Caustic Ramblings

There were some interesting discussions on yesterday's Magic Monday post and on the past month's or so posts on the Ecosophia blog regarding the collapse of alternative spirituality in the West and a likely impending cultural backlash against decades of general rot and grubbiness that is decaying our civilization from within.

Some of us here in the US are afraid that a sudden cultural jolt in the other direction, away from leftism/progressivism, will result in any type of spirituality that doesn't fit a narrow, literalist Christian/Abrahamic format as being seen by the reaction mob as "part of the problem." Anything the people leading and directing this backlash deem to be adjacent to the aforementioned cultural rot will be lazily lumped together into one big, bad conspiracy against what they believe they are trying to save and preserve. This likely means anything occult/esoteric, overtly pagan, or too foreign will be included, with very little nuance. As we know, the moral collapse of both Neopaganism and the postmodern occult scene hasn't helped matters at all in this respect, especially in light of recent tragic events.

Anyway, I want to know what anyone else here thinks of this and anything in your own area (US or somewhere else) you have seen indicative of a new cultural direction that may or or may not involve the condemnation of the things I listed above (or anything else that comes to mind). Also, we could use this space to think up ideas on how to preserve and carry on various spiritual teachings and practices if/when an intolerant religious climate becomes reality.

This is an open post that will stay open for quite a long time.

I've been crisscrossing numerous theories in my head about how Christianity may have actually gotten its start; here I mean whatever was the real proto-Christianity that took root and spread around the Eastern area of the Roman Empire during the several centuries prior to its consolidation and codification as an official state doctrine with all the dogmas we recognize today as being mainstream Christianity.

Taking much inspiration from the so-called Mythicist school of critical Biblical scholarship, I'm pretty much now settled on the position that the personage of Jesus Christ, as depicted in the New Testament writings, was indeed a fictitious person and not a historical one. Now that is not to say that there were real people in and around 1st century CE Judea and the surrounding region that did not fit at least some aspects of the Jesus character. But that itself being true does not validate a literal, historical Jesus Christ.

So my basic working hypothesis now is that what we could today recognize as early forms of Christianity started during the early-mid second century somewhere in the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. My best guess was somewhere in Asia Minor (Anatolia). And this first movement did not just emerge out of a vacuum, but rather it branched off from an existing continuum of religious sects. So this first proto-Christian church probably came about as a Hellenic-style mystery school for either Proselyte Jews (gentiles who converted to Judaism, which seemed to be a big thing at the time) or Hellenized Jews who had become somewhat lax on strict law-adherence. Either of those choices would point to a location where a Jewish diaspora community awash in Hellenic culture might have been. The Mystery School would have been the core inner-circle of this new church, and the outer outer would have been a lay community of congregants who most likely lacked much of any knowledge of the mystery rites and practices of the core group. And what set this group apart from similar off-Jewish sects of the time would have been the use of Jesus narrative of the Gospels that we would recognize today. Though the original gospel story would probably not have looked exactly like the 4 that got officially canonized during the post-Nicean era, it may have somewhat resembled Mark without the obviously-interpolated ending part. In fact, most critical Biblical researchers these days agree that the other two 'synoptic' Gospels, Matthew and Luke, were probably based on Mark (or a similar older version, like the supposed "Q" source text). In other words, Luke and Matthew have source dependency on Mark.

Now, what would have this group based their savior myth and other doctrines on? Most likely, on numerous sources, which would have been in abundance from within the existing religions of the time. Dying/rising vegetation deities had been a thing for quite some time all over the Mediterranean and Middle East for millennia. The concept of a savior-incarnate would have drawn from very old heroic myths, with perhaps a borrowing from the mystical traditions of India; the stories of Krishna and the Buddha would have certainly spread into the rather-cosmopolitan Roman Empire of the first several centuries CE. Secondly, in the great cosmopolitan hub of Alexandria, there had already been a number of Greco-Egyptian and Judeo-Hellenic syncretist movements underway; a lot of the Jews living there had become so thoroughly Hellenized that some of the intellectually and mystically-inclined among them would have started mixing the Greco-Egyptian hodgepodge doctrines into their own Hebraic beliefs. Proto-Christianity would have certainly drawn from something along these lines. In fact, it was probably Alexandria and Asia Minor that were the two main starting epicenters of the early Christian movements.

One thing that does seem clear from reading the Gospel narrative is the pro-Roman attitude oozing out of the text (in contrast to the virulently anti-Roman sentiment of Jewish messianic groups of the time). If not due to later redactions and interpolations, this attitude might suggest that the original Gospel writer favored a doctrine that was not antagonistic toward the Roman authorities. And if we accept an early-mid 2nd century CE time for the initial writing of the first gospel, this would overlap directly with the several Roman-Jewish conflicts of that time period. First the uprising that took place in Judea from 66-70, which the Romans totally crushed, under the command of Vespasian and Titus. And several decades after that was the diaspora rebellion of 115-117, which we today refer to as the Kitos War. And then finally was the Bar Kokhba revolt which took place from 132-136. In other words this period was one of intense conflict between a rather vocal Jewish minority and their Greek/Roman rulers and the all-but-ubiquitous Hellenistic culture. During the heat of these conflicts it might have very well been a death sentence in any of the diaspora communities to belong to any Jewish group or sect that was overtly-hostile to Roman authority. And conversely, it would have been advantageous for Jews of the period to adopt a Roman and Hellenic-friendly variant of their own religion. By the later portion of the second century we already see approach clearly reflected in the rather-Stoic writings of Justin Martyr, whom later Church authorities considered to be one of their founding fathers. Though whether or not Justin Martyr was in actuality someone we could classify as Chirstian is perhaps a mystery that will never be solved; as 4th century Church scribes with a penchant for memory-holing earlier writings which conflicted with the post-Nicene narrative, maybe have simply retconned Justin's writings to fit said narrative. Anyway, I digress.

So let's say this new Roman-friendly Jewish cult became quite the sensation during the period of Roman-Jewish conflicts. Surely, many diaspora Jews and gentile converts were quite averse to being seen as rebels or people hostile to Roman rule; yet at the same time they wished to practice a type of religiosity that at the core was quite at odds with the traditional Greco-Roman religion and pretty much every established "pagan" religion (Many Romans considered Jews to be atheists, owing to their disbelief and/or disregard of the Gods). What a tough position to be in. But here with proto-Christianity, these people found a balance of sorts. And this early cult may have had the patronage of wealthy Roman citizens, or at least a few affluent and literate Jews who were thoroughly Hellenized, culturally-speaking.

And now we get to one of the core reasons I consider the first Gospel document to have been composed during the 2nd century, at the earliest. In his book The Christ Conspiracy, author and researcher Joseph Atwill draws an undeniable number of parallels between the Gospel story and the historical account Flavius Josepus (the Jewish turncoat who became a fixture of the Flavian court after the war) of the Roman-Jewish War of 66-70. Now I don't go as far as Atwill and thus I refrain from jumping to the conclusion that proto-Christianity was a deliberate creation of the Flavian regime, but I do see the evidence he brings to the surface as supporting the hypothesis that whichever person or group wrote the first version of the Gospel narrative, probably used the works of Josephus as source material for at least composing the story's setting. No conspiracy theory is required to support this explanation. Any person or group with sufficient resources (like access to a major library) and basic literary acumen could have composed new religious texts using already-existent source works. (This is pretty much how all new religions come about anyway)

So by this we can speculate that the first wave of proto-Christian efforts had a wealthy sponsor or two. And now we arrive at the curious figure of Marcion of Sinope (Asia Minor), who was a very-wealthy shipping magnate said to have headed his own Church. Marcion was later disavowed and declared a 'heretic' by the post-Nicean state church. Anyway, a man like Marcion would have certainly had the resources to employ a few scribes and researchers; enough of an effort to throw together some new religious literature. From what little we know it seems that Marcion's variant of early Christianity took a rather anti-Torah approach and likely appealed to both Jews and Proselyte converts who had quite a zeal for Jewish-like religiosity, yet harbored little love for any pedantic approach to the Mosaic Law and the legalistic tradition built around it. By the 2nd century, the major cities of the Empire had become full of malcontents who were ripe to jump aboard any new social movement which postured itself as a rebuke to the established and decadent mainstream institutions of the time. Proto-Christianity would have been one among many movements of this type. Roman Mithraism, and the the Cults of Isis and Cybele, were among other examples of this type. As an overall trend, it seems there was a sort of "Orientalism" of late antiquity that took hold of the popular imagination.

We can see in the 'authentic' letters (epistles) of 'Paul' the forensic clues of how the first Christian groups likely spread around the map. I've seen Mythicist author and researcher Robert M. Price speculate that the 'Paul' of those epistles may have in fact been a pseudonym and alter-ego of Marcion himself; perhaps with the memory of a few authentic historical people tossed into this probable composite character of 'Paul'. We know from observing the ways new religious movements are formed in our current era, that contrived and concocted pedigrees and lineages is a common method of persuading new members of the religious group in question that the tradition is much older than it actually is. And we can easily apply this MO to the formation process of Christianity. Come to think of it, how are the supposed 'Apostles' any more real (in the literal sense) than HP Blavatsky's 'Mahatmas' or the 'Ascended Masters' of the various New Age groups which spawned from her fraudulent works?

So whomever this 'Paul' figure is supposed to represent, was the mean by which the Jesus story first spread around; it's evangelists started 'churches' in various locales and certainly after that there were a number of copycat movements purporting to be the original lineage. These various groups likely hit up the Jewish communities as their first targets of evangelizing and then after that, disaffected gentiles. The proto-Christian movement would have featured a wide spectrum of different beliefs, and most importantly, different approaches to interpreting and incorporating the Jewish Canon (i.e. the Old Testament) into their respective doctrines and practices. This would have run the gamut from outright Torah rejection (the Marcionites, various 'Gnostic' sects, among others) to full Torah adherence (Ebionites and similar groups). And somewhere in the middle would have been the approach of harmonizing the inclusion of the Torah and Tanakh and authoritative revelatory texts, while at the same time placing emphasis on and precedence of the new Christ revelation. This middle position seems to have been the basis of what would later evolve into the 'Orthodoxy' which the post-Nicean state church would champion. Another spectrum within Early Christianity to consider would have been the range of esotericism to literalism practiced within the group in question. Again, this differed a lot by group/sect. It very well may have been that the first proto-sect to spread the Gospel story around did indeed intepret it in a totally allegorical manner, and that the later literlization and historicization of that story was a corruption rather than something based on an authentic view of the earliest users of the Jesus myth.

Regarding the OT question, it's actually quite logical that the 4th century state Chuch would pick the middle approach, as it would be the most appealing to the greatest number of Christian. But as a result of this process, all the various Churches (and their differing doctrines) which would comprise early Christianity, would have to be harmonized, and thus homogenized, into a single unifying doctrine. And thus we see today why there are so many contradictions and plot holes on the NT canon when its looked at as a whole corpus.

So by this we can picture Early Christianity as being quite doctrinally-diverse, and not a homogeneous orthodoxy later Church historians would pretend it was. Much of what would have been authentic Early Christian belief and practice would have eventually been dumbed down or even lost as the state-sponsored orthodoxy both assimilated and snuffed out the earlier variants of Christianity. And thus, what we know today as Christianity should really be called Churchianity.

Remark from Reddit: "I can’t remember which church schism it was, but it related to the thought that the Old Testament God is not the same God of the New Testament."

My response:

There were actually a good number of early churches which did not recognize the Jewish/OT god as the True God. And they each devised slightly different myths to explain why the OT god is flawed, inferior or even evil. This division actually started before Christianity came to be. The Sethians, who likely predated the first Christian sects by at least a century, started off as a group of disaffected Jewish mystics living in Alexandria who much preferred Platonic teachings. The Sethians simply flipped the script and declared the OT god to be the devil. (Many subsequent Gnostic groups would follow suit) And then during the 1st century CE there was Philo of Alexandria. Though he remained a pious Jew throughout his life, he devises and hammered out an esotericized Jewish theology that was essentially Platonic in character. While Philo's work didn't make a lasting effect on the Judaism of his time period (though it may have influenced Kabbalah centuries later), it essentially was a blueprint for what would become the core Christian theology. For example, the allegory of the Word/Logos becoming flesh was one of Philo's innovations, among several others.

The standard Christian canon is an unresolved and rather schizophrenic attempt at reconciling an all-good Platonic godhead with a rich and voluminous Hebrew scriptural base plagued by a very flawed god; the church fathers eagerly utilized the Jewish canon as an easy means to bolster their claim that Jesus Christ was prohphecized centuries before his coming, and thus convince lots of simple-minded people to join their cult. The very blatant incongruity between these two clashing god concepts was haphazardly paved over by the church and thus never explained in anything resembling a coherent or logical manner. And thus all the violent mob attacks, book burnings, witch hunts, heresy hunts, ect. when any sane mind dared to point out this gaping wound in the entire edifice.

1. This first point is a succinct reiteration of some other points I had made on the first list. Namely, that institutionalized (i.e. mainstream) Christianity has always been a sectarian affair with a rigid believer/nonbeliever binary Christian clergy have used over the many centuries to divine all of humanity into opposing "with us" vs. "against us" camps. Under this system there is zero middle ground, nor are people allowed to have any freedom of conscience; more specifically, freedom to form their own beliefs and opinions on metaphysical subject matter. Mainstream Christianity is supremely sectarian, and for me, compulsory belief and religious tribalism together is the ultimate deal-breaker. Full stop.

2. In my opinion and from the perspective of the great Western esoteric tradition, any attempt to claim a godform or archetype as a literal, real, historical person in anything resembling a matter-of-fact way (like the Gospel drama/myth does), is supremely vulgar act and a profaning of the great mysteries. Such an endeavor is what charlatans and mind-control cultists do in an opportunistic attempt to gain as many unthinking followers as possible. As I stated on my first list, I do not believe Jesus of Nazareth to have been a real historical person.

3. I do however believe that Jesus was created out of thin air by the New Testament compilers and editors (whomever they may have been), but that in the realm of ideas, Jesus is a very real entity. As an idea, Jesus Christ is composite godform; effectively a of mashup of Dionysus, Apollo, Mithras, Horus and very likely some Eastern inputs like Krishna and the Buddha. As a whole, Jesus Christ is a solar godform. On his name itself, Jesus Christ may in fact have been concocted out of an attempt to create a "Dionysus-Krishna" compound name, as we know "Ies" was the Phoenician name for Dionysus/Bacchus and adding the Greco-Roman os/us masculine proper noun suffix to the name would render "Iesus"..in other words, Jesus. The creations of composite gods for political purposes was nothing new at the time. Not long before Christianity came to be, the Macedonian rulers of Egypt combined the worship of Osiris and Apis into the compound god Serapis. They constituted this new cult for the Egyptian masses they ruled over at the time.

4. As we can see, the creators of the NT narrative were syncretists and they borrowed from every religious tradition they could get their hands on at the time in order to create their new chimera-savior god. Why should I or any independently-thinking person worship a fake god with a fake historical narrative attached to its legacy?

5. The clear answer is: I should not. And I'm under zero obligation to, since Christian institutions have lost so much power over the past several centuries that not a single Church anywhere in the Western world still has the power to force their dogma and demand for sectarian affiliation upon the general public. Why would I voluntarily throw my lot in with a crappy religion that I'm under no obligation whatsoever to affiliate with?

6. Having said all of this, now I can move on to some positive remarks regarding the archetypal aspects of the Jesus godform. But first I must say that in this day and age, we all have choice. As an archetype or ideal form, Jesus is a symbol of light, love, healing, altruism, spiritual rebirth, spiritual illumination and spiritual community-building. And on an ever higher metaphysical level, he personifies "the Logos" which is essentially the active, create and radiant aspect of creation. In essence, the Logos is the masculine aspect of Natural Law. In the Mazdean and Vedic systems, this is the fiery Asha and Rta, respectively. My point in bringing all this up to to put fort the idea that we can use any number of similar godforms to serve as a vessel for this holy and luminous archetype. Why not allow the people to choose between other solar/savior/healer figures like Apollo, Mithras, Dionysus, Krishna, Balder, ect.? Different people can choose a different godform based on their own personality type, aesthetic preferences, or really whatever one resonates with them the most. And event the sacraments, art and ritualism of traditional Christianity has been recycled into whatever new cults arise. Let's face facts: the ritualism of Christianity was stolen for earlier systems anyway. So why not just repossess these elements?

7. Finally, I do recognize that many good people will wish to retain worship of Jesus, which of course is all fine and good. Jesus worship can be cleaned up and purged of its historical blemishes. But at the same time there will be many who don't want to bother with what they see as centuries of blood-soaked baggage and spiritually-enslaving dogma. For the latter group, they can simply adopt another solar godform.

I feel like I need to expand upon one of the points I made in my previous post on why I can never be a Christian. I said:

Because I do not believe that the Hebrew canon as a complete narrative is of a divine source, nor do I believe that ANY of the stories or myths contained within should ever be taken at literal face value as matter-of-fact historical accounts or ontological axioms, I cannot buy into concepts like "original sin" as being real or relevant to the human condition.

Having said that, I do believe that humans do indeed suffer from a sort of "default ignorance," owning to most of us being alienated from out higher spiritual nature. Of course this condition is very poorly explained by the Garden of Eden narrative. In fact, I believe the Garden myth actually inverts the truth on the human condition. Knowledge of "good and evil" (or duality in general) is what separates humans from mere beasts. We are endowed with the ability to make decisions using criteria more elaborate than animalistic impulses and whims. We have higher consciousness and sentience.

With humans, this great power falls on a spectrum. Many people go though life barely ever using their powers of higher reasoning. Instead, they merely react to external stimuli. People usually just acquiesce to the commands and suggestions of people much more powerful, dominant and influential than them. And even without direct commands from others, the path of least resistance is for people default to ingrained habits that have accumulated though years of life experience and solidified confirmation bias.

Default Ignorance is the result of people turning away from their inner divine spark and instead giving into their desires for quick and easy material comforts and conveniences. Default Ignorance is just sticking to what we know and refusing to look inward or outward for higher wisdom. IMHO, Plato's dialogues (among many other pieces of wisdom literature) do a much better job at explaining the ignorant state of humanity than the silly Garden Myth can ever do. The cynical side of my mind wants to say that the purpose of that myth was to keep the common rabble away from dabbling with mysticism and magic, which is something organized priesthoods have been scaring away the little people from doing for quite some time. We even see a modern equivalent of this attitude somewhat reflected in the knee-jerk evangelic Protestants have to any and all expressions of spirituality which fall outside the scope of Biblical liberalism; they declare anything deviating from that as being "Satanic" or "Luciferian" or "Demonic"..ect; you get the picture. On an esoteric level, "Lucifer" is just a catch-all term for the various Titanic powers occultists would associate with magic, esoteric mysticism and higher metaphysical inquiry. In actuality, these higher powers are tools. And just like any other tool, this set of tools can be used for both creative or benevolent or destructive or malevolent purposes. By itself, it is neutral.

We could look at the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" as symbol of these higher powers. It is the secret sauce that scared the shit out of muggles and normies. However I'm not going to single out the ancient Jews for demonizing our higher powers. There was a general Iron Age Mediterranean attitude which embraced fatalism and took an antagonistic attitude toward Titanic spiritual powers. The Greek attitude expressed in the Prometheus myth has some thematic similarity (though in a more nuanced manner) to the act of Eve eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Both are presented as beings acts of divine disobedience. For Prometheus, reaching up into the heavens and grabbing onto the higher powers suggested the moral hazard (slippery slope) of "stealing the fire of the gods" and proceeding to torch everything in sight. Ya know, just for the lulz. In the case of Eve, it's subtly implied that the "god" of the Garden of Eden wishes to keep his human creations ignorant. Or maybe it was just a test. Who knows; the "god" of the OT actually seems like a whole plethora of different beings rolled up into one.

Anyway...no, mankind is not cursed with "original sin." All we are "cursed" with are the material bodies our souls are chained to. Another way of looking at this condition is that of a training process rather than a curse. Of course this training process narrative requires the belief in some form of reincarnation. Priesthoods obsessed with controlling people's thoughts and behaviors tended to shy away from accepting reincarnation as valid. Or they developed perverted interpretations of Karma. The latter would function as a sort of backdoor "original sin" whereby a priest could claim a person is cursed by the misdeeds of many previous lifetimes. Of course, from a higher spiritual perspective, no fallible person like a priest has any business pretending to know all about another person's soul business beyond that of a current lifetime.

Here is an interesting article news story that caught my eyes earlier today. It's about US Navy sailors who hold religious services rooted in Norse paganism aboard aircraft carrier.

Heathenry is experiencing a resurgence.

The polytheistic religion, one that traces its origin to Norse myths that tell of the universe’s creation and prophesy its destructive end, was at one time stifled following the end of the Viking Age and the subsequent spread of Christianity.

One such collections of myths, “The Prose Edda” — authored by Icelandic historian and politician Snorri Sturluson sometime around the year 1220 — provides much of what the modern world knows about Norse mythology: Yggdrasil, Asgard and the Aesir, a tribe of gods and goddesses with names like Odin, Thor, Loki, Frigg and Idun.

Now, nearly 800 years after Sturluson’s “Edda,” a small group of sailors aboard the aircraft carrier John C. Stennis has adopted these deities as the pillars of their religion, according to a Navy release.

My only opinion on this is simply, good for them! Anyway, the comment reactions to this story from shrieking ('autistic screeching' in 4chan parlance) evangelical Christians were pretty entertaining and entirely predictable. The responses fall along the lines of:

1. See, this is evidence of Satantic cults everywhere; the spiritual war is real!
2. Those evil and depraved heathens are probably sacrificing children!!!
3. Who needs old superstitious Norse mythology when we have Jesus to save us from our sins???

My response to these sentiments:

1. Yeah, just a couple decades ago you idiots were claiming that Dungeons % Dragons and heavy metal music were nothing but fronts for secret "Satan" worship. [Fallacy: ANYTHING THAT ISN'T EXACTLY MY RELIGIOUS BELIEFS IS EVIL/SATANIC/DEPRAVED/BLASPHEMOUS]
2. Dude, your entire religion revolves around human sacrifice. Glass houses, glass houses. [PROJECTION]
3. Ok, so let me get this straight: Norse mythology is just mythology and superstition, whereas Hebrew mythology is scientific fact? Whatever you are smoking, pass it this way. Wait...on second thought, I think I'll pass. [Again, PROJECTION]

I long for the truly old days when we go just each go about our business believing (or not believing) in any variant of whatever mythology or cosmological schema we want to without any real threat of harassment, coercion or character assassination. Maybe fundamentalist Christian will learn their lesson on this now that SJWs are coming for them. Then again, they probably won't learn a damn thing.

Oh well... Hail Odin!

I'm much in agreement with this analysis. The OT/Tanakh contains many supremely skewed accounts of the histories. cultural and folkloric practices of various Near Eastern peoples. The book (more like a sprawling corpus) altogether is a political narrative, not an objective study of anything. From TC:

I do not recommend using the Bible for reference when trying to learn about ancient worship practice. The Bible is a mixture of false histories and plagerized [sic] scripture from other civilizations. And the Bible perverts most of what was stolen. Baal is a title not a Gods name, but so you will see many references to Baal because they simply site him by title. So Baal can be different Gods depending on source and context. Even the alleged Yahweh of the Hebrew has seven different names in the old testament and may not always be the same God. The ancient Hebrews were not monotheistic as is commonly taught.

Good point on Baal, which was just a title among the Northwest Semitic peoples (Canaanites) of antiquity; there were a number of deities which contained the name Baal. It translates as something along the lines of "Lord." In other words, it was something rather generic. We find a similar word, "Bel" in Akkadian, which was another ancient Semitic tongue. Idiot conspiracy nuts, usually of the fundamentalists evangelical Protestant persuasion, like to throw around "Baal" as being a name for Satan or whatever. Actually, they believe anything that isn't 100% their version of "God" or Jesus to be Satan. These mouth-breathing sorts know absolutely zilch about history, comparitive religion, philosophy or really anything that's intellectually a single notch above believing in their Bible in the most literal, word-by-word manner.