Letter Never Sent

Christians Hail Rightist’s Call To Oust Arabs:

A spokesman in DeLay’s office rejected the claim of religious exclusivism, citing many occasions when the Majority Whip spoke out in favor of religious tolerance. The spokesman declined to comment on Elon’s remarks.

During his speech last week, Elon quoted from Chapter 33 of Numbers, in which God tells Moses that the children of Israel are mean to inherit the land of Canaan. God then instructs the children of Israel: “Ye shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you… But if ye will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then shall those that ye let remain of them be as pricks in your eyes, and as thorns in your sides, and they shall vex you in the land wherein ye dwell.”

Drawing loud cheers from the audience, Elon said, “I know, we always have to be politically correct, but it is very, very complicated to be politically correct when you have to correct so many political mistakes.”

To correct such mistakes, said Elon, an Orthodox rabbi, “Let’s turn to the Bible, which says very clearly… we have to resettle them, to relocate them, and to have a Jewish state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.”

I probably have posted something along these lines before, but I have been chewing on these ideas again lately in my normal pattern of bubbling, pulsing angst so I thought some of you might find them interesting as concepts.

Personality Theories of Otto Rank

Life and death

Another interesting idea Rank introduced was the contest between life and death. He felt we have a “life instinct” that pushes us to become individuals, competent and independent, and a “death instinct” that pushes us to be part of a family, community, or humanity. We also feel a certain fear of these two. The “fear of life” is the fear of separation, loneliness, and alienation; the “fear of death” is the fear of getting lost in the whole, stagnating, being no-one.

Our lives are filled with separations, beginning with birth. Rank’s earliest work, in fact, concerned birth trauma, the idea that the anxiety experienced during birth was the model for all anxiety experienced afterwards. After birth, there’s weaning and discipline and school and work and heartbreaks…. But avoiding these separations is, literally, avoiding life and choosing death — never finding out what you can do, never leaving your family or small town, never leaving the womb!

So we must face our fears, recognizing that, to be fully developed, we must embrace both life and death, become individuals and nurture our relationships with others.

The artist

Rank also tackles the difficult issue of artistic creativity. On the one hand, Rank says, the artist has a particularly strong tendency towards glorification of his own will. Unlike the rest of us, he feels compelled to remake reality in his own image. And yet a true artist also needs immortality, which he can only achieve by identifying himself with the collective will of his culture and religion. Good art could be understood as a joining of the material and the spiritual, the specific and the universal, or the individual and humanity.

This joining doesn’t come easily, though. It begins with the will, Rank’s word for the ego, but an ego imbued with power. We are all born with a will to be ourselves, to be free of domination. In early childhood, we exercise our will in our efforts to do things independently of our parents. Later, we fight the domination of other authorities, including the inner authority of our sexual drives. How our struggle for independence goes determines the type of person we become. Rank describes three basic types:

First, there is the adapted type. These people learn to “will” what they have been forced to do. They obey authority, their society’s moral code, and, as best as they can, their sexual impulses. This is a passive, duty-bound creature that Rank suggests is, in fact, the average person.

Second, there is the neurotic type. These people have a much stronger will than the average person, but it is totally engaged in the fight against external and internal domination. They even fight the expression of their own will, so there is no will left over to actually do anything with the freedom won. Instead, they worry and feel guilty about being so “willful.” They are, however, at a higher level of moral development than the adapted type.

Third, there is the productive type, which Rank also refers to as the artist, the genius, the creative type, the self-conscious type, and, simply, the human being. Instead of fighting themselves, these people accept and affirm themselves, and create an ideal, which functions as a positive focus for will. The artist creates himself or herself, and then goes on to create a new world as well.

I always knew there was something more going on in the genesis story.

Ophites

A Gnostic sect which evolved during the second century AD. and existed for several centuries afterwards. The name, or word, was derived from the Greek ophis, meaning “serpent, and relates to the great reverence which the Ophites had toward the serpent. The members progressed through full-fledged initiation ceremonies that included symbols for purity, life, spirit and fire. The entire system of the sect appears to be a combination of the mysteries of the Egyptian goddess Isis, concepts of oriental mythology, and early Christian doctrine.

According to the theologians Origen, Irenaeus and others, the essence of the Ophitic Doctrine was that the God of the Old Testament was a misanthropic deity from whose power mankind had to be liberated. From this point of view the serpent in the Garden of Eden was a benefactor to mankind when he urged Adam and Eve to revolt against such a God. Therefore, other enemies of Jehovah in the Old Testament became heroes of the sect.

As a mark of reverence for the serpent, it was reported, the snake took part in the sect’s communion service. The following was reported by Epiphanius (fourth century Church Father) who called the service abominable. The snake was kept in a chest known as the cista mystica. At the beginning of the service the snake is summoned out. He then rolls among the loaves of bread which are on the table after which are broken and eaten. Following this each of those present kiss the snake on the mouth for it has been tamed by a spell. They have then fallen down and worshipped the snake as a part of the Eucharist service. They claimed they have sent forth a hymn to the Father, and thus concluded their mysteries. A.G.H.

Today my roommate’s girlfriend, Sarah, called me up and invited me to attend the evening Unitarian service with her. We had been talking about going together since I knew she went every week and I had been missing the weekly ritual of meeting with people and discussing spiritual matters I had experienced growing up. Granted, growing up as a Southern Baptist was far from completely positive, but there was always something I sorta liked about seeing the same people every week and thinking quietly about those feelings inside me and my relationship to the universe and to other people.

The service itself was novel yet familiar. They appear to have some ritual (the voluntary lighting of votive candles to remember a loved one or to commemorate something) but at the same time are very hands off and liberal. Tonight they had some sort of Persian group playing music. It was pretty neat.

The sermon was very intellectual and mentally stimulating, references to Jung and world religious ideas were made to ask certain philosophical questions. The main thing I like about the Unitarians is that they reject the divinity of Jesus and the idea of original sin. At times I was uncomfortable with the openness of it, but that’s mainly my own reticience and self-maintained distance. I recommend checking it out.

• First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin
• Austin Area Interreligious Ministries

As it happens, only one of the hundreds of saber-rattlers in congress has a son in the military. I think these pigs at the trough ought to be the first to ship out in the event of war. I’m sure that idiot Lieberman or Lott can shoulder a modern-day musket. We’d probably be better off if they caught the wrong end of an Iraqi grenade or something. Lord knows they do nothing for us here but drive us to betray the very principles our constitution is supposed to uphold.

Abortion foes involve police in new tactic

Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer’s canonization, only 27 years after the Spanish priest’s death, was achieved in remarkably swift time by the Vatican’s saint-making timetables, which often stretch over decades or even centuries. …

Opus Dei has rejected charges that it is elitist and secretive, and much of the criticism of Escriva’s personality seemed to be tempered as Catholics saw the pope move along Escriva’s cause for sainthood at a quick pace.

In Norse mythology, Odin descends to hell and hangs upside down on the world-tree (Yggdrasil) for nine days where he discovers the secret magic of the runes. An ex-Jesuit professor of mine used to describe Odin as a ‘kickass Jesus’. The similarities between this and the crucifixion of Jesus are interesting. The Norse version seems to be a more assertive, powerful story. Like Jesus, Odin is impaled by a spear in his side, but unlike Jesus he hangs himself UPSIDE DOWN for nine days AND in hell no less. Both end in a triumphant fashion with the resurrection and ascent of Jesus into heaven and with Odin learning the secrets of the universe.

From a Unitarian sermon:

The author of 4000 Years of Christmas theorizes that some information about Christianity came to the north in garbled form and got included in stories about Odin, who becomes an all seeing father god. Odin’s story has some amazing parallels to the crucifixion of Jesus. For nine days Odin made a sacrifice of himself and pierced by a spear, he hung on a tree. (Jesus hung on a cross not nine days but for nine hours.) At the end Odin received a drink of mead, and then he cried out the letters of the alphabet. Odin gave humanity the alphabet-runes is what they are called–which is a revelation to whoever will become versed in their mystery. It allows those who can use it the ability to speak silently, to send messages, to make records and to make shopping lists. It is the god’s gift of civilization. It’s the gift of the written word.

From About.com:

According to the Eddas, the poetic saga of the Norse Gods, the Runic alphabet was a gift from Odin. The word ‘rune’ means ‘wisper,’ or ‘secret wisdom.’ A selection from the Eddas tells of their discovery. Odin hangs for nine nights upon the world tree, wounded, without food or water; finally, he sees the reflection of the runes in the water:

“Wounded I hung on a wind-swept gallows
For nine long nights,
Pierced by a spear, pledged to Odhinn,
Offered, myself to myself
The wisest know not from whence spring
The roots of that ancient rood.

They gave me no bread,
They gave me no mead,
I looked down;
with a loud cry
I took up runes;
from that tree I fell.”

From here:

“The Tau was the basis for what is now called the “cross” taken from the Latin “crux”. “The shape of the [two-beamed cross] had its origin in ancient Chaldea, and was used as the symbol of the god Tammuz (being in the shape of the mystic Tau, the initial of his name) in that country and in adjacent lands, including Egypt. By the middle of the 3rd cent. A.D. the churches had either departed from, or had travestied, certain doctrines of the Christian faith. In order to increase the prestige of the apostate ecclesiastical system pagans were received into the churches apart from regeneration by faith, and were permitted largely to retain their pagan signs and symbols. Hence the Tau or T, in its most frequent form, with the cross-piece lowered, was adopted to stand for the cross of Christ.”—An Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words (London, 1962), W. E. Vine, p. 256.

“It is strange, yet unquestionably a fact, that in ages long before the birth of Christ, and since then in lands untouched by the teaching of the Church, the Cross has been used as a sacred symbol. . . . The Greek Bacchus, the Tyrian Tammuz, the Chaldean Bel, and the Norse Odin, were all symbolized to their votaries by a cruciform device.”—The Cross in Ritual, Architecture, and Art (London, 1900), G. S. Tyack, p. 1.

The people of the ancient lands used the cross in worship, some, like the Egyptians used it in Phallus worship, or, worship of the male sex organ. It was used as a symbol of fertility. “Various figures of crosses are found everywhere on Egyptian monuments and tombs, and are considered by many authorities as symbolical either of the phallus [a representation of the male sex organ] or of coition. . . . In Egyptian tombs the crux ansata [cross with a circle or handle on top] is found side by side with the phallus.”—A Short History of Sex-Worship (London, 1940), H. Cutner, pp. 16, 17; see also The Non-Christian Cross, p. 183.

The Ancient Church by clergyman W. D. Killen says, on page 316: “From the most remote antiquity the cross was venerated in Egypt and Syria; it was held in equal honour by the Buddhists of the East; and, what is still more extraordinary, when the Spaniards first visited America, the well-known sign was found among the objects of worship in the idol temples of Anahuac. It is also remarkable that, about the commencement of our era, the pagans were wont to make the sign of a cross upon the forehead in the celebration of some of their sacred mysteries.” The origin of the cross is indeed very pagan.

“The Greek term signifies an upright stake on which criminal were executed, with no suggestion of a cross-beam. In the Latin versions the term ‘crux’ was used, but according to Livy of the 1st century B.C., the word meant no more than an upright stake; it was only later that crux came to mean a cross. Josephus relates how 2,000 were crucified at one time (‘Antiquities’ book 17; 10:10) hardly practicable if crosses had to be made for each one. There are Greek words which denote a cross, but none of these appear in the in any of the four gospel accounts of Jesus’ execution. At Galatians 3:13 Paul refers to the instrument as ‘a timber’ (A.V. a tree) a reference to the upright stake on which bodies of criminals were hanged under the Mosaic Law (Deut 21:22), and which Jesus fulfilled by his death.

Some have contended that the Romans did use crosses for execution at that time although Livy refutes this. Even if this were so, the Romans were also careful to observe local customs as fas as possible to avoid unnecessarily upsetting the populace, and so likely would have modified their method to conform to the Jewish practice. A rough upright stake would be in any case less trouble to produce than a hewn cross with a joint strong enough to bear the weight of a man.
Christians are sometimes disturbed to learn that the cross, considered for centuries as a Christian symbol, had its origin long before Christ and was actually used in pagan mythology.It was the symbol of the god Tammuz, and Bacchus, and the Egyptian Osiris. It was worshipped by the Celtic druids and worn on necklaces by the Vestal Virgins of Rome…As the Greek text shows, Christ was not executed on a Cross, that symbol can be regarded for what it is, a pagan corruption of Christian worship introduced in the early centuries of our common era. Thus in harmony with 2 Cor 6:15 although long cherished, it is something that Christians should shun.”