Paganism and Christianity

 I have a good deal of sympathy for serious seekers who wish to explore spiritual traditions of the past because they see these as unaffected by the plagues of modernity to which all religions which have made it into the 21st century have succumbed. Christ is universal and his person and teaching encompass and override everything else but certain things were undoubtedly lost in official Christianity. God was removed to a far distance, the world became dead matter, the gods were demonised which means Nature lost her sacred qualities, and the universal supplanted the local with spiritually sterilising results. To a certain extent, an involvement with paganism can restore these losses.

But only to a certain extent. The difficulty here is we are modern people living in the modern world with modern consciousness and needing to learn lessons associated with all those things. We are not our ancestors and not meant to return to their way of life and mode of being even though we have lost many good things of those times and to our great detriment. We should certainly be aware of that loss and try to restore it but we have to do so in a way that is natural to us, that becomes us, and ancient pagan rites, rituals and beliefs will always be like a suit of clothes we have borrowed that do not really fit us. Furthermore, the spiritual approach of the pagan path lacks something that makes Christianity uniquely powerful. Paganism has its gods who may still exist in some form (either angelic or demonic) on the inner planes and who may also have  lived in the physical world in pre-history, but it does not have the incarnation of God. There is no spiritual figure in any religion other than Christianity who manifested perfection, no Odin, no Zeus, no Apollo, no Athene, no Isis etc begins to do this, and this matters because the religious exemplar determines the mindset of the followers. This is not to say Christians are better people than those of other religious backgrounds, but the pattern to which they seek to conform themselves is on a higher plane of reality. It is the true and original template of truth compared to which all others are only approximations at one or several removes.

In the standard Christian view, God and creation are separate which means that we, as part of creation, can only achieve divine union through grace. The pagan approach is to see the world as an emanation of the divine which gives it a sacred quality often lacking in the ex nihilo scenario. However, there is an important strand in Christian mysticism summed up in the saying of Meister Eckhart that there is something uncreated in the human soul which we may take to refer to the spark of divine being that is the source of our life. Without this always-present spark of divine being an eventual union would not be possible. To be created in the image of God carries the same meaning as does the idea that we are the sons and daughters of God. The child is born from the seed of the Father and that is the spirit within us. This does not mean that we already are God because the spark is in the soul, it is not the soul itself, which means that the created part, the soul, has to transcend itself to know its real and eternal nature as divine, and that is the goal of all spiritual life. This scenario satisfies both the need for grace and the doctrine that God already exists within us as our innermost being so it takes the pagan idea of divine immanence up to a Christian level where it can be properly sanctified,

Creation may be ex nihilo but that only means there is no pre-existing stuff out of which God creates. It does not preclude the possibility that he creates out of himself, and that idea would resolve the conflict between the creationist and emanationist schemata. Pagans might reject Christianity because they see it as removing God from the world and even from the soul but they, in turn, miss that both the world and the soul are in their present state fallen, and that deep wound can only be healed by and in Christ.

Equality: A Modern Myth

 

My book By No Means Equal was published a few months ago and the advent of a new government in the UK brings its message to the fore because this government is motivated, theoretically, at least, by the principle of equality. To a degree, this principle drives all Western liberal democracies but the book argues that equality is what you have left when you strip life of its spiritual component and try to preserve some kind of moral foundation. There are also those now whose spiritual understanding is secondary to the leftist ideology with which most modern people are indoctrinated who think that because God is one and love the cornerstone of truth, all souls are necessarily equal. They don't see that in a created world souls may all derive from God and be equal in potential but they are at very different levels of manifesting the fullness of spiritual being. Souls are all expressions of the divine but they range enormously in how much of the divine they can express, and this is both a matter of will and of actual development. This understanding takes into account both oneness and difference and realises that neither can be followed as a principle without the other to balance it.

If everything were equal then nothing could be because everything would be the same. It is inequality that allows for anything to be something. Equality is actually a property of matter undisturbed by spirit or the Logos aspect of spirit. Hence, equality as a philosophical principle is associated with materialism while inequality forms part of the spiritual conception of life, something we can better appreciate when we realise that inequality indicates the presence of the vertical axis of being, in other words transcendence, while equality is restricted to life conceived solely along the horizontal, life without transcendence. For the full view, the fact of inequality must be considered in association with that of oneness which in turn must always be combined with the truth of difference, and that means hierarchy.

The enforcement of equality is an attempt to banish a proper spiritual worldview or create a false one. Those organisations and ideologies that seek to do this are anti-spiritual in nature though many may present themselves as spiritually motivated. But for the forces that work against God both materialism and false spirituality work equally well. In fact, false spirituality is better because the spiritual impulse cannot be suppressed indefinitely so it becomes more useful to divert it into wrong paths than to deny it altogether, even if an initial period of denial helps in the latter corruption of it. The equality doctrine is part of the corruption of spirituality.

If you are interested in this subject of equality, the moral justification for the contemporary deviation from truth, the book goes into it in more detail and from various aspects. Love and justice are divine attributes but equality is a distorted parody of these things and to find out where it comes from you can go right back to the serpent in the Garden of Eden.

Astrology Comes Up Trumps

There's nothing like being wise after the event but no astrologer will be surprised by the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, given the planetary patterns of the time. Below is the chart of President Trump with the transits of the day added. The important thing to note is the Mars/Uranus conjunction in 26 Taurus right at the top of the chart. This is in a direct square to Trump's Mars in Leo and by association, since they are conjunct, his Ascendant which is also in Leo. (Incidentally, Trump both looks and behaves like an archetypal Leo even down to the mane of hair). Mars/Uranus signifies sudden surprises, accidents and even potential violence. When the two conjoined planets form such a close contact with natal Mars all these possibilities are intensified. The square to the Ascendant indicates an assault on the body, and when you factor in that the Mars/Uranus conjunction also sits on the fixed star Algol you have an increased likelihood of misfortune. Algol means the Demon's Head, the demon in this case being the Gorgon Medusa, and is reputed to be among the most violent and dangerous of all the fixed stars with accidents and injuries common when connected to important parts of the horoscope.

So, what saved Trump? If we look at the matter from a purely astrological  perspective we could say that the exact sextile from transiting Jupiter to Pluto in the 12th house might have had something to do with it. It is the 12th house that is being assaulted here and Venus has just made her entry in that house, providing another protecting influence. 

Donald Trump's birth chart must have been analysed many times over the last few years but I have not looked at it before. Having now done so, I am struck at how well his conjunction of Sun and Uranus both trine to Jupiter describes his ebullient, over the top character. I have already mentioned the Leonine qualities but perhaps the most significant factor is combative Mars in Leo sitting right on the Ascendant. Fight, fight, fight indeed. Also to note is the Mercury/Neptune square showing tendencies to lies and deception on the one hand and an intuitive ability to tap into the mystical undercurrents of life on the other. The Sun and Uranus are both in the 10th house as is the North Node, all showing public prominence. Like him or not, this is a chart of a man who makes a mark.

Be Ye Perfect

 We live in a messy, imperfect and out of balance world and we are messy, imperfect and out of balance people. However, we are shooting for the stars. Jesus said, "Be ye perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect", but he was the most forgiving and compassionate of souls. He was demanding and exacting, and yet he understood human weakness and frailty like no other. We have to have the highest possible standards because that is the truth, the only truth, that will set us free. At the same time, we must accept that we and others will fall short. If we aim for anything less than perfect we will never escape this world, but because we are in this world we can never be perfect. We will always fail. Until by the grace of God we succeed.

Any spiritual path that is valid is extreme in its demands. A teaching that reflects divine reality must be absolutist and perfectionist because those are the qualities of divine reality. In this relative world of imperfection these standards can never be met but we should always strive to attain them and not excuse or justify failure. A real teacher demands the best from his pupils but knows they will fall short. That doesn't matter as long as they keep the vision before them. 

Here is the problem. We must free our soul of sin but we can never actually do that. What we can do is set our hand to the plough and keep trying. That shows our heart is rightly oriented which is the important thing. If we wholeheartedly dedicate ourselves to God then he will wash the soul clean. We cannot do that ourselves but we can offer ourselves to him and open our heart and mind to his purifying love. That means love on our part. It is love that overcomes sin, the love that has the willingness to sacrifice self at its root. Nothing else will do. Not knowledge, not wisdom not higher consciousness, whatever that is. And "if you love me, you keep my commandments."

The Continuing Slumbers of Albion

 It seems the British have decided to jump out of the frying pan into the fire and to exchange venal incompetents for a group of people ideologically committed to the destruction of the country as it has been. Could this be the moment when the sleep of Albion descends into nightmare?

It is understandable that the electorate wanted to punish the incumbent government, conservative in name only, but the choice they have made will plunge the country into deeper misery. I am not talking in economic or political terms so much here as, important as they are, those are secondary issues. I am referring to the spiritual darkness which will intensify under the new government as it pursues its agenda of dismantling the entirety of tradition and replacing it by rigid bureaucratic control and enforced egalitarianism or Eurocommunism as you might call it. Those who oppose this will be accused, like the early Christians, of being haters of humanity but the idea of love has long since been corrupted and used as a weapon to attack the good, the beautiful and the true. Freedom of thought will be increasingly curtailed with the excuse of safety, equality and fairness. The new prime minister has spoken of his desire to stamp out something called Islamophobia. This may be a cynical vote catcher but nevertheless only someone who has no love for his country or for Jesus Christ could speak in those terms.

The new UK government has achieved a landslide with a relatively small percentage of the vote. They have far more power than would normally be the case given the relative paucity of their support. They managed this because their opponents were split and one has to wonder if this was a tactic of those who pull the strings behind the scenes. I don't say the Reform party was consciously set up to give the left greater power but it has surely been used to do just that. I can understand why so many people turned to it because it asks some of the right questions but it doesn't have any real answers. The rot is too deep.

Bruce Charlton has spoken of the two forms of evil at play here, that which seeks control (Ahrimanic) and that which seeks destruction (Sorathic). As usual, his analysis is spot on. The previous government was Ahrimanic in a passive sense because it had no real beliefs, but the new one will be actively so because it does have beliefs though they are anti-God beliefs. Naturally, they are not framed like that but these beliefs spring from a rejection of God and the natural order of creation. We can never understand why the modern world is as it is until we realise that we are in a spiritual war. The enemy cannot win but it can do enormous damage to people's souls before it loses, and that is what the whole business is all about. And although the enemy cannot incarnate directly in the world, it can certainly influence and overshadow human beings that allow this because of their inner emptiness and spiritual rejection. This has become more of a likelihood.

Ultimately, none of this matters. Our task is only to recognise it and stay faithful to God. If humanity is to be healed then its spiritual sickness must come out. This is what we are witnessing.

Lights that Serve as Signs

 God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times" Genesis 1:14 (New International Version translation).

Despite the presence of the Magi at the birth of Jesus, Christians have always been reluctant to accept the validity of astrology, seeing it as a link to pagan times and gods as well as being incompatible with free will. But then no Christian would deny heredity which could equally well be said to determine our behaviour to a certain extent, and a wiser reaction to pagan wisdom would be to baptise it rather than simply demonise it.

It is understandable that astrology as divination is frowned upon when it is tries to second guess God and undermine his will. But if study of stellar patterns is used as a kind of weather-forecasting, something that seeks to understand times and tides, it is less questionable. I personally think there are too many variables for this to be particularly useful other than in a very broad brush way, but astrology as character analysis can be instructive. I found that studying my birth chart gave me added insight into my own psychological strengths and weaknesses, and was a helpful spiritual tool insofar as it showed truths about myself in an objective, dispassionate way that I might have otherwise been reluctant to accept.

Clearly, we are not meant to know the future and to seek to do so is blasphemous as it is an attempt to replace God's will with our own. Moreover, we are nowhere near spiritually mature enough to deal with such knowledge as, in our current state, to know our future would be to nullify its lessons. But that does not mean that astrology doesn't work or that it is in any sense diabolical. As the passage from Genesis makes clear, it is part of the majesty and beauty of creation. It is a profound system of symbolism that is built into the cosmos, and God speaks to us through the heavens as he does through nature. We can misuse the knowledge we gain thereby but if astrology is studied with the full realisation that it is subordinate to Christ, considering it rather like a messenger of God or angel, then it can enrich our imagination and guide us to a deeper understanding of the universe and ourselves.

This is a horoscope cast for midnight in London on 1st January 1900. In terms of planetary positions and relationships it would largely apply to the whole world. Any astrologer who saw this with Sun conjunct Mars, Moon conjunct Saturn and more or less everything else in a stellium opposite Neptune and Pluto would think that the 20th century was going to be a bumpy ride. Be prepared is the old scout motto. The study of the heavens can sometimes help us do just that.

Spiritual Crisis

A few years ago I wrote a book called The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man (see here and here) which was largely based on essays from this blog arranged thematically. The crisis has obviously intensified since 2019 when the book was published but its nature has not changed. It concerns humanity's rejection of God which has the effect of leading people to search for meaning in false paths, some political, some supposedly spiritual through the attempted deification of the human self, and some just plain hedonistic. That's to name just a few of the wrong directions in which people may go when they turn away from the path of truth and reality.

The events of 2020 could not have happened, certainly not to the extent they did, in a world in which people acknowledged God. To acknowledge God does not just mean you accept a higher power in which all truth is centred and from which it derives. It means you perceive a meaning and a purpose and goal beyond this world which, let's face it and despite its many beauties, is a distinctly unsatisfying place if it represents the sum total of existence. But surely we should know we are not the body and if we are not the body then this world is not all there is and if that is the case then there must be more, something more real that lies behind it. 

We should know we are not the body for many reasons but one simple one is that we speak of 'my' body. That means we recognise that the 'I' lies elsewhere. It is not the product of the body or physically derived but uses the body as part of its experience and means to express itself. Think of your body. It really is just flesh and bone and blood, and surely it should be obvious we are more than that. Obvious as in known unless we are bamboozled by intellectual sophistries. This is not to denigrate the physical body which is currently part of the totality of our being but it is only part and by no means the central part. If people had understood this then they would not have allowed themselves to be panicked by officious bureaucrats and a cravenly compliant media into a quasi-totalitarian situation with an unnecessary and potentially dangerous medical intervention presented as the only escape route. But most people succumbed to the propaganda and they did so because of fear. It was a test which the majority failed. The medical crisis, assuming there ever really was one which is highly doubtful, has passed but the groundwork has been laid for human beings to have their freedom taken away again at some future date. When something has happened once it becomes much easier to do it again. If it's been done before there is precedent so we are less inclined to question it the next time.

Human beings are so constituted that we can accept or deny reality. We have the freedom to do that. But if we make the wrong choice, there are inevitable consequences as in cause and effect consequences. These may not be obvious straightaway but they will become increasingly apparent. Such is our situation. We have turned away from reality and at first there may even have seemed to be the illusion of greater freedom after doing that. There is also a certain freedom if you jump out of a window. However, the law of gravity cannot be ignored and we descend in this certain freedom until we hit the ground. So it is in a spiritual sense. We are falling and the only way to avoid a crash is to learn to fly which basically means return to the acknowledgment of God who alone can save us from a hard landing. I am speaking metaphorically, of course. Suffering in the material sense is not circumvented by faith and spiritual suffering often increases as that is part of the purificatory operation on the soul. But these are transitory and have an ultimately beneficial purpose. The suffering that comes from the rejection of God has no purpose. It is just the negative consequence of denying truth and it does not lead to joy.

Why does one deny truth? Some people might claim that it is an intellectual matter but that is either too simplistic or else an excuse for the failure to exercise proper spiritual responsibility. The true answer lies in the will. The will is sovereign. It is the one thing that is entirely our own and part of the reason for our life in this material world is to test it in an environment where there is no coercion. The current spiritual crisis may in part be seen as the inevitable consequence of a cycle reaching its conclusion when material clouds have thickened to such a degree that the spiritual sun is almost completely obscured. But even when you cannot see the sun its light is perceptible and so it is now. The light of God may be obscured but it is still present and we should know that without that light we could not see anything at all. The current crisis, which is now in the process of moving from simple crisis to actual madness, is to bring things to a head. Use the situation in the world today as a springboard to push against and return to God.