"Real Paganism" (2 / 2): Animism and Living Polytheisms

[causticus]

In the first installment of this series I started grasping at an idea – that our popular understanding of “paganism” (i.e. Natural Religion) today comes from a very distorted perspective. We generally look at these ancient religions from several thousand feet up in the air; we see the rooflines and treetops rather well, but have nary a clue about how the buildings of the towns and cities are constructed, or what types of trees we are seeing in the surrounding woodlands.

This misleading perspective stems from out tendency to look first at fixed pantheons and standardized mythologies and then other aspects second. Modern academics and enthusiasts typically gloss over the “on-the-ground” building blocks of the religion or at least downplay these fundamental elements in terms of overall importance.

Over the past several years I have read several books which starkly challenge this popular set of assumptions. The first I gave a very brief look at in my first post in this series. The Ancient City by Fustel de Coulanges, the author presents a compelling thesis – a proposal that ancient religion begins first with the family cult, and then over time, it gradually scales its way up to the “high” civilizational forms of paganism most of us are familiar with today. I found this to be a sound thesis, though missing an important element; namely that of the actual numinous experiences of the people participating in these ancient religions. The book is written from a wholly detached, secular perspective; the implication seems to be that these religions primary served as a social technology; one that was utilized for a very long time to propagate and uphold a culture’s family structures and civic institutions.

As a “believer” in all sorts of numinous things, I’m inclined to mix in some missing elements to the half-empty cauldron that is Coulanges’ insights. Well, I’m thinking of one missing element in particular. I propose that even older than the family cults (gentilism), was the massively-shared understanding which says that the world around us is quite alive; that everything in our environment, including trees, rocks, rivers, springs, hills, mountains, ect., is imbued with some sort of numinous life force, or even active consciousness. Today we understand this set of assumptions as being “animism.” The specific flavor of gentilism Coulanges explains in great depth was a likely something specific to various offshoot nations of the ancient Indo-European people. Integral to those cults was animistic belief. Animism itself is something found in every single native religion in all times and places the world over. The universality of animism is something that points toward a shared reality that anyone can experience.

I’m inclined to propose that gentilism arose in response to animist spiritual experience; the family cult came about as a way of making sense of our weird experiences with the rather-murky spirit world that surrounds and interacts with us. Once we start assigning concrete meaning to our hazy, dreamlike experiences, it becomes much easier to explain away all those chaotic things that’s an ever-present wellspring of anxiety and uncertainty. Those odd spirits lurking about can be (temporarily) satiated with material offerings of various sorts. Shamans, mediums, and diviners can communicate with those spirits to figure out what it is they they want and what benefits they can provide for us in return for creating and maintaining a gift cycle. Telling the people that at least some of these spirits are in fact ancestral ghosts, adds several layers of piety and familiarity to the practice of keeping these beings content and willing to help out out from time to time.

The second book I’d like to mention is The Deities are Many, by Jordan Paper. It does a great job (in my opinion) of getting at the sorts of things I’m talking about in the above paragraph.

What’s really neat about this book is that the author himself is both an academic and a practitioner of polytheism. Not only that, but he is a practitioner of several living polytheisms, as opposed to merely being involved with neopagan historical reconstructions. In other words, this isn’t just another dry academic work! The pages are quite alive and full cross-cultural propositions based on the author’s own personal, “hands-on” experiences with the book’s subject matter. I’ve read a bunch of very dry academic books on pagan topics and those tend to bore me to no end. This one is quite the opposite.

In the very early chapters he speaks of direct experiences with nature deities in Appalachia. He then tells us how he studied closely with Native American practitioners of their traditional religions. After that talks about how he lived in Taiwan for several years and studied the traditional Chinese folk religion in close detail. During that time he married a Taiwanese woman and got to partake directly in her Chinese family cult and the venerable temple traditions of the surrounding community. He tells us all sorts of interesting stories about trance mediums being possessed by deities and then those deities relaying rather concrete tips and tricks to their human devotees. He also gives us a much more holistic understanding of shamanism then we are used to hearing about from the usual sources. One gripe I have is that he often speaks very negatively about everything-Western (in a typical leftist-deconstructionist sort of way) and makes some crude generalizations about Western culture as a whole, but overall I found this to be a minor annoyance and doesn’t really detract much from the work as a whole.

To me, the book is a fascinating summary of the living traditions Paper studied and worked with. It would take me way too many words and posts to accurately summarize this work here. I will say though that after my first time reading it, I experienced a significant perspective-shift as far as my “paganism studies” are concerned. And without reading this book, I likely would have had a more difficult time properly contextualizing the insights of Coulanges. Paper’s observations tell us that it is in fact animism that constitutes the basic building blocks of these religions. I’m currently about ¾ the way through my second reading and that’s really helping me grasp some of the finer details I might have missed the first time around.

Paper’s book will probably take at least a few posts, as far as unpacking its main highlights is concerned. In the meantime, I think I can sign off with a very general statement – that it’s today’s living polytheisms which give us the best insights on how and why Natural Religions actually work.

Comments

[jprussell]

Consarnit again, you've added another book to my list for the deep(ish) dive I want to do on polytheistic theology in the next year or two (optimistically)!

Kidding aside, thanks very much for this post and especially the book recommendation, it sounds like a book I wanted to exist but didn't know how to find specifically.

Anyhow, I agree that the "nuts and bolts" of daily cultivation of a relationship with the numinous is both under-appreciated by most modern writers on polytheism (whether practitioners or not) as well as the key to understanding a lot of seemingly disjointed stuff. As a double super extra bonus, it also seems to be the most important bit for having a satisfying polytheistic religious life, at least so far for me.

It's also nicely appropriate as I've been mulling over our discussion in the comments on the last post and thinking about Coulanges more (aside: the Blood Satellite podcast episode that talks about it is very interesting, but has some of the shortcomings I mentioned. I'm currently listening to their episode that features a discussion on Jaynes's The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, which briefly touches on the implications it has for Coulanges, which is fascinating, but coming from a couple of Catholic guys, isn't wholly satisfying to me. Fair warning: if you're only there for the book bits, you'll have a lot of other stuff to wade through, which is a fairly spicy "radio talk show" format, then a book discussion, then an interview). Anyway, I realized that over the past few years, after reading some books, trying some stuff out, seeing what seems to work, and so forth, I've developed a very rudimentary "household cult" of my own - I even have spiritual beings I give worship and offerings to that are not parts of anyone else's pantheon, so far as I know. More to the point, though, I have my own way of approaching and leaving my altar, specific prayers I say, days that I focus on different Gods, and so forth. Now that I'm teaching my older daughter to pray (though in a much abbreviated form that looks a lot more like typical American protestant Christian prayer), I'm potentially taking the first steps of solidifying that household cult.

I very much doubt that the nomads of the Ukranian steppe or the rough folks of the swamps along the Tiber were reading books by nerds and piecing the bits together, but the general feeling of trying stuff out, keeping what works, and not being particularly concerned with orthodoxy strikes me as having some echoes. But maybe I'm puffing myself up too much.

Oh, one last thing - to return the favor of adding to the ever-growing pile of books: I've likely mentioned it before, but you might enjoy God is Red by Vine Deloria, Jr. if you haven't read it yet. Another example of a practitioner of a living polytheistic/animistic tradition discussing what it is, how it works, and how it differs from modern Christian assumptions about religion (but with the politics you might expect from something written by an American Indian activist in the 70s). Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta also does a good job of casting light on an animistic way of thinking about the world, but is less explicitly religious, as its goal is to make certain tools for thinking more palatable to Anglo audiences.

Cheers,
Jeff

[causticus]

1. That's really cool what you've done with your own household cultus! You've essentially started your own unique religion and not in the cringey kind of way (i.e. a "Faustian monomyth" style personality cult or nerdy designer religion). My own practices and religious experiences haven't exactly conformed to the imagery of big organized religions or historical pantheons. Though I do think starting off with known deities is a great way to get the ball rolling; that's how I started out before having weird non-pantheonic experiences.

2. Nope those steppe nomads and swamp-dwellers had much more pressing matters on their minds, like trying to survive the next week! Which also clues us into the fact that these ancient religions were largely about surviving and coping with an often-hostile world. With all the technological abundance and conveniences we have today, our practical "need" for a lot of those ancient practices simply isn't there anymore. Like we don't need to propitiate local deities and spirits in order to get a productive harvest or stave off disease. That's not to say there's no need for deities in today's high-tech society, of course there is, but it's very different needs. Giving out blessings and clearing out astral muck is one huge need for today that I can think of right off the top of my head. And then of course all the mundane little things people would ask saints for, which can just as easily be asked of gods and goddesses.

3. Yes I did read God is Red. That book was less influential on my thinking process, as the things Deloria brought up were things I was already familiar with, and the whiny leftist tone all throughout the book I found to be a bit of an annoyance. Still, I did find it valuable to read a Native American's own traditional perspective on spiritual matters.

BTW, I didn't get the chance to respond to our MM discussion. Yes, I did read that entire John Carter series on the "Christ as Caesar" proposition. And I largely agree with your assessment. Very interesting parallels there an perhaps the Imperial Cult and Caesar symbolism did have some influence on the formation of the Christ mythos (among many other influences I might add), but I find a definitive conclusion like "Christ was really Caesar, dontcha know?" to be quite reductive and blind to how spirituality actually works. Having said that, I do think that John has done a great job at exploring fascinating "what if?" questions and other thought-provoking themes.

[jprussell]

1. Thanks, just stumbling along working it out as I go. I suppose we'll see how it keeps going from here!

2. That's a good point, and the neglect of it is another example of the dominance of material thinking, even among believers - the default is very much the assumption that religious ritual/practice/prayer doesn't do anything, at least not anything that isn't touchy-feely.

3. Yeah, I also found the politics detracted from what seemed like the more interesting parts of the book, and his critique of Christianity seemed somewhat shallow/straw-manned. The two things I found most thought-provoking from the book were a. the idea of the central importance of place to American Indian spirituality, and b. the idea that "separation of church and state" is a mistake that will lead to problems. On the latter point especially, I haven't gone deep enough on his critique to know what I think he gets right or wrong with any definiteness, but it's a bold, striking idea that cuts against what I tend to take for granted, and so I found it worth some attention.

4. Oh yeah, John is great at that stuff, but I think he might have a bit of the geek's taste for "non-obvious, but clever solutions" (I recognize it because I do too). He also finds Gmirkin's argument that Judaism was a Platonic social experiment convincing, which to my mind fits into a similar space of "wow, there's some intriguing evidence here, but not enough for a slam dunk, and the obvious answer has a lot of plausibility going for it."

[causticus]

2. Yes, our conception of what constitutes "legit" religious experience has long ago been reduced down to just a few Christian types, i.e. Dionysian mystical ecstacy, and the serene vibe one might experience at a traditional Catholic Mass. Most people have no concept of other types being religious experiences, like say Thunder Deity blasting you with a brief etheric powerup.

4. I do really need to follow-up on the Gmirkin hypothesis sometime soonish. I've been thinking about it a lot lately and how I see that there's probably a good deal of truth to it, but like other theories of this type, it's missing a key dimension or two, thus becomes prone to the usual sort of rationalistic reductionism. Also, it's nice to see this theory circulating around these intellectual spaces.

[jprussell]

4. Fair enough! As I read your response, a way to make the binary into a ternary came to me, which upon stating seems maybe too obvious to be worth spelling out, but here goes: rather than Plato being influenced by the True Ancient Religion of the Israelites, or the Hellenized Jews of Alexandria concocting a plan to dress up Plato in desert clothes (I simplify both positions for comedic effect, of course), it might instead be that the Hellenized Jews of Alexandria noticed certain resonances between Plato and their own traditions, and "spruced things up" to make the points of similarity stronger, maybe even with an explicit social engineering angle (as the most recent Hardcore History on Philip and Alexander of Macedon pointed out, the dream of running a real-life experiment with a philosopher king was definitely alive in the time just prior to the Hellenistic era and likely persisted into it).

Whether that's anywhere close to right or not, I'm also reminded of the way Eric S. Raymond described the value of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind - even if it's not an accurate description of reality, going through the exercise of thinking through the implications if it were true might still be enormously useful, since it provides a very different lens than usual assumptions: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=4893

[causticus]

I like it! I do think what might have been going on was that various peoples in the Near East and Eastern Mediterranean regions were drawing on the same grab-bag of Axial Age spiritual teachings that spread all over the map thanks to the Achaemenid Empire's extensive road system; with each recipient people trying to naturalize those teachings into their own native traditions and producing very different syntheses as a result.

Well, consarnit... this idea is likely the makings of a future textwall.

[k_a_nitz]

To my mind, the idea you cite of Coulanges seems to me to not account for the well-developed nature of pantheons with people who were not city-based (ie nomads). Or is the civic bit only about paid priests with established temples/monasteries, public rituals, etc? That it arose from families then passed on to tribes I consider plausible.

[causticus]

I really wish we knew more about the religions of nomadic peoples! We typically have to rely on second and third hand accounts from literate other cultures who came into contact with these groups.

It's likely certain nomadic peoples "carried" a lot of their gods with them and perhaps their religion had less of a focus on place-based local gods than the religions of sedentary peoples. This could be the reason why sky deities were so important among groups like the ancient Indo-Europeans; as they moved around all the time, the landscape would constantly change, but the sky was always there. Perhaps specific localities were seen mainly sacred spots to make very periodic pilgrimages to, like the burial mounds of illustrious chieftains.

[lincoln_lynx]

I've added both writers to my To Read list but Coulanges chose a tough hill to climb. I'd imagine one would have a difficult time answering the question of what gave them the idea for ancestor worship and all it entails in the first place without referring to other spiritual phenomena.

[causticus]

Totally agree. Without a spiritual source, any explanation for how the ancestral cult emerged is going to sound like cynical rationalist speculation.

[jprussell]

"Cynical rationalist speculation" neatly sums up most of the explanations I've heard from folks summarizing Coulanges's take, though they vary in how bad a thing they think that is.

[causticus]

I do wonder if people have taken to Coulanges's work so well because it provides a neat little rationalistic explanation for all those "weird ancient superstitions that didn't make sense until now"?

[lp9]

Very interesting, thanks for this! I'm definitely going to check out this book (especially as someone originally from Appalachia with a daughter living in Taiwan for the summer; it's a surprise to see this combo reflected here).

[causticus]

You're welcome! It sounds like this book will be right up your alley.

[lp9]

Just started reading it... and the author is from Baltimore, which is where I now live. Weird!

[causticus]

Hmm, possible synchronicity ;)