Image of Godhead or Anthropomorphic Idolatry

 

In the lecture that I attended presented by Andras Corbin-Arthen at Paganicon, he made the point that to use anthropomorphic images of the deity is contrary to a religion that worships nature. In doing so, we are placing human-kind at the pinnacle of godhead and thereby allowing and even excusing human domination and exploitation of our natural world. He stated that indigenous pagan groups around the world do not use anthropomorphic images of their deities, and in fact, their concept of godhead is altogether different, and perhaps devoid of deities altogether.

This was one of the issues that he brought up that I did not agree with and felt that it was an oversimplification, or even a conflation of two different issues. First, we need to define exactly what deities are, where they reside and their overall function or purpose. One of the first things that I will bring up here is that the reality of deities is not to be found in the material world. There are neither super-human nor supernatural beings in our material universe. Yahweh or Zeus doesn’t live in the sky or in a palace on the highest mountain. We have explored the whole planet, and even other planets, and the natural world seems to lack any kind of super-human or supernatural beings. If there are gods and goddesses, where are they? Where do they reside?

In my various books I have stated that nearly all of the spiritual and magical phenomena that we humans experience are part of the greater domain or field of consciousness. Whether that consciousness can exist independently of human beings is a big question. I for one, believe that consciousness has an existence and reality all its own, but others have disagreed. Are deities accessible to the animal and plant kingdoms of the earth? That is another interesting question. I would suspect that animals do not need deities to function and perceive spirit; their world is complete and whole for them. So, it would seem that the whole concept of deities and godhead are a proclivity strictly associated with human perceptions and experiences.

Spiritual consciousness, as I have experienced it over the decades, can function as a mirror to those who seek to perceive and understand what is within it. It can be an illuminating mirror, or it can be a dark and distorted one. Deities are living attributes or characterizations of the symbolic life and death of everything in the world perceived by humanity. Deities therefore have no true form, but as protean entities, assume whatever form we perceive them to be. Their function and importance is that they represent points in our collective conscious world where the disembodied consciousness assuming various deific forms can dynamically interact with our individual minds. This means that the deities are both within us and also outside of us, residing within the space of our collective consciousness. We are the deities and they are us, but they are also apart from us. Some people can sense them and emotionally engage with them, while others cannot. That engagement, however it occurs, is the basis for most of the religions of the world.

The domain of spirits, intelligences, magical powers and deities is also represented as a single agency that ties everything within that world of consciousness together in a living web of unity. When I have discussed the quality of union that pervades all things, it is based on my personal experiences of the transcendental state of consciousness perceived as the result of my most intense magical workings. It is this unity, or monism that has no name or characterization, that appears to be the foundation and the source for all spiritual and magical phenomena. We can encounter this state at brief moments of our spiritual and magical workings, and these would be peak moments of clarity and illuminated insight. It is in that moment that I have experienced spirit as a single overarching phenomenon where no individual entities reside, including myself. What that means is that if I perceive deities, then there are, for me, deities. If I perceive this domain as it truly is then there are no deities - there is a one-ness, a unity of all things and beings. Since deities function as points (or stars) within the domain of spirit representing the potential or gateway to that one-ness that is beyond their reality, then how we perceive them is a reflection on how we perceive ourselves.

If we characterize our deities as human-like, then we are making them similar to ourselves, and this is done so that groups and individuals can intimately and comfortably relate to the phenomenon of deity. It also has the power to briefly make deities equal, identifiable and accessible to ourselves. There is no fault in making use of the anthropomorphic qualities of deity in order to establish the means for experiencing union. As long as the image of the deity conforms to what the worshiper expects and desires to see, then the means of accessibility and ultimately union is possible.

The problem, and this is where I would partially agree with Andras, is where we believe that the deity we worship is absolute in its form and character. A human looking deity is a tool or mechanism that allows us to be able to identify and access this being. A deity, as I have stated, has no real shape or form itself, and it is our imagination and passions that give it an image, form and even a tangible means for union. If we can understand that our images of deity are constructed so we can access them, and that they have no real singular form or character by themselves, then I think that we will not be guilty of engaging in an anthropomorphic idolatry. Deities mirror the natural world, but they are not of the earth. They are a part of the greater domain of consciousness that exists within our minds and in the cultural of our shared world, and it is a very human centric domain. Some may be able to perceive that unity behind all spiritual phenomena, and some might not. Some may need deities to engage their spiritual sensibilities, while others might not even have such sensibilities.

Thus, I think that our perception and engagement with deities is a matter quite distinct from the way we have dominated and treated the very earth that we live in. Ecology and theology, although perhaps touching on the same points here and there, are separate concerns for the post modern world. Conflating them creates a false dichotomy and can promote confusion and division within our community.

Frater Barrabbas

Paganicon 2023 - Thoughts and Impressions

The last time I attended Paganicon, in the Twin Cities, MN, was in 2017. At that time, I was living in the northern suburbs and was able to drive and take in some classes and meet folks, but I didn’t plan on staying at the hotel. I only went for a couple of days, did some impromptu book signing because my first book in the “For Witches” was in print. I presented the lecture on the Egyptian Mysteries of the Dead, namely on the contents of the Am Duat with a PowerPoint lecture slide deck. You can read about it here, since I did do a write-up on it for my blog. Needless to say, that was the last time that I attended the convention. I was working and traveling during the following year, and then moved to Virginia. I really couldn’t find the time to make a return visit in 2019, and then the pandemic came in 2020.

During that interlude, I wrote and published two more books with two more manuscripts ready for whenever Llewellyn can put them into production. It was a busy time, but I thought that it would be nice to return this year now that the pandemic has become an endemic disease, more or less. I got emails about what was happening, but I didn’t pay much attention to them. I know that the year 2020, the convention was canceled, and in 2021 it became remote access attendance kind of event, and in 2022, it started to return to a normal convention. Because I had two more books in my series, I felt that it was time for me to return. So, I sent in a lecture request, signed up and then made all of the arrangements to travel to Minneapolis and attend the convention. I also wanted to see the many friends and associates that I had left behind and soak up a bit of the social scene with my pagan tribe. 

Overall, the trip was a big success, although I had to endure a very cold wintry spring, with temperatures nearing zero degrees F. It was very cold, icy and snowy outside, but at the convention center, it was warm and inviting. I had a mini lecture on the nature of a talisman and how to make one at the Llewellyn hospitality suite, and I had a main lecture on the Temporal Model of Magic and the importance of time for celestial types of magical workings. Both went well and were decently attended. I had 25 attendees at the main lecture, because I used up all of the handouts that I had made. My lecture was unfortunately scheduled at 9:30 AM CDT on Sunday, the morning after the ball and extended parties. Those who made it in to my lecture were serious about the topic, regardless of the lack of sleep. Still, the lecture was a success and I even went off script and that made it even better.

While represented my own contribution to the convention, I also attended a number of lectures, and particularly enjoyed those presented by Andras Corbin-Arthen, the found and director of EarthSpirit community, and Kristopher Hughes, chief of the Anglesey Druid Order, a native of Wales and an impressive author. Both of these men presented their own perspective on what could be called a kind of survival of indigenous European paganism. Paganism has survived in obscure rural pockets in Europe, or as in Wales, it has been reconstituted as an integral part of the national culture. Andras, who was born in Galiza in northern Spain, encountered a couple practicing an authentic indigenous form of Witchcraft from the highlands in Scotland when he was a young man and studied with them for over five years. While Andras has deepened and developed his training, and also traveled over much of Europe to discover more remnants of paganism, Kristopher was favored with a cultural foundation for a pagan and magical heritage, revitalized in recent times.

What I learned from these two remarkable men in their lectures is that paganism and witchcraft as practiced by these surviving pockets of Europeans has much in common with other indigenous non-Christian traditions, like the Native American religious practices. There are common threads to all of these groups, and these commonalities can help us modern pagans and witches to be more authentic in our beliefs and practices. Both men showed that it is very important for any pagan religion to include a cultural perspective along with their religious practices. Universal faiths, such as Christianity and Islam, proclaim to be beyond culture or locality, but paganism is dependent on both culture and locality in order to fully function. Witchcraft or paganism are poor faiths if they are stripped of their culture and locality, which was something made abundantly clear in the teachings that Kristopher presented to us at Paganicon.

So, what I learned at this Paganicon was quite illuminating. I learned the following important concepts.

• Paganism or Witchcraft, even as modern practices must have the following qualities.
• Culture - a style of life based on older precedents, whether through emulation of actual pagan survivals, reconstructed or developed with available cultural tropes.
• Location - a typically rural location occupied for centuries with mythic associations, or elected special topographic places where myths are developed, shared with others and passed on.
• Language - an actual language (Welsh, Gaelic, Celtic, Nordic, Germanic, Saxon, etc.) or a specific terminology (borrowed from other languages or academia) to describe states of consciousness, compose invocations, hymns and incantations, names of magical objects and themes, various beings, deities and demigods, and place names.
• Folk Practices - rituals, ceremonies, songs, life event rites and celebrations, lunar and solar cycles, recipes for food and drink, special clothing, special decorations, and folk magic.

Some of the qualities that Andras discussed about what these pagan survivals had in common was even more striking.

• Lack of deities - especially anthropomorphic gods and goddesses. These often assume the guise and nature of animals with only a kind of archetypal representation.
• Belief in an unifying mystery or web connecting all things together into union - a living tapestry where all things appear as one united design. This one-ness has no name, other than naming it “Mystery”.

The word pagan comes from the Latin pagani, which means rural inhabitant, as opposed to the urbani, folks that live in the city. Pagani was also considered a kind of insult, similar to “country bumpkin” or “red neck”. When the Christians later called the Roman polytheists pagani, this considered quite a powerful insult.

Some of the important guiding points that Andras gave the modern community of Witches and Pagans in the U.S., was to make a conscious break with the underlying culture that promotes capitalism and the exploitation of people and resources, and to build a truly polytheistic culture to underlie our religious and magical practices. We should develop a common language to discuss what we are experiencing and what we believe to ensure better communication and reduce the confusion that an unsupported language might give to a group of people committed to acting outside of the Christian culture. I will have to consider these guiding points, and I am not certain that I agree with them all.

Additionally, it is a sign of extreme foolishness to engage in attacking or discriminating against other pagan or witchcraft traditions when we have more in common with each other than with other faiths that are fundamentally inimical to our practices.

It was an excellent Paganicon pagan convention, and it was probably one of the best that I have ever attended. The Pantheacon convention had its anthropologists and academics giving college level lectures, but that convention is no longer available. We still have Paganicon, and it is good to see that it is evolving and able to present good information to the community at large.

Frater Barrabbas