mongering of the now notorious Westboro Baptist Church with their infamous slogan ‘God hates fags’ is such an instance. How do they know? Do they have God’s private cell phone number? From a standpoint of simple logic one could equally argue that God actually likes gays, because so many good and decent and loving [1]people on this planet are gay. And it serves little purpose to point out that such ‘ungodly’ practices are forbidden by scripture, because that only counts for something if those specific scriptural texts are universally accepted as being the actual word of God, and that is far, very far, from being the case.

I have not been able to identify the church where this notice appears, but it does incongruously seem to suggest that the request for silence potentially applies to only two of these six items. In reality, of course, all six are prohibited for the congregation. But who’s to know if God doesn’t actually like smoking, has a cell phone, keeps a dog, and smiles benignly upon sassy dresses, baseball caps and hamburgers with milkshakes?

Another field rich in human assumptions about God’s preferences is religious dress codes. Perhaps a distinction should be made here between those styles of dress which are intended as outward expressions of religious adherence and community, such as the turbans worn by Sikhs, and those which we presume actually have God’s nod of approval, or even meet God’s demands. We now know that the dress codes for women as prescribed by Paul in his first letter to Timothy (1 Timothy, 2:9-14) are not actually by Paul at all, but were [2]appended under Paul’s name much later by an unknown hand. Even though this passage of scripture is now known to be an anonymous appendage, it still goes on serving the Church’s needs enough to keep it in scripture, and in turn to cite scriptural precedent for keeping women in a subservient role.

A Sikh girl wearing the distinctive turban or dastaar. One of the younger world religions, Sikhism is in its outlook and conduct altruistic and egalitarian, does not seek to convert others, believes that no one religion has a monopoly on the truth, and shuns religious rites and rituals including all forms of circumcision and cutting, believing such rituals to be ‘blind spirituality’.

Here two streams of assumptions come together: The assumption that God requires us to dress in a specific way, and the assumption that God approves of dress codes which undermine gender equality. God wants you to cover your head in a place of worship. God thinks that you should conceal your hair/face/body in public. The list goes on. But such statements say more about us and the ways in which we seek to control others in subtle and in not-so-subtle ways. In a patriarchal society it is patriarchal beliefs which hold sway, and those in power will do what they can to make sure things stay that way.

When such gender-directed religious dress codes are taken to their most extreme expression, women are cyphered away to the point of being non-entities, and the burka becomes the order of the day. And when congregations in a place of worship are segregated according to gender it is as if we are sending a clear signal to God, not only that those men present cannot trust themselves to keep their lustful thoughts in check, but that those same men seek to please God by banishing half of the congregation to an inferior, non-visible status while they themselves maintain an all-too-visible centre-stage profile. ‘Look at me, God, I’m worshipping you!’ Male ego, apparently, demands God’s attention as much as anyone else’s.

The all-covering head-to-toe Islamic burka. Only a fabric mesh allows the wearer a limited window on her surroundings. We hide away that which we most fear, and a more graphic expression of men’s fear of women is difficult to imagine. It has been pointed out that such practices are nowhere mentioned in the Quran, although they apparently are mentioned in auxiliary texts.

It is not clear where or when circumcision originated, but we have wall reliefs from Ancient Egypt depicting the [3]practice. It is therefore likely that it was a custom exported from that country from the years of Israelite exile, and is now customary in two of the world’s religions: Judaism and Islam. There’s another assumption right there: God wants your sons and/or your daughters to be circumcised. As with any of the other above assumptions, we cannot know the mind of God. It is the crucial difference between what God thinks we should do (which we cannot know), and what we think God thinks we should do. Male [4]circumcision is practiced on infants too young to have a voice of their own, and who therefore are legal minors who have no choice in the decision to have non-reversible modifying surgery performed on their genitals. We deny our own children any say in the matter: a state of affairs that in another context would otherwise be looked upon as a particularly bizarre form of [5]child abuse.

A wall relief from Saqqara in Egypt dating from 2,400 BCE. The origins of the practice of male circumcision are uncertain, although they certainly pre-date the two world religions which practice it. Circumcision is therefore a custom inherited from a pagan past, and the scriptural assertion that it originated as a demand by God of the Israelites has no anthropological foundation.

But even male circumcision is neither as drastic nor has the same intent as female circumcision. Even to call it circumcision is misleading. If the equivalent operation were to be performed on a [6]male child, then the entire glans – the head of the penis – would be cut off. The term used by those opposing this practice – female genital mutilation, or simply FGM – is therefore an accurate one, the more so when considering the additional factor that the procedure is generally carried out using unsterilized blades and without anaesthetic on young girls who are denied a voice of their own about what is happening to them and the bodies which will carry them through the rest of their life. Such radical cruelty inflicted upon those young girls who have no [7]say of their own is not about religion. It is about [8]power and control and a misplaced sense of [9]tradition – and about the fear that is generated by male insecurity. In a society in which men fear women’s sexual autonomy, the clitoris is perceived as a threat that needs to be removed.

The girl in this photo was told by her mother (at right) that the mother was taking her to a party with her young friends. “Circumcision is a noble act to do to women. There’s nothing wrong with doing it.” This quote comes from Sheikh Mohamad Alarefe, Saudi Arabian theologian and professor at King Saud University. I would suggest that if there is ‘nothing wrong with doing it’, then the sheikh leads by example and has the same procedure performed upon himself.

This to me is the greatest blasphemy: to presume to know the mind of God. Whether that concerns dress or other religious customs, it is the subterfuge that we either seriously believe or are fooling ourselves into believing that such things are done ‘in God’s name’. Now that is taking the Lord’s name in vain, if ever anything is. And think about it: is it not a shocking blasphemy to think that we have the right to modify, that we can [10]‘improve upon’, what God already has created? And yet we do just this when we surgically modify the genitals of those who are too young to resist. Instead, we wield the knife and presume to play God, and then let ourselves off the moral hook by sanctimoniously saying that it is ‘for religious reasons’.

And when it comes to religious dress codes, maybe you see things differently, but I was always taught that God sees what is in our hearts, not what is on our heads, or what is covering our bodies. So if religious constraints require you to wear a hat in church, or to wear a skirt instead of slacks, or to hide your hair or even your face in public, then maybe it’s because your fellow man is demanding more of you than God is.

Hawkwood


Since no one really knows anything about God, those who think they do are just troublemakers.
~ Rabia Basri, 8th-century female Sufi mystic and Muslim saint.

Notes:

[1] Please see my post Sex and Trust.

[2] Please see my posts It's Real! It's Fake! and "Behold This Woman" for more about these spurious letters written in Paul's name. To save you looking them up, the verses are: “...Also that women should adorn themselves modestly and sensibly in seemly apparel, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly attire but by good deeds, as befits women who profess religion. Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became the transgressor.” (Revised Standard Version)  

[3] Greek accounts by Strabo (left) from the 1st-century BCE mention that Egyptians practiced both male and female circumcision, which confirms that Islam adopted these practices from a pre-existing pagan culture. 19th-century accounts from both Europe and America document secular cases of surgical removal of the clitoris ‘to prevent hysteria and masturbation’. Young boys, apparently, could go at it like a steam hammer, but the idea that females had their own autonomous sexual identity apparently was – and in many circles still is – too much of a threat to the male ego to be tolerated.   

[4] The story that circumcision might help to prevent lower prostate cancer is worth mentioning, although it turns out that this could be more a matter of simple personal hygiene. The story can be read here. The other story that intercourse with a circumcised male reduces the risk of cervical cancer in the female seems to have a number of variables, including the promiscuity of males with monogamous partners, the age at which circumcision is carried out (the younger the age, the less likely circumcision appears to be an influencing factor), and again, personal hygiene-related issues. That story can be read here.

[5] The map at left shows the global prevalence of male circumcision. Blue is above the 50% threshold: the lighter the blue, the more prevalent the practice. Red is below that threshold. While with a country such as the United States the prevalence might be due to social factors, in north and central Africa, the Middle East and Indonesia the predominant religion combined with societal traditions is the determining factor. I would suggest that it is only the fact that circumcision has become so widespread, also outside of religious traditions, which makes it so broadly acceptable. It is only by stepping back and considering the practice more objectively that it might be seen for the bizarre practice which it is. And my point made in this post that it is practiced on legal minors, on those too young to voice their own objections, is what tips it over the line into child abuse. It is. For a father to say ‘if it was good enough for me then it’s good enough for my son’ is the same argument as a father saying ‘I was beaten by my dad and it never did me any harm, so I beat my son too’.

[6] The map at right shows the global prevalence of female genital mutilation, with those areas of greatest prevalence shown in light blue. Egypt and Somalia have the highest rate, with 91% to 98% of all females undergoing some form of genital cutting. There are different types of FGM procedures, from excision (cutting off) of the clitoris to infibulation, the most extreme form, which also involves excision of the inner and outer labia and almost stitching shut the vaginal opening. To read and/or download a fact sheet about FGM please visit The Clarion Project. 

[7] When interviewed by the BBC (BBC HARDtalk, 11 January 2016) pro-FGM activist Fuambai Sia Ahmadu (left) claimed that type 1 FGM (excision of the clitoris) “is equivalent to male circumcision”. It is not. As mentioned above, the male equivalent would be to cut off the head of the penis. Ms Ahmadu said that the lack of a clitoris had not made any difference to her sex life. But with no comparision to draw upon, how could she possibly know? Ms Ahmadu also claimed that a woman feels more feminine without her clitoris because of its resemblance to the male penis: a statement which finely demonstrates my point about the human hubris of presuming to know better than God what is ‘correct’ for us. Human sexuality is a shifting thing. In early embryonic development all human genitalia are identical.

[8] The so-called Islamic State militant group has declared their intention that if (as far as they are concerned, when) they create their caliphate, then all women in Iraq between the ages of 11 and 46 will be forced to undergo FGM. I remarked in a previous post (Isis in Paris) that IS is deeply misogynist in its intentions. This news is a further confirmation of that, although IS now deny the story. A report can be read here.

[9] The Question of Tradition: Tradition is the usual defence offered by those who seek to maintain these practices: ‘It’s an important part of our tradition’ is what we hear. Anthropologically, tradition is a primitive mechanism inherited from our distant past, most probably as a survival mechanism. ‘We did such-and-such this way, and nothing bad happened to us, so we’d better do it the same way from now on, just in case.’ I recently heard a leader of a religious community expressing his concern about the possible disappearance of circumcision as a (to him) valued religious tradition. “If such an essential tradition disappears” he wondered, “what would we be left with?” Hmm... just a wild idea on my part, but maybe… God? 

[10] It is worth making the point that I am drawing a distinction between such procedures which are carried out on minors as a religious practice and those body modification procedures which are carried out in a secular context by adults who have chosen such procedures for themselves. If you choose to have a stud in your tongue (or anywhere else) that is really up to you.

Sources:

Niqab photo from the Huffington Post. Photo of Sikh girl from Michael Freeman Photography. Photo of FGM being performed on a young girl from The Clarion Project. Other photos from uncredited sources. Global map of male circumcision prevalence adapted from a work by AHC300. Global map of FGM prevalence by Woman Stats Project.

Ecclesiastes: Conversations with the Heart

I read a lot of books, and whatever I read I prefer to take on its own merits, which is to say that for me there is no distinction between a text which appears in scripture and any other text I might be reading, which for me makes all of literature a level playing field. This puts me in a different position from either the die-hard [1]atheist who might reject scripture in its entirety simply because it is scripture, and at the other end of the critical spectrum, the Christian Apologist who attempts to defend and excuse even the most recklessly immoral and inhuman episodes in scripture, and there sadly are enough of [2]these.

In dismissing scripture, I would suggest that the atheist misses much that is worthwhile. But in uncritically accepting it, the Apologist often-enough strives to justify the unjustifiable, and any innate sense of human moral worth is overruled by the mere fact that the offending (and offensive) events happen to appear ‘in scripture’. But what the stances of my hypothetical atheist and Apologist have in common is their lack of critical discrimination, of being unable to acknowledge either the merits or the shortcomings in such texts. 

One book in scripture that is a favourite of mine is Ecclesiastes: The Preacher. Of modest length (it easily can be read in one sitting), it brims with simple wisdom and sagacious advice about negotiating one’s way, both in the world and through life itself. It is truly a text with heart. Indeed, the unknown author of this text actually says to us that ‘I communed with mine own heart.’ And that is the way it feels to us, his readers.

Let me now take another personal favourite from my bookshelf: the Edward Fitzgerald translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Unlike Ecclesiastes, the identity of the author is not in doubt. As history informs us, he was the 11th-century Persian poet, mathematician and astronomer Omar ben Ibrahim al-Khayyami, known in the West as [3]Omar Khayyám. Omar might at first seem a very different world away from Ecclesiastes, but it is their similarities that intrigue.

Both texts reveal a deep wisdom, a practical vision of life and of death, and the stance necessary to face both. Both contain [4]phrases to which we respond so powerfully that they have passed into the language. Both offer a sense of true consolation, of offering a way through the convoluted course of life. Both acknowledge the futility of worldly vanity, the ultimate meaninglessness of material titles and possessions. Both openly agree that wisdom itself has its own limitations, and should not be placed above simple human responses to situations. These are among their similarities, but what of the differences?

Excepting the obvious differences of time and place, what at first seems like a clear difference between Omar and Ecclesiastes is the latter’s piety. When compared with Ecclesiastes’ reverence, and his urging his readers to place God centrally in their lives, Omar seems positively worldly. It is Omar who urges us not to take things too seriously, and it is Ecclesiastes who concludes by urging us to “fear God and keep his commandments.” But does he? Scholarship now considers that these overtly reverend verses of Ecclesiastes were inserted by a later hand, to give the text a greater sense of piety. If such later additions are removed, then it is as if the two voices, the one Persian, the other Hebrew, speak as one.

Of course there still remains a very obvious difference indeed: one is in scripture, and the other is not. So how did Ecclesiastes come to be a part of scripture? Its worldly voice seems to be a very different one from those in the scriptural books around it. One tradition suggests that Solomon was himself its author, and the great king’s name and status carried enough gravitas to have it accepted, although this claim is an attribution with little weight in scholarship. It also could be that its tacked-on ‘fear God..’ conclusion gave it the necessary weight to make it canonical, although this and other such phrases, as mentioned above, almost certainly were not part of the original text. The fact is that we simply do not know how or why Ecclesiastes ended up being part of scripture. Its inclusion remains a mystery.

But Ecclesiastes nevertheless is in scripture, which in turn reasonably invites a comparison with Omar Khayyám on these terms. Is what one of these voices says any more or less valid or meaningful than the other for this reason? Of course not. Both voices have equal validity, both in what they say and in what they offer to us, their readers. Both show a great depth of humanity, and in that humanity, both reach out to us in a meaningful way across the intervening centuries. With this perspective before us, that we read Omar in a secular context and Ecclesiastes in a scriptural one seems in the end to be down to mere happenstance, to the chances of history and of place.

Both of these literary voices are in this sense very much ‘conversations with the heart’. Both reveal to us an essential humanity, and comment profoundly on the human condition. The [5]line which we have drawn between the scriptural and the secular is one which we ourselves have created, and – at least when considering the voices of Ecclesiastes and Omar Khayyám – there is not a cigarette paper’s thickness between them.

Hawkwood

Notes:

[1] I am of course aware that not accepting scriptural authority also includes any non-Christian belief or religion, and that Judaism accepts the first five books – the Torah – as its own authority. 

[2] Please see my post Frontier Justice in the Promised Land for chapter-and-verse references to some of these. The task of Christian Apologists is an unenviable one. They must excuse their way through a whole battery of atrocities which include the condoning of rape and slavery, the massacre of women and children, the agonizing death by stoning even for such trivial acts as your child's disobedience, and the actual human sacrifice to God of one's own child - and all of these in just the first seven of the sixty six books of scripture.

[3] For more about Omar and his verses, please see my posts Omar Khayyám and Through the Seventh Gate. It is often suggested that Fitzgerald’s translation is really more of a reinterpretation, more Fitzgerald’s own vision of things than Omar’s. If so, then for the purposes of my comparison in this post this simply puts it on the same footing as the English translation of Ecclesiastes, which has been filtered through Hebrew, Greek and Vulgate Latin to become the familiar resounding prose of the King James Version.   

[4] Among the sayings originating in Ecclesiastes we find: all is vanity; the sun also rises; all the rivers run into the sea; there is nothing new under the sun, and; to everything there is a season. Omar Khayyám most famously offers us: The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on.

[5] I have used Omar Khayyám as my example because to me his parallels with Ecclesiastes are so strikingly clear. But of course when considering such profound voices as Omar’s countrymen Rumi and Hafez, or the Bengali Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore (left), the whole idea that what is written in scripture is in some way inherently ‘better’, and has more to tell us than these and other such voices, simply becomes meaningless. The Golden Rule attributed to Jesus – do unto others as you would have them do unto you – was first uttered by Confucius three centuries before New Testament times.

Sources:

Martin A. Shields: The End of Wisdom: A Reappraisal of the Historical and Canonical Function of Ecclesiastes. Eisenbrauns, 2006.

Michael V. Fox: The JPS Bible Commentary: Ecclesiastes. Jewish Publication Society, 2004.

Jorge Luis Borges: The Enigma of Edward Fitzgerald, in Other Inquisitions, 1937-1952. University of Texas Press, 1964. Borges, usually so meticulous with literary facts, describes Omar Khayyám as an atheist. In fact, it has proven notoriously complex to unravel his personal beliefs, and he has been described as being everything from an agnostic hedonist to a Sufi mystic. I personally opt for the mystic. Fitzgerald might at times portray him as an earthy and wine-quaffing devil-may-care, but this particular Omar is largely one of Fitzgerald’s invention. Omar ben Ibrahim al-Khayyami also wrote a brilliant and ground-breaking treatise on algebra, as well as producing profound poetry and being an accomplished astronomer – hardly the profile of a drunken sot.

There are various editions of Edward Fitzgerald’s translation, several of them illustrated by noted artists. My own is: Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, Rendered into English Verse by Edward Fitzgerald, Illustrated in Colour and in Line by René Bull. Hodder and Stoughton, 1913. I bought this first edition many years ago for $33. An edition signed by the artist is now worth over $2,500.

The images for this post are adapted from the illustrations by Adelaide Hanscom Leeson for the 1905 edition of the Rubáiyát, published by Dodge. This American artist pioneered the use of photography as a medium for book illustration, and her originality in this field is more deserving of attention than it perhaps receives. 

All Things Must Pass

The lioness-headed goddess Sekhmet of Ancient Egypt, mighty Odin of the Vikings, the amorous Zeus of Ancient Greece seeking mortal women to seduce: we now think of these gods and goddesses as the deities of mythology, and the surviving stories in which they feature as mythological tales. But all of these deities, and all of their stories, were once a part of living, breathing religions. All of these deities once were worshipped and believed in as surely, and with as much passion and conviction, as those deities of the religions which are with us today.

Zeus and Danae: Incarcerated in a tower of bronze, Danae is visited by Zeus in the form of a shower of gold. The result of this encounter is the hero Perseus, whose story lives on, even though the once-great Zeus has become a figure of mythology.

It is only through the lens of time that we view these beliefs as ‘mythology’, because as vibrant religions they have with passing time, and for various reasons of history, become a spent force. This being so, then by logical extension it must follow that if the religions of the past have for us turned into mythology, then the religions of today must be the mythologies of the future. Does this thought make you howl in protest? Do you believe that your religion will be eternal? In history, there is no such thing. Ra, the creator sun god of dynastic Egypt, was worshipped as a principal deity for almost three thousand years before he too had his day.

A god also rises and sets.

Christianity has now been with us as a practicing religion for two thousand years. Will it still be here in that same form a thousand years from now, in the year 3013? How about 4013 – or even 8013? The year 8013 (for convenience and clarity I’m assuming the Common Era calendar) is more remote from our own time than our own time is from the building of ancient Babylon. I’m not making bets on anything six thousand years into the future – but I am prepared to make reasonable assumptions. And reasonable assumptions tell us that all things must pass.

The Roman Forum: The present contains the ruins of the past, and the future will contain the ruins of the present.

The historian Edward Gibbon sat down among the ruins of the once-great Forum in the city of Rome and, overwhelmed by the finality of this great truth, and surrounded by the echoing remains of temples and roofless columns, conceived his plan to write his multi-volume classic on the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Empires are in a sense the secular versions of religions – although it is true enough that empires and religions are at times inextricably intertwined.  The Holy Roman Empire (which the ever-philosophical Voltaire dryly described as being neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire) carried its religious convictions to the New World, there to lay waste the then-existing indigenous pre-Columbian cultures in a frenzy of conversion by conquest.

Burnt by the fires of a new faith: Of the thousands of Pre-Columbian sacred books that were destroyed during the 16th-century Spanish conquest of the New World, the damaged Codex Borgia is one of less than ten to survive.

The three great religions of today known as the Religions of the Book – Christianity, Judaism and Islam – are all monotheistic. From within those religions there is probably a tendency to view the belief in a single omnipotent deity as a progression beyond the primitive polytheistic religions of the past, with their head-spinning diversity of gods, goddesses and semi-divine heroes and heroines. Monotheism is therefore perhaps viewed as an evolution beyond such ancient mindsets, as being  ‘the way to go’. But Hinduism makes a nonsense of such an idea – and Hinduism, with its rich pantheon of gods and goddesses, is still well-and-truly with us after some four thousand years. And Taoism, dating from the same era as the beginnings of Judaism in the Near East, and with no gods to its name, has successfully put down new roots in the West – as has Buddhism. The message from history is clear: one supreme god, or many, or even none, have no bearing on the staying power of a belief.

Wise Ganesha: With his distinctive broken tusk, the Hindu elephant god is widely worshipped as the remover of obstacles from the paths of the faithful, and as the patron of the arts and sciences.

Voltaire (yes, Voltaire again!) said that if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. Atheist cultures, which by default seem to be politically atheist, merely replace the gods of religion with gods of political and revolutionary heroism. Towering bronze and stone statues of ‘the great helmsman’ Mao and other communist luminaries, some as massive as the statue of Christ which watches over the city of Rio, and as sterile as the vast and soulless city squares in which they stand, serve as substitutes for the missing supernatural deities of other countries. Inspiring and consoling their subjects from the lofty heights of apotheosis, these mortals are revered in a way that is only nominally secular. 

Chairman Mao: New gods rush in to fill the vacuum left by those banished by politically atheist regimes.

But if, as it seems history wishes to demonstrate to us, all religions sooner or later pass into mythology, is there any belief anywhere which has gone the distance? Yes, there is. Cave art and other Paleolithic artifacts depict forms of fertility, hunting and other visionary rituals. Shamanism, and its practices and beliefs, stretches back some thirty five thousand years into our distant past. It has consistently been a part of the heritage of human spirituality, and is still with us today, both in indigenous communities and in a new urban renewal.

Ancient ceremonies: Hunting, fertility and other rituals strove to tip the balance of fortune in the favour of those who practiced them.

The names of the protagonists in these shamanic stories may shift with the telling, but their roles remain consistent. The hero (often-enough setting out on a quest of some kind), the heroine, the mischievous trickster, the spirits who need to be kept on the right side of:  such stories have been told for as many millennia as human culture has had language. And such stories can be instructive, or explanatory of the natural order of things, or just plain entertaining. Shamanism never actually passed into myth. It just kept right on going.

The year 8013: New rituals for a new world in which as-yet unborn heroes will create mythologies for a future even more remote from their own times, and our gods will have become their mythologies.

Given its staying-power, perhaps in our distant future a form of neo-shamanism will endure, and humans may themselves appear as creatures of myth: future Valkyries, harpies and sphinxes against which unknown heroes will pit themselves: new rituals for a new world which will have become unrecognisable to us. Or maybe – just maybe – the human species will have outgrown its need for religion as such, and spirituality and secularism will have blended seamlessly into one indistinguishable whole, and all that is around us will be infused with a startling new magic.

Hawkwood  

Images:

ZEUS & DANAE: Incarcerated in a bronze tower, the mortal woman Danae was visited by Zeus in the form of a shower of gold. The result of this amorous encounter was the hero Perseus, who went on to slay the gorgon and rescue the fair princess Andromeda from a terrifying sea monster. If you would like to read and see more about the story of Perseus and Andromeda, you are welcome to visit the post on my other blog Beautiful, Naked and Chained to a Rock. Original artwork © David Bergen Studio, all rights reserved.

A GOD ALSO RISES AND SETS:  A pendant in gold, carnelian and lapis lazuli from the tomb of Tutankhamen. Enfolded by the wings of the rising sun, the scarab beetle pushes the sun’s disc into the heavens at dawn. Adapted from a photo at the online Global Egyptian Museum.

THE ROMAN FORUM: The overgrown ruins of the Forum as they appeared in the 1920’s, with the columns of the temples of Vesta and Castor. The forces of the Christian Visigoth King Alaric overran Rome to enter the Forum in 410 CE, putting a definitive end to over four centuries of Roman domination. The quote paraphrases that of the Japanese architect Arata Isozaki: “Only one thing is certain: the future will contain the ruins of the present.”

BURNT BY THE FIRES OF A NEW FAITH: Image adapted from the facsimile edition of the Codex Borgia restored by Gizele Díaz and Alan Rodgers, issued by Dover Publications. This particular page has been fire damaged as shown, and depicts the sun god Tonatiuh (lower left) and Tláloc, the god of rain and storms (lower right), with the central frieze showing signs for the various days. Although almost all such codices were burnt in huge bonfires by the Spanish priests who accompanied the conquistadores, a handful were kept for curiosity value. Please see my post The Stone from Satan's Crown for another story of the Conquest.

WISE GANESHA: The symbol on his forehead is known as a tilaka. Ganesha has a human body, and is sometimes depicted holding his broken-off tusk in one hand. Yes, I realise that this is actually an African, not an Indian elephant, but its broken tusk made an irresistible reference for my painting. Original photographer unknown.

CHAIRMAN MAO: The apparent need which the human mind has for a deity of some description is dramatically expressed in the statuary of Communist public places. If this need is abolished, it merely pops up in a disguised form. Statue of Mao Zedong adapted from a photo by Andreas Schreiber. In the background is the national emblem of the People’s Republic of China, with the title of Mao’s famed 'little red book’ of quotations superimposed.

ANCIENT CEREMONIES: A hunting ritual presided over by a shaman taking place in the famed cave of Lascaux, as imagined by that master of such scenes, Zdeněk Burian. The Lascaux cave paintings in the Dordogne region of France have been dated to some 17,300 years ago. Now closed to the public for conservation reasons, the climate of the cave – and the limited number of scientists who are allowed access – is strictly controlled.

8013: NEW RITUALS FOR A NEW WORLD: DNA and electron sequencing from the world of science combine with occult and other symbols in an imagined future in which these two worlds merge to become indistinguishable from each other. Original artwork © David Bergen Studio, all rights reserved.