Post by Heron on Apr 1, 2011 18:03:55 GMT -1
A Buddhist once said to me that he didn’t see the need for stories and myths, that religious truths were beyond stories, and even beyond words or language of any sort. From the point of view of the mystic, godhood is perceived as undifferentiated spirit, whether that spirit is transcendental or immanent in the world about us. What need of stories if you have an experience that is beyond anything that can be said or expressed in terms of everyday reality? I would say two things in response to this view. The first is that such experiences are rare both in terms of the number of people who have them at all and, even among such people, in their frequency. If we think typically of an individual having two or three such ‘full-on’ experiences in a lifetime, with, maybe, occasional echoes at other times, this can be enough to sustain a lifetime of religious devotion. But that devotion needs to take a form. This might be a regime of contemplation. It might be a deliberate cultivation of a way of life that makes the repetition of such experiences possible or more likely. Or it may be a set of rituals or observances to acknowledge the source of the experience or to share aspects of it with others. Or, indeed, it might take the form of stories, dramatisations, realisations of the nature of the gods in deeds and displays of their attributes.
Consider this from the goddess Flora as reported by Ovid :
I enjoy perpetual spring; to me the year is always most beauteous;
the tree always bears its foliage; the earth its herbage.
vere fruor semper: semper nitidissimus annus,
arbor habet frondes, pabula semper humus.
Here the suggestion is that the goddess is perpetually in the same state, not subject to the ageing process or even to the turning of the seasons. She has her whole existence in a time when the flowers are blooming in spring. We might imagine her extending her domain into the summer. But where is she in autumn and winter? There are a number of ways in which we might answer that question, and I think the answers will give a clue to the nature of the gods.
If we look at actual practice, whether in the ancient world or amongst neo-pagans, we certainly won’t find consistency. Should we expect this? There is a sense in which the experience of Flora and the experience of flowers in spring are one. But we can also turn to her at other times. I think of David Jones’ line “Mother of Flowers save them then where no flower blows.” That is, the gods can be appealed to in their apparent absence as well as celebrated when they are present. But even this is too limiting. For polytheists, the gods are not frozen into abstract planes and so are complex beings with all the inconsistencies of complex beings like us. They can represent ideal states. They can also articulate the desire for such states in their absence. And further to this they can also move beyond such states, transforming themselves and our understanding of them in the process.
Should we restrict our understanding of Rigantona or Epona by thinking simply of a goddess associated with horses? Stories about Rhiannon suggest that horses are just one part of what she was about. But for a goddess actually called Rigantona we have nothing solid to go on. Epona is recorded in historical deposits as having a definite association with horses, stables and the Roman calvary. But if we are not members of a cavalry unit or even regular riders of horses, does this mean she has no relevance to us? Clearly not. The horse is a powerful symbol of itself and the idea of a goddess associated with horses as well as sovereignty has many resonances that we may respond to.
Beyond historical deposits from the ages of polytheistic paganism, does the imagery of such a goddess remain in the human imagination? Certainly there are stories about a divine female on a white horse that can speak to us directly. The gods can also speak to us through their appearance in such narratives without necessarily being defined in them as ‘gods’. In fact it might be that they are more effectively godlike by not being defined or ‘fossilized’ into an ideal state of godhood. Rhiannon comes riding out of Annwn on a white horse breathing divinity, though the story dwells, rather, on her practicality in getting herself the husband she wants. Her horse associations and her attributes as a goddess of sovereignty are certainly apparent, but so is the narrative impulse of the particular story which contains them. We can read this as a ‘corrupted’ or a transformed version of a sovereignty myth, or we can read the story for itself. Or, rather, we can do either or both of these things simultaneously. Because, after all, that is how stories work. They are interesting in themselves precisely because they also contain many other things that add to the bare bones of the narrative, amplify emerging themes, and resonate with further significances that point beyond the story to other stories and insights into the nature of all manner of things.
Intertextually, there are images that appear in the story of Rhiannon that also appear elsewhere. The Scots ballad of True Thomas, which itself occurs in different versions, features the Queen of Faery who comes on a white horse to carry off Thomas, not on the roads to Righteousness or Wickedness but on the road that winds across the Ferny Brae to the Land of Faery. She gives him the gift of true utterance, or in some versions, of poetry. Alongside the ballad there are other fragments of prose folk narrative concerning Thomas of Ercildoune and his comings and goings to and from the Otherworld. John Keats made a poem – ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ – out of the tale and further images recur in John Waterhouse’s painting based on the poem. Can the gods speak to us through such images, and if so is it even pertinent to consider, in this respect, to what extent, for instance, Keat’s poem owes anything to a sovereignty myth?
Perhaps the gods speak to us through such stories even where they do not specifically take the form of ‘myths’? Consider this attempted definition of what the gods might be from Ronald Hutton. He says they
“may be passionate projections of the human heart and mind. This may well be so. It may equally well be true, however, that human belief has actually given them life, or else that they have always existed and have been perceived anew because people now have need of them.”
That is the voice of an historian obviously setting down a range of interpretative possibilities without committing himself to any of them, though his personal feelings here seem pretty clear. If the gods are always there and are rediscovered when we have need of them, appearing in stories is one way that they might appear. And if our need of them is such that it is not necessary to define them in a particular way, or even as gods at all, then they might not actually appear as ‘gods’. Or maybe it’s not until after they have appeared that we recognise them as such. My own view is more that they are there whether or not we have a need of them, or recognise their presence. But such distinctions may be more subtle than is necessary. That we acknowledge them, whether out of need, desire or simple acceptance may not make too much difference to them. Our choice is whether we are prepared to live in the world with them or live in it as if they were not there.
Consider this from the goddess Flora as reported by Ovid :
I enjoy perpetual spring; to me the year is always most beauteous;
the tree always bears its foliage; the earth its herbage.
vere fruor semper: semper nitidissimus annus,
arbor habet frondes, pabula semper humus.
(Fasti V. l.207-208)
Here the suggestion is that the goddess is perpetually in the same state, not subject to the ageing process or even to the turning of the seasons. She has her whole existence in a time when the flowers are blooming in spring. We might imagine her extending her domain into the summer. But where is she in autumn and winter? There are a number of ways in which we might answer that question, and I think the answers will give a clue to the nature of the gods.
If we look at actual practice, whether in the ancient world or amongst neo-pagans, we certainly won’t find consistency. Should we expect this? There is a sense in which the experience of Flora and the experience of flowers in spring are one. But we can also turn to her at other times. I think of David Jones’ line “Mother of Flowers save them then where no flower blows.” That is, the gods can be appealed to in their apparent absence as well as celebrated when they are present. But even this is too limiting. For polytheists, the gods are not frozen into abstract planes and so are complex beings with all the inconsistencies of complex beings like us. They can represent ideal states. They can also articulate the desire for such states in their absence. And further to this they can also move beyond such states, transforming themselves and our understanding of them in the process.
Should we restrict our understanding of Rigantona or Epona by thinking simply of a goddess associated with horses? Stories about Rhiannon suggest that horses are just one part of what she was about. But for a goddess actually called Rigantona we have nothing solid to go on. Epona is recorded in historical deposits as having a definite association with horses, stables and the Roman calvary. But if we are not members of a cavalry unit or even regular riders of horses, does this mean she has no relevance to us? Clearly not. The horse is a powerful symbol of itself and the idea of a goddess associated with horses as well as sovereignty has many resonances that we may respond to.
Beyond historical deposits from the ages of polytheistic paganism, does the imagery of such a goddess remain in the human imagination? Certainly there are stories about a divine female on a white horse that can speak to us directly. The gods can also speak to us through their appearance in such narratives without necessarily being defined in them as ‘gods’. In fact it might be that they are more effectively godlike by not being defined or ‘fossilized’ into an ideal state of godhood. Rhiannon comes riding out of Annwn on a white horse breathing divinity, though the story dwells, rather, on her practicality in getting herself the husband she wants. Her horse associations and her attributes as a goddess of sovereignty are certainly apparent, but so is the narrative impulse of the particular story which contains them. We can read this as a ‘corrupted’ or a transformed version of a sovereignty myth, or we can read the story for itself. Or, rather, we can do either or both of these things simultaneously. Because, after all, that is how stories work. They are interesting in themselves precisely because they also contain many other things that add to the bare bones of the narrative, amplify emerging themes, and resonate with further significances that point beyond the story to other stories and insights into the nature of all manner of things.
Intertextually, there are images that appear in the story of Rhiannon that also appear elsewhere. The Scots ballad of True Thomas, which itself occurs in different versions, features the Queen of Faery who comes on a white horse to carry off Thomas, not on the roads to Righteousness or Wickedness but on the road that winds across the Ferny Brae to the Land of Faery. She gives him the gift of true utterance, or in some versions, of poetry. Alongside the ballad there are other fragments of prose folk narrative concerning Thomas of Ercildoune and his comings and goings to and from the Otherworld. John Keats made a poem – ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ – out of the tale and further images recur in John Waterhouse’s painting based on the poem. Can the gods speak to us through such images, and if so is it even pertinent to consider, in this respect, to what extent, for instance, Keat’s poem owes anything to a sovereignty myth?
Perhaps the gods speak to us through such stories even where they do not specifically take the form of ‘myths’? Consider this attempted definition of what the gods might be from Ronald Hutton. He says they
“may be passionate projections of the human heart and mind. This may well be so. It may equally well be true, however, that human belief has actually given them life, or else that they have always existed and have been perceived anew because people now have need of them.”
( from The Triumph of the Moon )
That is the voice of an historian obviously setting down a range of interpretative possibilities without committing himself to any of them, though his personal feelings here seem pretty clear. If the gods are always there and are rediscovered when we have need of them, appearing in stories is one way that they might appear. And if our need of them is such that it is not necessary to define them in a particular way, or even as gods at all, then they might not actually appear as ‘gods’. Or maybe it’s not until after they have appeared that we recognise them as such. My own view is more that they are there whether or not we have a need of them, or recognise their presence. But such distinctions may be more subtle than is necessary. That we acknowledge them, whether out of need, desire or simple acceptance may not make too much difference to them. Our choice is whether we are prepared to live in the world with them or live in it as if they were not there.