"My religion is connection."

Not Divided = Not Conquered

Noted author, teacher, and all-around BNP, T. Thorn Coyle recently wrote in her blog: "My religion is connection." I couldn't possibly say it better myself, so I won't try. But I will try to say what those four simple words mean to me.

My religion is connection. That's why I bother with arguing against "Pagan Monotheism" and "the spiritual two-party system". It's also why I criticize Ronald Hutton for his claim that the only thing that modern Paganism and ancient Paganism have in common "is the name". It's also why I argue against the claim that Socrates, Plato, and other ancient Pagan philosophers weren't really Pagans. It's also why I reject the idea of Paganism as an "ethnic" or "European" religion (some kind of "indigenous religion" for white people).

My religion is connection. Paganism never died: modern Paganism is connected to the Paganism of the past, and through that connection I am connected to my past. As a Pagan I feel a spiritual kinship with all those who worship the life force inherent in all of Nature, who understand that the Earth Herself is alive, as are the Moon, the Sun, the Stars - even Space itself. I feel a kinship with all those who embrace the erotic, sexual, life-affirming world-view in which there is no such concept as "dead matter". There is nothing dead in the Cosmos. Life and Consciousness pervade the whole Universe.

My religion is connection. The ancient Orphic Hymn to Aphrodite calls the Goddess of Love "the all-connecting Lady". Love is the force that binds the Cosmos together, that binds everything to everything else. To paraphrase the great modern Hindu sage Swami Vivekananda, the whole world is filled with the Divine, not with sin.

My religion is connection. There is nothing excluded from Paganism. Kabbalah is not too Jewish for Paganism, nor is Isis is too African, or Cybele too Asian, or Athena too philosophical. Paganism does not pit Celt against Roman against Hellene against German. Nor does it pit philosopher against peasant, man against woman, "the elite" against "the people", gay against straight, right against left.

Because Paganism is a religion of connection it is inherently ethical - there is nothing that I can do to anyone or anything that does not directly impact on me. There is nothing that happens anywhere in the Cosmos that does not directly impact me.

Because Paganism is a religion of connection it is inherently Magical. The interconnectedness of all things is a Great Mystery, but one which is not closed to us. Through study leading to knowledge and prayer leading to inspiration we can learn how to pull on the threads of Indra's Net in one place in order to create the intended effect somewhere else.

Because Paganism is a religion of connection, there is no part of me that is not of the Gods. Nor is there anything of the Gods to which I cannot aspire. The whole Universe is filled with Goddesses, Gods, Daemons, Nymphs, Sprites, Dakinis, Bodhisattvas, Spirits of every kind - of which the human soul is also one kind.

Awareness of the interconnectedness of everything is a luminous key that unlocks and throws wide the doors of consciousness. Without this key those doors remained closed, forming an impassable gate, a limiting barrier rather than an entryway to the limitless. In every culture throughout human history there have been those who have found this key, sometimes discovering it on their own, but most often it is passed from warm hand to warm hand as the great gift of Initiation. This knowledge is never lost from humanity, but even among those who know some know more and some less - and even those who know the most are able to communicate that knowledge to others only with great difficulty. But the Golden Thread is unbroken.

Out of curiosity young Lucius dabbled in Magic, and tried to turn himself into an owl thinking it would be fun to fly about for an evening. But because he did not know what he was doing, instead he turned himself into an ass, and, worse, was unable to regain his human form. For a long time he suffered hardship and abuse as a lowly ass, but when his time of testing and trials was nearing an end he purified himself and called upon the Queen of Heaven, The Goddess of a Thousand Names, Isis. She appeared to him, and the Divine Vision granted to Lucius is immortalized in the writings of Apuleius. And those words, in turn, were repeated in Cornelius Agrippa's descriptions of the Goddesses Luna and Venus, written over 13 centuries later during the great Pagan flowering of the Renaissance. And these words continue to stir Pagan hearts and minds to this day.

Isis commanded Lucius to seek out the sacred procession of the Goddess, and to join that procession even though he was still trapped in the body of an ass, "for all the people by My commandment shall be compelled to give thee place." And once in that procession he was to seek out the Priest, to whom the Goddess would send a vision, telling him to carry a garland of roses. And Lucius must, without doubt or fear, go right up to the Priest and pretend as if he were going to kiss the Priest's hand, but then instead to "snatch at the roses, and thereby put away the skin and shape of an ass."

So mote it be.

Paganism, B.C. (Before Christianization)

[This is the second of a series of posts on "What is Paganism?"]

In the first post on "What is Paganism?" I began to look into the question of how Paganism fared when confronted with "the machinery of enforcement", as historian Ramsay MacMullen has called it, of the process of Christianization. The idea being that a great deal can be learned by observing how people (both as individuals and as groups) "put forth their strength" in the face of severe adversity (as Socrates puts it in the opening of Plato's Timaeus). I will have much more to say along those lines, but before doing so it might be a good idea to stop and ask a question that could conceivably sound strange to some: did any such thing as Paganism actually exist independently of, and prior to, "the determination of the Christian leadership to extirpate" it?

Of course there were temples, statues, altars, shrines, sacred groves, sacred caves, sacred pools, sacred mountains, sacred rivers, etc. dedicated to various Goddesses and Gods long before Christianity came along. And there were rituals, fasts, feasts, prayers, hymns, processions, holidays, secret initiations, etc, dedicated to these same deities. And, of course, there were people who worshipped these deities together and participated in those fasts, feasts, etc. To the Christians all these people were "Pagans", but what were they to themselves and to each other? Did they, before the pressures brought on by Christianization, already see each other as "fellow" believers/practitioners of a common religious tradition?

James Rives states, in his 2007 Religion in the Roman Empire (also see the BMCR review here):

[O]n a fundamental level the various religious traditions of the [Roman] empire had more similarities than differences. As a result, when people from one tradition were confronted with another, they often found much that was familiar and immediately understandable, and tended to treat what was unfamiliar simply as a local peculiarity. In short, the impression we get from the sources is that people thought not so much in terms of "different religions," as we might today, but simply of varying local customs with regard to the gods.
[p. 6]

Similarly, Ramsay MacMullen had observed (in 1981) in the Introduction to his Paganism in the Roman Empire:

[T]he thing so arrogantly called [by the Christians] paganism, being in fact all the many hundreds of the Empire's religions save one, must really have shared certain widespread characteristics.
[p. 2]

And Charles W. Hedrick Jr, in his 2000 History and Silence: Purge and Rehabilitation of Memory in Late Antiquity (also see the BMCR review here), says this about Paganism:

Paganism cannot be reduced to nothing more than its opposition to Christianity. There are other sets of systematic relations operating simultaneously. The most important of these is the relation of paganism to its past, that is, the identity of memory.
[p. 53]

Rives is saying that Pagans from different cultures mutually recognized one another as, (very) broadly speaking, co-religionists. MacMullen is saying that this mutual recognition is based in the fact that the religious traditions of these different groups of Pagans "shared certain widespread characteristics" (that is, there is a real objective basis for this mutual recognition). Finally, Hedrick says that, at least once the process of Christianization got underway, "the most important" shared characteristic of different groups of Pagans was "the relation of paganism to its past."

As Hedrick notes, Pagans during the late fourth and early fifth centuries AD (the period his book focusses on) were already, as (many) modern Pagans do today, defining themselves in relation to their past, that is, to a time before the process of Christianization had begun to encroach on traditional Paganism. Already even in the late fourth century, Pagans had a tendency to imagine their past in a romanticized way. But as the quotes from Seneca (in the previous post) showed (concerning the great heroic figures from Roman history that he refers to), whatever romanticization late antique Pagans engaged in was nothing new, and it in no way amounts to merely a response to Christianization, rather it was a continuation of business as usual in terms of mythologizing the heroic past. (On a side note it might be worth pointing out that to not mythologize the heroic past is arguably very un-Pagan, which calls into question much of the rationale behind both the whole "reconstructionist" project, and also much of what currently passes for "Pagan scholarship" especially the work of Ronald Hutton and those like him.)

It is important to focus on the timeline of Christianization, not on the supposed time of the birth of Jesus or any of the events associated with his life and career (all during which he and all of his followers were, as everyone knows, observant Jews, and no such religion as "Christianity" either existed or was conceived of). During the first three centuries of Christianity's existence, Christians were often viewed by Pagans (to the extent Pagans gave Christians any thought at all) as dangerously anti-social elements on the margins of society who threatened social harmony, especially because of their violent acts directed against Pagan holy sites and other criminal activity. That is to say, prior to 312, Pagans had no reason to define themselves in terms of their opposition to Christianity, although after that date they increasingly had little choice but to define themselves as non-Christians. For more on how Pagans viewed early Christianity see especially Robert L. Wilken's The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, and for the acts of criminal violence committed by early Christians see especially Christian Persecution, Martyrdom and Orthodoxy by G.E.M. de Ste. Croix, especially chapter four: Voluntary Martyrdom in the Early Church.

It must be mentioned at least in passing that the great irony here is that it is Christianity itself, at least as we know it today, that did not exist prior to early fourth century. Early Christianity (that is Christianity as it existed prior to the beginning of coercive Christianization) bore very little resemblance to the Christianity that came later. Among early Christians there was no agreement on whether Jesus was human, divine, or, both. There was no agreement on whether a Christian needed be baptized, or circumcised, or both. There was no agreement on what constituted "the Church". There was no agreement on the relationship between Christianity and Judaism, or in particular, on whether or not the followers of Jesus should follow the Mosaic Law, as Jesus and all of his disciples had done. There was no agreement on what the sacred texts (including even the Gospels themselves) of Christianity were. And so forth. All these matters were only straightened out, so to speak, by the very same violently coercive process that sought (and to a great extent succeeded in the attempt) to extirpate Paganism.

In addition to the contemporary scholarly sources already noted above (a list which could very easily be lengthened), many primary sources also support the idea that long before Christianization, and even long before Jesus, Pagans mutually recognized one another, despite (sometimes quite wide) cultural differences. One of the most important of these sources is the Histories of the fifth century Athenian writer Herodotus. In his Athenian Religion: A History (also see BMCR review here), Robert Parker nonchalantly observes that,

Herodotus, of course, tends to suppose that Greek and foreign gods can be translated into one another, like Greek and foreign words. Indeed it seems that for him the gods themselves are the same everywhere.
[p. 158]

Thomas Harrison in his Divinity and History (reviewed here) goes so far as to say that, at least in the case of Herodotus, "It is questionable indeed whether it is legitimate to talk of foreign religions at all" [p.209]. Harrison does state that "This picture of a tolerant universalism must be qualified .... [but] [i]n many of these cases, the apparent lapse can be explained by its context" [p.214]. It is worth noting that between these two quotes from Harris there appears a two page long table of correspondences showing "Herodotus' equations of Greek and foreign gods." It is clear that whatever qualification might be required, that Herodotus' perspective on religion is fundamentally cosmopolitan.

Plutarch (who lived during the late first and early second centuries AD) echoes Herodotus' universalism in his essay On Isis and Osiris:

But those theorists engender horrible and impious notions, who apply the names of deities to natural productions and to things that be without sense, without life, and necessarily consumed by men in want of and making use of them. For these things themselves it is impossible to conceive as gods (for we cannot conceive God as an inanimate thing, subject to man), but from these productions we have drawn the inference that they who created them, and bestow, and dispense them to us constantly and sufficiently, are gods—not different gods amongst different people, nor Barbarian or Grecian, of the South or of the North—but like as the Sun, Moon, Sky, Earth, Sea, are the common property of all men, but yet are called by different names by different nations; in the same manner, as one reason regulates all things, and one Providence directs, and subordinate Powers are appointed over all things, yet different honors and titles are by custom assigned to them amongst different peoples....
[LVXII]

One more example is the Temple of Diana on the Aventine Hill of Rome. This temple to Roman Diana was built by an Etruscan king who used as his model a temple built by a Lydian King (Croesus) honoring a Greek Goddess (the great Temple of Artemis at Ephesus). Livy informs us concerning Servius Tullius, one of the semi-legendary Etruscan Kings of Rome, that

Having increased the power of the state by this enlargement of the city, and made every internal regulation that appeared best adapted to the exigences both of war and peace, the king, who wished that the acquisition of power should not always depend on the mere force of arms, laid a scheme for extending his dominion, by the wisdom of his counsels, and raising, at the same time, a conspicuous ornament to the city. The temple of Diana at Ephesus was at that time universally celebrated, and it was commonly believed, that it had been built by a general contribution from the several states of Asia: Servius, in conversation with the chief men of the Latines, with whom he had taken pains to form connections of hospitality and friendship, both in his public and private capacity, used frequently in the strongest terms, to recommend concord and a social union between their several gods; and by often repeating the same sentiments, prevailed so far at last, that the Latine states agreed to build, in conjunction with the Roman people, a temple to Diana at Rome. This was an acknowledgment that Rome was the sovereign head of both nations, a point which had been so often disputed in arms.
[Livy The History of Rome 1.xlv]

It is obvious, then, that a Paganism that transcended, without necessarily abrogating or even contesting, local customs and "ethnic" identities, was not something that only came into existence with the onslaught of Christianization. In fact, Livy shows us that (well over five centuries before the birth of Jesus) different "ethnic" groups (in this case the Latins and Romans - with the Romans seen as foreign colonists and the Latins as the "indigenous" population) could be brought together peacefully through common worship (although perhaps not through that alone).

The widely varied religious traditions of the people of the oikoumene, stretching from Britain to Bactria, did form a loosely coherent family of religions, which does not in any way imply one uniformly monolithic, static, homogeneous religion with a unified priesthood, a common set of beliefs and religious texts, or anything like that. But it does mean that, while they did not use the word yet, those who would come to be called "Pagans" did already mutually recognize each other as following religious traditions that were clearly related to each other. (More on religious universalism in ancient Paganism can be found in my previous blog posts labeled Prisca Theologia.)

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post there really are people who believe that there never was any such thing as Paganism. Frank Trombley, in his masterful Hellenic Religion and Christianization (reviewed here), states in the Preface concerning the process of writing that book that "It became obvious right from the start that the project had taken a line of analysis that few had anticipated. It was suggested to me, for example, that there was no paganism ...."

In addition to the claim that "there was no paganism", one also encounters the closely related claim that whatever Paganism may have existed vanished nearly instantaneously upon first contact with aggressive state-sponsored Christianization, as claimed by Ronald Hutton in his Witches Druids and King Arthur:

During the late twetieth century it gradually became apparent that, all over Europe, the conversion of the rulers of a medieval state to Christianity was followed with a relatively short time by the formal acceptance of the new religion by their subjects. There is no evidence of the long-term persistence of paganism as an organized religion of resistance, meeting in secret or associated with military or political rebellion, once the ruling family of a particular kingdom had accepted the Christian faith and outlawed the traditional ways. This effectively means that paganism as a formal system of religion vanished from Mediterranean Europe after the sixth century, from the western and northern parts of the continent after the eleventh, and from the north-eastern portions after the fourteenth.
[p. 137]

It is quite revealing that in a book with over 50 pages of endnotes, Hutton does not provide even a single reference to even one other scholar to whom this "gradually became apparent". Hutton seems to think that Christianity is like kryptonite to the Pagan Superman. But we already know that in the case of the most powerful state to ever exist in Europe, the Roman Empire, that Paganism did indeed persist after the Emperors had embraced Christianity and "outlawed the traditional ways". There is also evidence for much later Pagan survivals and/or revivals in Byzantium, especially associated with the Platonic school of philosophy founded by Michael Psellos in the 11th century. Psellos' hand picked successor as head of the school, John Italos, was, in fact, arrested, charged, and convicted of being a Pagan and of promulgating Pagan religious ideas in his philosophical teachings. Italos was spared only after he recanted on all 12 counts, and also agreeing to live the rest of his life under house arrest. Parts of the proceedings against Italos were even incorporated (as so-called "anathemas") into the liturgy of the Orthodox Church! The school of Psellos and Italos is none other than that of George Gemistos Plethon (to learn more about him see this earlier post and also the references listed here). Hutton also conveniently neglects the well known fact that secret religious groups were a widespread feature of the religiosity of the Middle Ages.

I'll have more to say about Hutton and his take on answering the question "What is Paganism?", but for now let's just make a note of the fact that Hutton acknowledges that modern Paganism has a "distinguished and very long pedigree" connecting it back to the Paganism of late antiquity. Even Hutton nervously understands the awkwardness of allowing modern Paganism's "very long pedigree" while simultaneously asserting that "there is no evidence of the long-term persistence of Paganism."

Bottom line: Paganism existed, Paganism persisted. But why is this important? It is important for Pagans to know our history, and knowing our history means knowing who we were, and without knowing that we will never understand who we are. We were not just little groups of people who each worshipped our own little godlings huddled in our own little separate corners of the world, imagining that our Gods spoke our language, wore the same clothes and ate the same food as we do - and did not speak the languages of our neighbors, or look or dress or eat, etc., like them. To be sure, we knew our Gods intimately - they were part of our family life, part of our personal lives - they dwelled with us in our cities and villages and in our own homes, and they dwelled in us in our hearts and minds and bodies. But we also knew that the same was true of our neighbors, and even of our enemies, of all humanity everywhere. And we also knew that this had always been true from the dawn of humanity.

T. Thorn Coyle recently said on her blog: "My religion is connection." It sent a shiver down my spine when I read that. This has always been so for Pagans. Our religion, today, connects us with all humanity, and also with the past of humanity - for as long as there have been humans there has been this dance with the Gods that we call Paganism - or call it what you will. As Julian, the Pagan, said "without having it taught us" we feel our connection to each other and to the Gods.

First they came for the abortion providers.....

George Tiller was a brave man who was gunned down by a coward who believed he was doing "God's will", never mind the fact that Tiller was murdered while ushering at his Church. George Tiller was murdered because of his courageous commitment to continue to provide abortion services despite the pressure, up to and including acts of terrorism and murder, that all those involved in any aspect of reproductive health care must still confront in the United States of America in the twenty-first freaking century.

Scumbag Randall Terry, head of Operation Rescue, says he is more concerned about President Obama's reaction to the murder than he is about the murder itself.

George Tiller's murder goes way beyond just the issue of abortion rights. For decades the issues of reproductive rights and gay rights have been the front lines of the battle to protect everyone's rights in the US. As Upton Sinclair prophesied: "When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the Flag and carrying a Bible."

And the timing is obviously no accident. America now has our first African American president, and we are about to have our first Latina Supreme Court Justice. This is driving some people over the edge. But it isn't the lone assassins that are the problem: it's the vast support network that they have, the people, like Randal Terry, who honestly and seriously believe that anyone who actively supports abortion rights deserves to be murdered.

Extremely good (vegetarian) chilli

Saute two small shallots (or one small onion or a small bunch of scallions) in 1 tbsp olive oil
Then add about 6 oz portobello caps
Once the portobello caps are getting done, add 2 15oz cans pinto beans
At the same time (more or less) also add 8oz diced tempeh (I used Lightlife Three Grain)
And also add four medium sized tomatoes diced up
Seasoning: 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp cumin, 1+ tsp Valle Del Sol Chili Powder (Whole Foods)

The Religion of Socrates

.
1. The Pagan Socrates

Seeing then that the soul is immortal, and has been born many times, and has beheld all things in this world and the world beyond, there is nothing it has not learnt; so it is not surprising that it can be reminded of virtue and other things which it knew before. For since the whole of nature is akin, and the soul has learned all things, there is nothing to prevent someone, upon being reminded of one single thing--which men call learning--from rediscovering all the rest, if he is courageous and faints not in the search.
[Socrates in Plato's Meno 81c-d]

It is not by teaching but by nature that humanity possesses its knowledge of the Divine, as can be shown by the common yearning for the Divine that exists in everyone everywhere -- individuals, communities, nations. Without having it taught us, all of us have come to believe in some sort of Divinity, even though it is difficult for all to know what Divinity truly is and far from easy for those who do know to explain it to the rest.
[Julian Against the Galileans]

Socrates was a Pagan, and on this point there can be no reasonable doubt. Nevertheless one often encounters attempts to portray him as a monotheist or even a proto-Christian, as well as portrayals of Socrates as some kind of secular-humanist or even an atheist. Very often this is nothing more than a transparent exercise in wish-fulfilment by those who wish to think of Socrates as one of their own, and there is actually some merit to that.

For it is to Socrates' credit that so many people seek to associate themselves with him, and at the very least such people show that they have some understanding of the importance of the great philosopher. In fact, both Christians and secularists/atheists often go further and demonstrate an appreciation for parts (different parts, usually) of Socrates' actual philosophy. Christians respond very naturally to Socrates' intense focus on the grave issue of the proper care of the soul. Meanwhile secularists and/or atheists enthusiastically approve of Socrates' unshakable commitment to free and unfettered intellectual inquiry.

Far more troubling than the false claims of filiation coming from some quarters, though, is the fact that a great many modern day Pagans choose to think of Socrates as irrelevant to them, or even worse, to view him with hostility. In doing so, these Pagans usually repeat uncritically things vaguely half-remembered from a college "Philosophy 101" class, or some book or magazine article, or some drivel on wikipedia, to the effect that Socrates was a monotheist and/or atheist, which, in turn, merely repeats the slanders of those whose accusations led to Socrates' execution. Such mentally lazy Pagans have passively absorbed the message: Socrates was definitely not a Pagan, and whatever it was that Socrates believed or didn't believe, it was (or so these poor souls have been led to think -- inevitably without being able to clearly explain why they think it) very much at odds with the beliefs of most of the other people (ie, Pagans) who were around at the time, and also very different from the world-view of modern day Pagans.

Before going further it must be emphasized that Socrates is one of the most well documented individuals known to us from all of antiquity. Dozens of historically attested persons were among his family, students, friends, associates and enemies. Among his admirers were three of Athens' most famous writers: Euripides, Plato, and Xenophon. Another of Athens' most famous writers was numbered among Socrates' most outspoken (and, in the end, deadly) enemies, Aristophanes. A small library could be filled with materials relating to just one Athenian especially closely associated with Socrates' - the one who was easily the most famous person associated with him at the time, but about whom many people today know absolutely nothing: the infamous rogue Alcibiades, who left no writings of his own, but who nevertheless cuts quite the swath across the history of classical Greece (for, among many other things, serving as a general on both sides of the Peloponnesian War).

The entry for Socrates in the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy begins with the philosophical equivalent of "it was a dark and stormy night": "The philosopher Socrates remains, as he was in his lifetime, an enigma ...." Despite this obfuscating, potboiler beginning, the article then goes on to provide an incredibly detailed account of Socrates' life, including personal details such as the names of his parents, and even the name of the man (Chaeredemus) his mother (Phaenarete) married after the death of his father (Sophroniscus), as well as the name of his half-brother (Patrocles) from that second marriage. We also learn the dates of young Socrates military training, and the dates of his later service in three different military campaigns.

Nor would it be credible to claim that Socrates' ideas (and especially those about religion) are somehow a veiled mystery, whereas, for examples, the occupations of his father and mother (stoneworker and midwife, respectively), and the names of his wife (Xanthippe), his children (Lamprocles, Sophroniscus and Menexenus) and even of his music teacher (Connus) are not.

In addition to the extensive writings about Socrates' ideas found in Plato and Xenophon, we also have philosophical works from at least six other of his students which, while fragmentary, nevertheless offer a wealth of information. As it turns out, written accounts of Socrates' teachings, authored by those who knew and studied with him, were extremely popular in the early fourth century BC, and this subgenre of philosophical literature is now known as the Sokratikoi logoi, a term that has only (relatively) recently become common in contemporary discussions of ancient philosophy, but which actually first appeared in the works of Aristotle. Therefore, Socrates' thought is no more "enigmatic" than that of any other philosopher of sufficient depth and subtlety.


2. "Socrates manages"
On the urge to find daylight between Socrates and "traditional" Paganism (and between Socrates and Plato)
 
All of the evidence that we have clearly demonstrates that Socrates was a Pagan. But, please, don't take my word for it. Here's just one example from Mark McPherran's The Religion of Socrates (scroll down for many more quotes along these same lines from McPherran and also Gregory Vlastos):

[T]he Apology--in concert with the Euthyphro and other early Platonic works--portrays a Socrates who was not only a rational philosopher of the first rank, but a profoundly religious figure as well, a Socrates who believed in gods vastly superior to ourselves in power and wisdom and shared many other traditional religious commitments of this sort with his fellow citizens.

McPherran is actually a hostile witness to the case of Socrates' Pagan-ness. But since no consistent case (based on evidence, that is) can be made for "The Religion of Socrates" being anything other than Paganism, McPherran is forced into inconsistency. After having said that Socrates believed in the Gods and "shared many other traditional religious commitments" common to the Hellenes at the time, he almost immediately feels the need to insist that, nevertheless, Socrates promoted "a unique, philosophical religion founded on a rationalist psychology and theology that devalued the old, publicly observable, external standard of piety ...." It is McPherran (not Socrates) who wants to "devalue" traditional Paganism, but he wants to use Socrates to validate his own devaluation. As far as Socrates goes, far from "devaluing the old publicly observable" aspects of Paganism, he contributed significantly to the preservation of traditional Paganism, just one example of which is the fact that the Platonic Academy in Athens had the honor of being the last place in the Hellenic world where "publicly observable" Pagan rituals were performed, over a century after any such open, public worship of the Gods had been made, in theory at least, a capital offense.

There is simply not a single sentence anywhere in Plato (early, middle or late), Xenophon, or any other writing from those who knew Socrates, friend or foe, to support McPherran's idea that Socrates "devalued" the more public, indeed the more "social", aspects of ancient, traditional Paganism. Plato, for example, uses the Athenian religious calendar to associate each of his dialogues with a traditional festival or other holiday associated with a Deity. And these are far from mere literary "window dressing" chosen and put to use without regard for their spiritual significance, as anyone who has ever pondered the timing of the Lysis on a day sacred to Hermes, or the Meno at a time of year associated with the Eleusinian Mysteries, can clearly see.

Part of McPherran's problem is that he still labors in the semi-darkness created by the long shadow cast by his mentor, Gregory Vlastos, arguably the most prominent Socrates scholar of the 20th century. Vlastos was a Christian who, in addition to his extremely influential scholarly works relating to Socrates and Plato, also produced books with titles such as Towards the Christian Revolution (as co-editor and contributor) and Christian Faith and Democracy (as author).

Vlastos did not try to make Socrates out as a Christian. He was somewhat more subtle than that. In his Socratic Piety (Chapter 6 in Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher), Vlastos zeroes in on what he refers to as the "embarrassing" "fact" of "Socrates' acceptance of the supernatural". While melodramatically announcing that he "shall waste no time arguing against" those who have sought to deny or explain away Socrates' supernaturalism, Vlastos himself crosses the line between explanation and "explaining way" when he offers his own view "that, far ahead of his time as Socrates is in so many ways, in this part of his thought he is a man of his times" [p.158].

McPherran inherits from Vlastos the need to find daylight between Socrates and "traditional" Paganism, even though he goes further than his mentor in acknowledging Socrates' Pagan-ness. What becomes clear when we look closely at what both McPherran and Vlastos have to say is that they both use Socrates to validate their own assessments of ancient Paganism, and, in particular, to promote their own personal visions of how religion and reason can be (and should be) reconciled. The problem is that in their eagerness to make use of Socrates to validate their own points of view, they blatantly pick and choose from among Socrates' ideas, ignoring the fact that "the religion of Socrates", that is, traditional Hellenic Paganism, already presents this reconciliation as an accomplished fact.

McPherran also inherits from his mentor the urge to pit Socrates against Plato, or, in his own words, the "Apollonian modesty" of Socrates against the "Platonic hubris" of his most famous (to us) student. McPherran is so desperate to build a wall between teacher and student that he declares, "The death of Socrates marked the death of Socratic religion.":

The death of Socrates marked the the death of Socratic religion. What little career it had as an independent phenomenon shows up only in the relatively conventional pieties of Xenophon and the slightly more thought-out theism found in some of Socrates' followers, notably Antisthenes and Aristippus. The real measure of its importance is found instead in its varied contributions to the thought of Socrates' most talented pupil, Plato. There, preserved in his middle and late dialogues, many of the basic tenets of Socratic religion survived intact--e.g. the complete justice and goodness of the gods--while other elements were either rejected or transformed as Plato proceeded to elaborate his profoundly influential, mystical theology.
[p. 291]

The above remarks come into sharper focus when we look at what McPherron had said immediately before. After a long, detailed, and quite persuasive argument for accepting as accurate Xenophon's ascription, in his Memorabilia, of a "teleological theology" to Socrates, McPherran caps it off with a peroration that appears to convey something of his own personal philosophy:

Socrates' endorsement of the Memorabilia's teleological argument places him at the leading edge of fifth century theological reform. Raised in a culture of passionate gods--gods hungry for honor, full of strife, morally distant, and confusedly and intermittently involved with the daily life of nature and humanity--Socrates manages to travel a very great conceptual distance indeed. For beginning there he appears to have arrived at an idea that was to dominate [sic] Western thought for many centuries to come: the existence of an immanent--albeit still anthropopsychic--cosmic intelligence and loving Maker.
[pp. 290-1]

3. More on McPherran and Vlastos on the Religion of Socrates

Although they are at pains to deride traditional Paganism, and to make use of Socrates himself in that project, nevertheless McPherran and Vlastos are also eager to portray Socrates as a profoundly religious man. The deep bias that both scholars have against traditional Paganism blinds them to the glaring inconsistencies that result from their Christianizing paradigm that attempts to posit a Socrates preparing the way for the Gospels. Below are a selection of quotes that highlight the fact that both McPherran and Vlastos are forced again and again to acknowledge that the religion of Socrates is Paganism.

Socrates ... believed in gods ... and shared many other traditional religious commitments of this sort with his fellow citizens.
[McPherran, The Religion of Socrates p. 2]

Socrates, for all his rationalism, appears to give clear and uncritical credence to the alleged god-given messages found in dreams, divination, and other such traditionally accepted incursions by divinity. For example, we have seen him claim that his philosophical mission to the Athenians 'has been commanded of me ... by the god through oracels and through dreams and by every other means in which a divinity has ever commanded anyone to do anything.' [Apology 33c4-7] In Xenophon we even find Socrates sending his students to oracles and seers for advice.
[p. 176]

Socrates does not endorse a form of the intellectualist rejection of divination's efficacy ... he ... accept[s] the tradtional notion that the gods really do provide humankind with signs...
[p. 177]

He [Socrates] will insist upon elenctic testing for all beliefs for which that is appropriate and feasibly, but he will also acknowledge that some beliefs are legitimately derived from extrarational sources (which then count as practical 'reasons').
[p. 179]

[S]ince according to Socrates the soul [psuche] is the seat of all the virtues, and the virtues are forms of knowledge [Protagoras 314a-b], it is thus the part of us that engages in discursive reasoning. It is, in short, our mind, our nous. Throughout the early Socratic dialogues this view is linked to the idea that the psuche is not identical with the body but rules over it from 'within' .... [W]hile some have argued that Socrates conceives of the soul as a nonseparable aspect of a person's living body, rather than a distinct element 'housed' in a body .... [s]uch a view is ... incompatible with Socrates' conviction that it is genuinely possible that death results in a separation of the soul from its body followed by a migration to another 'place', a migration that leaves no part of the soul behind [Apology 40c=41d].
[pp. 248-50]

Burnet seems right to me when he says that the originality of Socrates' contribution lay in his combining the Ionian view of it [psuche] with the Orphic-Pythagorean doctrine of the purification of the psuche.
[p. 251]

Socrates' commitment to reasoned argument as the final arbiter of claims to truth in the moral doman is evident throughout Plato's Socratic dialogues.... And yet he is also committed to obeying commands reaching him through supernatural channels.... Between these two commitments--on the one hand, to follow argument wherever it may lead; on the other, to obey divine commands conveyed to him through supernatural channels--he sses no conflict. He assumes they are in perfect harmony.
[Vlastos, Socratic Piety, in Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p. 157]

If we are to use Plato's and Xenophon's testimony about Socrates at all we must take it as a brute fact ... [that] [h]e subscribes unquestioningly to the age-old view that side by side with the physical world accessible to our senses, there exists another, populated by mysterious beings, personal like ourselves, but, unlike ourselves, having the power to invade at will the causal order to which our own actions are confined, effecting in it changes of incalculable extent to cause us great benefit, or, were they to choose otherwise, total devastation and ruin.
[p. 158]

Some scholars have expressed bafflement, or worse, incredulity, that from the the Pythia's 'No' in answer to the question 'Is there anyone wiser than Socrates"' he should have derived the command to philosophize on the streets of Athens.... But in point of fact that oracle was by no means the only sign Socrates had received ... there had been more divinations (some of them no doubt from his own daimonion) and more than one prophetic dream.
[pp. 171-2]

Were it not for that divine command that first reached Socrates through his report Chaerephon brought back from Delphi there is no reason to believe that he would have ever become a street-philosopher.
[p. 177]

Vlastos and McPherran invariably employ circular logic to explain away the glaring inconsistency in there claim that Socrates somehow had "his own" religion. Socrates was a moral philosopher, and yet traditional Paganism is assumed, by both scholars, to be inherently bereft of moral teachings. Therefore no matter how obviously Pagan Socrates was, he wasn't "really" a Pagan at all, for to admit that would be to admit that traditional Paganism was not in need of being extirpated after all.

Related posts:

• An Erotic & Magical Greek Lesson: "What then can Love be?" "A great Demon, O Socrates"
• "There is no monotheism in Homer or Pindar or Aeschylus or Herodotus; there was certainly none in cult."
• "On the Gods and the Cosmos" (Peri Theon kai Kosmou) by Sallustius
• Pagan Cosmology: not quite random thoughts on Platonism, polytheism, monism, and so forth
• The Socratic Logos in Plato's Republic
• Pagan Ethics According To Socrates: The Quick And Dirty Version
• Thomas Taylor on the Religion of Socrates
• Socrates: still making people crazy after all these years
• The varieties of sceptical thought (a six part series)

Liberte, Egalite, Apoplexie

I admit it. I got a little bent out of shape when I read what Gus DiZerega had to say about Atheists, Christians, and Pagans. Here's why:

(1) In any context I would consider it a grotesque distortion of the last 1700 years of human history to proclaim that Christianity should be credited for the promotion of the ideal of human equality.*

(2) This distortion is especially egregious when it comes from a Pagan, that is, a follower of a religious tradition that every major sect of Christianity has done everything in its power to wipe off the face of the earth. While it would be very difficult to find any religion anywhere that Christianity has not sought to "extirpate", as the Christians themselves have historically put it, Pagans can claim pride of place as the first religious tradition to be so honored.

(3) But to say this and then add to it an indictment of Paganism itself (coming from a Pagan!) for our supposed failures and deficiencies with respect to human equality, well, that, as the saying goes, takes the freaking cake. As a matter of fact, our modern conceptions of democracy, freedom of speech, justice, equality, and compassion, as well as our notions of the republican form of government and "the rule of law" in a constitutional system, all derive from Pagan Greco-Roman antecedents.

The reason I am bringing this up now is because of a wonderful post over at Impotent Rage on the proposal by some Christian fundamentalists to make 2010 the "Year of the Bible". In that post is an extended quote from Michael Lind's April 14th Salon.com piece titled America is not a Christian Nation, in which Lind puts the lie to the claim that the ideas behind phrases such as "we hold these truths to be self evident" and "all men are created equal" are somehow inspired by or based on Christian theology.

As Lind rightly points out, and as Guz diZerega as a scholar of politics and history should certainly be aware, "the actual intellectual roots of the Declaration of Independence" are to be found "in Greek philosophy and Roman law", not in the Old and New Testaments.

Some closing thoughts from old Tom Paine:

Some Christians pretend that Christianity was not established by the sword; but of what period of time do they speak? It was impossible that twelve men could begin with the sword: they had not the power; but no sooner were the professors of Christianity sufficiently powerful to employ the sword than they did so, and the stake and faggot too; and Mahomet could not do it sooner. By the same spirit that Peter cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant (if the story be true) he would cut off his head, and the head of his master, had he been able....

Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid, or produces only atheists and fanatics. As an engine of power, it serves the purpose of despotism; and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests; but so far as respects the good of man in general, it leads to nothing here or hereafter.
The Age of Reason, Thomas Paine, 1796

[* This is not to deny the contributions to social justice made by individual Christians, but diZerega specifically said that Christianity itself as a religious tradition is to be singled out (from among all the religions of the world) and credited with the "ideal of human equality". In any event my negative assessment of Christianity's net "contributions" to humanity is no more extreme than that of Thomas Paine or Bertrand Russell.]

George Gemistos Plethon: Sources

I will add more to this eventually, and clean it up some, but for now here is a rough and ready list of English language sources of information about George Gemistos Plethon (and to those who don't know who Plethon was, or what he has to do with anything, please see this previous post):

John Monfasani: "Platonic Paganism in the 15th Century"

Colin Wells: "Sailing from Byzantium"

Christopher Woodhouse: "George Gemistos Plethon: The Last of the Hellenes"

Basil Tatakis: "Byzantine Philosophy"

Katerina Ierodiakonou (ed): "Byzantine Philosophy and Its Ancient Source"

Joscelyn Godwin: "Pagan Dream of the Renaissance"

Edgar Wind "Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance"

Steven Runciman: "Mistra, Byzantine Capital of the Peloponnese"

Online:

ALEXANDER ALEXAKIS : Was There Life beyond the Life Beyond?
Byzantine Ideas on Reincarnation and Final Restoration :
http://www.doaks.org/publications/doaks_online_publications/DOP55/DP55ch08.pdf

Darien C. DeBolt: George Gemistos Plethon on God: Heterodoxy in Defense of Orthodoxy:
www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Medi/MediDebo.htm

Demetrios Constantelos: A Conflict between Ancient Greek Philosophy and Christian Orthodoxy in the Late Greek Middle Ages:
www.myriobiblos.gr/texts/english/Constantelos_2.html

split pea, lentil, and unsplit pea soup

Combine 1/2 cup split peas + 1/2 cup lentils + 3 cups water
bring this to a boil and then let it simmer, covered, for about 45 minutes (until the split peas are "done")

then add the following:
one 15 oz can of peas
one bunch of celery cut up
1 bay leaf
1/2 tsp nutmeg (or to taste)
1/2 tsp salt (or to taste)

then continue to cook for at least another 15-20 minutes. You might want to leave it uncovered for part of this time if you want the soup a little thicker.

I guess you could add the spices earlier, especially the bay leaf. You could also add a tbsp of olive oil.

This recipe is so easy it hardly counts as "cooking"! It's great with rice.

Hypatia and the spiritual two party system

In his biography of Augustine of Hippo, Peter Brown, the man who is largely responsible for the term "late antiquity" in its current usage, describes the climate of religious violence in North Africa during the first decade of the fifth century AD like this:

For over a decade, the Bishops in Africa had provoked the destruction of the old ways. Public Paganism had been suppressed: the great temples were closed; the statues broken up, often by Christian mobs; the proud inscriptions ... used to pave public highways.
[p. 185]

Classicist Michael Gaddis describes the following incident during this same period:

In the early fifth century, the Egyptian monk Shenoute issued an open letter containing a thundering denunciation of a local pagan magnate. Shenoute and his followers had taken the law into their own hands, ransacked the pagan's house, and smashed his idols. In response to the magnate's accusation of lesteria--banditry, crime, illegal violence--against him, Shenoute proclaimed that "there is no crime for those who have Christ."

Gaddis uses this catchy phrase of Shenoute's for the title of his 2005 study of religious violence in the Christian Roman Empire: There is no crime for those who have Christ. Appropriately, the story of Shenoute appears on page one of that book.

The religious violence that Gaddis and Brown describe, however, did not suddenly appear out of nowhere in the year 400 AD. Although it is a bit of an oversimplification, the year 381 provides a non-arbitrary starting point for this reign of religious violence. It was in that year that the Emperor Theodosius finally made an open declaration of an ideologically monolithic one-religion state, in which only Nicene Christianity would be allowed in the Roman Empire. In fact, however, legal proscriptions against Paganism go all the way back to 312, when Constantine first decided to favor the new religion of Christianity and discourage the ancient Pagan traditions. But somewhere along the line between 312 and 381 the Roman state went from discouraging Paganism to punishing it with prison, torture and execution.

The situation of Paganism during the 380's is indicated in Libanius' oration For the Temples, in which we learn that after the death of the last Pagan Emperor, Julian, in 362, sacrifices at Pagan temples were, in theory, still allowed "for some time", but then were mostly prohibited, with only the offering of incense being permitted. But the real problem, according to Libanius were mobs of "black garbed people" who "run to the temples, bringing with them wood, and stones, and iron ...." According to Libanius those who commit these acts of violence against Pagan sacred sites gather afterward "and they require of each other an account of what they have done; and he is ashamed who cannot tell of some great injury which he has been guilty of."

They, therefore, spread themselves over the country like torrents, wasting the countries together with the temples: for wherever they demolish the temple of a country, at the same time the country itself is blinded, declines, and dies.... Nor are they satisfied with this, for they also seize the lands of some, saying it is sacred: and many are deprived of their paternal inheritance upon a false pretence. Thus these men riot upon other people's misfortunes, who say they worship God with fasting. And if they who are abused come to the pastor in the city, (for so they call a man who is not one of the meekest,) complaining of the injustice that has been done them, this pastor commends these, but rejects the others, as if they ought to think themselves happy that they have suffered no more.

Libanius wrote this in 386, and while it was an appeal for all of the remaining Pagan sacred sites in the Empire that had not already been destroyed by Christian mobs, it was in particular a plea for the Serapaeum in Alexandria. Five years later, in 391, Christian mobs attacked the ancient temple of Serapis, although first they had to fight their way through Pagans who had gathered to defend their old Gods. In the end the Pagans were no match for the crowd of "monks" and lay Christians and the 600+ year old temple was demolished and a "church" built on on the site, and the other remaining Pagan temples in Alexandria were also destroyed. Unfortunately there is very little comfort in that profound insight of J. William Fulbright, reflecting on the debacle of Vietnam, that while "power tends to confuse itself with virtue", they often have very little in common.

So the year 415 was preceded by decade after decade of religious violence, setting the stage for the infamous, gruesome murder of the Pagan philosopher Hypatia in Alexandria. In his A Chronicle of the Last Pagans historian Pierre Chuvin makes a point of saying that Hypatia "was not killed for reason of militant Paganism" [p. 90]. But what Chuvin overlooks is that by 415 any Paganism was seen as "militant" Paganism: the mere existence of a Pagan was all the provocation Christians needed. So it wasn't Hypatia's "militancy" that got her killed - it was the militancy of those who killed her.

Here is how Chuvin describes the death of Paganism's most famous martyr:

Hypatia was returning from a trip when fanatics dragged her from her carriage into one of the town's main churches, which was the see of the patriarch. This church, though it had been dedicated to Saint Michael, was still known by the name of pagan sanctuary whose walls it reused: the Caesareum (center of the former imperial cult in Alexandria). There Hypatia was stripped, stabbed with shards of pots and crocks, then hacked to pieces. The remains of her body were paraded around the streets of the town and finally burned.
[p. 88]

Even though Chuvin insists that Hypatia's Paganism was not "militant", still there is no doubt that she was a Pagan. In fact, while it is certainly a nontrivial undertaking to determine precisely what the religious beliefs were of a person who died 16 centuries ago, there is really no question that Hypatia was, indeed, a Pagan. So I was a little surprised to read the following synopsis (here at the imdb site) of the forthcoming film Agora (in which Hypatia is played by Rachel Weisz):

A historical drama set in Roman Egypt, concerning a slave who turns to the rising tide of Christianity in the hopes of pursuing freedom while also falling in love with his master, the famous female philosophy professor and atheist Hypatia of Alexandria.

It's a little thing - a boneheaded screw up in a one sentence summary of some film in Spanish that most people will never see. But it shows the pervasive influence of the spiritual two-party system, which reduces all matters of religion to monotheism versus atheism.

Fortunately it looks like the movie might actually be something that both Pagans and classical history buffs will be able to enjoy. At least that is the optimistic impression given by this post over at The Wild Hunt blog on the subject of Post-Cannes Reaction to Agora.