Stoicism and Religion II

In the last post, I concluded that Stoicism isn't a religion, but could be religious, at least in a sense.  But is that truly the case?

I think that strictly speaking it can be if we use "religious" according to its dictionary definition as set forth in Merriam-Webster online.  A Stoic certainly can be devoted to a deity or underlying reality (the vague "Divine Fire" or "Divine Reason").  We can and do say that someone who believes in God is religious.  But the "God" commonly referred to when we say that word isn't an immanent "God" of the kind we find referred to by the ancient Stoics or other pantheists, nor is it the "god of the philosophers" we see referred to often enough even by those ostensibly devoted to institutional religions.

Who and why the reference is made is interesting, however, and indicates that the meaning of "God" is dependent on that who and that why.  Christian apologists, theologians and philosophers throughout history have managed to maintain that the "god of the philosophers" or something very much like that "god" is, in fact, the Christian God.  When they do that I think they necessarily must disregard Jesus as he is depicted in the Gospels, though (despite the Gospel of John's use of the word "logos" which must then, perforce, be made flesh and walk among us--something it's rather hard to imagine logos doing).  Nor is it possible to claim that the Christian God as he is actually worshiped in Christian churches is the god of the philosophers, if the ceremony of worship is considered.

And so I wonder whether it is entirely honest, if it is disingenuous in other words, to claim that Jesus is the god of the philosophers as is attempted from time to time.   Maybe those who do that are like some of the ancient philosophers who claimed that people should engage in the traditional worship of the gods despite the fact that the myths pertaining to them were silly at best.

If worship as ceremony, or ritual, is required for one to be religious, however, it would seem that a Stoic would not be religious.  Western history would seem to establish that worship is communal, something that groups of believers participated in generally at regular times and in a particular manner.  That was the case as far as I'm aware in pre-Christian and Christian times.  The ancient mysteries involved ceremony and invocation in group settings; sometimes large groups as in the case of the Eleusinian mysteries, sometimes in very small groups (the temples or caves in which devotees of Mithras would meet suggest 20 to 50 men would participate in worship).  Pagan worship involved parades and feasting and rituals of various kinds.  Christian worship certainly is communal, though one hears of hermits and folk who lived on pillars and other ascetic extremes, but these are rarities, and meant to be.

I find it hard to picture Stoics gathering for any similar purpose.  For that matter, I find it hard to imagine what they would do.  I personally am adverse to religious gatherings and ceremonies of any kind, though I've noted before my sentimental fondness for the old Catholic ritual.  This is one of the reasons I avoid not only Catholic but other Christian, and even Unitarian gatherings (from what I hear, Unitarians are similar to Christian church gatherings, with singing and reading from I'm not sure who--perhaps the New England Transcendentalists).  The only current non-pagan form of worship I can think of that might be tolerable would be Quaker, where it seems nothing is required beyond silent contemplation unless someone gets the urge to testify--which I like to think would be infrequent.  As for the so-called modern pagans, I suspect that Wiccans, Druids etc. do whatever they do in groups and that some sort of ceremony and liturgy is involved.

Are there any forms of worship engaged in by Stoics, or pantheists, or panentheists?  If so I don't know.  And this makes me wonder whether worship of such a kind can be, and also wonder whether it is possible for them to be considered religious.

Danse Macabre

I first became familiar with the Danse Macabre through the music of Saint-Saens, who wrote a tone poem by that name.  I thought it a rather jaunty tune, though in a minor key and so thereby a bit unusual, perhaps even grotesque but in an entertaining manner.  I didn't know when I first heard and enjoyed it that it was greeted with something approaching outrage when it was first performed; something I find difficult to believe, but all too believable.

I knew enough even at the time I first heard it to be aware of its association with death.  Perhaps it's jauntiness in that association is what critics and audiences alike objected to in the 19th century.  The use of a xylophone must have been particularly irritating back then.  But it is after all a dance, even if a dance led by Death, and it seems that dance involved hopping or skipping judging from paintings, engravings and drawings by which it was depicted.  So it seems to me "jaunty" well describes the part of Death in it, at least, cavorting as it leads us into....what?

In the Middle Ages when it seems the dance appeared as an object of artistic representation which became, if we can use the word, "popular", the dance as represented had much the same features everywhere it was displayed.  A skeleton or skeletons, sometimes decked out in the garb we associate with the Grim Reaper, leads men and women and children identifiable by their dress as Emperors, Kings, Popes, Bishops, nobility, merchants and peasants--all of the kinds of people of Europe at the time--in the dance of death.  The meaning and purpose of these works is clear enough.  We will all die, and will do so regardless of our status when alive.  Being one of the rich and mighty won't protect us from our inevitable dissolution.  We all come to the same end, die and decay.

At that stage of humanity's "progress" death was more familiar than it is now.  Life spans were short, medicine primitive, sickness rampant.  The Black Plague and other diseases ran through whole communities.  There was no escape from death.  There's no escape now, of course, but seldom was the phrase "here today, gone tomorrow" more applicable.

Clear enough what was meant, then.  But what was the reaction to the message?  Reaction would vary, one would think.  In pagan times it likely meant something different.  There are old Roman funeral inscriptions which state one reaction; that is, to eat, drink and be merry while we can.  That may have been the reaction of some in the Middle Ages as well.  But with the advent of Christianity came a different view of the Danse.  Eating, drinking and being merry were frowned upon at least to a certain extent; to the extent, that is, they were sins or caused sins to take place.  And so the Danse  impressed on many the need to pray for forgiveness, to repent, perhaps even to do good deeds.  This would not be thought to do much if any good, though, in some circles, where only those were saved who were saved by the grace of God, not their own acts.  Also, of course, there would be the reaction that one must do right by the Church and its rules.

In both pagan and Christian times, however, there must have been those few who reacted to the Danse as indicating the vanity of our concerns and actions,  All fame, power and money came to nought.  Marcus Aurelius wrote more than once of the fact that our words and deeds will not be remembered in the future and meant nothing to the world, which we may now call the universe.

How react to the Danse now, though?  Some no doubt react now as others did then.  Some would react like Marcus did.  Most Stoics would know what he knew.  To a Stoic it would serve as a reminder that we should treat things beyond the control of our will as indifferent.  To do as Epictetus said, and do the best we can with what we have and take the rest as it comes.  To understand that our deaths are according to nature, and not to be feared.  Instead to be accepted.

But this time is peculiar in its selfishness, I think.  At least, I think that's the case here in our Great Republic.  We're encouraged not to care about others--and certainly not to do anything for them.  Particularly those who are different.  It's perfectly all right with many of us that some are poor, or can't afford health care, etc.  Perhaps it's our Protestant background, and the myth of rugged individualism that make us uncaring.  Or, perhaps we merely resent that others may get something we don't have "for free."

Our selfishness causes a different reaction to the Danse.  I think that reaction is anger.  We're angry that we, and what we want, will end.   For some of us, that makes it easy enough to do violence, to others.

Great Pan Is Not Dead



According to Plutarch "Great Pan is Dead!" are the words uttered in a loud voice (sometimes called a "divine voice") heard by the sailor Thamus on his way--by boat one would assume--to Italy while travelling there during the reign of the Emperor Tiberius.  The extremely fat and inordinately glib Christian apologist G.K. Chesterton, who could be a witty fellow though over-fond of quips, thought Pan to be the only pagan god said to have died, and thought his death somehow connected with the death, or perhaps the birth, of Jesus.

I'm not sure if it mattered all that much for Chesterton's purposes, but I suspect the birth of Jesus somehow precipitated the death of Pan.  I think a case can be made that it did, though it took quite some time to do Pan in.  This had something to do with the birth of theology, according to Chesterton.

Others, such as Robert Graves, thought the story the result of some confusion, and believed the great shout had been mistranslated over time or mistold.  He believed there was no Thamus, but there was a Tammuz, another pagan god who died and whose death was remembered through a ritual which was being performed and was overheard by...someone.

It does seem jolly old Chesterton was mistaken about pagan gods and their birth or death, for various of them did die or their consorts did, and it was their death and resurrection which became the subject of the mystery religions such as that of Mithras, and Isis, and the Great Mother.

Pan was the god of nature, of wild nature that is; but also of shepherds and flocks, and music through the rustic flute.  He's often confused with satyrs, due to the fact that he had the horns, hoofs and hindquarters of a goat.  And it must be said he was inclined to physical pleasures as well, which of course rendered him abhorrent to many Christians.  As a nature god he wasn't worshipped in temples but in caves or wooded groves.  He was born in Arcadia.  His Roman counterpart was Faunus.

But if he died so long ago, he seems to keep coming back, Chesterton and, perhaps, Jesus notwithstanding.  He came back during the Renaissance, as did so much else pagan in spirit.  He was a favorite of the 19th century Romantics, and is even now worshipped by neo-pagans.  He is part of the great inheritance of Western culture that is pagan antiquity, and like it will not die much as some wish it would, who are blithely ignorant of the debt owed to it even, and perhaps especially, by Christianity. 

I know little of Wiccan or neo-paganism generally.  I'm not inclined to engage in rituals or ceremonies which are meant to revive or mimic ancient religious worship.  Nor am I inclined to worship any of the old gods.  But I am pleased that there seems to be a revival in respect for and reverence towards nature--by which I mean the physical world, the universe.  We've believed ourselves to be nature's master for far too long, and are paying the price of the monstrous credo we've accepted here in the West; that we like the God of the Abrahamic religions are apart from nature rather than a part of it.  We will pay more for our self-regard. 

Stoicism also keeps coming back, as the modern resurgence of that philosophy makes clear.  But it's always been around in one sense or another, and it's injunction to "live according to nature" is one that will be accepted it's to be hoped.  It may have to be accepted if we're to survive.

But if I were to worship any of the old gods, I think Pan would be one of them, along with Apollo and Hermes, the one the god of reason, the other the bright intelligence of the universe.  And Pan the god of the physical nature of all living things.

Some Thoughts on Modern Paganism

The word "pagan" is derived from the Latin paganus, which was used to refer to someone from the countryside, someone rustic, unsophisticated, unlearned; something of a bumpkin, I suppose.  As Christianity came to take hold in the Roman Empire, it began to be used, by Christians, as a term of disapproval or contempt, referring to those who were not Christians.  This may make a certain kind of sense, as those who recognized the old gods came to avoid urban areas which Christians came to control or where Christian intolerance was prevalent (except, perhaps, Rome itself, where the aristocratic old families remained stubbornly attached to the older religion).  The old beliefs and rituals survived in the countryside, it's said, for centuries after the advent of Christianity.  They may survive even now, in modified, Christianized form.

Halloween may be considered a particularly pagan time of year.  By Christians, that is.  I'm not sure, myself, just how pagan it may be.  I suppose Christians think it pagan because they associate it with Satan and his minions, and Christians have long thought pagan gods to be demons of one sort or another.  But Satan himself isn't much of a figure in traditional paganism.  There is no Satan among the Greco-Roman pantheon, for example; no Satanic figure at all, really, except physically in the form of Pan.  Pan, though, is otherwise not very Satan-like.  The Devil seems to be a peculiar fixture of the Abrahamic religions.

What's referred to as Modern Paganism, or Neo-Paganism, seems to be groups of people who for various reasons practice what they think to be ancient pagan rituals and hold what they think to be ancient pagan beliefs.  It's claimed that it's growing.  Some modern pagans are adherents of Wicca, a kind of witchcraft revival hatched in the mind of a retired British civil servant in 1954.  Some follow the Norse gods, or certain of them.  Some think of themselves as Druids.  Some are followers of a goddess or the goddess, and are convinced that such worship is in effect the original religion, when society was, it's claimed, matriarchal long before the advent of the sky gods.

Some hold various beliefs which involve nature-worship, theistic, polytheistic or pantheistic.  Some may be considered Deists.  Modern Paganism has been around for some time, I believe, and is in some respects a phenomenon of the late 19th-early 20th century when many became interested in occultism or spiritualism, or became enthralled with ancient Egyptian religion after the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen, when Madame Blavatsky and others sought to resurrect Hermeticism or something else which could be said to have a pagan pedigree.

It would seem that Christianity, though otherwise remarkably successful in quashing paganism for centuries, hasn't managed to destroy it utterly.  Nor has its efforts to assimilate it been entirely successful.  It retains its magic.  This shouldn't be unexpected, as it existed and flourished for thousands of years.

I doubt, though, that the pagans of our times live, or think, or believe as did the pagans of the ancient past.  It simply isn't likely that they could after all that's happened.  The picture at the beginning of this post is of a relief showing Marcus Aurelius making sacrifice.  Animal sacrifice was essential in Greco-Roman paganism, performed in complicated rituals.  Livers of animals were perused by haruspices in ancient Rome, a form of divination the Romans learned from the Etruscans.  Who today could honestly ascribe to such ceremonies the significance they were accorded by the ancients?  Who, indeed, could perform them?

Who knows what the Druids did, really, or what they believed?  Our sources of information about them are Roman and so unlikely to be sympathetic or entirely accurate.  How many moderns believe, sincerely, in witchcraft?  How many while joining hands and chanting at Stonehenge or some other ancient site can really claim to be believers of the kind who did the same, if indeed they did the same, so long ago?  None of them knew or had experienced what we know and experience now.  Given that knowledge and experience, would they believe now as they did then?  How could they?

There's no reason (unless we accept the view that they were deceived by demons) to think ancient pagans were not sincerely pious, and it must be assumed the beliefs of many of them were fervent.  But that piety can no longer be shared, or even imagined.

I suspect there's a great deal of Romanticism involved in the efforts to recreate paganism, as well as what may be a longing which cannot be satisfied now by Christianity as an institutional religion.  But we fool ourselves if we believe we can be what pagans were.  They were different from us in matters of faith, in mystic belief, in ways too profound for them to live again in us, or for their beliefs to be shared by those living now.