Intransitiveness

This is a continuation of a series of posts on how modern Neopaganism is truly the ‘Old Religion’ because it contains similar tropes and beliefs as the oldest recorded Indo-European religion, Mesopotamian, which far predates Abrahamic monotheism. 

In classic Paganism and modern Neopaganism, our gods have a characteristic called ‘intransitiveness.’ This word, which one doesn’t hear daily, means that a divinity is located within a phenomenon and only within that phenomenon. 

'Oak King' and 'Holly King' by Anne Stokes
https://nelliecole.com/2020/06/19/folkdays-the-oak-king/

 

Thorkild Jacobson, in his book The Treasures of Darkness, gives an example of intransitiveness with the Mesopotamian god Dumuzi. Dumuzi is the Mesopotamian god of fertility and harvest. Jacobson points out that “there is no instance in which the god acts, orders, or demands; he merely is or is not. He comes into being in the spring, is celebrated as bridegroom in the cult rite of sacred marriage, is killed by powers of the netherworld, and is lamented and searched for by his mother and young widow; any action, any achievement, any demands by the god are absent altogether.” (page 10).

Examples of intransitiveness in Neopaganism are the Holly King and the Oak King. These two gods, considered manifestations of the Horned God by Wicca, are personifications of winter and summer, respectively. Neither god makes demands upon us. The seasons are their domains, and that’s the total for them. 

Neopaganism is the Old Religion.