tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1883567827950405204.post3486704532198454492..comments2023-10-24T11:53:12.980-04:00Comments on Meadowsweet & Myrrh: Pantheism, Suffering & SatireAlihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01738190874181111086noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1883567827950405204.post-87992400135052742772010-02-20T18:13:40.120-05:002010-02-20T18:13:40.120-05:00lolzlolzrg brhxbhtnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1883567827950405204.post-6404971523067150892007-06-01T17:25:00.000-04:002007-06-01T17:25:00.000-04:00Erik, thanks for following up on that. :) Really i...Erik, thanks for following up on that. :) Really interesting stuff. I'm reminded again of <I>The Fountain</I>--"death is the road to awe," and the idea of death as an act of creation.Alihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01738190874181111086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1883567827950405204.post-74632332381969368502007-06-01T15:57:00.000-04:002007-06-01T15:57:00.000-04:00Here is an example of the "joy" part of a hardcor...<A HREF="http://www.thegreatstory.org/songs/death-lifted.html" REL="nofollow">Here</A> is an example of the "joy" part of a hardcore pantheistic approach to death.<BR/><BR/>The article by these people that I read in last spring's <I>UU World</I> was in my mind when I wrote my first response, but I didn't realize they had a website.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1883567827950405204.post-85319466720147858802007-05-25T03:22:00.000-04:002007-05-25T03:22:00.000-04:00I'm sorry to stumble on this mid-conversation, but...I'm sorry to stumble on this mid-conversation, but I watched "The Fountain" very recently and was also taken with the ideas of it (enough so to post about it). A friend of mine once described human consciousness as "the universe knowing itself" -- and I think that's the most important insight into our existence I've ever received. After our time here has ended, our being returns back to the vastness of that universe. I can't conceive exactly what that experience will be like, but in letting go of self there may be a tremendous sense of peace and belonging, which is what I think Izzy experienced in the film.Francis Scudellarihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01008685302028451297noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1883567827950405204.post-69730829582335106632007-05-25T00:40:00.000-04:002007-05-25T00:40:00.000-04:00Haven't seen that yet - but it sounds like I need ...Haven't seen that yet - but it sounds like I need to add it to the queue.<BR/><BR/>My favorite afterlife movie to date is still "What Dreams May Come", just for the incredible visual beauty of it.Erikhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08084509066376979793noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1883567827950405204.post-38604838968041462132007-05-24T22:55:00.000-04:002007-05-24T22:55:00.000-04:00Erik, Ain't the blogosphere grand? :) I had actual...Erik, Ain't the blogosphere grand? :) I had actually been thinking about writing a post on satire for a while, and then put it on the back-burner after you wrote about it, since I felt like you'd done such an excellent job and I didn't have much to add. Then reading that bit in Hutton sparked a whole new spin on it, so... there you have it.<BR/><BR/>Interestingly, a friend of mine just lent me the DVD of <I>The Fountain</I>, which deals a lot with the idea of death from what I would consider a "pantheist" perspective... I was really blown away by it--it does a wonderful job of portraying that "hour of adversity," the strange human desire for "eternal life" in one form or another, and the final realization that "the joy of knowing that after death your elements are rejoined with the cosmos and that your body goes on to create new life" and "the corpse that slowly disintegrates and rejoins the flux and flow of nature" are, in the end, one and the same.Alihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01738190874181111086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1883567827950405204.post-73345880497992003372007-05-24T22:19:00.000-04:002007-05-24T22:19:00.000-04:00Hi Ali,I'm pleased that I made somebody think with...Hi Ali,<BR/>I'm pleased that I made somebody think with that post; Thalia needed Her due.<BR/>Interesting spin you've put on the "sacred play" ball - it's always fun to see an extra perspective on something like this!<BR/><BR/>Regarding pantheism and the "hour of adversity" - I can't speak to this historically, but most of the (little) pantheist writing I've seen on the subject stresses the joy of knowing that after death your elements are rejoined with the cosmos and that your body goes on to create new life... more than merely "the corpse that slowly disintegrates and rejoins the flux and flow of nature".<BR/><BR/>And of course, what I love about Druidry is that it gives me a framework to express my largely naturalistic joy in the natural world *plus* adding in the Gods. :)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1883567827950405204.post-39887609910662650222007-05-24T00:26:00.000-04:002007-05-24T00:26:00.000-04:00Jeff, I'm glad at least some of this made sense (a...Jeff, I'm glad at least some of this made sense (after I finished writing it, which took a long long time, I felt like things were still rather jumbled, but I figured I'd at least get the idea out there and let it grow into something coherent later on :).<BR/><BR/>Your point about the Druids is well taken, and Hutton's book is largely about how various sources have portrayed Druids in vastly different ways, in part because there are so few reliable, verifiable records about them. For instance, even the view of reincarnation as recorded among ancient writers is contradictory. While Caesar and a few others claimed that Druids believed in a reincarnation of the soul within the same world, as human or animal (which was similar to the Pythagorean doctrine with which these writers were familiar), others (Valerius Maximus, Lucan and Pomponius) claimed that Druids believed in the continuing life of the soul "in a parallel world." It's no wonder, then, that views of what the Druids may have believed have been embellished or reinterpreted over time. The view of pantheism that I cited in the post was an idea circulating in the nineteenth century and was based, by its main proponent, on forgeries by Iolo Morganwg, with a little "green" flavor added in by the early Romantics (not so much a statement of "fact" about the Druids, as a reflection of the concerns and perspectives of British society in the 1800s).<BR/><BR/>Still, I've always liked to approach comparative religious studies with an attitude that asks, "What if this were true? What would it take for me, as a human being, to believe these things and do these things?" I think that's a useful approach in understanding different religions from an "internal" perspective (which greatly supplements the "external" analytical perspective which can recognize patterns but tends to be a little too flabbergasted by human strangeness). I figure, if I can ask such questions about current religious systems or systems that have been well-recorded and understood... is this not just as valuable an approach when dealing with spiritual traditions that "might have been"? We can still learn about ourselves and our world by entering into such thought experiments, even if they prove to be merely day-dreams of a lost past.<BR/><BR/>I feel like I wanted to clarify that more in the post (I agree that the actual Druids probably weren't pantheist in such a specific way)... but every time I tried to take a moment to explain, the essay got away from me. So thanks for mentioning it in your comment and allowing me to clarify. :)<BR/><BR/>If you read Erik's post about "sacred play," he talks a bit about the Zen koan--which, to me, has always been a beautiful example of the transformative and ego-shattering power of nonsense. Nonsense is taken for granted these days as easy and mindless; I think both political and spiritual satire have a role to play in reminding ourselves that suffering, too, is part of the puzzle and should be considered a real obstacle, a true paradox, not merely a smudge on the glowing ball of light that many of us want to see, through rose-tinted glasses, as the world.Alihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01738190874181111086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1883567827950405204.post-84186805852617366142007-05-23T15:40:00.000-04:002007-05-23T15:40:00.000-04:00A fascinating hypothesis!One thing to note -- thou...A fascinating hypothesis!<BR/><BR/>One thing to note -- though it is almost a side issue to the main thrust of your article -- and since I haven't read the book you're reading, I'm risking seriously exposing my ignorance here -- is that the ancient Druids were almost certainly not pantheists in the sense you use here. Caesar himself says quite explicitly that they believed in reincarnation, and that the ferocity and fearlessness of the Celts in battle could be ascribed to their belief that death was quite a temporary thing. Caesar is not always a reliable source, but in this case he squares with comparative evidence from other branches of Indo-European belief.<BR/><BR/>But the point that satire can alleviate the times when the Universe is a Mean Mother is definitely well taken. It can take you out of yourself, for a time -- it introduces a layer of absurdity between yourself and your pain, and for a while the pain is almost happening to someone else. In that way it is related to the Eastern ideas of transcending suffering via the sublimation of the ego.Jeff Lillyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04863295594209617987noreply@blogger.com