Julian Jaynes Has Blown My Mind Apart, and Put It All Back Together Again

 

The Origin of Consciousness In the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind – Julian Jaynes (1976)

 

            For weeks now I have been lost in the pages of this amazing book, one which came to my attention through the bibliographies in several of my previous reads.  One of my favorite literary experiences is when I finally find a seminal book oft quoted or referenced in other books. Such a book is The Origin of Consciousness In the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.  Author Julian Jaynes has accomplished something outstandingly original and beautiful, providing what is perhaps the best explanation of what we modern humans call “Consciousness,” how it came to be, and how we can track that development.

            Books like this contain so much within their pages.  It is difficult enough to absorb all the information and ideas shared by the author, but discussing it intelligently is another matter entirely. In the over 11 years I have kept this book-review blog I have enjoyed countless books, but very few have coalesced knowledge and wisdom in my brain like The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind has.  It is a masterpiece of insight and research.

            Jaynes divides his work into three “books,” the first one dealing with consciousness itself, what it is, and where it comes from.  This alone is enough material for a great book.  The first great insight that the author shares involves consciousness itself.  We modern humans assume that our brains work in the same manner as all early humans.  We have an internal “I,” designating an interior head-space that exists outside of time and place, and which us modern humans see as our true selves, our internal monologue.  Jaynes central proposition is that this internal “I, this sense of individual consciousness, only arose in humanity after the invention of written language.  Before this time, humans lived in what Jaynes terms a “bicameral mind.”

            To explain what “bicameral mind” refers to, I must go into a bit of neurology and brain structure.  We humans have essentially two separate brains, connected through several channels, (the corpus-callosum is the main one, a bundle of nerves which allow signals to be sent from one brain hemisphere to the other), allowing them to communicate with each other, and to control different aspects of life.  For example, our left hemisphere contains Brocka’s and Wernicke’s areas.  These are two parts of our brain that handle language, with Brocka’s area controlling speech production, allowing our physical mouth and tongue to create meaningful words, and Wernicke’s area handling the other end of speech, that being language comprehension, the mental understanding of the auditory signals received by our ears through spoken language.  In patients who suffer from traumatic brain injuries, strokes, or other such conditions, these areas are sometimes affected, which was the initial impetus for understanding the various sections of our brain. 

            Julian Jaynes posits that, before the advent of the written word, humanity lived in a very different state of mind, the bicameral mind, a consciousness completely unaware of itself, quite the opposite of our current view of consciousness which we feel exists independently of our physical being.  For tens of thousands of years, humans lived in groups led by a “king.”  These kings dictated how the people of a said group would live. The truly great and long-lived kings would be remembered long after their death, their words still echoing in their follower’s heads.  This was not seen as an aberration.  Humans found it perfectly logical that a dead king would continue talking in their heads, as if still alive. The greater the king, the longer the voice would live on in his followers.  As evidence of this, Julian Jaynes discusses how for over ten thousand years, human burials followed the same pattern.  The deceased was not seen as dead, in the way we modern humans see things.  As long as their voice could be heard the king was alive. Because of this, the dead were buried with food, clothing, tools, and all sorts of items that would be useful to the dead person’s continuing “life.”  The high culture of the Egyptians was the pinnacle of this thinking, with Pharaohs buried alongside dozens of sacrificed slaves, wives, animals, etc.  Their isolation in northeast Africa allowed them to maintain their bicameral culture the longest, even after the advent of written language.

            Julian Jaynes posits that the first gods were the dead kings whose voices and commands could still be heard in the people’s heads.  This makes a lot of sense as ancestor worship is the oldest spiritual practice still found among us humans.  Many of the oldest tribal cultures in the world today still observe a lengthy period between when a person’s body stops breathing and when they feel the person is truly dead and ready to be buried/cremated/etc.

            This same bicameral structure is evident in Mesoamerica, where dozens of city states sprung up, flourished, and died over millennia.  These cities are all remarkably similar, containing a large central pyramid of structure housing the king, and in later times, the statue of the local god.  Everything about their lives was dictated by the king/god-king/god, and sometimes the entire city-state would revert back to the jungle after the death of a prominent king.

            Sometime around 2,500 years ago, everything changed.  In Mesopotamia, a writing system was created which altered our entire world and, according to Julian Jaynes, altered our brain’s structure.  This was cuneiform, a method of writing which involves pressing a wooden stylus into wet clay, leaving triangular marks.  Cuneiform is not a language, but a system of writing, and due to this, it was used to write down things in Assyrian, Emetic, Akkadian, and many other languages.  Essentially, once a remote king found that his proclamations could be written down and shared without him needing to personally deliver the information, he then asked his scholars to use cuneiform to write down his proclamations, history, etc.

            In this sense, writing was not what we think of today, words which, when read, create a narrative in our minds.  Much like ancient temples, statuary, and religious artifacts initially did, writing allowed ancient humans to hallucinate words and instructions, keeping the king’s voice alive well past his death.  It was an immensely valuable tool for social control in a time before individual consciousness.  For millennia, humanity passed down its accrued knowledge verbally, with specific people in each tribe/group designated to be the memory carriers, reciting long poems and stories from memory in order to share wisdom and instructions with the next generation.  These bards would not specifically memorize a text, for there was no texts back then.  What they did was remember the salient points of a tale, concerning an old god-king perhaps, and then add in connective language as they reiterated the story in question to a new audience. This way allowed the important points to be learned by the audience, while also allowing the storyteller to shape his stories, adding and subtracting parts as they saw fit to. 

            The written word changed all of this.  Julian Jaynes recounts a very dark era in the history of our developing consciousness.  The period of time, around 500-1000 years after the initial breakdown of the bicameral mind, sometime around 500 BC, was a time of dissolution, fear, and mass-violence.  Before the written language, civilizations lived near each other in relative peace, trading goods and food items, but generally just leaving each other alone.  It was understood that other human groups followed their own gods/kings, and that was good enough for them.  Once writing appeared, the “voices” of the gods/kings no longer reverberated through the people’s minds, causing chaos, and uncertainty.  The idea of an individual “I” was unnecessary before this, for everyone knew what their role was, what they were expected to do in life, and why they did it.  The god-king’s proclamations were followed without question, for he spoke directly from the gods.  The bicameral mind did not seek explanations.

            The written word quieted that internal voice that repeated the gods/kings proclamations.  City states became too large for easy control of the population.  It was at this time that specialists came into being, people whose breeding, training, or social status prepared them to be interlocutors between the god and the people.  These were the beginnings of the sacerdotal sects that we all currently deal with.  Even these methods were not enough to hold the homogeny, and the cities slowly fell into ruin and disuse, as people moved back out into the wilds to make their own lives.  Because of this, there was an extreme rise in violence and warfare.  Without the god’s voices keeping everyone safe, neighbors were seen as violent, evil, “other,” etc., and the need to exterminate them arose.  During this turbulent period, it is estimated that in both the western and eastern worlds, nearly 90% of the human population was exterminated.  This was wholesale genocide on a planetary level.  Humans are our own worst enemies.  It is a sad reminder that, even two thousand years later, our collective humanity can be quickly erased or forgotten when we end up seeing our fellow beings as less than human because they do not believe what we chose, or are told to, believe.

            Julian Jaynes traces the development of consciousness in man through our written works, the oldest ones such as the Rigveda from what is now India or the Iliad, from Greece being written at a time when the bicameral mind was still the norm among us humans.  In these tales, the human protagonists do not share their internal monologues.  They had no internal monologues.  Their actions are not self-decided.  Instead, all the actions in the Iliad, for example, are a result of a command or a suggestion by one of the many gods. Achilles does not choose his actions.  They are dictated by the gods.  The same holds for the characters in the Rigveda.  Bicameral man did not self-assess, self-doubt, or self-analyze.  He lived, breathed, and acted in accordance with the instructions provided him by the gods and spirits, voices we modern humans would describe as our internal monologue.

            In the follow-up to the Iliad, the Odyssey, the protagonists do make their own decisions.  They worry and fret and flip-flop without any certainty, something lacking in the heroes of the Iliad.  They still do not have what we would call a consciousness, however.  It is their own constituent parts that make demands.  Parts of the human, such as phrenes, nous, and psyche, were the ones dictating action.  Odysseus’ nous might demand that he feel jealousy, or his phrenes might state that the gods do not agree.  Ancient man did not think of the brain itself as the seat of our minds.  They saw different parts suited to different things.  Sometimes these would still be associated with specific gods, or spirits, but they were internal to man, not external.  Jaynes explains how today, we judge psychosomatic responses in people that would have been very familiar to the people of the Odyssey.  When we are stressed out, our stomachs feel curdled, bile rises in our throat, and we get the “butterflies.”  To ancient man, just developing the faculty of consciousness, this made sense.  When scared, our heart starts beating faster.  Our blood pressure rises.  Our skin gets cold and tight.  Ancient man saw this as evidence that the heart controlled certain emotions, much as the stomach controlled others, and the bowels controlled even others.  There is a wide gap between the mentality evident in the Odyssey and the mentality seen in the Iliad. 

            The second section of this book details the progression from the Bicameral Mind to our current consciousness, tracing the history of our gods, temples and rituals associated with bicameral thinking. Jaynes describes how Mesopotamia was the first example of modern consciousness, something which must have been very strange for those few humans who innately accepted their internal “I”.  Even the tales in Genesis describe this transition from bicameral thinking to our current sense of self.  The author traces the story from the ancient Greeks down to the nomadic tribes which were prevalent after the mass genocide period.  It was these tribes which practiced a new monotheism, replacing the pantheon of gods with one deity, and which led to our current Abrahamic religions and their strict morality, most of which is based on refuting the old bicameral gods and our ways of communicating with them.

            The last section of this masterwork seeks out the vestiges of the bicameral mind within our modern world.  Humanity went from each one of us hearing the gods’ voices directly, to the gods only speaking to select priests and oracles, and then to the gods becoming totally silent, letting their desires be known solely through omens, or the revelation of “prophets.”  Julian Jaynes backs up every one of his observations with rigorous science, and explores the role that our bicameral mind still plays in the creation of poetry, art, and music.  Many creators describe how a piece of art, or music, or poem came to them unbidden, as if the universe was speaking to them directly.  This is an example of how our two brains communicate, with one side dominant, and the other not so.  Jaynes explores hypnosis and the mechanisms used to incite it, mechanisms and techniques extremely similar to those used by ancient priests when selecting new oracles.  Basically, the less self-aware you are, the easier it is to be hypnotized.  The same goes for deeply devout religious belief. 

            This book blew me away.  I wish I could cover everything that Julian Jaynes discusses in greater detail, but that would take an entire other book!  It is a humbling thing to understand that our species, Homo Sapiens Sapiens, lived for over a hundred thousand years in the bicameral state.  It is only in the past 2,500 years that what we call human consciousness came to be.  There is no guarantee that our individual conscious selves will continue into the future.  It may be that a bicameral mind is better suited for long-term survival on Earth, and we will all soon revert back to that state.  There are no rules stating that evolution is a progressive, directional force.  Animals and plants evolve in all directions, both “forwards” and “backwards.”  It is our ego that makes us believe we are the epitome of life, that we are the best living creature created in our Universe.   That very ego may destroy us all.  I look forward to acquiring this book for my own personal library, and jumping back into its amazing pages in the future.  It is books such as this one that made me a book lover, and keep me a book lover.  What a glorious achievement.

(This book can be downloaded from the Internet Archive here: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind - Julian Jaynes )

Geneviève Lacambre Shares Her Deep Love and Admiration for Gustave Moreau

 

Gustave Moreau: Magic and Symbols – Geneviève Lacambre (1999)

 

            Often, it is the small books that provide the most information.  Such is the case with this sumptuously illustrated volume exploring the life and art of Gustave Moreau.  One of publisher Harry N. Abrams’ “Discoveries” series, an amazing set of introductory books on Literature, Science, Art, and the Ancient World, this book benefits greatly from its erudite author, Geneviève Lacambre, previously the long-time director of the Musée National Gustave Moreau in Paris.  First-hand knowledge is awesome!  I much prefer reading the adoring words of an artist’s true admirer than the critical skewering which passes for art history these days.

            I spent 2/3 of my time at University studying for my major, Studio Art, specifically oil painting.  I spent 1/3 of my time taking classes for my Art History minor.  In all that time, I was not introduced to the work of Gustave Moreau.  What a shame! Gustave Moreau, through supreme talent, practice, and pure willpower, created a synthesis of old-world myth, christian allegory, and his own innate creativity which served as the vanguard for the Symbolist movement of the very early 1900’s.  Much like the best artists, Moreau sought not to pander to the then-current and always-fickle tastes of the populace, or to the increasingly short-sighted ideas of the established Parisian Salons.  He sought to portray universal truths and wisdom, without overtly explaining his compositions. 

            Seen as an inspiration by many younger painters, Moreau never sought direct categorization of his style and work.  Even so, the path he carved through the world of painting led to the formation of the Symbolist movement in art.  These painters, much younger than Moreau, with many of them studying under him as assistants, used his techniques of theme, composition, and color to try and pull the art world away from the two main pillars of the time, Naturalism, and Impressionism.  The Naturalists sought to portray the inherent beauty of nature, life, and the world around us without embellishment, subtext, or mytho-historical context.  The Impressionists sought to portray the gossamer, fleeting, ever-changing nature of light upon the natural world, and specifically the way that light entered the human eye to create image and form.  Neither used the classic masters as inspiration, which Moreau explicitly did.  They also never sought to create narrative works, something Moreau excelled at, imbuing his art with a deep sense of history, myth, religion, fable, and the inherent human truths those forms espouse.

            Gustave Moreau was an obsessive personality.   He made countless sketches before he sought to portray anything in oil.  Moreau was one of the first fine artists to utilize watercolor paints as a finished product, whereas most artists of the time used watercolors for preliminary sketches.  In time, Moreau’s watercolor works sold just as well as his finished oil pieces, owing to his masterful and riotous use of color.  He also chose not to sell, or even exhibit, his favorite paintings, choosing to keep them for himself.  Who else would appreciate them as intensely?  Truly a bad-ass of the highest caliber. 

            Moreau eventually began teaching art at the École des Beaux-Arts, and according to the testimony of his many students, he was an inspiring and engaging instructor.  Some of the greats of 20^th century art studied under Moreau, giants such as Henri Matisse, Georges Rouault, and Henri Evenepoel.  Unlike many great artists who also taught, Moreau never demanded his students follow his personal style or ideas.  He sought to have them each develop their own view, their own style, something that could never be taken from them.  This was far different from the other art professors at Beaux-Arts, most of whom were strictly academic painters, seeking to render the natural world and not the inner tumult of human experience.

            If there is a lesson to be learned from Moreau it is that an artist must seek their own internal, thematic guidance.  For writers, the dictum is “write what you know,” which is a fair one, as readers can immediately tell when an author is speaking about a topic they have no personal experience with.  I believe this should also apply to visual artists.  While many artists seek to defend their explorations, they often end up forcing a theme, or leaving their work feeling slapdash and incomplete.  Moreau loved the classical myths, and drew inspiration from them, re-purposing their symbols and allegories, combining them with christian themes and allegories, all the while portraying his subjects in a lavish way, almost overwhelming the viewer with attention to detail.  It is the exact opposite of minimalism, and his style influenced the Symbolists who followed.

            The amazing result of Gustave Moreau’s failure to sell much of his work, mostly by choice, is that upon his death, he left his entire collection, home, and studio to the country of France.  Several years after his passing, the paperwork went through, and the Musée National Gustave Moreau opened in Paris, where it remains to this day, a time capsule of, and a testament to, one of the most imaginative painters of his generation.  I hope to someday visit it, and see in person these large, impressive works of art.  Until then, books such as these will be my companion.

Hermann Kern Takes us Into, and Brings us Back Out of, the Labyrinth

 

Through the Labyrinth: Designs and Meanings Over 5,000 Years – Hermann Kern (1982)

A fascination with the story of Daedalus and his ill-fated son Icarus began early after reading a book on the Greek myths, likely found at the local library (Alief Public Libraries for the WIN!). The idea of a genius engineer forced to create a labyrinth in which to imprison King Minos’ step-son, and the story of what befell him and his son as they tried to escape, struck a nerve. As a youth, the simple lesson that a child must pay heed to his elders, especially his parents, when it comes to dangerous matters of life and death, was what drew attention. This was Icarus’ folly, that of a young man too carefree when he should be careful. It resulted in Daedalus’ tragic loss of his son, all because Icarus did not pay attention.

As an adult, reading more and more on the Greek myths, and about the idea of the labyrinth, the focus turned to the labyrinth itself. An understanding of it as allegory grew. My employment now affords the great pleasure of wandering through labyrinthine shelves (see what I did there?), each stocked with all manner of art books. Upon one of these meanderings this large book called out to me. It may be an innate skill, or perhaps the oft-rumored Library Angels really do exist, but sometimes an amazing tome will just fall in my lap. Such was the case with this book, Hermann Kern’s exhaustive, immersive, and deeply informational masterwork on labyrinths worldwide. It is packed with thousands of illustrations and photographs, and translated into English from the original German. Exceedingly awesome.

 As Hermann Kern carefully explains, over thousands of years the ancient symbol/idea of a labyrinth morphed and degraded into our currently accepted meaning, that of an intricate maze, with endless dead-ends, false passageways, and walls meant to disorient anyone inside. This idea is a disservice to the labyrinth, making it seem more of a trap, or a tool for torture and subjugation, which is evident by the time Plutarch wrote of his story of King Minos and the Minotaur. The original idea of a labyrinth was not a maze of dead ends, but a long, winding, singular path to a center. To exit a labyrinth, one must retrace their steps back through the entire thing. There are no shortcuts, and the journey in and out is where meaning is found. Labyrinths may be one of the oldest meditative tools created by humans.

Mr. Kern starts with, and reiterates throughout, the essential feature of a Labyrinth as opposed to a maze or spiral. As stated above, a labyrinth is a single path, convoluted and winding, leading to a central area within it. This is the center of the labyrinth. Once at the center, there is nothing to do but turn around and retrace your steps back through until you reach the initial entrance. This differs greatly from mazes, which may or may not have centers, and which feature countless wrong turns, dead-ends, and misleading paths. One can get lost in a maze. One cannot get lost in a labyrinth. It is this specific trait that makes the labyrinth so useful as a tool of introspection, initiation, and ritual.

The origins of the labyrinth are lost to time. What is known, and what Mr. Kern describes so well, is that the initial labyrinth was of a very specific form, what is now referred to as a Cretan Labyrinth. This very specific shape, carved in stone, has been found in many places, but is associated with Crete due to the Greek Myth discussed above. A critical aspect of the labyrinth, and its use, is called the “Thread of Ariadne.”  The Greek myth tells of how the hero Theseus entered the labyrinth, faced and killed the dreaded Minotaur, and escaped with his life. He did so by using a fine thread given to him by the Cretan princess Ariadne, which he unspooled as he entered the labyrinth and which he spooled back up as he found his way out of the labyrinth. The Greek myth tells of how Theseus then rescued Ariadne and took her away from Crete. This is a retcon of a sort, as the initial “thread” of Ariadne was simply the path taken by the labyrinth itself. Many of the oldest labyrinth images show a red line, the symbolic thread, coursing its way through the bends and twists until it arrives at the center. As a true labyrinth has no dead-ends, or meanders, there is no need for a literal thread, as told in the story of Theseus.

In the shamanic/mystical sense, the thread of Ariadne is the same thread woven by the fates when a human is born. This thread tells the story of one’s life, which lasts just as long as the Fates allow, one of them tasked with cutting off the thread marking our point of death in this world. In a labyrinth, this thread of life symbolizes the return to the womb, to the primordial beginnings, and then the return trip back to our experiential world. To walk into a labyrinth is to retrace your steps back to your creation, and to leave the labyrinth is to be re-born. The human exiting the labyrinth is not the same human that entered it. This is a deep philosophical point made visible and interactive by means of the labyrinth, which is why many of the old sanctuaries and cathedrals of Europe contain labyrinths inside. They wanted the parishioners to reflect on the journey to Christ and the rebirth afterwards, as they walked the path of the labyrinth to the center (Jesus) and back.

Apart from their mystery, meaning, and use, labyrinths themselves are just beautiful. Many of the great cathedrals contain exquisite labyrinths, tiled as perfectly as any Roman mosaic. Hermann Kern’s exhaustive search also includes many proto-labyrinth carvings whose creators are lost to us. It also includes images related to labyrinths, such as the cup and ring marks, or the many spirals, found throughout paleolithic locations. Kern differentiates between these seemingly related symbols and those of a true labyrinth, providing details and historical context for everything. Because of his rigor in collecting the data, this book has become the seminal resource for those seeking to study the history and purpose of these designs. I am very thankful that it was translated into English, and would love to find a copy of this magnificent reference work for my own personal library. Thank Mario that my workplace affords me access to such wonderful books. I have been fortunate to visit a couple of labyrinths located in my home of Houston, Texas, USA.  More will be sought and I will walk the Thread of Ariadne again.

Charles-François Dupuis shared the truth with us over 200 years ago

 

The Origin of All Religious Worship - Charles-François Dupuis (1795)

 

            One of the very best things about books is that they can transport a reader anywhere and to any time.  Most people love old fiction works specifically for this reason.  I adore older non-fiction books, especially ones that deal with deep exploration of a given subject.  I especially enjoy finding and reading the old books used as references for the more modern works I read.  I have read widely in comparative religion and mythology over the past decade.  There are few seminal works, and Dupuis’ “The Origin of All Religious Worship” is one such masterwork.  It has taken me months to digest it all.

            People remember the French Revolution alongside the American one as a battle to usurp monarchy and instill democracy.  While this is technically correct, what they were fighting against was the power that the European monarchies and the Roman Catholic Church had consolidated in the 1500-1700’s.  For centuries, the super-rich aristocracy and the super-rich Papacy joined teams to control nations and to plunder their wealth for themselves. The scientific method along with obsessive rationality led French leaders to denounce the church, the evils they commit under the guise of “religion,” and everything they teach.  In order to have evidence against the church, to fight the centuries of lies and obfuscation, geniuses like Dupuis sought to study just why the church acts as it does, and where they got their theological ideas.  Before the modern study of comparative religion and mythology, Dupuis set out to explore the historical past of religious worship.  What follows in this book is a detailed excoriation detailing why everything taught by all priests from all religions is sadistic and willful untruth seeking to blind the eyes of the people.  It is awesome.

            Since truly ancient times, the only real concern of humanity has been to study the heavens.  Once the ancient humans understood that the seasons were cyclical, that around the same time each year the days would get longer, signaling the return of spring and summer, they began to understand the world around them and their place in it.  There was a large, overarching pattern to the world and humans lived in harmony with it.  One hundred thousand years ago, there was no thought of “rational” versus “spiritual,” or of “natural” versus “supernatural.”  These are all recent inventions.  The world of ancient humans was equal parts what they saw and experienced, what they dreamed, and what they imagined. 

Dupuis goes back as far as recorded history lets him, considering he lived in the late 1700’s.  While there existed civilizations before the ancient Egyptians, their culture amalgamated and absorbed the wisdom of all the previous millennia.  Ancient man would describe what they saw in the heavens through allusion, metaphor, and anthropomorphism.  They saw patterns in the stars, which, to their eye, never changed.  These became the constellations.  Initially meant purely as a visual code to describe the locations of the stars, the constellations helped mark the passage of the year.  The Sun would rise in the sky in front of a different constellation every month for a year, and then repeat itself.  During parts of the year, the daylight hours grew compared to the nighttime hours, and at the opposite end of the year, the nighttime hours grew while the daylight shrank.  At two specific points each year, the ancient sages noted that the hours of day and night were equal.  These are now referred to as the Spring and Autumnal Equinoxes.

The Spring equinox seemed a perfect time for ancient humanity to designate as the beginning of the yearly cycle.  It marks the day that the warmth and life-giving properties of the Sun start to increase in influence over the Earth (at least for the people in the Northern Hemisphere.  Throughout much of human history, most of our species has lived above the equator.  This includes the ancient cultures of Egypt, India, China, and Mesopotamia.  It is because of this that astrology and such things are north-biased.  The stars that are visible from the southern hemisphere are different from those that make up what most humans call the Zodiac and were one of the reasons ancient sea-faring humans understood the Earth is a sphere.)  Fall and Winter were times where the Sun’s living force diminished.  In Spring and Summer the Sun’s energies were in full power. 

Our recent ancestors did not know of the procession of the stars, something that occurs because our Earth is not only rotating, but also wobbling in space.  Our ancient forebears knew better.  Before around 14,000 years ago, the Spring equinox Sun would rise in the constellation of Taurus, or the Bull, and the Egyptians would sacrifice the apis Bull on that date, signaling the new year.   For the past few thousands of years, the Spring Sun rises in Aries, or the Ram.  On the Spring Equinox, Christians celebrate the death and resurrection of Christ, a stand-in for the Sun in its yearly journey.  Ancient Hebrews would sacrifice lambs, and the Christ is symbolized by the ‘Lamb” for this very reason.  In a few thousand years, the Spring Sun will rise in Aquarius and humanity’s gods will be altered to match.  Each human culture shared this information through their myths and legends.  Ancient stories of Heracles/Hercules were poetic representations of the Sun’s path through the constellations each year.   Each of his Labors correspond to a different constellation.  Dupuis describes this in depth, even explaining how the ancient poets included stars adjacent to the constellation in the epics, disguised but understandable to those with astronomical knowledge. 

Other of our collective human myths are analyzed by Dupuis, each one shown to be a poetic and allusion-filled description of the path of our Sun as it rises in front of a different constellation each month.  From the ancient Vedas of East Asia, to the Osiris myths of Egypt, to the Dionysian myths of the Mediterranean, to the Zoroastrian founding myths, all are shown to be, at their core, astronomical in nature.  He shows how every religion’s main stories come from an attempt to explain the workings of the Heavens, with each god, all the way up to Jesus, being a stand-in for our beneficent and all-powerful Sun, the true life-giver of our world.

It is this idea that is the basis for the main thrust of this work.  Charles-François Dupuis had grand goals when he set out to write this book.  He wanted to provide clear and irrefutable evidence that the many man-made religions and cults that exist in our history took as their basis either a willful or an ignorant misunderstanding of what the ancient poets wrote in the legends.  The genius of our ancient sages lay in the ability to describe the world around them in a way that could be transmitted and repeated by oral means.  These stories eventually became codified by scribes writing in clay or papyrus. 

Dupuis points out one thing that corrupts ancient wisdom.  As long as there have been humans, there have been some among us who seek to increase their wealth and/or power by using our collective knowledge to control and train the rest of us.  These are the sacerdotal classes; whether shamans, rabbis, magi, or priests, and their sole reason for existence is to create the illusion that they are the only ones capable to providing a lowly human with the divine truths.  Before priests, all humans were equally informed and aware of these universal truths.  The Sun provides warmth and life.  The Earth completes a full cycle every year.  Winter is followed by spring is followed by summer, etc.  We are all part of the whole.  The sun is divine.  We, like all life, contain a piece of the divine within us, and when we die, that energy will dissolve back into the universe.  This used to be basic wisdom, sacred wisdom, showing the interconnectedness of everything in creation.  The ancients did not differentiate between good things and bad things.  Anything and everything could be either, at any time, depending on how and who was utilizing it.  Our living spark comes from the Sun and returns to the Sun after death.

Before priests and the sacerdotal classes could use the old wisdom to control the people something else had to happen.  This is something that is hard to pin down, but Dupuis has done a masterful job of it.  The ancient oral wisdom, allegories meant to provide information about the heavens and the yearly cycles began then to be interpreted in non-allegorical ways.  Instead of understanding that the heroes of myth, Osiris, Heracles, were stand-ins for the mighty and all-powerful Sun, “wise men” began to postulate that they were real, actual people, humans who had lived and been so inspired as to become like gods themselves.  A second and critical jump was the dogmatic assertion that, since the Sun/God was all good, there are things in the universe that are all-bad.  They created polar enemies, Ormuzd and Ahriman, Jehovah and Satan, to foster the lie that the universe is a constant battle between that which is good, and that which is evil.  Of course, the priests/rabbis/cult leaders/shamans/gurus were the only ones among us all to know the “true path” to divinity, and to avoid eternal damnation.  It is the oldest grift in the world, to demand that someone behave as you ask in life, while promising riches and peace in death, promises they know they cannot deliver.  In this manner, all form of religion manages to leech the wealth and riches of the populace, continuing to this very day.  Most religions seem to think the living Earth is a pit of despair, abounding in horrors, and that the only true life is the “eternal” life that they promise after death.  This is a sick and twisted view, directly opposite of the wisdom our ancient ancestors tried to impart.

One of the beautiful things about this book is how Dupuis shows respect and admiration for the ancient sage poets that initially composed the solar myths we have all worshipped and fed off of for millennia. Their ability to describe, in poetic form, the passage of our Sun around the zodiac, is just one of the many bits of knowledge the ancients wished to pass down.  Many secret societies teach how to read these old myths, how to understand the scientific and natural wisdom the ancients hoped to pass on.  This was something of the reason why the Templars, Freemasons, and other such societies are viewed as a threat by the church. Who knows how much more the ancients knew?  Modern humans, Homo Sapiens Sapiens, have been around for somewhat over 100,000 years.  The genus Homo Sapiens itself, has been around for over 1,000,000 years.  The ancients seemed to understand this, many of them describing the great circumnavigations, whether labeled ages or Vedas that the world lives through, each covering tens of thousands of our years.  This was not idle fiction.  They wrote about it to share it with us, thousands of years later, the cyclical nature of existence.  It is Dupuis contention that these legends and myths have everything to offer us today, if only they could be divorced from the religions formed to use the ancient wisdom to take advantage of us, keeping them rich, fat, and comfortable, while they preach abstinence, austerity, and forgiveness.

This work was completed around the time when modern humans started to ignore myth and legend to instead focus on industrial and material matters.  The American Revolution had helped overthrow the ancient and false idea of the Divine Right of kings, and the French revolution tried to free the nation from the king and the powers of the Roman Catholic Church.  The Church has engaged in mass murder and genocide in France many times, seeking to exterminate any enclaves of what they termed “heretics.”  These were the initial freethinkers, dangerous to the status quo of a massive church, wealthier and more powerful than any single nation on Earth.  Dupuis stood for all of us when he wrote this work.  The Church has killed writers and philosophers for far less.

I am so glad I found this book.  It came at the right time, which is one of the magical things about books.  Sometimes, the exact book you need to read will come into your life.  Twenty years ago I would not have managed to complete this book, much less grok the immensity of its scope.  Dupuis truly is one of the greats, a hero to freethinkers and a bright guidepost to anyone seeking understanding of our deep mythical past.

(This book can be downloaded as a PDF here: http://iapsop.com/ssoc/1872__dupuis___origin_of_all_religious_worship.pdf )

Humanity Creates Gods and Demons Alike

 

Demonology and Devil-Lore – Moncure Daniel Conway (1879)

           

            For someone like me who loves to read older books the Project Gutenberg website is a gold mine.  It allows me to discover thinkers and writers otherwise lost to me.  Sometimes I have heard mention of the authors or their works.  Oftentimes I have not.  Either way I love digging through their archives.  This is how I came across Moncure Daniel Conway’s “Demonology and Devil-Lore,” an amazingly rich book that has captured my mind for the past weeks.  This book traces the development of the demons and devils that have plagued human religious thought since before the advent of writing.  In doing so, it explores much of our past, our collective fears, and the many ways that gods become demons as one culture/religion usurps another.

            Initially, humanity feared everything.  Mother Nature was brutal, harsh, unsparing, and sought to destroy early man at every turn.  Humanity sought to placate Nature, even before we invented gods.  The tribe reinforced personal rites and superstitions.  In this ancient estimation of Nature, there was no “Good” or “Evil” as we think of them today.  The earliest revelation of humanity was the knowledge that to stay alive means killing other living things.  Primitive man saw evidence of this constantly.  There was no favored species.  All things suffered the wrath of a hurricane, or a wildfire, or a volcano's eruption.  All creatures had to kill to stay alive.  Conway shows how this initial metaphysical idea is found in the early passages of Genesis, in the parable of man gaining the knowledge of Good and Evil.  Before humans had that knowledge, they existed in the state I described above.  It was a huge metaphysical leap for early humans to understand that some things can be seen as only Good and some seen as only Evil.  From there, it was a small step to imagine that offerings or sacrifices would appease the Evil and please the Good.  It was in this stage of humanity that we began to codify specific things as Demons.

            Conway describes Demons as initially being personifications of destructive force in the world around us.  They were the flip-side of the wonder that humans felt when they looked at the beautiful Earth and the heavens above.  The very earliest religious texts we have, the Vedas of Southeast Asia, speak in simple terms of how the Creator brought forth all that is good and all that is evil.  The Creator brought forth all that is joyful as well as all that is painful.  It took a long time, and a period of intellectual maturation, for humanity to split evil from the Creator, and to assign the source of evil to an entirely malicious entity.  Zoroastrian belief, a very ancient religion, shows the next step.  In Zoroastrian thought, there are two equal and opposing forces created at the beginning of time.  Light eternally battles Darkness.  Good eternally battles Evil.  Only later did these personifications receive proper names, and humans given their role in the entire process, which is to strive for Good to defeat eventually the forces of Evil in the world, creating everlasting peace and harmony.  This is the next level of theological thought humans achieved.

            Once humans saw the Universe around them as a battleground between the forces of Light and the forces of Darkness, as stated in the text by Conway, “Man found that in the earth good things came with difficulty, while thorns and weeds sprang up everywhere.  The Evil powers seemed to be the strongest.”  Even the greatest deity, the Sun itself, could burn you, kill you, and wither your life away.  The whole world was divided into realms controlled by individual malicious entities, whence came storm gods, water gods, mountain gods, etc.  Early sacrifices and offerings were not given to the “good” spirits” but to the “bad” ones.  It was the bad spirits that needed placating, whether this was in the form of an offering meant to keep evil away, or a sacrifice intended to send evil to an enemy instead of one’s family/tribe.  One tribe’s gods became another tribe’s demons.  This has continued until the present day.

            For example, one of the earliest names for the glory of the Sun was Baal.  Once sun-worship became outdated, and prayers to the Sun forbidden, the god Baal was converted into the demon Baal-zebub, a personification of the power of the Sun to rot things, and bring forth clouds of maggots and flies.  In the interim, Baal-zebub combined both of these traits.   As most old religions, including the Hebrew faith, did not have a need for an Evil One, their gods embodied both Good and Evil traits, such as the Jehovah of the Old Testament who not only saves the Jews, but kills thousands of first-born children, drowns Pharaoh’s army in the Red Sea, destroys whole cities (Sodom, Gomorrah), etc. The Hebrew Jehovah is an old god, raised to primacy by the Hebrews from a pantheon of pre-existing deities.

            Conway discusses how early humans saw the world as haunted by demons way before they assigned specific moral qualities to those very demons.  Early demons behaved like a ravenous tiger, who kills and eats because it is in his nature, not because he is “bad.”  They were not judged in the manner that modern Christians seek to judge what they see as demons.  Instead, these demons were appeased, praised, and sacrificed to but never ignored.  The history of humanity shows evidence that one generation’s gods become degraded until they are seen as the next generation’s demons. 

            For example, In the Old Testament the Hebrews are spoken of as setting an offering to a deity named Azazel (meaning “Strength of God”) as well as to Jehovah.  Jehovah was just one of a pantheon of gods back then.  Only through endless repetition and the “refinement” of religion by priests did Jehovah become THE GOD, the one and only that exists (at least for the Hebrews.)  As time passed, Azazel was seen as a powerful Demon, an enemy of Jehovah.  In fact, the Hebrew myths mention four arch-demons, Azazel, Samael, Asael, and Maccathiel, which originally represented four aspects of the divine Creator.  As stated above, Azazel was the “strength of god,” Samael meant “the left hand of god,” Asael was god’s reproductive force, and Maccathiel was god’s retributive power.   For the past few thousand years, these four have been seen as some of the mightiest of demons.  This is how gods, or the personifications of a god, degrade and eventually turn into demons.

            Conway explores so much that it is difficult to discuss it all.  One of the critical points he makes is the difference between the idea of Demons, and the idea of a Devil.  Demons are the personification of malevolent forces that assail humans and animals alike.  They are not moral, and they are countered by proper sacrifice or incantation.  Conway details the earliest demons, those of Hunger, Heat, Cold, the Elements, and Animals, as those were the very first deep fears in early man.  As we developed socially and intellectually, the demons became more specific, such as those of Illusion, Darkness, Disease, and Death itself.  Conway explores each type and their development in their own chapter.  Very cool.

The Devil however, is a much later development in the theological life of humanity.  The Devil is specifically an adversary to the Creator, who actively seeks to undermine and destroy the Creator’s good work (i.e. the divine soul of humans).  In many cases, humans ascribe the Devil more power than that of the Creator, at least on Earth itself.  Once the idea of a Devil was loosed upon the world, humans began to imagine the world itself as a fully evil, sinful, corrupt place.  The Earth and everything on it, ruled by the Devil himself, exists solely to test whether humans can survive with their divine souls intact.  If successful, when they die, they end up joining all that is good in heaven and leaving behind the carnal, sinful world of flesh and bone.  Many humans today live in this theological world.  From this came the idea that detachment from worldly pleasures is a good thing, instead of worldly pleasures being something gifted to us by the Creator.  All the good and beautiful in the world, from food to sex to beauty itself, is a temptation used by the devil to corrupt our souls.  Once the Devil was in charge of the Earth, his powers grew exponentially, until every manner of bad luck and evil was blamed on Satan himself.

            Moncure Daniel Conway details everything he discusses.  He delves into the way that spiritual/religious beliefs of the populace tend to help everyone get along, and provide them with purpose and meaning, until a priest/sacerdotal group decides to take over and dictate what the tribe/group is supposed to believe.  This has occurred through all of our time on this planet.  Whether it was the shaman who relied on handouts from the village to procure his services, the rabbi who dictated who was Hebrew and worthy of Jehovah and who was not, or the priest that “explained” exactly what the Bible stated whether or not the congregation felt or believed otherwise.  Those same people gained incredible power, luxury, and prestige from their subjugation of our collective human beliefs.  They still sit in the lap of luxury, castigating us for being sinners; all the while, they commit the most heinous acts of torture, sexual abuse, outright theft, and moral degradation imaginable.  They claim to know who the demons and the Devils are, always hiding their own flawed humanity behind the veil of organized religion.  Conway hated those bastards so much.  I am eternally thankful that I found this book and this author, another intellectual hero to add to my ever-growing list.  I highly recommend this book to anyone seeking to understand how humans have created their gods and demons, and how we continue to do so today.

(This book can be downloaded here: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40686 )

Over 100 years ago, Dr. Otto Rank explored the commonalities found in the world's Hero myths

 

The Myth of the Birth of the Hero: A Psychological Interpretation of Mythology – Dr. Otto Rank (1914)

            When looking at the list of books I have read and reviewed here on the Intellectual Journey, I find that many of them deal with the topics of Myth and the influence of these myths on human culture through the ages.  This is a topic that has always fascinated me, but which requires extensive background reading.  Comparative Religion studies is a relatively new area of research, having only truly begun in the last 150 years or so.  Before then, the idea of studying religions and myths to see the similarities and common sources for both was heretical, and all people who sought to study this field were dissuaded from it by the church on penalty of blasphemy.  (This makes me wonder how many amazing works of world literature, history and myth sit locked away in the Vatican archives, solely to keep the knowledge from disturbing their very elaborate and lucrative pyramid scheme.)

            In 1914, Otto Rank published a monograph where he explored the specific sources and intent of the Hero myth common to all cultures.  Specifically, Dr. Rank focuses on the parts of the Hero myths that detail the Hero’s birth.  From Sargon and Oedipus to Hercules and Jesus, Dr. Rank details their specific birth myths, working from the most ancient antiquity forwards.  In his introduction, Dr. Rank describes how “prominent civilized nations…all began at an early age to glorify their heroes, mythical princes and kings, founders of religions, dynasties, empires or cities…in a number of poetic tales and legends.”  Initially based on actual events, these stories were embellished and invested with fantastic features as they were passed on from generation to generation.  What struck Dr. Rank, and many others who study such things, is the improbable similarities that arose in each of these Hero’s birth stories.  It is these similarities, analyzed with a psychological view in mind, which Otto Rank explores in this monograph.

            Dr. Otto Rank details the three separate theories that researchers of his time offered to explain why there are so many similarities in the various civilization’s Hero birth myths.  One was the theory that there exists elementary thoughts, universally sourced from our human brain, which manifest themselves as details of our Hero myths.  A second was that of original community, meaning that one ancient civilization first created the details that have become universal, purely through the influence of the civilizations that arose from the initial one.  The third explanation offered, migration, expands on the second one, stating that an original civilization created the myths, and then when they expanded their territory, their myths were adopted by the people with whom they came into close contact.  Dr. Rank disagrees with these theories.  Using psychology, specifically the work of Dr.’s Freud and Jung, he proposes that the source of these myths lays in the human mind and it’s psychological constructs, specifically those that relate to our own birth and the processes of growth into adulthood.  As we are all humans with human psychology, it makes sense that our myths would seem to be of a similar character with similar details.

            It is not possible to go into everything that Dr. Rank discusses, but one detail in particular stands out.  In most of the classic Hero myths, the birth of the hero is followed by the abandonment/exposure of the baby hero in order that it may die, so as not to fulfil prophecy.  Invariably, the hero is placed in a container, which is then put into a river or body of water.  Fortunately, the child is rescued by someone who then raises him or her to adulthood.  Dr. Rank provides ample evidence that these various water stories are actually mythological descriptions of the Hero’s birth.  This is especially evident in the fact that in most of these myths the Hero is born of royalty or a god, and then after being ditched, is raised by simple folk such as shepherds, wet-nurses, slaves, etc.  The second birth helps separate the Hero from his true family and his true societal obligations.  This is necessary as it allows the Hero to seek the Hero’s path, eventually to usurp or replace his original royal parent.

            The creation of myths by humanity is an on-going process.  One of the founding heroes of the United States is the first President, George Washington, who as a General led the forces that defeated the British in the New World.  It has been almost 250 years since that time.  Already, a vast catalogue of fabrications exists that seek to portray President Washington in the heroic light that myth does.  The biggest one is the story where Washington cut down a tree, and when confronted about it, told his parents “I cannot tell a lie.”  This small, apocryphal story has gone on to become the basis of most everyone’s idea about George Washington.  It remains to be seen whether his myth tale will continue to grow.   I think Dr. Otto Rank may be correct in stating that the sources of Myth lie in our very own subconscious minds.  The stories that move us as human have not really changed since the dawn of history.  We all love a Hero.  We all love a story about someone who was taken from lofty heights, brought down to the lowliest of lows, and then re-emerges, like the Phoenix, to greater glory that ever before.  It is truly our human nature.

(This book can be read or downloaded here:  https://ia802205.us.archive.org/12/items/mythofbirthofher1914rank/mythofbirthofher1914rank_bw.pdf )

Alan Moore Took Swamp Thing Where It Needed To Go

 

Swamp Thing: Issues #21-64 – Alan Moore, writer (1982-1987)

            In my youth, I was always on the hunt for new and interesting comic books.  I was very fortunate, as the 1980’s were a great time for innovative storytelling and many comic book creators took the art form to new heights of intensity, storytelling, and beauty.  One of the premier writers in comic books at the time was Alan Moore.  His epic story, The Watchmen, is one of my all-time favorites.  An early work that Alan Moore devoted years to in the 1980’s was the comic book Swamp Thing.  After decades, I was finally able to sit and absorb the full run of Alan Moore penned Swamp Thing stories.  They were even better than I expected.

            Swamp Thing has always been a “horror” comic book.  It sprung forth as a monster feature, and was not too popular with readers.  Headed for cancellation, Alan Moore was brought in to breathe new life into the book, and he did so full bore!  Alan Moore retconned the origin story of Swamp Thing.  Originally, Swamp Thing was a man who, after being doused with experimental fertilizer of some sort, found his way to a nearby swamp where he was turned into the Swamp Thing.  Alan Moore changed that up.  Instead of a man becoming Swamp Thing, an earth elemental spirit took on the human shape of the scientist.  Swamp Thing is tasked with protecting the Green, which is in fact, all plant life on the planet.  The horror comes in the many ways humans treat nature and the revenge that Swamp Thing enacts in the name of The Green.

            Alan Moore never shied away from showing the ugly, evil sides of human nature in his work.  With Swamp Thing he was able to explore ideas and topics that in other mainstream or superhero comics of the time would have been taboo.  Alan Moore shows us true evil, true monsters who look human and nice and normal, but who are ugly and sick inside, as opposed to the Swamp Thing, who is a monstrosity that has a hero’s soul inside.  Seeing as how good “spirits” like Swamp Thing exist in this comic book world, it is evident that a lot of evil would exist for Swamp Thing to fight.

            The horrors and monsters that Swamp Thing battles are just one aspect of the comic book.  Just as important is the internal life of Swamp Thing.  Alan Moore’s genius lies in exploring the true self of his characters.  Swamp Thing is conflicted.  He falls in love.  He feels deep sorrow and pain at the way humans treat Mother Nature.  He seeks to understand his place in the cosmos and why he’s tasked with protecting the Green.  The humans and monsters he fights are the opposite, seeking to either destroy nature or to corral it and wield it like a weapon.  I can see why many superhero comic fans did not appreciate this series.  It is too complex and disturbing for someone that just wishes to see didactic good and evil fighting.  What was more surprising to me was how sad, how deeply mournful Swamp Thing is as a book.  Alan Moore’s fears for what the modern world has done to our Mother Nature are evident.

            While much of the Swamp Thing saga is grim and monumental, Alan Moore also finds joy and humor in Swamp Thing and his life.  One of the most interesting issues is a one-off that explores what happens when a tiny ship filled with cute alien beings lands in the Swamp.  They have travelled for centuries seeking a new, lush, green home after their home was destroyed.  Told in a light-hearted and humorous manner, this story nevertheless becomes one of deep sadness and pathos as the small aliens discover the damage that humans have done to the Earth, and decide to leave in search of another home, one that will not soon be damaged irreparably by its inhabitants.  Heavy stuff for a “comic book.”

            I must mention the artwork of Stephen Bissette and John Totleben.  For a horror comic book, the artwork must not only be appropriately scary, but it should lend a specific visual language to the book.  The naturalistic drawing and minimal inking of the artwork used in these comics speak to the content within.  It is a perfect match.  The visuals of Swamp Thing are some of the best of the era, able to portray not only the physical battles that Swamp Thing engages in, but also the psychic and ethereal battles fought on the Astral Plane.  Comic Books are, when done right, a perfect combination of story, words, and images.  This is one of those successes.

            I highly recommend finding and reading the run of Swamp Thing issues that Alan Moore wrote.  If you are already a fan of his, you will get to experience his early work.  If you are not yet a fan of Alan Moore then this is a good place to start as nearly all of the work he has produced since the 80’s contains many of the elements he first explored in Swamp Thing.  From explorations on the metaphysical and mythic nature of existence, to the re-introduction of nearly-forgotten characters from the history of comic books and much more, Swamp Thing is definitely an early Alan Moore triumph.