High quality post, as always. The other week during a great Midwestern thunderstorm, I sat in the living room with all the big glass windows and watched the lightening and listened to the thunder, like a little boy with my chin on the back of the couch. I was enthralled by a storm for the first time in a long time, and I couldn't help but feel pleased thinking of the Thunderer, the Striker, thinking of Lugh specifically. I'm pleased with this world. It is filled with divinity, if one looks.
I hear a lot about how science has disenchanted us, yet the only men that I know of that seem to have overcome this are themselves scientists. I would highly encourage you to read Ernst Haeckel's charming account of his time in Ceylon. His scientific understanding of the world deprived him not at all of the childlike wonder and excitement that he experienced (much to the bewilderment of his native helpers!) when he saw little plankton swimming in his glass apparatus. The world was no less enchanting for him than it was for the ancient Pagans. Prehaps some need some God or supernatural entity to spice Nature up for them, but that is their own failing.
As for Nature responding to us, as if an intelligent entity, here we must take Monism to its logical conclusion I think. If we take the position, terribly unfashionable in academic philosophy these days, but I think quite obvious, that there is nothing irreducible in consciousness or life and thus no essential difference between life and non-life, consciousness and non-consciousness, then the mental blocks to enchantment instilled by a half-way materialism wither and die. When we've finished off every notion of free will and of the soul then we end up somewhere much closer to 'the immensely rich, and indeed fatalistic, worldview of ancient peoples.'
Klages also takes a similar approach by distinguishing soul from spirit, and life from consciousness. Christian tradition typically synonymizes each pair, but Klages (I think correctly) puts firm distinctions between them. Life comes before and is more important than consciousness, and much of his philosophy stems from this.
Excellent post, one of the best that I've ever seen on substack. However, I'd note a few things:
1. Your description of Haeckel as a 'former Evangelical' is technically true but misleading to American readers. 'Evangelical,' unlike in America, simply means 'Protestant' in Germany. His family were liberal Protestants that followed the theology of Friedrich Schleiermacher, a family friend and doyen of liberal theology. Schleiermacher taught that religion was fundamentally a feeling, a desire to lose oneself in the infinite, and that this feeling could come from Nature. Many of Schleiermacher's teachings remained with Haeckel throughout his life, and influenced his Monism.
2. Darwin shared nearly all of Haeckel's views and his references to a Creator were merely diplomatic. Unlike Haeckel, who was such a firebrand that even Huxley advised him to tone down his rhetoric, Darwin preferred not to antagonise the religious.
3. This is a very minor quibble but he only left the Evangelical Church formally very late in life, many decades after he had begun expounding Monism. One newspaper reporting his disaffiliation remarked that they were surprised only to hear that he had remained an official member of the church for so long.
4. He wrote to his parents of on his journey to Italy (following in the footsteps of his idol, Goethe) that he was 'becoming a total Pagan' and felt completely disgusted with the Catholicism that he saw as trampling on the greatness of Rome. He praised classical Paganism as 'the highest polytheism' (and called the Catholic belief in the devil & trinity & the cult of saints as the lowest) and praised Zoroastrianism after he witnessed their prayers to the Sun in India; he interpreted this as the worship of natural forces and saw it as a much more sensible religion than he had found anywhere else in the world. However, he had no real interest in any kind of neopagan revival; he was too wonderstruck with whichever sea creatures he had most recently discovered to ever bother with that.
Very interesting, I always forget Darwin's relationship to Huxley and the influences he had on this sphere at large. Also did not know Haeckel went as far to write his family that
Divinity and access to God seems to be a reciprocal process and one largely borne of perception. Much like to truly comprehend someone, you have to make yourself believe what they do, and feel it intrinsically, even if only for a moment- contact with the divine requires you to perceive it as such in the first place.
I think there’s a place for the traditional religions even as a psychological necessity for man to retain his own sanity and not devolve into apostatic self-worship and perversion of the natural order, and perhaps this requirement is providence of its own accord. If the divine requires our perception, then perhaps the most powerful varieties of divinity are those which are most able to be perceived and most beneficial towards that end- perhaps this is why they become so dominant in the first place. There is no doubt in my mind that Jesus Christ walked this earth and performed miracles, and even if one’s own divine perception ended at Him, then maybe this is enough to maintain that mutual link.
There are always those who claim to go beyond, however, or to perceive the underlying cause- I think to the alchemists like Paracelsus who used the Bible as a compendium of natural law, and studied the world in tandem with abiding with its doctrinal law. You should also check out some of the interviews on crrow777radio.com with a man who calls himself the descendant of the Count of Saint Germain-it’s fascinating because I think he gets at what you’re getting at.
There are two modern scientists I can think of that make the good-faith effort to bridge the gap between access to the the immaterial world and rational science, and those men are Rupert Sheldrake and Jerry Marzinsky, and both of them focus primarily on theory of mind, and the nature of what the mind is in relation to the body. Of the two, I find Dr. Marzinsky to be highly compelling in his own personal testament to treating schizophrenics by addressing their “disease” as immaterial possession by dark energies and spirits. Both he and Dr. Sheldrake have the same theory that the mind exists outside of the head, with the brain being the physical bridge by which the signal of the mind is processed in physicality-like radio hardware. The physical is connected to the nonphysical by the metaphysical-the mind and body cohabitate by means of the soul which binds them. This in my heart feels like what the Christian Holy Trinity references, as we are all created in God’s likeness-he is three, why ought we not be three as well?
As a Christian I don’t know where I stand with all this, doctrinally, but Jesus claimed to be the Way and the Truth, and I trust that The Truth will set me free in my heart.
High quality post, as always. The other week during a great Midwestern thunderstorm, I sat in the living room with all the big glass windows and watched the lightening and listened to the thunder, like a little boy with my chin on the back of the couch. I was enthralled by a storm for the first time in a long time, and I couldn't help but feel pleased thinking of the Thunderer, the Striker, thinking of Lugh specifically. I'm pleased with this world. It is filled with divinity, if one looks.
Start with the sky.
Likewise—I've always enjoyed a good thunderstorm, but infinitely moreso since I became a pagan
I hear a lot about how science has disenchanted us, yet the only men that I know of that seem to have overcome this are themselves scientists. I would highly encourage you to read Ernst Haeckel's charming account of his time in Ceylon. His scientific understanding of the world deprived him not at all of the childlike wonder and excitement that he experienced (much to the bewilderment of his native helpers!) when he saw little plankton swimming in his glass apparatus. The world was no less enchanting for him than it was for the ancient Pagans. Prehaps some need some God or supernatural entity to spice Nature up for them, but that is their own failing.
As for Nature responding to us, as if an intelligent entity, here we must take Monism to its logical conclusion I think. If we take the position, terribly unfashionable in academic philosophy these days, but I think quite obvious, that there is nothing irreducible in consciousness or life and thus no essential difference between life and non-life, consciousness and non-consciousness, then the mental blocks to enchantment instilled by a half-way materialism wither and die. When we've finished off every notion of free will and of the soul then we end up somewhere much closer to 'the immensely rich, and indeed fatalistic, worldview of ancient peoples.'
Yes - wrote about Haeckel and Monistenbund some time ago here
https://open.substack.com/pub/gildhelm/p/ernst-haeckels-religion-of-evolution?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=tuevu
Klages also takes a similar approach by distinguishing soul from spirit, and life from consciousness. Christian tradition typically synonymizes each pair, but Klages (I think correctly) puts firm distinctions between them. Life comes before and is more important than consciousness, and much of his philosophy stems from this.
Excellent post, one of the best that I've ever seen on substack. However, I'd note a few things:
1. Your description of Haeckel as a 'former Evangelical' is technically true but misleading to American readers. 'Evangelical,' unlike in America, simply means 'Protestant' in Germany. His family were liberal Protestants that followed the theology of Friedrich Schleiermacher, a family friend and doyen of liberal theology. Schleiermacher taught that religion was fundamentally a feeling, a desire to lose oneself in the infinite, and that this feeling could come from Nature. Many of Schleiermacher's teachings remained with Haeckel throughout his life, and influenced his Monism.
2. Darwin shared nearly all of Haeckel's views and his references to a Creator were merely diplomatic. Unlike Haeckel, who was such a firebrand that even Huxley advised him to tone down his rhetoric, Darwin preferred not to antagonise the religious.
3. This is a very minor quibble but he only left the Evangelical Church formally very late in life, many decades after he had begun expounding Monism. One newspaper reporting his disaffiliation remarked that they were surprised only to hear that he had remained an official member of the church for so long.
4. He wrote to his parents of on his journey to Italy (following in the footsteps of his idol, Goethe) that he was 'becoming a total Pagan' and felt completely disgusted with the Catholicism that he saw as trampling on the greatness of Rome. He praised classical Paganism as 'the highest polytheism' (and called the Catholic belief in the devil & trinity & the cult of saints as the lowest) and praised Zoroastrianism after he witnessed their prayers to the Sun in India; he interpreted this as the worship of natural forces and saw it as a much more sensible religion than he had found anywhere else in the world. However, he had no real interest in any kind of neopagan revival; he was too wonderstruck with whichever sea creatures he had most recently discovered to ever bother with that.
Very interesting, I always forget Darwin's relationship to Huxley and the influences he had on this sphere at large. Also did not know Haeckel went as far to write his family that
Divinity and access to God seems to be a reciprocal process and one largely borne of perception. Much like to truly comprehend someone, you have to make yourself believe what they do, and feel it intrinsically, even if only for a moment- contact with the divine requires you to perceive it as such in the first place.
I think there’s a place for the traditional religions even as a psychological necessity for man to retain his own sanity and not devolve into apostatic self-worship and perversion of the natural order, and perhaps this requirement is providence of its own accord. If the divine requires our perception, then perhaps the most powerful varieties of divinity are those which are most able to be perceived and most beneficial towards that end- perhaps this is why they become so dominant in the first place. There is no doubt in my mind that Jesus Christ walked this earth and performed miracles, and even if one’s own divine perception ended at Him, then maybe this is enough to maintain that mutual link.
There are always those who claim to go beyond, however, or to perceive the underlying cause- I think to the alchemists like Paracelsus who used the Bible as a compendium of natural law, and studied the world in tandem with abiding with its doctrinal law. You should also check out some of the interviews on crrow777radio.com with a man who calls himself the descendant of the Count of Saint Germain-it’s fascinating because I think he gets at what you’re getting at.
There are two modern scientists I can think of that make the good-faith effort to bridge the gap between access to the the immaterial world and rational science, and those men are Rupert Sheldrake and Jerry Marzinsky, and both of them focus primarily on theory of mind, and the nature of what the mind is in relation to the body. Of the two, I find Dr. Marzinsky to be highly compelling in his own personal testament to treating schizophrenics by addressing their “disease” as immaterial possession by dark energies and spirits. Both he and Dr. Sheldrake have the same theory that the mind exists outside of the head, with the brain being the physical bridge by which the signal of the mind is processed in physicality-like radio hardware. The physical is connected to the nonphysical by the metaphysical-the mind and body cohabitate by means of the soul which binds them. This in my heart feels like what the Christian Holy Trinity references, as we are all created in God’s likeness-he is three, why ought we not be three as well?
As a Christian I don’t know where I stand with all this, doctrinally, but Jesus claimed to be the Way and the Truth, and I trust that The Truth will set me free in my heart.
Amazing post.