Pagan Origins of Easter

Gee I could not have said it better myself. And again we note the relationship between the Spring as a time of resurrection from winter, life bursting from death, and its relationship to carnival and the divine fool. And you thought I was just making this all up.

Another popular religion which influenced the thought of early Christians was the worship of Adonis. As is commonly known Antioch was one of the earliest seats of Christianity. It was in this city that there was celebrated each year the death and resurrection of the god Adonis. This faith had always exerted its influence on Jewish thought, so much so that the prophet Ezekiel[Footnote: Ezekiel 8:14.] found it necessary to scold the women of Jerusalem for weeping for the dead Tammuz (Adonis) at the very gate of the temple. When we come to Christian thought the influence seems even greater, for even the place at Bethleham selected by the early Christians as the scene of the birth of Jesus was none other than an early shrine of this pagan god–a fact that led many to confuse Adonis with Jesus Christ.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Pagan origins of Easter:

Many, perhaps most, Pagan religions in the Mediterranean area had a major seasonal day of religious celebration at or following the Spring Equinox. Cybele, the Phrygian fertility goddess, had a fictional consort who was believed to have been born via a virgin birth. He was Attis, who was believed to have died and been resurrected each year during the period MAR-22 to MAR-25. "About 200 B.C. mystery cults began to appear in Rome just as they had earlier in Greece. Most notable was the Cybele cult centered on Vatican hill ...Associated with the Cybele cult was that of her lover, Attis (the older Tammuz, Osiris, Dionysus, or Orpheus under a new name). He was a god of ever-reviving vegetation. Born of a virgin, he died and was reborn annually. The festival began as a day of blood on Black Friday and culminated after three days in a day of rejoicing over the resurrection." ₃

Wherever Christian worship of Jesus and Pagan worship of Attis were active in the same geographical area in ancient times, Christians "used to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus on the same date; and pagans and Christians used to quarrel bitterly about which of their gods was the true prototype and which the imitation."

Many religious historians believe that the death and resurrection legends were first associated with Attis, many centuries before the birth of Jesus. They were simply grafted onto stories of Jesus' life in order to make Christian theology more acceptable to Pagans. Others suggest that many of the events in Jesus' life that were recorded in the gospels were lifted from the life of Krishna, the second person of the Hindu Trinity. Ancient Christians had an alternative explanation; they claimed that Satan had created counterfeit deities in advance of the coming of Christ in order to confuse humanity. ₄ Modern-day Christians generally regard the Attis legend as being a Pagan myth of little value. They regard Jesus' death and resurrection account as being true, and unrelated to the earlier tradition.

Attis

by Micha F. Lindemans

A god of growth and fertility in Asia Minor, also venerated in Greece. His service remained more Asian than Greek, however, and was connected to that of Cybele. Because of his manifestations of intense sadness and ecstatic joy, his service resembles that of Adonis. Attis was thought to be beloved by Cybele and when he refused her love, in her rage she unmanned him. His followers sometimes did the same. Attis is portrayed on coins from the Roman era and on tombstones. He is represented as a young man in tight-fitting clothes and a Phrygian headdress and shepherds staff.

Chapter 34. The Myth and Ritual of Attis.
Sir James George Frazer

Indeed the story that Attis unmanned himself under a pine-tree was clearly devised to explain why his priests did the same beside the sacred violet-wreathed tree at his festival. At all events, we can hardly doubt that the Day of Blood witnessed the mourning for Attis over an effigy of him which was afterwards buried. The image thus laid in the sepulchre was probably the same which had hung upon the tree. Throughout the period of mourning the worshippers fasted from bread, nominally because Cybele had done so in her grief for the death of Attis, but really perhaps for the same reason which induced the women of Harran to abstain from eating anything ground in a mill while they wept for Tammuz. To partake of bread or flour at such a season might have been deemed a wanton profanation of the bruised and broken body of the god. Or the fast may possibly have been a preparation for a sacramental meal.

But when night had fallen, the sorrow of the worshippers was turned to joy. For suddenly a light shone in the darkness: the tomb was opened: the god had risen from the dead; and as the priest touched the lips of the weeping mourners with balm, he softly whispered in their ears the glad tidings of salvation. The resurrection of the god was hailed by his disciples as a promise that they too would issue triumphant from the corruption of the grave. On the morrow, the twenty-fifth day of March, which was reckoned the vernal equinox, the divine resurrection was celebrated with a wild outburst of glee. At Rome, and probably elsewhere, the celebration took the form of a carnival. It was the Festival of Joy (Hilaria). A universal licence prevailed. Every man might say and do what he pleased. People went about the streets in disguise. No dignity was too high or too sacred for the humblest citizen to assume with impunity. In the reign of Commodus a band of conspirators thought to take advantage of the masquerade by dressing in the uniform of the Imperial Guard, and so, mingling with the crowd of merrymakers, to get within stabbing distance of the emperor. But the plot miscarried. Even the stern Alexander Severus used to relax so far on the joyous day as to admit a pheasant to his frugal board. The next day, the twenty-sixth of March, was given to repose, which must have been much needed after the varied excitements and fatigues of the preceding days. Finally, the Roman festival closed on the twenty-seventh of March with a procession to the brook Almo. The silver image of the goddess, with its face of jagged black stone, sat in a waggon drawn by oxen. Preceded by the nobles walking barefoot, it moved slowly, to the loud music of pipes and tambourines, out by the Porta Capena, and so down to the banks of the Almo, which flows into the Tiber just below the walls of Rome. There the high-priest, robed in purple, washed the waggon, the image, and the other sacred objects in the water of the stream. On returning from their bath, the wain and the oxen were strewn with fresh spring flowers. All was mirth and gaiety. No one thought of the blood that had flowed so lately. Even the eunuch priests forgot their wounds.

The Pagan origins of the Easter Bunny

Have you ever wondered where the celebration of the Christian holiday celebrating the resurrection of Christ acquired its unusual name and odd symbols of colored eggs and rabbits?

The answer lies in the ingenious way that the Christian church absorbed Pagan practices. After discovering that people were more reluctant to give up their holidays and festivals than their gods, they simply incorporated Pagan practices into Christian festivals. As recounted by the Venerable Bede, an early Christian writer, clever clerics copied Pagan practices and by doing so, made Christianity more palatable to pagan folk reluctant to give up their festivals for somber Christian practices.

In second century Europe, the predominate spring festival was a raucous Saxon fertility celebration in honor of the Saxon Goddess Eastre (Ostara), whose sacred animal was a hare.

The colored eggs associated with the bunny are of another, even more ancient origin. The eggs associated with this and other Vernal festivals have been symbols of rebirth and fertility for so long the precise roots of the tradition are unknown, and may date to the beginning of human civilization. Ancient Romans and Greeks used eggs as symbols of fertility, rebirth, and abundance- eggs were solar symbols, and figured in the festivals of numerous resurrected gods.

Pagan fertility festivals at the time of the Spring equinox were common- it was believed that at this time, when day and night were of equal length, male and female energies were also in balance. The hare is often associated with moon goddesses; the egg and the hare together represent the god and the goddess, respectively.

Christian denominations and cults that do not observe Easter

Easter traditions deemed "pagan" by some Reformation leaders, along with Christmas celebrations, were among the first casualties of some areas of the Protestant Reformation. Other Reformation Churches, such as the Lutheran and Anglican, retained a very full observance of the Church Year. In Lutheran Churches, not only were the days of Holy Week observed, but also Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost were observed with three day festivals, including the day itself and the two following. Among the other Reformation traditions, things were a bit different. These holidays were eventually restored (though Christmas only became a legal holiday in Scotland in 1967, after the Church of Scotland finally relaxed its objections). Some Christians (usually, but not always fundamentalists), however, continue to reject the celebration of Easter (and, often, of Christmas), because they believe them to be irrevocably tainted with paganism and idolatry.

Their rejection of these traditions is based partly on the words of 2 Corinthians 6:14-16. "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people." (King James Version)

That is also the view of Jehovah's Witnesses, who instead observe a yearly commemorative service of the Last Supper and subsequent death of Christ on the evening of 14 Nisan, as they calculate it derived from the lunar Hebrew Calendar. It is commonly referred to, in short, by many Witnesses as simply "The Memorial." Jehovah's Witnesses believe that such verses as Luke 22:19-20 constitute a commandment to remember the death of Christ, and they do so on a yearly basis just as Passover is celebrated yearly by the Jews.

Some groups feel that Easter (or, as they prefer to call it, "Resurrection Sunday" or "Resurrection Day") is properly regarded with great joy: not marking the day itself, but remembering and rejoicing in the event it commemorates—the miracle of Christ's resurrection. In this spirit, these Christians teach that each day and all Sabbaths should be kept holy, in Christ's teachings.

Other groups, such as the Sabbatarian Church of God, believe in keeping the feasts and commandments of God as given in the Bible, including a Christian Passover that lacks most of the practices or symbols associated with Western Easter and retains more features of the Passover observed by Jesus Christ at the Last Supper.

Etymology and the origins of Easter traditions

In his De temporum ratione the Venerable Bede wrote that the month Eostremonat (Eosturmonath) (April) was so named because of a goddess, Eostre, who had formerly been worshipped in that month. In recent years some scholars have suggested that a lack of supporting documentation for this goddess might indicate that Bede assumed her existence based on the name of the month.^[15] Others note that Bede's status as "the Father of English History," having been the author of the first substantial history of England ever written, might make the lack of additional mention for a goddess whose worship had already died out by Bede's time unsurprising. The debate receives considerable attention because the name 'Easter' is derived from Eostremonat (Eosturmonath), and thus, according to Bede, from the pagan goddess Eostre, though this etymology is disputed.^[16]

Jakob Grimm took up the question of Eostre in his Deutsche Mythologie of 1835, noting that Ostaramanoth was etymologically related to Eostremonat (Eosturmonath) and writing of various landmarks and customs related to the goddess Ostara in Germany. Again, because of a lack of written documentation, critics suggest that Grimm took Bede's mention of a goddess Eostre at face value and constructed the goddess Ostara around existing Germanic customs which may have arisen independently. Others point to Grimm's stated intent to gather and record oral traditions which might otherwise be lost as explanation for the lack of further documentation. Amongst other traditions, Grimm connected the 'Osterhase' (Easter Bunny) and Easter Eggs to the goddess Ostara/Eostre. He also cites various place names in Germany as being evidence of Ostara, but critics contend that the close etymological relationship between Ostara and the words for 'east' and 'dawn' could mean that these place names referred to either of those two things rather than a goddess.

Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum ("Ecclesiastic History of the English People") contains a letter from Pope Gregory I to Saint Mellitus, who was then on his way to England to conduct missionary work among the heathen Anglo-Saxons. The Pope suggests that converting heathens is easier if they are allowed to retain the outward forms of their traditional pagan practices and traditions, while recasting those traditions spiritually towards Christianity instead of to their indigenous gods (whom the Pope refers to as "devils"), "to the end that, whilst some gratifications are outwardly permitted them, they may the more easily consent to the inward consolations of the grace of God." The Pope sanctioned such conversion tactics as biblically acceptable, pointing out that God did much the same thing with the ancient Israelites and their pagan sacrifices. If his statement on the origin of the name "Easter" is accurate, this practice might explain the incorporation of Eostre traditions into the Christian holiday.

However, the giving of eggs at spring festivals was not restricted to Germanic peoples and could be found among the Persians, Romans, Jews and the Armenians. They were a widespread symbol of rebirth and resurrection and thus might have been adopted from any number of sources.

Musei Vaticani, State of the Vatican City

Artist/Maker Unknown

Attis performing a dance of the Cybele cult. Marble, Roman Imperial Era.

Dimensions Unspecified

Credit line Formerly at Palazzo Altieri

Accession number Inv. 1656

Museo Chiaramonti

Photographer/Source Jastrow (2006)

See:

Passover Song

Palm Sunday April Fools Day

Judas the Obscure

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Liberation Theology

This is an interesting essay by K. Satchidanandan that is quite long but well worth the read. I have pulled out excerpts that I hope do justice to whole post, it is over four pages long.

I found it informative and in many ways it reflects my belief that certain religious or spiritual movements, such as paganism, Gnosticism, the spiritualist reformers and occult revival of the fin de sicle 19th Century as well as their heirs; the 20th century magickal movements, reflect a true liberation theology. In fact a theology of libertarianism.

As Satchidanandan says in the Indian context they are movements of the Sramana.

Satchidananda's critique of communalism is similar to that of Habermas though he is clearly critical of western positivism, Hegelianism and Marxism.

He deconstructs in a devastating way the fascist statist elements of Brahmanism and its modern revivalist incarnation in political Hinduism.

He ends with a reflection on the champion of libertarian spirituality, Ghandi, whom his Canadian biographer; George Woodcock called 'the gentle anarchist', and influenced a whole generation of intellectuals to become active anarchist pacifists.

For a critique of Woodcock's view of Ghandi's liberation theology see;Indian Spirituality and the Mythic Gandhi

Which should be contrasted with Woodcocks Who Killed the British Empire? that observes: "Undoubtedly if one had to choose any individual as more responsible than others for the death of the Empire, it will be Gandhi.''


All in all I found this an enlightening essay , if you pardon the pun, so I thought I would share with you.


Between saints and secularists

K. Satchidanandan is Secretary of the Sahitya Akademi.
A major Indian poet writing in Malayalam, he lives in New Delhi

We need a secularism that is not merely ‘tolerant’ of our pluralist traditions of religion but is inspired and motivated by them and fully takes into account the creative, positive, contributions of different religions to the moulding of our subjectivity as well as to the evolution of our civilisation. By dismissing religiosity and spiritualism as fundamentally flawed, superstitious and illusory, our communist friends have foreclosed any possibility of a dialogue with the majority of our people who have faith in one religion or another. They have also entirely failed to understand the radical significance of spiritual leaders from Buddha and Mahavira to Vivekananda and Gandhi, and of subaltern religious movements like the Bhakti and the Sufi traditions.

Communalism being the worst form of materialism, divorced from everything that is sacred and oriented towards worldly wealth and power, can truly be combated only by a higher form of the sacred that combines the secular ideal of human equality, democratic awareness, identification with the suffering, alleviation of poverty and resistance to oppression with a deep inner inquiry and belief in the holiness of all forms of life. Those who turn religion into a means to attain state power and worldly status are indeed the most irreligious of all, for they profane the most hallowed and usurp even the last refuge of the spirit from a world where ‘the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity’ by joining the ‘ignorant armies’ that ‘clash by night’.

It is possible, at the risk of some simplification, to characterise the struggle within religions as one between Brahmanas and Sramanas. I am using these words more as oppositional metaphors than as historical categories. Of course, the terms do have historical sanction: there are references to them in Buddhist and Jain literature, Ashoka’s edicts and the travelogues of Megasthenes and Chinese pilgrims. Patanjali records that the two were born rivals "like the cat and the mouse, like the snake and the mongoose". The Arab documents of the second millennium AD also speak of two religious traditions they call Brahmanam (also Brahimam) and Samanyam. The Brahmana stream represents emphasis on ritual, belief in hierarchisation and priesthood and the resulting inequality, the unquestioning faith in the Vedas as repositories of eternal truth, the monopolisation of certain knowledges through a language seldom known to the majority and the linking of those knowledges to power, secrecy, deformation, mystifying representations and divisive practices imposed on people that are later legitimised and rationalised to seem almost natural or divinely created.

In short, it is the religion of hegemony that believes in subjection and domination that splits up community life, forces the individual into himself/herself and ties him/her to his/her own identity in a constraining manner. In this way, it always has had links with state power, even when it does not directly rule, by being more than the rulers, making rules for them, by being advisers in court in the past or as lawyers, managers and bureaucrats in the present, creating and sustaining mechanisms of subjection and determining the forms of subjectivity. Michel Foucault calls this ‘pastoral power’ in the context of the Western State, which has integrated the old power-techniques of the Church in a new political format. Originally, it was a form of power that guaranteed individual salvation in the next world, but it differed from royal power in that it not only commanded but was also prepared to sacrifice itself for the flock. It was a power that looked after not only the whole community but also each individual in particular during his entire life-span, a power that could not be exercised without exploring their ‘souls’, without making them reveal their innermost secrets. The concept of such a form of power applies equally well to the power the Brahmins enjoyed —and to some extent continue to enjoy in Indian society, the growing power of the Papacy and the Church in the Western states and the power of the mullahs in monoreligious Islamic states.

Sramanas by definition are beggars — those who have chosen poverty. They do not approve of the domination of the Brahmanas or accept the authenticity of their texts. Rituals are secondary in their practice: self-realisation and service are primary. They would prefer to speak in popular tongues rather than in Sanskrit or Latin, abhor the idea of hierarchisation through divisive practices like caste, look down upon earthly power and riches and demystify religion by taking it to the people. They interrogate traditional customs, rituals and taboos including, at times, the very idea of temples and idol-worship, not to speak of untouchability and other spatial strategies of distance and differentiation, and believe in basic human equality, or even go beyond it to believe in the equality of all created beings.

While for the Brahmana tradition religion is an instrument of hegemony, for the Sramana tradition, it is an instrument of spiritual enquiry, social justice and revolt against forms of oppressive subjectivisation.

The disappearance of women priests and the conversion of fertility cults dominated by women into celebrations dominated by men, like Ganesh Chaturthi, are all signs of similar patriarchalisation of society. Ancient Indian texts abound with legitimising narratives where the caste system is shown to have divine sanction. The Purusha Sukta of the Rig Veda, probably a later interpolation into the Vedic canon, says that the mouth of the divine became the Brahmin, his arms the Kshatriya, his legs the Vaisya and his feet the Sudra. The Bhagavad Gita, again considered by historians like D.D. Kosambi to be a later Brahminical interpolation in the Mahabharata, brackets Vaisyas, Sudras and women together and calls them the ‘base-born’. The Vishnu Purana, the Padma Purana and Satapatha Brahmana are full of similar narratives and situations that glorify the Brahmin at the cost of other segments of society.

The Sramana tradition, on the other hand, is counter-hegemonic, often to the degree of being subversive. The Buddha and Mahavira, who interrogated the Varna system, questioned the priesthood, spurned rituals, upheld the equality of beings and hence condemned violence, whose victims in those days were mostly the Sudras and the animals useful for the peasants, may be said to belong to this tradition. The Bhakti-Sufi movement was another major pan-Indian articulation of this stream of subaltern dissent.

The spokesmen/women of the movement mostly came from the subaltern or marginalised sections of society and were workers, women or Mulsims. Namdeo the tailor, Kabir the weaver, Tukaram the peddler, Chokamela the bricklayer and Gora the potter were some of them. Bulhe Shah, Baba Farid, Mir Dard, Shah Abdul Latif, Sultan Bahu, Madho Lal Husain, Sheikh Ibrahim Farid Sani, Ali Haidar, Fard Faqir, Hashim Shah, Karam Ali and other Sufi poets were Muslims by birth. And there were women saints from Lal Ded and Meerabai to Andal, Ouvaiar and Akkamahadevi, who transcended their gender and whose stories are also often tales of emancipation from the oppression and subordination they experienced as women. The Sahaja cult of Chandidas and the cult of Chaitanya also did not recognise caste and creed and hence provided moments of liberation for the Sudras.

Tukaram, Kabir, Namdeo, Meera and the South Indian saints like Allamaprabhu and Basaveswara did not accept the authority of the Bhagavad Gita. Even the Sikh credo, that received its elements from various religious sources including bhaktas like Jayadev and Namdeo, has been little influenced by the Gita. Jnaneswar quarrelled with Brahmin beliefs in Alandi and hence had to seek refuge on the southern banks of the Godavari to write his popular version of the Gita. The Manbhavs (or Mahanubhavas), who belonged to the sect established by Chakradhara in Maharashtra in the twelfth century AD, also would have nothing to do with Brahminism; they practised a kind of primitive communism, sharing everything equally and denounced the idea of caste. Even Eknath, who was born a Brahmin, fell victim to the displeasure of his priestly class for opposing the caste system. The Varkari pilgrims of Maharashtra also renounced caste and refused to follow rituals.

The Hindu revivalist ideology practised in contemporary India deliberately ignores this second Sramana tradition of revolt and reform within Indian religion, or blurs the distinctions between the two traditions in order to absorb some of the populist aspects of Bhakti into its strategies of propagation. It is Bhakti vulgarised and emptied of its profound, egalitarian, radical content. The hidden agenda of this neo–Hinduism, what Romila Thapar calls ‘Syndicated Hinduism’, is a reassertion of the hegemony of the Dharmasastras and, through it, the retrieval of Brahmin ideology, now under threat from the awakening Dalit sections of society. The latter have very different traditions and practices of spirituality, a different iconography, and an alternative religion now half-submerged in the ruling rhetoric of the dominant religious discourse and marginalised by the conscious and unconscious processes of history. We know very well that a denomination called ‘Hindu’ did not exist until recently and the word merely denoted the people on the banks of the Indus. The Persians called the Sindhu river Hindu, the Greeks called it Indos and the Arabs, Al Hind. Muslim rulers and Christian missionaries used it as a blanket term to cover all those who did not belong to the Judaic religions, even while recognising the multi-religious nature of that population. The orientalist historians gave it a kind of theoretical legitimation by speaking about a Hindu civilisation and culture.

At the heart of this homogenising Hindutva lies the myth of a continuous and primordial struggle of ‘Hindus’ against Muslims as the structuring principle of Indian history. In this running construction of ‘otherness’, both the communities are to have been homogeneous blocs, though this myth has been entirely demolished by historians. Not the logic of religion but the logic of power had decided the nature of those struggles where Hindus have fought against Hindus (e.g., Saiva-Vaishnava) and Muslims against Muslims (e.g. Shia-Sunni). Both have also very often joined hands to crush someone perceived as a threat to sovereignty or royal power, whether Hindu or Muslim. And if Muslim kings had been invaders, let us remember, so were the Aryans. Only the communicational and economic integration of the last quarter of the nineteenth century provided sharply-defined identities and animosities with a larger expanse of space to spread across, and the forces of neo-Hinduism have managed to develop a wide-based institutional framework and strategic network to make full political use of this facility. Pride in the national past invoked during the anti-colonial struggle, the empowerment of the ‘other backward castes’ in search of new pastures of power and prestige, the growth of an aggressive middle class that seeks to manage society, the desire of the disempowered orthodoxy to retrieve their lost centrality in the power-grid: all these have in different ways strengthened the forces of revivalism and helped them expand their base. They are equipped now with a neo-Brahminical ideology well adapted to modern statecraft and in collusion with the forces of exploitation. This calls for new ways of perceiving ground realities, forging new alliances and reinforcing alternative forms of spirituality.

The Brahmana-Sramana paradigm is not confined to Indian religions alone. Christianity has its own brand of the Brahmana concept: the Vatican has been a major power centre whose growth has been over-determined by the power-systems of civil society from time to time. Hierarchy, priesthood, censorship against free enquiries and radical thought from those of Bruno and Galileo to Leonard Boff and Kazantzakis, alliances with the forces of oppression, with the Whites against the Coloured, with the Spaniards and Portuguese against the Indians in South America to hunt them down like beasts, inquisitions and crusades, the imposition of Western values and thought-systems on vast populations in the so-called ‘Third World’ who were forced to discard their own belief systems and traditions, support to colonialism of every kind and tacit support even to the Nazis, dictators like Somoza and to the CIA, as in destabilising the Arbens government in Guatemala: all these reveal the Brahmana streak of institutionalised Christianity.

I shall conclude this brief monologue with some comments on Gandhi’s attitude to the whole question, which I consider to be in the best of our Sramana traditions and to be valid even today as an alternative to Western touch–me–not secularism, which is completely divorced from the moral and spiritual insights of religion in fighting communalism.

He aspired towards God as an Absolute Truth while admitting that he was able to know only the relative truth. His shift from ‘God is Truth’ to ‘Truth is God’ in 1928-29 was strategic in that he wanted to appeal to the atheists as well. He claimed that sat (that which exists) the Sanskrit word for Truth, came closest to expressing the belief affirmed both in Hindu philosophy and the Kalma of Islam that ‘God alone is and nothing else exists’. He can be called Rama or Allah, Khuda or Ahura Mazda. Naming is a historical act, while God Himself is above Time. ‘There are many religions’, he said, ‘but Religion is only one’. ‘I do not differentiate between the sweeper and the Brahmin. My mind finds no difference between a Hindu, a Muslim and a Christian’. He denounced yajnas like most of the Sramana saints and said that the only true yajna is self-sacrifice for a higher cause. He refused to consider any prophet superior to any other. ‘To say Jesus was 99 per cent divine, and Muhammad 50 per cent and Krishna 10 per cent is to arrogate to oneself a function which does not really ‘belong to man’ — a simple argument, yet strong enough to refute all claims to superiority put forward by the fundamentalists. He considered the Koran, the Bible, the Zend Avesta, the Vedas and other religious texts as equally ‘divinely inspired’. He loathed monolithic categories and believed there were always many interpretations of Truth, many names for God, and many manifestations as scripture.

Truth, non-violence, abstinence, poverty and non-possession were the five vows he advocated; each was well thought-out and reasoned about. He never claimed, as fundamentalists do, that he spoke for truth or as truth, but only that he was ‘in search of truth’. He did not trust the shastras since they often offended his moral sense. ‘If Hinduism sanctioned untouchability,’ he once said, ‘I should denounce it’. Still, he was not prepared to give up his faith altogether; he held on to it even in the worst days of partition. He qualified Truth subjectively. ‘I represent no new truths, I endeavour to follow Truth as I know it.’ This is where he differs from the fundamentalists who always objectify Truth as something external to them and ask everyone to follow it. Gandhi also separated his notions of ‘faith’ and ‘religion’ from caste: "Caste has nothing to do with religion. It is a custom whose origin I do not know and do not need to know for the satisfaction of my spiritual hunger. But I do know that it is harmful both to the spiritual and national good."

Gandhi belongs to that great tradition of critical insiders within religion, and to invoke his image and to liberate it from the disuse into which it has fallen in the hands of the state and his self-proclaimed followers is, I believe, a moral-political act of great significance today, when the country is once again being asked to defend its sovereignty and its traditions of amity in plurality. I will consider my argument wasted if anyone feels that he/she is being persuaded to follow the footsteps of Kabir or Vivekananda, Sree Narayana or Gandhi. My essential plea is for a paradigm shift in our understanding of politics as well as philosophy. I have been looking at some of the positive aspects, the dimension of resistance within the idealist/spiritual traditions in India. In historical and practical terms, the materialist-idealist opposition does not work, at least in India. It has to be urgently replaced by the opposition between the hegemonic and the subaltern or the governing and the subversive. For this, one has to look at the internal critique that religions have developed, if we ever want to relate to the believing majority in the country. Arguments external to religion might appeal to an intellectual minority; but reformers like Sree Narayana, Vivekananda or Gandhi were forced to develop a spiritual idiom to persuade the people to fight the orthodoxy. It is wishful to think that religious revivalism and fundamentalism can be fought with philosophical materialism. One has to look at the history of struggle within and draw one’s energies for the contemporary combat against communalism from the strategies of the critical insiders within religions, especially the majority religion in India.



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Halloween Election?

So much for Ontario's historic first "fixed" election date.
Premier Dalton McGuinty's government has switched the much-ballyhooed Oct. 4 provincial election to Oct. 10 because of a conflict with the Jewish holiday of Shemini Atzeret. With the change, this year's election will fall on a Wednesday, instead of a Thursday, the traditional day for votes in Ontario. Democratic Renewal Minister Marie Bountrogianni said that's because Ontario's chief election officer, John Hollins, was concerned Oct. 11 might infringe on that week's Eid al-Fitr holiday, which marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. "The Jewish holiday pre-dates Dalton McGuinty's legislation. You think they would have figured this out from the beginning. This is incompetence."Hudak said, noting the holiday concern has been raised for two years.

Oh heck hold it on Halloween.

I am sure most pagans wouldn't mind, and besides it would be appropriate.

After all politicians are masters of disguising their true intentions.

And like ghosts and goblins they go door to door seeking to trick or treat.

And it is a celebration of ancestor worship and the dead, oh sorry that's the Senate.



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Damn Accurate

Gee them groundhogs sure are accurate, or damn close. They predict that Spring will be in six weeks. Gosh that just so happens to be March 16.

Thus spring will be early, since it is only five days prior to the official first day of Spring March 21st the Vernal Equinox.

Shows that the pagan tradition of popular prestidigitation by pests is almost as accurate as science.

Groundhog Day or Groundhog's Day is a traditional festival celebrated in the United States and Canada on February 2. It is a cross-quarter day, midway between the Winter Solstice and the Vernal Equinox.



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Pagans Party

The discovery of an ancient village at Stonehenge proves what neo-pagans have known all along, we know how to party!

After 4,600 years, we still gather for festivals.

The discovery reconfigures the geometry of Stonehenge, indicating that it is not an isolated monument but part of a larger religious complex that may have encompassed the area. It also casts the people who built the monument in an unexpected light, indicating that they were not only the somber worshipers of Stonehenge but also a raucous, hard-partying group who gathered for regular festivals.

An earlier discovery found that the village at Stonehenge may have been a gathering place of pagans from across Europe.

This is demonstrated by the 'Amesbury Archer', recently found in a 4,000-year-old grave, one of Europe's richest, near Stonehenge.

He was surrounded by about 100 items, including golden hair ornaments - some of the earliest gold objects found in Britain.

But his teeth provided the real surprise. Tests on their enamel, formed in early childhood and which contains telltale chemical signatures from local soil and rocks, showed the archer came from the Alps while the ornaments found in his grave were traced to Spain and France.

This discovery suggests that metalworkers from the Continent had already begun to trade and work in tin, copper and other metals in Britain 4,000 years ago and may have played key roles in building Stonehenge. The monument appears to have been the centre of major activity by travellers roaming across Britain, Ireland and the Continent.

See

The Monument Builders

Here Comes The Sun

Pyramid in Ukraine

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