The Self as Paradox

In an April 14, 2024 post, I wrote about how the Self is a contradiction. Meaning that the Self is both real and nothing. I want to address a related aspect of the Self in this post. 

The autonomy of the Self was significant to existentialists and absurdists such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, Beauvoir, and Camus. As evidenced by my writings, the autonomy of the Self is an essential issue of Dark Paganism. Personal autonomy allows the individual to grow and achieve authenticity.

However, while the Self is autonomous, it’s dependent upon forces outside itself. The popular idiom, “No man is an island,” is very true. From the cradle to the grave, we depend on others for all aspects of who we are, including life itself.

Therefore, the Self is both autonomous yet dependent. It’s through autonomy that we reveal our true Selves. However, the very existence of the Self is dependent on others.  

The Self is a paradox.

Blog Changes

Now that my life is so prearranged,
I know that it’s time for a cool change.
-    Cool Change by the Little River Band

I’ve written a lot, and I do mean a lot, about self-care. Self-care, of course, being a manifestation of self-love. I say this because someone may care for themselves out of a sense of obligation to someone else or what they deem a higher cause. However, I suspect such self-care would be less consistent and less effective than self-care resulting from self-love.

There’s a phrase that “actions speak louder than words.” It’s time for me to act upon what I’ve written.

 

Without going into details (I tend to be a private person, and I’m not into the current fad of oversharing), so as to care for myself, I need to change how often I post. This means that rather than posting weekly, I will start posting here bi-weekly. 

With these changes, I plan to post again on May 4th, 2024. Check back then.
Frater Tenebris

The Self as Contradiction

I’m a big fan of Tim Blake Nelson. I first saw him in one of my favorite movies, ‘Oh Brother Where Art Thou’ where he played Delmar, the not-very-bright prison escapee. Nelson has also appeared in other great productions, such as ‘The Ballad of Buster Scruggs’ and ‘Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities.’ So, I was really pleased when I came across the following quote by him,

“Really, life is full of contradictions. Life is messy.”

This quote reminded me of something. It's true that life is full of contradictions. The Self is also.

In my book, The Philosophy of Dark Paganism, I compare the Self to a hurricane. The characteristics of a hurricane are well known. It’s a massive rotating storm of rain and wind that wreaks havoc in its path. Anyone who’s lived through a hurricane will tell you it’s real. If you’re in the path of a hurricane, denial of its reality may kill you.

However, suppose one focuses on the contents of the hurricane. In that case, one will see that it consists of the same ‘stuff’ as the atmosphere surrounding it. This becomes apparent if you fly into its center, called the ‘eye.’ In the eye, not only is the stuff of a hurricane the same as the outside, but the hurricane’s characteristics also disappear. Instead of gale force winds and rain, you’ll find blue skies and calm winds. At its center, a hurricane is nothing compared to the rest of the atmosphere.

One could say that a hurricane is both real and nothing. It’s all a matter of perspective.

With this analogy in mind, let’s look at the Self. The effect of the Self on the world is very real. The news is full of the impact of individual and collective Selves on the world. However, the Self is not a thing. You can’t capture the Self in a bottle and study it under a microscope. The Self is an ever-changing, dynamic phenomenon that’s an emergent property of our physical and spiritual bodies.

The Self, like the hurricane, is both real yet nothing.

toldinstone YouTube

I’ve mentioned before that I watch a lot of YouTube videos. One of my favorite channels is “toldinstone.” 

 

The owner of the toldinstone YouTube channel gives a brief bio:

I'm Garrett Ryan. I earned a PhD in Greek and Roman history, and taught at a few universities before leaving academia. These days, I spend most of my time writing, traveling, and - of course - making videos about ancient history.

Every Friday (and sometimes also on Tuesday), I post a video about the Greeks or Romans. Some of my videos explore ancient buildings and cities. Others answer frequently-asked questions, tour famous museums, or delve into ancient mysteries. All my videos aim, in some small way, to bring the past to life.

Following is a recent video by Dr. Ryan that’s a good fit with this blog.

Polytheism God

 In a 2023 poll by Gallop, 12% of the respondents answered “No” to the question “Do you believe in God?” Another 14% replied, “Not sure about the existence of God.” Compared to previous polls by Gallop and other companies, the trend in atheism and agnosticism is increasing.

If one asked those same respondents what they meant by ‘God,’ they would probably give an answer like the Abrahamic God, 

The One universal yet personal Creator God who is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, and directly involved in human affairs while being the source of ethics and meaning.

A more sophisticated respondent might understand ‘God’ like the Deist God, which was popular among many highly influential American Founding Fathers, such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, which was:

The One universal Creator God who is revealed through Reason and Nature and is the source of ethics and providence.

This begs the question of how I and other polytheists should answer the question, “Do you believe in God?” Obviously, if we’re limited to either the Abrahamic God or the Deist God, then we’re lumped in with atheists. However, this wouldn’t be accurate since we believe in divinity. 

Following are a few choices that would allow polytheists to answer ‘Yes’ to whether we believe in God.

Neoplatonist Model

Neoplatonism was a highly influential Hellenistic philosophy from the 1st through 5th centuries CE. While resembling the later Deist model of the 18th century, the Neoplatonist model differed in that it allowed for a hierarchy of spirits, such as gods and angels, stretching from God to the human world. The Neoplatonic model of God is,  

An impersonal Source, discerned by Reason, from which, due to God’s self-contemplation, springs a Creative principle resulting in the emergence of the Cosmos arising out of a Chaotic base.

Collective Divinity

The word ‘God’ can represent a collective meaning. There are two ways we can define this ‘God.’

In Genesis 1, a holdover from the Hebrew pre-Abrahamic pagan past, the name Elohim is used. While English translations usually translate Elohim as “God,” the word literally means ‘gods’ for it contains both masculine and feminine elements. Defined as such: 

God is the collective will and efforts of all the gods operating towards a common goal.

Or we could say ‘God’ is a class of spirits, in the same way as we use ‘Human’ for our animal species. I admit that this is my preferred definition:

God is a collective term applied to a class of apex entities of the spirit world.

Godhead

Some classic Hellenistic philosophers used ‘God’ to reference Zeus (Jupiter to the Latins), as He was the head of their pantheon. 

God is the chief god in a pantheon of gods.

Pantheism

Pantheism is often associated with the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza. 

God is the impersonal sum of all reality and is an immanent deity, still expanding and creating, which has existed since the beginning of time.

Panentheism

Panentheism is sometimes wrongly confused with pantheism.

God is both the impersonal sum of all the physical universe and transcendent to it.

Recommended Reading

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” - Dr. Seuss

As a child, my father and I would visit our local library each Saturday. We would walk in with the stack of books we finished last week and walk out with a new stack. The following weekend, we would do it all over again. As a result, I grew up with a passion for reading.

The love of reading is something that should be shared. Therefore, in this post, I will mention two books I highly recommend.

Pursuits of Wisdom: Six Ways of Life in Ancient Philosophy from Socrates to Plotinus Paperback by John M. Cooper

Cooper’s Pursuits of Wisdom is the best book I’ve ever read about the classic Hellenistic philosophers. I cannot recommend this book enough. It’s a must-have for the library of anyone interested in philosophy.

Description on Amazon:
This is a major reinterpretation of ancient philosophy that recovers the long Greek and Roman tradition of philosophy as a complete way of life--and not simply an intellectual discipline. Distinguished philosopher John Cooper traces how, for many ancient thinkers, philosophy was not just to be studied or even used to solve particular practical problems. Rather, philosophy--not just ethics but even logic and physical theory--was literally to be lived. Yet there was great disagreement about how to live philosophically: philosophy was not one but many, mutually opposed, ways of life. Examining this tradition from its establishment by Socrates in the fifth century BCE through Plotinus in the third century CE and the eclipse of pagan philosophy by Christianity, Pursuits of Wisdom examines six central philosophies of living--Socratic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Epicurean, Skeptic, and the Platonist life of late antiquity.

The book describes the shared assumptions that allowed these thinkers to conceive of their philosophies as ways of life, as well as the distinctive ideas that led them to widely different conclusions about the best human life. Clearing up many common misperceptions and simplifications, Cooper explains in detail the Socratic devotion to philosophical discussion about human nature, human life, and human good; the Aristotelian focus on the true place of humans within the total system of the natural world; the Stoic commitment to dutifully accepting Zeus’s plans; the Epicurean pursuit of pleasure through tranquil activities that exercise perception, thought, and feeling; the Skeptical eschewal of all critical reasoning in forming their beliefs; and, finally, the late Platonist emphasis on spiritual concerns and the eternal realm of Being.

Pursuits of Wisdom is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding what the great philosophers of antiquity thought was the true purpose of philosophy--and of life.

The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft by Ronald Hutton

Ronald Hutton’s Triumph of the Moon is THE definitive account of the rise of Neopaganism. This is a must-read for anyone who considers themselves a pagan or interested in the subject.

Description on Amazon:
Modern pagan witchcraft is arguably the only fully-formed religion England has given the world, and has now spread across four continents.

This second edition of The Triumph of the Moon extensively revises the first full-scale scholarly study of modern pagan witchcraft. Ronald Hutton examines the nature and development of this religion, and offers a history of attitudes to witchcraft, paganism and magic in British society since 1800. Its pages reveal village cunning folk, Victorian ritual magicians, classicists and archaeologists, leaders of woodcraft and scouting movements, Freemasons, and members of rural secret societies. We also find some of the leading figures of English literature, from the Romantic poets to W. B. Yeats, D. H. Lawrence and Robert Graves, as well as the main personalities who have represented pagan witchcraft to the public world since 1950. Thriller writers like Dennis Wheatley, and films and television programmes, get similar coverage, as does tabloid journalism. The material is by its nature often sensational, and care is taken throughout to distinguish fact from fantasy, in a manner not previously applied to most of the stories involved.

Meticulously researched, The Triumph of the Moon presents an authoritative insight into an aspect of modern cultural history which has attracted sensational publicity but has hitherto been little understood. This edition incorporates new research carried out by the author as well as research by others who have been inspired by this book over the twenty years since its first publication.

El and Yahweh

In the past, I’ve been critical of Abrahamic beliefs. Especially their monotheistic belief in a One God that’s all-knowing, all-loving, and all-powerful. According to Abrahamic texts (Hebrew Bible and Christian Old Testament), this One God is known as El and Yahweh. In Exodus 6:2-3 we read,

God spoke further to Moses and said to him, “I am Yahweh; and I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as El Shaddai, but by my name, Yahweh, I did not make myself known to them.”

However, there are problems with the claim that El and Yahweh are alternate names for a singular universal God. Scholarly consensus is that evidence establishes, with confidence, that El and Yahweh were originally two distinct gods from different pantheons of the Levant region. The Abrahamic God worshiped by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is a product of centuries of complex cultural interactions and conflicts. 

 

How should we, as polytheists, see the God of the Abrahamic traditions? 

One way to view Him is as an actual god, like the syncretic Greco-Egyptian god Serapis, a fusion of Osiris and Apis. Such syncretism can occur because of the non-corporeal nature of spirits, resulting in new gods. Only the gods know whether this syncretism results in response to human needs or for some other reason.

There are problems with the idea that the Abrahamic God is real. Leaving aside the fact that He isn’t all-powerful, all-knowing, or all-loving as described in the Bible, the personality of this Abrahamic God has serious issues. The syncretism of El and Yahweh resulted in a god that exhibits signs of multiple personalities and severe narcissism. One moment, it’s all love and wanting to save humanity, while the next, it’s full of wrath and ready to destroy the world. If He exists, this would be a very unstable and dangerous god for everyone.

Another way is to view the Biblical God is as a construct rather than an actual god. The ancient Hebrew people conceived the Abrahamic ‘God’ to resolve cultural and historical challenges. It helped to forge the Hebrew people into a unified identity apart from their often-hostile neighbors. The power of this concept is evident in that it helped the Jewish people survive thousands of years of hardship.

I lean to the last option. El and Yahweh are clearly distinct gods with autonomy and their own agency. However, the One God of the Bible, the subject of worship by the big three Abrahamic religions, isn’t a true god but a construct. 

The God of Abraham doesn’t exist.