A distinction should be made between a religion, and a Way (a specific Way of Life) – for the term religion often now denotes what may be termed the religious attitude, which is [1] reliance upon and/or veneration of texts, and the emergence of schisms due to such texts; and because, in its origin, a Way mostly does not possess such reliance on or veneration of such texts, or involve such schisms.
For the essence of a particular Way is that it is a numinous, and it is this numinosity which not only serves to distinguish a Way from a particular philosophy (academic or otherwise), but which also provides the adherent of or believer in a particular Way with a personal awareness or manifestation of The Numen, and which presents them with an understanding or intuition of – or which can led them toward knowing – the distinction that exists between the sacred and the profane.
That is, the individual regards some things as sacred; for example, as worthy of veneration, and/or as special (beyond the mundane) and – if a place or area – as requiring a certain mode or manner of dress (and a reverent attitude) and/or as requiring a certain ritual purification before entering. In addition, and importantly, there is an awareness, often unspoken – that is, not defined through strict dogma – of the necessary limits of personal behaviour, based on a feeling for natural balance, for Φύσις: on the desire not to commit ὕβρις, to not overstep the mark and thus to avoid transgressing, or trampling on, the sacred; to show respect for the sacred [2].
In the philosophical terminology of The Numinous Way [3], this sacredness is a presencing of the acausal, and thus what is perceived or felt as numinous, as sacred, is that-which in some manner embodies or manifests acausality – that is, some-thing which does not the possess the quality of mundane causality, of a simple and linear cause-and-effect; some-thing, instead, redolent of the eternal, the timeless, the supra-personal, nature of the acausal, and which is beyond the power or the ability of all mortals to control.
Furthermore, it is this presencing of the acausal which the religious attitude tends to conceal, and which concealment often leads, over time, to reform or renaissance movements when some or many adherents or believers feel has been lost or obscured.
Why this tendency to conceal? Because the religious attitude is basically a manifestation of causal reductionism, where there is an attempt to explain or understand the numinous either by reference to some text, or by means of some causal abstraction, as being the effect of some posited cause.
Thus, the religious attitude removes the individual from – or has a tendency to remove the individual from – the immediacy of the numinous moment; from a personal, direct, and most importantly wordless, experience of The Numen, imposing as this attitude does some causal structure on such numinous moments, and which structure depends on collocations of words, with such words denoting only that-which is causal. This imposition is most evident in attempts to explain and to reform or to replace those ritual observances which have evolved naturally from such immediate numinous moments as become shared by small communities of adherents of a particular Way.
A good illustration of this process is the Latin Tridentine Mass of the Catholic Church. This Mass evolved over a certain period of causal time, and became, for many Catholics, the main ritual, or rite, which imbued their ordinary lives with a certain numinosity – a certain awareness of the sacred, with attendance at this rite involving certain customs, such as modest and clean dress, and women covering their heads with a veil. This rite was, in essence, a Mysterium – that is, it embodied not only something holy and somewhat mysterious (such as the Consecration and Communion) but also was wordlessly un-mundane and so re-presented to most of those attending the rite, almost another world, with this re-presentation aided by such things as the use of incense, the ringing of the Sanctus bell, and the genuflexions. In addition, and importantly, the language of this rite was not that of everyday speech, and was not even, any longer, a living changing language, but rather had in many ways become the sacred language of that particular Way.
The Catholic rite endured for centuries and, indeed, to attend this particular rite marked, affirmed and re-affirmed one as a Catholic, as a particular follower of a particular Way, and a Way quite distinct from the schism that became Protestantism [4], a fact which explained, for instance, the decision, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth the First of England, to punish by fine or imprisonment those who attended this rite, and to persecute, accuse of treason, and often execute, those who performed this rite.
However, the reforms imposed by the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican replaced this numinous rite, this Mysterium, with rites and practices redolent of un-numinous Protestantism. Why? Most probably because those involved in such planning and producing and implementing such reforms were swayed by the causal abstractions of “progress” and “relevancy” – desiring as they did and do to be in accord with the causal, material, Zeitgeist of the modern West where numbers of adherents, and conformity to trendy ideas and theories, are regarded as more important than presencing The Numen in a numinous manner. When, that is, some profane causal abstractions come to be regarded as more relevant than experiencing and manifesting the sacred as the sacred.
Yet this does not mean that Catholicism, before the reforms imposed by the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, was or remained a Way, per se. Only that, of all the variants of what are now termed Christianity, it retained a certain numinosity expressed by the original Way; that, through its Mysteriums such as the Tridentine Mass, it still presenced something of The Numen; and that it managed to avoid the worst excesses of the religious attitude, maintaining as it did a monasticism which by its own particular way of life encouraged the cultivation of a genuine, non-dogmatic, humility.
For the truth is that all conventional Ways, through becoming organized, and through their expansion, devolve to being religious attitudes – that is, they lose the immediacy of the numinous moment in their reliance on and reverence for texts, and allow causal abstractions to blur the distinction between sacred and profane, especially in relation to the personal behaviour – the standards – of individuals.
This is so because a causal organization (such as a central or centralized authority and the hierarchy that goes with it) by its very nature depends on abstractions, such as dogma, the codification of standards, the promulgation of edicts dealing with such matters as personal behaviour and personal goals, and the setting forth of penalties for failure to obey such authority. For instance, justification has to be found for such authority, and for the creation and maintenance of such hierarchy as are necessary for the commands of such authority to be promulgated and executed. And it is in such matters that texts, and their interpretation, their exegesis, become of great importance.
Expansion requires that such authority be maintained, and encompass those expanded to, as such expansion naturally leads to schism, given the past and the current nature of human beings. For it is and has been in the nature of human beings to place pursuit of causal things before a desire to not commit ὕβρις. And it is this desire not to commit ὕβρις that is perhaps the foremost manifestation, in human beings, of the immediacy of the numinous moment, and which Mysteriums presence, thus enabling individuals to re-connect with, to feel, the numinous when they partake in and of such Mysteriums.
Furthermore, it this understanding of the necessity of avoiding ὕβρις – the need to cultivate a natural, a human, balance – that is and has been the essence of all Ways, of all presencings of The Numen.
Hubris, Humility, and The Avoidance of Abstractions
As outlined elsewhere [5] the avoidance of ὕβρις is manifest in humility, and which humility is a dignified and balanced way of living which has its genesis in that supra-personal perspective which awareness of the numinous provides, and which awareness of The Numen πάθει μάθος often produces.
However, as succinctly expressed in an ancient Greek saying attributed to Heraclitus – Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ [6]. That is, there is a natural tendency for the balance that is Φύσις to become concealed, again, and again.
How, then, to avoid such a concealment, to avoid a return to abstractions, a return to that causal, mundane, perspective of profane and linear cause-and-effect? Or, expressed somewhat differently, is it possible for a Way to remain a Way and thus to continue to presence The Numen without devolving to become a religious attitude?
I believe it is, were such a Way to be founded upon the personal, the numinous, the individual, authority of πάθει μάθος and not upon the thinking or the revelation or the authority (real or assumed) of some individual, and were such a Way as well to make a personal knowing and awareness of the numinous the essence of apprehending The Numen.
It is my contention that such a Way as this is may be incipiently manifest in what I have termed The Numinous Way; that is, in what is otherwise called the Esoteric Philosophy of The Numen. For, in The Numinous Way, the essence of apprehending The Numen is the individual, the personal, faculty of empathy, as well as an acknowledgement of the numinous authority of πάθει μάθος [7].
Furthermore, such a Way as this cannot devolve into a religious attitude – into a conventional religion – for two quite simple reasons.
First, because the essence of πάθει μάθος is that
“… knowledge – and thus learning, based on such knowledge – is personal, direct, acquired in the immediacy of a living, a lived-through, moment of one’s own mortal life. For the religious way, knowledge – and thus learning, based on such knowledge – can be and has been contained in something other-than-ourselves which we have to or which we can learn from: something impersonal, some abstraction, such as a book, a dogma, a creed, some Institution, some teacher or master…” [8]
Second, because empathy by its very nature cannot ever be abstracted out from the immediacy-of-the-moment, from the realness of a personal a direct, interaction between individuals. This is because empathy is living, and thus already possessed of the acausal, and, being a natural faculty, empathy arises only in and through – is present in - such a direct, personal contact with another living being. Thus, it cannot be expressed in any causal abstraction; it cannot, being living, be contained in any book or books; it cannot be described or contained within any dogma or creed. It can only be experienced, and known, and cultivated, by each and every individual, directly, and always remains a part of them, a part of their life, of their living.
For there are, in this simple Numinous Way, no texts; no appeals to authority; no dogma; not even any need or requirement for supra-personal authority or supra-personal organization. Instead, there is the immediacy-of-the-numinous-moment, brought by the faculty of empathy and its development, and thence the avoidance of ὕβρις by the cultivation of compassion and personal honour, virtues which arise naturally, unaffectedly, from such empathy. Or rather, virtues which are the practical and natural manifestations of such empathy.
David Myatt
2455395.017
Notes:
[1] See, for example, my essay Exegesis, and The Discovery of Wisdom.
[2]
ὡς ἔπραξεν ὡς ἔκρανεν. οὐκ ἔφα τις
θεοὺς βροτῶν ἀξιοῦσθαι μέλειν
ὅσοις ἀθίκτων χάρις
πατοῖθ᾽: ὁ δ᾽ οὐκ εὐσεβής
Aesch. Ag 369-373
“Someone denied that the gods deem it worthy to concern themselves with mortals who trample upon what, being untouchable, brings delight. But such persons show no proper respect.”
[3] Also known as The Philosophy of The Numen, and as The Esoteric Philosophy of The Numen. The Numen is the source of all being, and which being is both causal and acausal. Thus, there are causal beings, acausal beings, and beings possessed of, or manifesting, both causal and acausal being. See, for example, Acausality, Phainomenon, and The Appearance of Causality, and also Life and The Nature of the Acausal.
[4] Catholicism (before the reforms imposed by the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican) represented, in my view, the original Way known as Christianity, and was – at least before those reforms – quite distinct from those schisms which are now known as Protestantism and Orthodox Christianity. Indeed, distinct enough – until those reforms – to be considered a different Way of Life, a Way evident, for example, in Catholic rites (such as the Tridentine Mass), in monasticism, in Papal authority, in the use of Latin, and in the reverence accorded The Blessed Virgin Mary.
Furthermore, it is my view that the schism now termed Protestantism was a classic example of the religious attitude predominating over numinosity – and thus that it is and was redolent of attempts to reduce The Numen to linear causal abstractions. Thus, Mysteriums such as the Tridentine Mass became replaced with recitation of Scripture in the vernacular and with attempts to rationally explain – according to some abstract causal theory – the mystery of the consecration.
[5] In Humility, Abstractions, and Belief.
[6] I have tried to elucidate the correct meaning of this often mis-understood fragment, attributed to Heraclitus, in my essay Physis, Nature, Concealment, and Natural Change.
[7] For example, see my From Aeschylus To The Numinous Way – The Numinous Authority of πάθει μάθος
[8] op.cit
