Afterthoughts and Fillers
By © Anton Vendamenc,
2017
2
The Nature of God
In my raga
(blog book), re “How They Shut Down Populist Latviyans”, I argue that the
concept of God arose from the Sacred King who sacrificed His life to hold
together a given community of humans. While this is not a popularly held view,
my opinion is seconded by (or perhaps I am the one who seconds him) political
anthropologist Pierre Castres in his book “Society Against The State”.
In a Chapter
titled “Of Torture in Primitive Societies”, p 186, Castres argues about the
importance of pain among non-state peoples. The pain is inflicted on youths as
a means to inscribe or mark on their bodies the law as understood by non-state
people. Writes Castres:
“The law
they came to know in pain is the law of primitive society, which says to
everyone: You are worth no more than
anyone else; you are worth no less than anyone else. The law, inscribed on
bodies, expresses primitive societies refusal to run the risk of division, the
risk of power separate from society itself, a
power that would escape its control. Primitive law, cruelly taught, is a
prohibition of inequality....”
Inequality
of course fosters division and results in capricious and unselfconscious individualism
as in our murderous neo-liberal civilization, where inition rites have been
replaced by acts of killing, which are (as Acts
of God due to their occurrence
during a time of war) rewarded, more or less, by the ‘men of power’ with shiny
medals and license to rape. That the ‘men of power’ constitute activity against
Nature is attested by the frequent mental breakdowns experienced by young men
after they return to their home communities.
Having
escaped painful initiation rites, which have been condemned by the neoChristian
ecclesia, modern youths (unrestrained by any social mark on their ‘sacrosanct’
bodies) wreak social havoc. Havoc is a form of Anarchism never intended by its originators [
2 ]. Though there exists a mild form of Christian
anarchism in Christian prolabor movements, this form of anarchism is based on
the inner contradictions of neoChristianity, i.e., Christian message of
unconditional love here on Earth vs neoChristianity’s support of taxation and
empire building, which institutions are achieved only through the use and threat
of violence.
Anthropologist
Clastres’s book has several chapters on the Mbya Guarani
Indians of South America. Once of a mighty Populist nation, known as Tupa
Guarani (Guarani of the West), the Mbya, a tribe of the Guarani nation, have
been reduced to a small remnant. Nevertheless, the remnant remain true to the Gods
of their tribe, which is to say, they remain people of the wood, avoid the
city, and will not be neoChristianized. Having said this, it appears that the
Mbya have not only their own religion, but that that religion in many ways
resembles the myths common to Christianity.
The God who
created the Mbya is called Namandu, Who is also the Sun. It is to the rising Sun that the
Mbya address their prayers, which are praises addressed to the God by means of
a language given to them by the God. The Sun, Namandu, also showed he Mbya the
way to the Land of No Evil. In times past, before the Conquests made by the
Europeans, the Mbya actively sought the Land of No Evil by traveling East.
Unfortunately, their quest was blocked by the Atlantic Ocean, whence came a
charade of gods known as conquerors, aka conquistadores. Though many of the
Guarani were forced to join neoChristendom and have replaced their former
religion of quest for that of speculation, the Mbya remained true to the faith
of their ancestors. Why were they able to do so?
The answer
must be sought in the practice of initiating the young into society (in ancient
times an ethnocentric tribe) by marking their bodies with signs that tell that
they had endured pain. In the distant past, this ‘marking’ must have been a universal
practice. The Jewish rite of circumcision, may be some kind of remnant of the
practice. Needless to say, there are times when initiations into endurance of
pain, may fail. It is then that the Healer and Sacred King appears and shows
that beyond pain there is yet another charismatic tool that works toward
restoring an ethnocentric society’s unity: the King who by His voluntary death
brings the God of a dying tribe to life again.
(Next: 3 The
Senses as Embodiment of Religion)
