Interesting Mike,
I'm happy for the continuing evolution of thought in all of the various
eddies and streams of history but it still feels like "naming". We are
given names from the Spirits or you might say that we see those individual
images in those little mirrors that I spoke of on that ball but to become
the "namers" is amongst our people, just something that is not even
conceivable.
So to name it as Panentheism is just another version of fooling yourself as
to the ability to conceptualize the inconceivable. The Aztecs called that
aspect Tlaque Nowaque or the "with and the by" or the "here and there" but
not limited to here and there. The closest conceptually that I can
understand, not being all that smart, are some of the paradoxes described
in Quantum thought having to do with space and division of matter without a
loss of original volume, as well as the power of thought in defining the
outcome of action, as in the problem of testing on a Quantum level.
Once you admit that all thought in relation to this is impossible then you
arrive at the power of metaphor as the only possible describer of deep human
activity. I think Robert Sternberg has lately arrived at this same
understanding in his Practical IQ work as the "Tlamatinime" Scholars of
Tenochtitlan were working on at the time they were terminally interrupted by
Hernando Cortez. We do get down to the practical in a lot of this when
confronting issues of healing and meditation. But the language is always
metaphorical and that is one of the areas where we make a distinction
between fact and truth. Scientific Facts are mutual agreements that are
constantly in a state of flux as we evolve while Truth is the metaphorical
foundation of the map of a culture as it explores the inexplicable. Facts
change constantly while Truth must be changed with great care and only as
fast as you can conceive of the effect down to the seventh generation both
into the future and from the past. So thought does have "power" as does
artistic expression. It is also possible to be in more than one place at
a time in the act of total being and sharing, like with a musical ensemble.
Music becomes the closest of the worldly activities to the language of the
"Gods". We may as well use multiples since they make as much sense as
being gender specific. But in order to do that you must agree to the
belief that there is a Unity to all of this that is conceivably singular and
conscious while admitting that the concepts of singularity and consciousness
are metaphorical. When we get down to the level of such metaphor then we
admit the limitation of all human sound languages, including math, and admit
that the common reality that we know is like the old children's song.
Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily,
merrily, merrily life is but a Dream. The unity of the child's verse is
built around three, four and seven. A common unity based upon the
horizontal and vertical plane of human physical balance, i.e. one of the
things that distinguishes us from our other primate relatives, our posture.
I spoke with the Roman Catholic Theologian Ewert Cousins recently about our
beliefs compared to the Roman Catholic and he had some names for similar
theological streams in their thought. Cousins was the first to bring the
American Indigenous spiritual leaders to speak at the UN in the 1970s.
Let me close with a story. Some years back, I was examining the
structure of some old stories about Briar Rabbit the Cherokee Trickster.
Walt Disney had done a movie about the old Slave Character Uncle Remus who
was Black in the Disney movie and who told the Briar Rabbit Cherokee stories
to the children in the movie. Remus had a song that began with "Zipidee
doo dah, zipidee ay, my oh my what a wonderful day. Plenty of sunshine
comin' my way, Zipidee doo dah, zipidee ay. Mister blue bird on my
shoulder, my oh my its actual, everything is satisfactual. Zipidee
doo dah, zipidee ay, wonderful feeling, wonderful day."
As I examined the song, I realized first that the song did something very
common to Shamanic narratives. It took a power word and slightly changed
it. Ah gi doo dah is the Cherokee word for Grandfather and is the prayer
term one uses when addressing the Creator as your relative. Not your
Father but your Grandfather. So Remus started out with a rhyme to the
Cherokee word Ah gee doo dah, Zipideedoodah. The next thing was the
repetition of the name around a line formula that happened in fours with the
name being said three times which makes seven. Now did Disney do this
intentionally? Or did Bizet do the Gypsy formulas intentionally for the
young Carmen when she taunted Zuniga? To me that is a "White" or
"Western" question. The muse is the Creator and it was put there for
those who have eyes to see and ears to hear maybe with the consciousness of
the composer and maybe not.
When I discovered this little thing in the Disney "Song of the South" movie
I shared it at dinner with a psychologist friend and his wife. He thought
it was preposterous and proceeded to deride me about seeing and hearing
Indian things that were not and could not be there in his not so humble
opinion. After his narrative he noticed that the Radio station, that was
supplying the music for the small restaurant in Vermont where we were having
dinner, was playing something familiar on the radio. It was a song played
by an instrumental ensemble with the violin having the melody. But the
words were in our heads even though they were not being sung. They were,
Zipideedoodah, zipidee ay, my oh my what a wonderful day..........
It was a radio station and not a CD player and I had nothing to do with it.
But we say that there is nothing in the universe that is apart from the
"mind" of the Great Mystery and that there are no accidents. I will not
speak more of this because it is not proper for me to do so. But it is a
thought for those who are led to read at this particular moment, this
particular post. For all others, the timing was wrong and should remain
so.
Best to you all.
Ray Evans Harrell
PS we have one of our Magic Circle Award Winners appearing in a small role
on the HBO "Sopranos" series tomorrow night. She is the Indian and her
name is Irma LaGuerre. If you are around tomorrow night then tune in.
She was also chosen recently out of a couple of thousand applicants to be
one of 20 performing artists to perform for the cr�me de la cr�me of the TV
business on the ABC Showcase. She's a wonderful talent, we all are
cheering and pulling for her. REH
----- Original Message -----
From: Mike Hollinshead
To: Ray Evans Harrell ; mcore ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; Karen
Watters Cole
Cc: Brad McCormick ; Arthur Cordell ; Lawrence de Bivort ; Dennis Paull ; Ed
Weick ; Frank Hample ; Harry Pollard ; Keith Hudson ; Mike Hollinshead ; Tom
Walker ; William Ward
Sent: Saturday, September 28, 2002 1:23 PM
Subject: Re: Modernists vs Fundamentalists
Ray,
In the West the conception of the Creator you present is known as
Panentheism - meaning God present in everything. It is not the same as
Pantheism, which means a god in every thing.
You may recall from my book that this has been the creed of Christian
heretics throughout history - the Gnostics, the Albigensians, the Cathars,
the Boehmists and the Anabaptists. You may also recall from the book that
the Anabaptist ideas have resurfaced regularly in Modern Times (since the
17th century) in radical Christian groups to be coopted by elites to form
the kernel of successive rejiggings of the Modern Paradigm. Indeed the
Lockeian Synthesis was a blending of Anabaptist thought from the radicals of
the English Revolution with the needs of a landed elite to retain power.
The Greens and Sustainable Development are the latest manifestation of this
phenomenon.
Mike
----------
From: Ray Evans Harrell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: mcore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED], Karen Watters
Cole <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: Brad McCormick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Arthur Cordell
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Lawrence de Bivort <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Dennis Paull <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Ed Weick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Frank Hample
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Harry Pollard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Keith
Hudson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Mike Hollinshead <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Tom Walker
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, William Ward <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Modernists vs Fundamentalists
Date: Fri, Sep 27, 2002, 11:07 PM
----- Original Message -----
From: Karen Watters Cole
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: William Ward ; Tom Walker ; Mike Hollinshead ; Keith Hudson ; Harry
Pollard ; Frank Hample ; Ed Weick ; Dennis Paull ; Lawrence de Bivort ;
Arthur Cordell ; Brad McCormick ; Ray Harrell
Sent: Friday, September 27, 2002 11:44 PM
Subject: FW: Modernists vs Fundamentalists
Karen said:
Greetings from the Pacific Northwest:
This is not a religious post, nor am I attempting to deviate from the
original Futurework premise by introducing a competitive theme. However, in
light of the cultural and philosophical battles that are currently being
waged upon the fields of the future, I hope that the selections below will
add to the debate and commentary about the transitions of people and the
systems that support and/or drive them as we move there.
On FW we have alluded to the global war between modernists and
fundamentalists, perhaps the great warriors of the coming ages, who will
command multicultural and multireligious regiments against the
secularization of the world, their combined symbol of the ultimate paganism.
REH said:
Karen, dear one, I am a pagan*. Pagan's consider the lessons of the
world to be the lessons of the Creator, that the world is the only ultimate
book from which to draw our lessons. That includes science, all cultures,
medicine, law, technology, everything. The Creator flows through creation
and everything has its own version of consciousness.
Most of the issues of Greek and Middle Eastern religions have to do with
the "word". In the beginning was the "word" and that is not true for us.
In the beginning was the Creator, the Great Mystery, the unnamable, the
completely beyond, the near and the far, the totality and yet beyond any
ideas that humanity is capable of having. If "God" began with a word then
God is limited to that word and smaller than the mind that conceived it.
If "God" is found in a book then he is limited and the Great Mystery the
Equa Usqwanigodi of the Pagan is only in the book in the sense that he is in
everything and beyond. So we are free to explore all reality including the
book.
This is not just me, your cousin, saying these things. The Forest
Dwellers of the Amazon have come to the UN and said these same words. The
Mayans of Guatemala have come to the UN and said these words. The Hopi
and the other indigenous peoples from around the world have come to the UN
and said these things and I too have said them at the UN upon occasion.
They are on video and they are in film.
The Creator walks through all. Every leaf, every frond, every religion,
every invention. We can note those places in the world where a footprint
was left and we can study those places. We can honor those who
encountered the Mystery that left the footprint. We can also say that
each group owns its own encounter and are keepers of that awareness and
encounter. So the Jews discovered their oneness of "God" and to the
Christians that made Abraham a Christian and to Islam a Moslem. But this
is, according to their own book the sin of pride, arrogance. The
ultimate arrogance is to believe that what the rest of us believe is limited
to what they believe about us in their knowledge and that the many realities
of the One constitutes multiple Gods. When you look closely, all
religions practice monotheism and when you look closely at monotheists you
discover many faces of the One. Like the ball covered with tiny mirrors
each looks and each sees images of themselves. Up close the image is
multiple but step away and it is One and it is limited by the recognized
image. Everything else is just politics and that is what we have in the
Middle East. Freud said it. "Sibling rivalry" and it is murderous. Why
should the rest of the world give honor to that? What we are speaking
about is roughly half of the world population is these three religions while
the rest is made up of more local groups. These three are the
Internationists while the rest are the local cultural. That does not mean
that the great waves sweeping across the human population are better, more
intelligent or subtle indeed Jerome Rothenberg makes the point that these
local religions have majored in the technology of religious consciousness
and are far more complicated and subtle than the big two. He termed these
groups "Technicians of the Sacred" and he published a book of their texts
just to drive the point home.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
>From the Dictionaries
*Pagan when you allow the people who would devour and destroy you to
define you this is what you get. The real meaning of the word is found in
the Latin, everything else is a 2,000 year old genocide against our faith
based upon fraud and lies. Pagan - People of the countryside,
Savage - people of the forest, Heathen, - literally people of the
heath. All had to do with not being citified which means a good number of
the folks on this list that don't live in town would qualify as Pagans,
Savages and Heathens to the people who invented the concept. Afterwards
the Christians treated it like they did the library at Alexandria. I
would remind you that over 300 million of the world's people follow the
traditional faiths of their ancestors and that the intellectuals of those
faiths are as clear about idolatry as this garbage that pollutes our current
dictionaries.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
pa�gan Pronunciation Key (pgn)
n.
1.. One who is not a Christian, Muslim, or Jew, especially a
worshiper of a polytheistic religion.
2.. One who has no religion.
3.. A non-Christian.
4.. A hedonist.
5.. A Neo-Pagan.
adj.
1.. Not Christian, Muslim, or Jewish.
2.. Professing no religion; heathen.
3.. Neo-Pagan.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Middle English, from Late Latin pgnus, from Latin, country-dweller,
civilian, from pgus, country, rural district. See pag- in Indo-European
Roots.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
pagan�dom (-dm) n.
pagan�ish adj.
pagan�ism n.
Source: The American Heritage� Dictionary of the English Language,
Fourth Edition
Copyright � 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
pagan
\Pa"gan\ (p[=a]"gan), n. [L. paganus a countryman, peasant, villager, a
pagan, fr. paganus of or pertaining to the country, rustic, also, pagan, fr.
pagus a district, canton, the country, perh. orig., a district with fixed
boundaries: cf. pangere to fasten. Cf. Painim, Peasant, and Pact, also
Heathen.] One who worships false gods; an idolater; a heathen; one who is
neither a Christian, a Mohammedan, nor a Jew.
Neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan,
nor man. --Shak.
Syn: Gentile; heathen; idolater.
Usage: Pagan, Gentile, Heathen. Gentile was applied to the other nations
of the earth as distinguished from the Jews. Pagan was the name given to
idolaters in the early Christian church, because the villagers, being most
remote from the centers of instruction, remained for a long time
unconverted. Heathen has the same origin. Pagan is now more properly applied
to rude and uncivilized idolaters, while heathen embraces all who practice
idolatry.
pagan
\Pa"gan\, a. [L. paganus of or pertaining to the country, pagan. See
Pagan, n.] Of or pertaining to pagans; relating to the worship or the
worshipers of false goods; heathen; idolatrous, as, pagan tribes or
superstitions.
And all the rites of pagan honor paid. --Dryden.
Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, � 1996, 1998 MICRA,
Inc.
pagan
adj : not acknowledging the God of Christianity and Judaism and Islam
[syn: heathen, heathenish] n : a person who does not acknowledge your God
[syn: heathen, gentile, infidel]
Source: WordNet � 1.6, � 1997 Princeton University
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
REH continues
As for the rest of the arguments about the fight over God, I would say
that it sounds very "English" and reminds me of the battles that used to be
waged over whose music was the real Universal Music of the world. An
attitude that ignored the entire Asian continent as well as the Americas
until they became richer than England. Today, composer Tan Dun from
Communist China makes a good case for intelligent world music being Chinese
both in the Opera House, the Movies and the concert hall. While such
things die in the West they are alive and well in the conservatory of 100
Chinese composers drawn from the creme de la creme of Chinese Society,
funded by the government and sent out to convert the rest of the world with
their erudition, intelligence and talent. If you liked Crouching Tiger
then you like Tan Dun.
Next in sophistication are the Japanese who will take any European
composer to the mat when it involves intelligent discussion and
sophisticated musical elements. Unlike the Russians with their late
Romanticism, the Orientals don't have the baggage that the West brings with
it when working with multi-cultural elements drawn from pure sound and
thought. Meanwhile the West consumes but without understanding.
Ultimately we have to learn to see the outline of things and give up our
claim on the Whole. We will learn to define what the Chinese and Japanse
do, as their style and music of this time and place and we will wonder what
happened to ours. Our identity beyond the crassly commercial simple
minded.
I have written several previous posts about idolatry, the big accusation
of the Three Middle Eastern Religions toward the rest of the world. Using
their own rules they come much closer to their complaint of idolatry than
any of the Pagans, Savages or Heathens that I know. Their naivite has to
do with believing that saying the word creates the reality rather than
"walking the walk" and "doing the do."
This complaint goes back to the beginning contact with European Christians
who taught our peoples to read the Bible. We were impressed with the
sheer amount of text and words written down. Our thought constructs were
different. So we elected to give it time to see how it worked within the
European immigrant community. This irritated the ministers greatly and
they began their push immediately to demand the banning of our religions
which they finally succeeded in doing, in "religious freedom" America in
1883 when the churches joined with the capitalists to break the back of the
resistance to the homestead act and the break up of American Indian Nations.
Note that they are now reduced in the literature to "tribes" which suggests
a totally different relationship to the land. A relationship that foresees
the day when the White Society will once again take over our land and win
the ultimate victory over our cultures and ways of life.
That is what we know about "Christian" America or should we say "Middle
Eastern America" a series of religions based in the desert and the myths
of desert life in the Middle East that are slowly becoming a hopeless
desert. Life ways that have very little to do with our wealth that they
coveted and absconded with. I would note that they have not developed the
land at all in 500 years of occupation but have simply used up 70% of the
fertility that was developed by 10,000 years of animal development on the
Barrens of the Great Plains that have now gone to seed and are disappearing.
Ray Evans Harrell
