Ass Soff, Ass Soff, Ass Soff…Adelphiasophist (A-Soph) demonstrators, Seattle, 1999
© 1998 The Adelphiasophists and AskWhy! Publications. Freely distribute as long as it is unaltered and properly attributed
Contents Updated: Sunday, December 05, 1999
Otter G’Zell explained as early as 1970 what neoPaganism is, and placed it on the web in 1994. Paganism is Nature worship. Religions divide into two categories: Pagan religions, the naturally evolving, indigenous folk religions of particular regions and peoples, and the “revealed” religions—religions supposedly a “revelation” of God to some “prophet” and expressed in creeds and dogmas. Revealed religions are patriarchal ones, all derived from Zoroastrianism, the Iranian religion of early in the first millenium BC. The eastern religions are generally not patriarchal ones and have evolved from Nature worship. Buddhism came as a revelation but is not patriarchal, and nor is Taoism, Hinduism and Confucianism.
Patriarchal religions are made of non-living materials, and do not grow naturally. They are artificial and alienated from life. Pagan religions are “natural,” in origin and expression, as opposed to the artificiality of created, revealed religions. The old Pagan religions were never “created”. They had no founding prophets and no saviors.
Pagan religion emerged out of the processes of Life and Nature, and evolved as a living, growing, organic entity. They grew up with their people, and their origins are lost in the mists at the dawn of humanity. What little we can trace indicates a descent from paleolithic and neolithic “fertility cults,” hence the common symbols of the Earth Mother Goddess, and the Horned God. In short, a Pagan religion, emerges alive, like a plant, from the Earth, grows, changes, both cyclically through the seasons, and continually in upward and outward growth, bears flowers and fruit, and shares its life with other living beings.
Pagans venerate Nature and the sensual celebration of life, birth, sex and death as expressed in the seasonal Festivals of the Sacred Year. All these Great Festivals of Paganism correspond with the seasons, the solstices, equinoxes, and natural annual cycles of life, mating and birth, planting, harvest.
After tolerating Paganism for centuries while Pagan morality remained influential and Christianity felt secure, in the 13th century the Church declared Witchcraft to be heretical. In Europe alone, tens of thousands or even millions—the figures are still in dispute—of Pagans were martyred by the Christian churches during the Inquisition and Witch trials. Millions of other Pagan peoples in North and South America, Africa, Polynesia, Melanesia and Asia also fell before the advancing plague of Christian armies and missionaries. Today, the conception most people have of Paganism is the lurid one drawn by the Christian church to justify its own reign of terror, and bears as much relation to reality as the propaganda Christianity once fostered about Jews.
Through the 16th and 17th centuries Pagans fought its remorseless and unscrupulous enemy. Papacy and Protestants alike sought to condemn those they called the devil worshippers, gloating over the thousands consigned to burning faggots and barrels of pitch. But the Christian policy of converting rulers and law-givers was irresistible.
In the midst of our current ecological crisis, natural religions are once again finding a place among the children of Earth. Modern neoPaganism is a new phenomenon. NeoPagan religions are many and diverse. The dozens of neoPagan religions that exist, and most of the sects of Witchcraft, have common values, and these values are Pagan ones.
Above all, neoPagans must take personal responsibility for what they do. They have no excuse of “original sin,” and can not go fawning to a supposed saviour for redemption for their acts. NeoPagans know there is no Divine retribution for doing wrong. Whatever is unnatural and creates discord in Nature invites the homeostatic response of Nature herself. In other words the disturbance of the balance of Nature will create a reaction that will bounce back at us. The responsibility is ours. We suffer the ecological consequences of our actions:
In Nature there are neither rewards nor punishments. There are consequences.Robert Ingersoll
NeoPagans see Nature as divine, so ecology is a religious study. Ecology reveals humanity’s intimacy with Nature. Ecology offers us an unforced religious relationship with the world. Ecology shows life as one dynamic Whole, and suggests how the parts and the Whole should be treated and respected, if we are to survive.
NeoPaganism sees humanity’s duty as not conquering Nature, but living symbiotically with Her. No intervention from some Big Daddy in the sky will solve the problems of our times. Nature will inspire us through her system of knowledge once we accept our duty of care, but will not yield up supernatural answers and miracles. What has to be done, we have to do.
Adelphiasophists are the people most sensitive and aware of the plight of the planet and the disdain traditional social, political and religious institutions have for its plight, whenever greed—usually called profit—is invoked. Nobody is obliged to be an Adelphiasophist or support our views, but those who do not should not be surprised when the biosphere’s terminal decline is blamed collectively on to them. The world is not a milk cow, or the cornucopia it once seemed, as the massed demonstrators at WTO meetings know, but the transnational bosses and their governmental puppets do not.
We shall plant the seeds of a new attitude to Nature and along with it a new social consciousness. When people begin to appreciate that a tree is not just an unrefined floor board but is a living creature that has probably lived longer than most people that will eventually walk upon it, then people might begin to think more generously of other human beings. This means that we must lead the way in the new morality. We shall have to learn ourselves how to live according to new rules—indeed live up to them for they will demand us to accept noble principles and taxing duties.
Adelphiasophism is the kinunity of neoPagan peoples. It is not so much a neoPagan religion itself as an umbrella philosophy of neoPaganism. Adelphiasophists accept only a pantheistic Goddess of Nature, but prescribe no fixed methods of devotion or adoration, and has no objections to others who accept local gods within the rule of Nature. It is for each Pagan to decide for themselves.
However, Adelphiasophists think that we Pagans, being imbued with toleration of the beliefs of others, have always yielded to others rather than standing our ground in the sure knowledge that toleration of others demands toleration by others. Adelphiasophists therefore demand toleration and will no longer tolerate intolerant religions, but will seek to expose them for what they are.
Needless to say, the intolerant religions are the very patriarchal "lego" religions that have persecuted Paganism into extinction in the past. The result has been the dire situation in the world we now have, with Christian "entrepreneurs" destroying the planet yard by yard. For other-worldly religions, this world is a cesspit of filth, crime and pollution, that can hardly be spoiled by get rich quick "stewards" of the earth. But, for us, it is the only world we shall ever know and we want to keep it pristine for our children to enjoy.
Adelphiasophism is therefore not passive neoPaganism, but it remains tolerant of all people that want to preserve our world, rather than yearning for some other place. If you are Pagan, be proud enough of it to be Adelphiasophist!
Awake from sleep, and joyful rise,
To hear the morning seagulls’ cries,
Arise to dawn and with the sun
We’ll rest again when truth is done.
We’ll seek the truth and take no rest
To set our world among the best.
Let’s waste no time, it goes too fast,
In making sure the old God’s past.
Ignoring priests, for truth they smear,
In all we do we’ll be sincere
Then Nature will her thoughts reveal
To our enquiring questions’ zeal.
And as we learn and get to know,
As fears and superstitions go,
We’ll see the world in clearer light
When dawn dissolves the dark age night.
O Magna Mater, Queen of Truth
Guide us to thy Gnostic proof,
Great Mother, evolution’s light,
Whose dawn shall break the dark age night.
Our journey into the future is amazingly unprepared. Scientists and politicians are afraid to admit that sometimes they do not know what will happen. They are cautious about their predictions and do not care to speak in a way that might cause a panic, especially in the press. When threats are global in scale we ignore them. We do not agonize over prophecies of doom. We assume that they will not happen in our lifetimes.
Those who believe in the precautionary principle would have us give up, or greatly decrease, burning fossil fuel. They warn that the carbon dioxide by-product of this energy source may sooner or later change, or even destabilize, the climate.
Most of us know in our hearts that these warnings should be heeded but do not know what to do about it. Few of us will reduce our personal use of fossil fuel energy to warm, or cool, our homes or drive our cars. Yet we should not wait to act.
For most of us, what we know of the earth comes from books and television programmes that present either the single-minded view of a specialist, or persuasion from a talented lobbyist. We live in adversarial not considered times and tend to hear only the arguments of each of the special-interest groups. Even when they know that they are wrong they never admit it. They all fight for the interests of their group while claiming to speak for humankind.
One thing helpful to lessen the chances or consequences of catastrophe is a guide-book for civilization free of our mistakes. A proper gift for our children and grandchildren is an accurate record of all we know about the present and past environment. No such book exists.
We are so ignorant that we give equal place on our book-shelves to the extravagances of Christianity, astrology and homeopathy as we do to scientific books. Books on those subjects have in the past bemused us, entertained us or fed our hypochondria. Still, today, especially in the USA, many take them seriously and treat them as if they were reporting facts. Often they even appear on science shelves of bookshops, so that some people cannot distinguish science from superstition.
The discovery that bacteria and viruses cause infectious diseases is relatively recent. Imagine the consequences if such knowledge were lost. Imagine the survivors of a world catastrophe trying to cope with a cholera epidemic using knowledge gathered from a tattered bible or a book on reflexology. Yet, such books would be more likely to have survived in the debris, and be readable, than a medical text.
What we need is a manual for personal survival, and for preserving the world. It should serve for reading for pleasure, for devotion, as a source of facts and even as a basic text for primary schoolchildren. It would be a primer of philosophy, science and ourselves. We should be able to dip in it anywhere and feel enlightened. It would explain the natural selection of all living things, and give the key facts of living. It would range from our relationship with other creatures, and our place in the Solar System and the Universe, to our duties and responsibilities to each other and to Nature.
In its time, the Bible has been respected for defining personal and social standards. Yet the standards of the bible are ancient ones that are inappropriate in many respects for modern times. They applied at a time when humanity had no chance of destroying their environment on anything other than a local scale. The threat now is global, yet intelligent people look for answers into a primitive book, believing that God speaks through it.
We need a new book that would serve in the same way as the bible did but acknowledge modern realities and discoveries, and particularly science. It would give the people of today a proper understanding of our civilization and of the planet it occupies. It would inform them at an age when their minds were most receptive and give them truths they would remember for a lifetime.
It would be our survival manual. A book that would help us avoid disaster and recover if it happened. It would help make responsible science central in our culture and in our heritage. Whatever else may be wrong with our selfish society, science still provides the best explanation we have of Nature.
Religion does not require belief in a god. When consciousness grew in human beings they were struck with awe at Nature. The earliest religions were based upon the idea of a goddess—Nature and the queen of heaven, the Goddess of love and the Great Mother. Religion then was essentially joyous.
The new rulers, the priests and warriors wanted something in their own image and built upon mankind’s feelings of guilt from which came the need for atonement and a redeemer. The priests taught mankind to disregard Nature and worship instead the supernatural, a power they invented beyond Nature which controlled Nature and demanded obeisance and sacrifice—they invented God. Human beings fell into the hands of the theologian with his inspired revelations and the real world became a Vale of Woe.
Theology concerns ideas and conceptions humans entertain respecting the god they have invented—a male anthropomorphic being, Christians call God. Religion, irrespective of scientific evidence, asserts the truth of a particular form of theology and the system of dogmas built up around it, the adherence to which constitutes the sum of duty. It is morally wrong not to accept it. The fear of God is the motive for morality rather than the natural motives of co-operation—human love and empathy. The most popular or otherwise dominant religion often despotically forces upon everyone its dogmatic principles and observances. That religion comes to be religion. The priests and preachers tell us the question is settled—religion is Christianity. All religious recruits need to decide is what brand they prefer.
It is not true. Questions of religion are not settled. A growing minority demands a review. Theologians pretend to welcome this and launch into a thousand theological discussions in a thousand theological discussion groups. Learned authorities and religious correspondents write articles and features explaining the arguments and defining the terms for readers of the national broadsheets and the religious press. Complicated all this obfuscation might be but it can all be cut through easily. It is all intended to confuse so that doubters will conclude it is too complicated and settle for the simplicities of old. In fact, transcendental religions are nonsense, and Christianity is a fraud. Science has proved it.
When the holy books were written mankind had no understanding of Nature. Since the Renaissance humans have regained interest in the phenomena and mysteries of life. Rational minds have travelled the paths of investigating Nature through science, and the claims of orthodox religion have been shown to be bogus. Today mankind has observed and studied the phenomena of Nature and has a much better, if still imperfect, understanding of it. Since mankind in the past had inferior facilities for observing the universe, their ideas of the it must have been imperfect. Why then should we hold these ancient and faulty conclusions to be sacred?
Christianity is founded on the Book of Genesis yet science has found so many errors of substance in the stories of Genesis that to continue to declare these as divine truth is to make the word of God a lie. Lies cannot be sacred. Christians ought to give up the Book of Genesis but cannot because it contains the foundation of the Christian theory of redemption. Without Genesis the need for Jesus to have been a divine sacrifice to save fallen mankind evaporates.
Any religion based on books thousands of years out of date cannot be right, even if they are not entirely wrong. The ideas of the universe, the origin of earth, life, mankind, good and evil and most other matters of science mentioned in the Christian holy books are incorrect. To accept as holy what we know to be wrong is irrational to the point of insanity.
New discoveries are made daily by science, but what has theology discovered? The scientist is searching for truth, and by determining only to accept the truth and to build on that alone, they are coming to understand some of Nature’s laws. Of the inventions and discoveries that have made human life easier, happier and more fulfilling, not one can be attributed to theology.
The theologian has the disadvantage that he is not trying to establish the truth and has no objective criteria for establishing whatever he does. He is not trying to get at the truth but trying to save his sinecure. People will eventually realize that the priest is parasitic upon them and no use at all.
Although western society is more secular than it has ever been, we still hear it said: "Nothing is more important to mankind than religion." Who says so? The answer is Christian evangelists and bishops. What they mean is that nothing is more important to them than Christianity.
That nothing is more important to mankind than religion is so self evidently false that it hardly needs arguing. Maslow, years ago gave us his hierarchy of wants. Religion is not the first on the list. The bishops and evangelists interject: "Ah, but all the basic wants have been fulfilled." So they are not claiming that religion is absolutely more important than any need of mankind but only a relatively unimportant one which arises only when more important ones have been filled.
The spiritual feeling that humans have of being part of Nature and wanting to express their awe and wonder at it, is really what the clergymen are talking about. A few people are coming to realize this and are rejecting the ogre that Christians try to present as a loving God. When a majority do, mankind might be happier and more secure.
The word Nature comes from the word meaning to be born, as in nativity. Among the things that Nature is are the essence of life, the universe and its phenomena, forces, energies and laws, personality, instinctive or intuitive behaviour, and so on. Naturalism is the doctrine that all truths may be gleaned from observation of the natural world without recourse to the supernatural for revelation. Nature does not admit of the supernatural because, if it happens at all, it must be natural and naturalism discards all supernatural revelation as superstition.
So, all our views are natural. Nothing exists outside of Nature, and nothing is supernatural. There are no gods, spirits or demons—immaterial "sentientities" that interfere with our lives. The concept of spirits is in fact metaphorical, just as we speak of Lady Luck or Jack Frost. The demons and angels that people feel are influencing their lives are metaphors for the choices they are making and how they turn out. Demons and angels do not choose or manipulate us but we make choices that might have angelic or demonic consequences, or sometimes we have fortune or misfortune that we attribute to angels or demons. Demons are best avoided by making angelic choices in life. A man that beats up his neighbour’s grandma for the contents of her purse has made the choice himself. No devil possessed him, he chose the devilish act.
The guardians of the supernatural, Christian clergymen, not surprisingly, denigrate naturalism as being a state of animal uncivilization in which only the lower qualities of the mind are being used instead of the supposedly higher, spiritual powers engendered when the personality is handed over to the priesthood, but by seeking bliss in an imaginary future, we abandon our chances of getting it in this world. By hoping for heaven after we die, we fail to try to achieve heaven on earth.
Patriarchal religions encourage snobbery or insincere piety. Christians are often smug timeservers, dutifully attending church and regarding that as sufficient. Someone’s level of religiousness is usually measured by the amount of support given to some particular form of theology. To the adherents of such a theology, the naturalist, whose opinions lead them to believe that all theological theories are wrong and exploitative would be considered irreligious, when in the most profound sense they are more religious than the religious.
The guiding stars of naturalism are Wisdom and empathy. Adelphiasophists do not fear the vengeance of any vindictive and jealous god but picture Nature as the Goddess, the Great Mother of all things who prepares the world into which we are brought so that it can nourish and protect us. Yet, if we damage our world, it will damage us back—eventually. People have a right to believe anything they please, but if they choose to practice something contrary to Nature, she might rebuke them severely. Dr Johnson understood that Nature kicks back. Boswell challenged Johnson to refute Bishop Berkeley’s idealist doctrine that everything exists only in the mind. Boswell wrote:
Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it—"I refute it thus."
We have therefore a duty to respect the Mother and all that is hers—to empathize—or we might regret it. We are not the pinnacle of creation free to do as we like because God has given us power over the world. We are a foetus in a womb which protects us and we had better not damage it. We are not here to get rich but to take delight in the world, and Adelphiasophists can delight in the natural world without having to believe that joy can only be had in some other unnatural world.
Nature is the only source of our value judgements. To reject it is to reject all value. What is there to put in its place? Anything else must be purely theoretical with no basis in reality. Anything that is seen as valuable in it, to the exclusion of all the rest means that the whole must be retained—part of Nature is not possible. Admittedly, it is possible to consider only parts of Nature to generate a new ideology, but it leaves the door open for someone to take another part and come to a different conclusion. Indeed, such partial ideologies are the exact danger in the world. By pretending to be complete in themselves they cut a dangerous path through Nature leading to danger to us all. The only proper thing is to consider all, and that leads to a conservationist system in which caution is uppermost.
To pretend that private ownership and private profit are natural and the proper way for society to be ordered is to allow powerful minorities to destroy the living space of others and therefore their lives. Ultimately communism is no different, because it sanctifies humanity to the extinction of other species. Fools in France cut down avenues of trees because they blame them for killing speeding motorists that crash into them!
The same is true of making religious choices. Only the whole can justifiably and sensibly be considered, and the whole is Nature itself, not flakes off it. For the modern human, that is a problem because no one has been brought up to consider Nature as primary. For two thousand years God has been primary. Only by thinking of Nature as primary and seeking to work within her confines can proper values be determined. In other words, we have not yet had the experience of working with the primacy of Nature at heart to make willy-nilly judgements.
It is all the more reason to be cautious and to refuse to be hassled and bundled into decisions by our enemies. We have to be open-minded about all questions except that Nature is prime. That has to be taken as written, even if it is contrary to everything we have believed in hitherto. We have to start somewhere and this is where.
It is hard to say that human beings have any inclination to preserve humanity, and it is probably, sadly, untrue. People do not think of themselves as being part of the human species and to have any duty to preserve it. They only can see it in the sense of being concerned for their children and perhaps their grandchildren. They want to do their best for them, to give them a greater chance of success in their lives that are the continuation of our own. It ought, though, to be sufficient to persuade people that they should be interested in keeping the world healthy. They might not be able to conceive of their relationship to the whole vast numbers of humanity but they can identify a few generations ahead, and all that has to be done to keep the world healthy for future generations is for each generation to keep it healthy for the next.
All the old values we have held are not necessarily wrong. Religions and ideologies are generally selections from Nature and so are not necessarily wrong in themselves. Inasmuch as some of them have stood the test of time, they probably can be retained when considered in the whole, because they have come down to us from times when Goddess morality dominated or was at least still influential. Thus we can accept the Christianity saying, “Love thy neighbour,” but must reject the Christian idea that the world is a vale of woe merely to be lived through as a trial. That debases the world utterly and can only lead us to devalue it in practice.
In early Hinduism, good people conform to “Rita,” the great pattern of Nature that is revealed in cosmic order, moral virtues, social stability and temple ritual. Truth is “Satya,” a title of Buddha, and means whatever corresponds or is in harmony with reality or Rita. Even the gods are born of Rita and have to conform with it.
The Chinese have the same concept in Tao, meaning the ultimate reality, the Way Nature is, the Way it continues and evolves, the Way that righteous people live their lives to conform with Nature. Confucius says that harmony with Nature is prized.
The Persians also valued Rita, called Arta and Asha, and again they prized Truth as whatever conformed with Arta. The Jews used the word “Emeth” in respect of the Law, meaning it was true, but taking truth to be permanent and therefore loyal and faithful.
The point about all of this is that ancient religions had concepts that preceded gods—the concepts of truth and reality. They saw that these were somehow permanent and reliable and conformed with everyday ideas of order, harmony and regularity—they conformed with Nature, and the proper way for human beings to live was also in conformity with Nature. On top of these true beliefs, patriarchal societies built a superstructure that hid the truths at their heart—the superstructure of patriarchal father figures who sent sons as saviours and who controlled rather than conformed with Nature. The reason was plain. Nature was seen as the primaeval Goddess—the mother who nurtured us of her own substance.
It is the Goddess, the Way if that is preferred, that requires us to take care of young children and not abuse them and to venerate old folk and not batter and rob them, because they are vulnerable targets. You might not like old people and prefer dogs to children but you should treat them according to Nature’s order—with respect if not love! It is Nature not God who provides yardsticks of morality. We might have inexplicable feelings of rage, but Nature has a proper way of responding, and it is objective—we should not offend her whether directly or indirectly. We might instinctively hate spiders, but should we automatically kill them?
Nature has been disparaged to such an extent that only about fifty years ago it was still the norm to speak of the conquest of Nature by man. Nature was seen as the ogre, the monster that controlled the vale of woe as opposed to the great angel that we would meet when we die—for we are all good, of course—we assume. To control the monster in life was a good obstacle course to ensure we reached heaven as winners. Of course, man did not control Nature and was not winning any imaginary battle. Some men were getting the benefits of knowing certain things about Nature and certain resources of Nature that benefitted them, and the rest of us won only to the extent that the powerful needed us for them to benefit.
Man against Nature arises because men have thought of themselves as above Nature or outside of it. It does not seem coincidental that this error has grown into dangerous proportions with the growth of transcendental almighty father religions. The almighty father, who is really purely imaginary, is outside of nature and in control of it. This father has made human men in His own image and has given them the stewardship of all of the rest of Creation. Is it surprising that this deluded vertebrate, that thinks it has a brain, should conclude that he is God? Man is now outside of Nature in this homunculus creature, self-created and amazing, the master of all he beholds—and the destroyer!
Nature is the opposite of all the things this man thinks is good—the human, the synthetic, the supernatural and the spiritual. When we dominate something, we subjugate it into slavery for that is what Nature is for—we are its stewards or slavemasters. The Goddess is our bondsmaiden. It is quite acceptable to rape her! The Goddess provides us with beautiful trees for our eyes, to freshen the air for our lungs, to provide shade and shelter for our feeble bodies, and our gratitude is to chop and burn them down and to make floorboards out of them.
The old dying god used to revivify each year to replenish the soil and fertilize the fields and domestic animals, but now he is permanently dead. We have chemicals to fertilize, and insecticides and weedkillers to kill what we do not like, and Frankenstein plants that will be the only ones able to live among all the chemicals, thus creating a Frankenstein god that will soon go insane and kill us all. We begin to get allergies and asthma, plagues, coughs and cancers.
Some people are suddenly awakening to the fact that we are a part of Nature not above it and certainly not in control of it. We have sent it spinning out of control, and the only proffered remedy is more of the same—in hope! We are shelterless in a gathering storm, blind and going insane: mankind—the king Lear species. We can note that communists and socialists have disappeared from the political scene, liberals are present only in name and democrats are conservatives in the greedy sense of the word, not in any sense that they want to conserve anything except their own wealth and power. These changes are presented as improvements in the world, yet the insanity intensifies. We conquer more and more, subdue it and destroy it in our huge machines but the machines take on a life of their own and now they are threatening us. Like Sam McGee, but this is no joke, we shall step into our own furnace, out of necessity.
The founders of science did so to control Nature as their God had instructed them. Science is not to control Nature, but to understand it and allow us to live in harmony with it. We can dissect a fly to find out how it works but we cannot do the same to the biosphere that sustains us on earth. What is dissected is dead. Modern scientists and their paymasters need to remember this simple fact—an entity has to be whole to live! There is always a step too far. When we take it we shall find that the Goddess will conquer the conquerors—her worms and maggots will consume us and there will be no one to commisserate.
In the age of human dissolution of Nature, we can only save ourselves and the planet as we know it by eschewing greed, consumption and wealth in favour of Wisdom—the ability to use what we learn about Nature in such a way as to preserve her rather than progressing her destruction. This requires us to proceed along the road of concern, from concern only for self and our children, beyond concern for our relatives and clan, beyond concern for our province and nation beyond even concern for the whole of humanity, to concern for the kinunity of Nature—the Goddess herself.
Nature is rational not whimsical, not in the sense that she is herself thinking, but that she is able to be understood in a rational way and therefore humans have to exercise their own rational skills to understand her. But this understanding must be gained in such a way that it deepens our humility rather than expands our ego.
Wisdom cannot be egotistical—it is a contradiction. Wisdom requires humility, and our greater knowledge of Nature ought to be accompanied by a greater sense of the marvellous depth and mystery of it rather than unjustified pride in conquest merely because we managed to remove one of her infinite veils.
Because something happens on earth does not mean it is natural. Of course, it is natural in the sense that it occurs at all, but it is a case of the exception that proves the rule. A mother sometimes murders her children, but it is not natural to do so, as few will disagree. The mother that does so is deranged or wants to save her children from a crueller fate.
The worst vices that humans have are unnatural desires—not sexual peccadilloes, like homosexuality, called unnatural vices in former times—but desires like greed, which is an unnatural attachment to something such that excess of it is wanted when sufficient is enough. Wealth and power are the worst unnatural desires being greed for money and for authority.
We should take from Nature only what we need and, not only reject excess but be angry that Nature is being exploited so that excess of something can be offerred to us. What is taken to excess is soon discarded, perhaps before it has even been used at all, and is then simply waste. We live in the waste land and, unless we change our ways, it will become the Wasteland.
Wealth can only be seen in relation to its entropic effects. Real wealth is had at minimal cost to Nature but most wealth today is spurious wealth, divorced from the real costs, which in truth outweigh the wealth. That is why geothermal power is wealth but nuclear power is not.
Nor can wealth and status based on social hysteria be admired, because they are too often acquired at the cost of the earth or her children. We should bring up our children not to adulate money or outlandish behaviour but to admire selfless service to Nature and her kinunity. Even Christians no longer teach the myths of sainthood, rightly, since they are nearly all lies, but there are still people in this day and age who can be taught as examples of selfless service.
Physical death is not bad but good, because it allows our children and future generations to live, and should be celebrated because it is the sacrifice that every creature undergoes for the sake of others, and allows us to be reminded of what the dead person did in life.
Even illness is not bad, though no one would say it was particularly good either. Yet, it is good in some ways because we have to accept some illness so that Nature can prepare our defences against anything more serious. Plainly, if something is life threatening, it is natural for us to do all we can to relieve it, but it is absurd and ultimately counter productive for us to take anti-biotics at every sneeze and swill gallons of chlorinated water all over our living spaces to kill "germs".
Science is the way the Goddess has provided for us to comprehend her, but science cannot be divorced from morals and logic. Just because science has revealed how something can be done does not mean that it should therefore be done. Logic and moral judgements are also necessary. It is our duty to be ill, not our right to use every chemical discovered to kill the innocent and often beneficial microbes that are blamed for afflicting us. Nature has her own defences and they should be allowed to work. Medicines should be for acute and chronic cases, and operations should be to improve quality of life and prevent death.
Our aim in life is Wisdom and that is to understand our place and relationship with the kinunity of the Goddess and to know how to live our lives in symbiosis with Nature.
Adelphiasophists become real beings when they find and recognize a common sentience with the whole of Nature. One might be inclined to envision a vantage point from which Nature in all its relations can be seen, but that really puts us beyond Nature. The word sentience is chosen deliberately because it is more than "seeing"—it is feeling. This gnosis can come through practical and theoretical knowledge, but can be found in many other ways. Some Christians experience it but attribute it to the wrong cause.
The real aim of science is to integrate the whole of humanity into those elements in phase with the cosmos.Teilhard de Chardin.
It is the appreciation of our kinunity with the cosmos and everything in it. In this sense, Adelphiasophism is not taught—it is appreciated. Science can be taught and love of Nature can be encouraged, but "appreciation" comes to us like a revelation.
Then we can never harm Nature for we appreciate her as ourselves, and a natural loss seems to us like the loss of a child. On its discovery, we will gasp in astonishment, sob with pain and frustration and suddenly know the real meaning of love and of being. That is when we stop being only a spectator.
The virtue to be cultivated as a result of being wise, is care. Care has to be for the whole kinunity of Nature or else it is selfish. Nature’s kinunity is truly cosmopolitan for everything in creation is a citizen of the cosmos and a child of the Goddess. We must cultivate care for everything in Nature as if it were our brother, so that we would hardly squash a snail without serious consideration and pause for concern.
No one necessarily has to go out of their way to honour Nature’s way. Providing that our normal employment is not harmful or servicing or dependent upon harmful actions against Nature, then doing an everyday job nobly and justly and to the best of our ability is sufficient. Who, though, will not make an additional effort for the Goddess?
I shall not kill.
I shall treat Nature as my own kin.
I shall take care of my kin and shall reproach them only in kindness.
I shall not frighten or bring misery on to people.
I shall not make anyone’s life harder than it is.
I shall not cause hunger or weeping or injury.
I shall show good will and kindness towards people.
I shall see any misfortune to others as my own misfortune.
I shall never ask anyone to do what I would not do myself.
When I scatter to the winds and sink into the earth to rejoin the Goddess, I shall die gladly knowing she has not been offended by my life.
When I become convinced that the universe is natural—that all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood, the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell, the dungeon was flooded with light, and all the bolts, and bars, and manacles became dust. I was no longer a servant, a serf, or a slave. There was for me no master in all the wide world—not even in infinite space. I was free.
For the first time I was free. There were no prohibited places in all the realms of thought.
I was free. I stood erect and fearlessly, joyously, faced all worlds. And then my heart was filled with gratitude, with thankfulness, and went out in love to all the heroes, the thinkers who gave their lives for the liberty of hand and brain.
And then I vowed to grasp the torch that they had held, and hold it high, that light might conquer darkness.
Relative to homeopathy, reflexology—two "unscientific" targets near the beginning of this piece. Homeopathy is well-proven for its effectiveness in a variety of areas—all the double blind tests you could wish for—as a redneck columnist in the New Zealand Listener discovered when he suggested strongly that pharmacists who retailed homeopathic remedies were defrauding the public. Representatives from New Zealand homeopathic colleges provided a fairly substantive rebuttal of his nonsense, (and I suggested that he would be better off targeting pharmacists for their sale of beauty preparations).
Relative to reflexology, I would not consult a surgeon for the treatment of ringworm, nor an obstetrician to sort out a brain tumour. Most natural health modalities have focussed effectiveness. (I certainly wouldn’t consult a reflexologist in respect of arthritis, but while I was in hospital a year or two back for some minor surgery, a friend of mine who was visiting offered me a reflexology treatment. It coincided with the rounds of the nurse taking blood-pressure readings. That blood pressure reading was markedly lower —about ten points—than the others which had been consistently 120/80 for the previous few days. Not enough swallows for a summer, but something to suggest that blanket dismissal is a trifle hasty.
I agree that problems do occur when natural health practitioners claim a competence beyond their grasp, but the same can certainly be said of orthodox medical practitioners, who (JAMA figures) each day in the USA alone, cause the death of an equivalent jumbo jet full of passengers as a result of misdiagnosis, incorrect prescription, and other iatrogenic disorders.
I agree that much natural health care does not lend itself to the same procedures that are used to evaluate mainstream medical practice. (These "scientific" evaluation procedures are in any case not nearly infallible. See the JAMA figures above. Think thalidomide, etc etc.) I think a fair analogy is to suggest that neither does a Maori need to demonstrate that heis identical with a European in order to insist that he be treated well, and likewise women do not need to demonstrate they are the same as men to claim equal consideration. Much that claims to be "scientific" commentary on natural health care is no more than Professor Higgins wailing, "Why can’t awoman be more like a man." (By the same token the "spiritual" rejection of mainstream procedures by blinkered New Agers and the like is just as insane.)
Regards, Dave Woodward Executive Committee, Supervisory Council, NZ Charter of Health Practitioners.
I haven’t the least doubt that both can do some good because they mean giving the patient attention, care and, in the case of reflexology, touch, which I see from your website (only briefly glanced at) you would consider valuable. With Mike once, in Torquay, on a quiet Sunday afternoon, we heard what seemed to be moaning. We tracked it down to an old woman who had stumbled walking up some narrow steps and had sprained or broken her ankle. I went to phone for help while Mike comforted the distressed old woman. Later, Mike said she hung on to him like a limpet. She was of course frightened and distressed, but we also thought she needed to be touched. Old people are not often touched, especially when their families move away. Sorry for the story but I thought you might like it.
So, yes, these things can help, as can all care and concern for others. And, you are also right that conventional practitioners are not always saints or even too clever. But, I think you get our point when you say:
I agree that problems do occur when natural health practitioners claim a competence beyond their grasp.
Your expression "blinkered new agers" is about right—they differ not a whit from blinkered Christians. We really will not accept that "Faith," in whatever the panacea is, can replace proper investigation and evidence of efficacy, though it plainly can help. The problem always is that too many people want to earn a fast buck by conning gullible people with unrealistic and often dangerous claims—beauty treatment! You are obviously aware and sensitive to it, but the field is wide open to charlatans, so we cannot be execessively generous. There can be nothing wrong with any form of treatment that offers comfort and attention, provided that it is appropriate. I think we agree on this.
Incidentally, the woman next door is from New Zealand—Wellington. A windy place, she says, where rain falls horizontally!
The ability to receive and give touch is vital to our health.
Given the strength of wind and the extremely hilly terrain, the rain in Wellington has been known to fall not just horizontally but uphill. Our politicians, based in Wellington, cannot help but be affected by this state of affairs, though none will acknowledge it.
If you have glanced at the spiritual section of my site you will realise that it is an attempt to order an ongoing personal mystical experience within the terminology of the Presbyterianism I grew up in—(Ah, so that’s what it is really about.) While the experience is no less valid or real, I have to acknowledge that Mike’s work on the Hidden Jesus, which I have been dipping into for well over a year is obliging me to recast the experience in terms which reconcile the Essene earthly kingdom of God—which I concede was probably what Jesus was about—and the inner, mystical experience which Paul reports on, and seems to have grafted on to the Jesus movement.
This process is still very much in transit. I note Mike seems to have relatively little time for the latter. I can assure him it is worth a second, more sympathetic, look; always bearing in mind that the stories, even my best ones, which are used to encapsulate it, almost by definition fall short. As I remark elsewhere, in order to gain ongoing experience of this state given it has once been attained, almost everything we have learned on the outward path of the prodigal must be abandoned. It has been a truism of the human potential movement for some years that one cannot think and have a feeling about something at the same time. Much the same applies to mystical experience. I think e.e. cummings expresses it as well as any: "words, which stand helplessly before the spirit at bay..."
And please convey to Mike my deep appreciation for the free availability of the work he has obviously put so much time and study into. Regards, Dave