An interesting journey. My condolences to you for your lost daughter. I've
always considered the pantheon of Greco_Roman Gods to represent the full
spectrum of human existence, emotion, logic, and experience. And much more
sensible than Christianity.
to gar autou noien estin te kai enai
Gaius Basilicatus Agricola
Scriba Curatoris Differum Lex Iuridicalis
Legate Major for Regio Campus
America Medioccidentalis Superior Province
"It is indeed a desirable thing to be well-descended, but the glory belongs
to our ancestors."
-Plutarch (46-120AD)
-----Original Message-----
From: bradley Skene [mailto:
malkhos@...]
Sent: Tuesday, February 25, 2003 10:48 AM
To:
JulianSociety@yahoogroups.com;
Nova-Roma@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Nova-Roma] Testament of Malkhos
I was raised in some vague offshoot of the Protestant sect founded by John
Calvin. My parents rarely attended the services, certianly did not beleive
in it, but sent me for some years to the Sunday School, where I was taught
pathetic theology and philosophy by pathetic men and women.
By the time I was 9 years old I had determined that the proper course to
follow was that of materialist atheism. But at the same time I was filled
with curiosity to find out the truth, the truth that lay behind what little
I had been shown of the spiritual world (I seemd to know by some instinct
that there was something more), the truth that would expose the falseness
and insufficency of those who had failedto teach me.
In college I set out to take the courses for chemical engineering, since
that seemed an advantageous profession, and one suited to a scientifically
mindied atheist. But I also took history courses becuase I was intersted in
them. I soon found that I had such a monomania for historical research that
I was reading historical texts even while actually attending the chemistry
lectures. I changed the course of my studies to conform to the new my new
view of reality. I determined to fix on the Renaissance since the kindly and
jovial personality of my teacher in that field, Willaim Maltby, had made a
tremendous impression on me. Also the figures that I studied, the Kings and
Generals of the Catholic Renaissance--Charles V, Philip II, Don Juan of
Austria, The Dukes of Alba and Parma--seemed admirable to me because of
their unswavering devotion to purity of doctrine; however much in error I
beleived them to be: their faith impressed me.
Then I read Plato.
On his teaching he seemed as if he were showing my own thoughts to me,
thoughts which were nobler and finer than any I had ever had, but which were
living unkown within me. And the substance of his teaching explained why
this was so: he was merely revealing the substance our own divine natures,
which the prison house of the body kept us form seeing. I still did not yet
believe him, but I recognized that here at last was what lay beneath
Christianity and everything else I had been seeking after--I still took this
not in a spiritual sense, but in the sense of historical causation.
I knew that Plato was what I had to study, but in the Renaissance, his
philosophy had become very fractured: Hermeticism, Kabbalah of various
sorts, sufism, magic. The life's work (and he had a very short life) of the
greatest philosopher of the period, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Prince of
Concord, was to attempt to call together a Grand council of Christian,
Jewish, and Islamic theologians, to create a new faith unifying all three on
the basis of their common Neoplatonic theology. I determined that I would
write as my Ph.D. dissertaion a translation and commentary of the program he
had prepared for the conference (never called becuase the Pope put him under
house arrest rather than permit it)--900 theses for debate and a plenary
address: The Oration on the Dignity of Man (a poject which I did not then,
but will someday, complete). Obviously I would haveto know Latin, and as I
had started my historical studies quite late, I took an MA in Classics.
Once I could read Greek, and had read Plato, and the New Testament, and
Sophocles, and Homer, and many other works in Greek, it was farewell to the
Renaissance.
It was also farwell to atheism. It slowly dawned on me that to think and
believe as Plato had done increased rather than lessened my dignity, so I
did so, but as a philosophy only, not yet as a faith, except as a pose in
debate with my fellow Ph.D. candidates, either atheists, Christians so far
lapsed into hedonism and indiffernce that they were nothing Augustine or
Paul would have recognized, or Fundamentalists preachers, gaining a real
degree in Greek so that they could teach at their sectarian seminaries.
My sympathies veered toward Gnosticism at this time. The translation of
Plato's teachings into a more mythic form, a form expressed in the myths of
the semitic peoples (and I do not mean only Judaism--once one becomes
acainted with the mytholgoiesof Babylon and Ugarit everything about judiam
is seen in a new light and takes on a new meaning) seemed perilously
beautiful. Here at last, knowledge began to transform into belief. It will
come as no suprise to anyone reading this that every human life is filled
with suffering, and all the more so those lives cut off from spiritual
refreshment. I certainly had my share--I mean the interior pain of
lonliness, isolation and exile, too dull and pervasive for most to percieve
under its proper name. It finally occured to me that the Grace of the Wisdom
of God was meant heal this, and as best as I am able to tell, even now many
years later, that is what happened to me in a moment of revelation. I can
still recall the exact instant it happened. I seemed to be filled up with a
new life, infinitely greater and more spelndid than the one I had known. It
is a cliche to say the experince cannot be expailned in words, but I can
offer you this much idea of it: go and listen to the Pilgrim's Chorus from
Wagner's Tannhauser and imagine feeling the way that sounds. I happend to
have been in a coffe house talking to a girl at the time, and I mistakenly
thought that I had fallen in love with her! It was the same kind of
experience. I no longer recognize in memories from before that time the
person I was.
Shortly before this I had undergone a surgery which was badly botched and
almost died. I realized then that I had to go and pour a libation of
thanksgiving to the Gods for having preserved my life for that moment, the
moment when I realized I was of the same religion as Plato, Iamblichus,
Julian and Proclus.
I have never encountered anyone else who shares this faith, certianly not
in the profession of Classics, the very people who are trained to best
udnerstand these matters, at least outwardly. That is why I met with honest
joy the Nova Roma movement, of which I became aware only a few days ago now.
When I read on the Julian Society list that someone in the world is planning
to make a temple to Hekate, and already has a cult statue, I quite literally
wept, and became excited and exhilirated at the thought of perfoming
sacrifice there, something I have never done, and which I never thought it
would be possible to do. I still, obviously have much to learn about you,
and hopefully in dialog with you, but I thought the best wat to proceed
would be to introduce myself in the way that I have, especially in view of
the fact that when the Gods save us, they also command us to leave testimony
to the fact in their houses. This list is not a temple, but it may be a
start.
I have one more thing to testify to.
I am married to a woman named Rita (not the girl mentioned above), who is
a Roman Catholic, of extremly traditonal tastes and orthodox leanings--a
position I once toyed with, but know now I can never assume. Last year she
concieved our daughter Sophia, who died in the womb one day before labor was
going to be induced (a fatal blood-clot formed in the placenta--the poor
thing was perfectly well up until the last moment and then died, probably in
the space of only a minute). You can imagine how shattering this was,
especially for Rita--I have prepared myself for suffering through the
intensive study of philosophy, but this tested my indiffernce and reserve,
Rita, however, is possessed of an innocence that is indescribably beautiful,
but left her terrbily vulnerable. I feared for her sanity. Rita went through
all the rituals of aid and comfort presrcibed by her Church. I prayed to
Apollo that he might save my wife and child, and vowed to repay him as best
I could. Now just over a year later Rita seems restored (and she is pregnant
again with a boy I hope to name Julian) and I have every faith that Sophia
is in as blessed a state as she may be. It would be easy to say that time
heals all wounds, I have decided (and I do not decive myself that faith is
not in some sense and existential decision--asfter all we do live in the
modern world) that the proposition that I and my family expereince the Grace
of Apollo is a more meaningful description. Since that time I honoured the
God with libations, and have done and will libate and leave a offering of
flowers on Sophia's grave each year on the Rosalia (last year the first day
that Rita could bear to return to the cemetary after the funeral).
This brings up some ciritcal problems that I feel I have to address, not
by dogmatic statements that I have no authority to make, but in discussion
with the members of this list whom i hope believe as I do.
The proper recompense I owe to Apollo is sacrifice. The reasons I have not
yet done so are deeply troubling to me, and I think must be considered
seriously by anyone who loves the gods.
First let me say something further about my studies. I have completed all
of the course work for a Ph.D. in classics, and am a specialist in
Neoplatonism and Greek magic. For personal reasons that have been partly
alluded to above, I am on hiatus from a formal degree program, but have been
working as a Greek instructor. I have published articles and reviews in
these fields in peer-reviewd journals, and will have a spate of new articles
published at the end of next summer. I have a draft of a dissertation
dealing with Iamblichus' dialog with Christianity in his Pythagorean Life
(the on-line name I use, Malkhos, was the given name of the Neoplatonist
Porphyry, a man of Semitic cultural origin). I do not think of myself in any
way as a hemicaust crack-pot, but I know that if most classicists read what
I have written here, they would be dismissive.
I am now going to raise a series of objections that I feel have to be
answered, and which, if the answers are going to be meaningful have to be
answered together, not just by me and my own reason. I do not mean to be a
smart ass or to offend anyone's beleifs. But the Socratic method of finding
the truth employs discussion, and I feel strongly that the points I will
make are the ones that are going to have to be discussed if any kind of
resurrection of ancient religion is to be made, as I fervently hope it can.
I know that some 'pagan' lists I have looked at go so far as to say that if
you criticize anyone's beliefs you will be banned from the list. I never
said anything about it but just left, because I took it as a signal that the
people were not serious. If you seriously believe something, your belief can
sustain criticism. There also seemed little point in believing in soemthing
that you either did not care to defend, or tacitly admitted was
indefensible.
1. In Antiquity religion was a communal act: the very word means 'binding
together' and it was the force that bound the city into a sacred whole.
Corespondingly, the exercise of religion depended on the common practice of
all citizens together. Anyone who purseued a strange religion or practiced
reilgious ritual for private inscrutible ends was liable to charges of
superstition and magic. The very indictment agianst Socrates charged him
with worshipping Gods other than the city's. If you had approached someone
in antiquity, even a priest or philsopher, and asked him how his religion
could be sustained in a state that was secular and atheistic, he would have
told you it could not. A specific cult had been established by the Gods,
wither in prehsitory or through divination or revelation and its existence
depended on its communal suport nad its continuous operation. If it ever
ceased to exist or operate, this was a further sign from the gods that that
cult should end. For example, the cult of Jupiter Dolinecheas was in late
antiquity almost as popular throughout the Roman Empire as the worship of
Mithras, but, once the Persians sacked and burned the temple at Dolinecheum,
it was abandoned everywhere else on the grounds that if a God was too weak
to defend his own temple, what good was he. This kind of reasoning applied
to individual cults; no ancient person could have imagined all cults ceasing
silmultaneously (until it happened), or how the whole aparatus could be
revived after 1500 years of lapse of worhsip. At one time I considered
converting to Parsism, the last remnant of the ancient Zoroastrian religion
(still surviving among Iranian emingrants in India and spread from there
recetly to a few other places around the world) and the last trace of any
ancient religin not related to Judeo-Christianity. But they don't accept
converts; they want to protect the purity of their unbroken tradition by
limiting it to ethnic Iranians, and I can't blame them. But, and here is the
question, how can we say we f! ollow a religion based in tradition after so
long a cesation of tradition? Obviously we must find some way. I trust that
it can be some way other than to invent a buch of fraudulent nonsense
offensive to reason, as the Wiccans, Theosophists, Druids, and others have
done. I feel strongly that only way is to revive the ancient cults in the
purest possible form (which is why I felt also trememdous relief when I saw
the photos of the cult image of Hekate posted here--it looks like a real
cult image, not like a hollywood or kitsch idea of a cult image). The
revival of cultic practice per se, is not really so diffcult, though it
would take much work, the problem is finding a theological justification or
explanation to bridge those lost 15 centuries. The best hope I can see comes
from Iamblichus, whose theurgic doctrines form a link between ordianry
cultic practice and the essentially private religious practices that we
would be forced to today. I expect I will have rather more to say about that
later, if my contributions turn out to be welcome here. Indeed the only
reason I am writing now, is becuase reading the De mysteriis has recently
made my own thinking on this subject much more flexible.
As I find out more about Nova Roma, it seems as if it is attempting to
provide a viable platform for sacrifice.
2. I don't know what the attitude here is toward the word 'pagan', but I
will venture to offer my own opinion. In antiquity paganus was someone from
the countryside, someone likely to be unsophsiticated, ignornat,
old-fashioned: a hill-billy or red-neck. The church fathers had the brillant
idea of applying this term to anyone they suppsoed lacked the wisdom and
sophsitication to convert ot Christinaity, who insisted on adhereing to what
Christians considered an out-moded form of religion. Becuase of this
historical etymology, classicsits have not for a long time now not refered
to Graeco-Roman religion as 'paganism.' I certianly will never use this term
to refer to myself, and think any one else who wanted to revivie
non-Judaeo-Christian reigion would be wise to do likewise. In my view we
should use the same kind of formualtions found in Julian and other ancient
writers who were first faced with defining as particular what had been
universal. In controversy with Christians, Julian most often refered to
himself as a Greek; probably we would more like say Roman. We should say
that we follow the faith of our ancestors, that we worship the Gods, or that
we are pious.
3. The revival of ancient religion is always going to seem mad and
pointless to the mass of soceity, whther they are Christians, Atheists, or
whatever. For example, I have already seen the Julian Society ridiculed on
an American Philogoical Association list, supposedly for the lack of
learning displayed in some Web article or annoucnement the author had seen,
although it was clear he had not invenstigated the matter clsoely enough to
form an accurate judgement; the derision was reflexive. For this reason, I
think anyone attempting such a revival has to be absolutely beyond reproach
in terms of intellectual, aesthetic, and moral legitimacy--as one would be
any way who followed the ancient traditions. There are a few obvious errors
that could easily be avoided. a. Anyone who has read Plato knows that the
creation myth in the Timaeus and his various allusions to Atlantis are what
we would call today thought experiments--he never intended them to become
dogmatic articles of faith. So there would be no reason, for example, for
any follower of Plato to act in a manner similar to many American Indians
and Christian fundamentialsits and deny Evolution--one should also bear in
mind all of the damage done to the popualr opinion of Americna Indian
religion by the interfernce by some Indians in the name of that religion in
archaeological and other scientific research. b.Thomas Taylor seems to have
a good reputation here, and I can see why, since his aim is the same as
ours; personally I have a great deal of affection and sympathy for him. But
he made himself look ridiculous by, for example, denying the validity even
of Newtonian phyiscs, even of Galileo's observations of craters on the moon
and the moons of Jupiter (see previous item). Also his Greek was very bad,
and his translations give a very imperfect idea of the texts he was dealing
with. Since all of the important books he translated have been given modern
schoalrly versions, some of them quite recently (I may well post a
bibliographical list here, if anyone ! is intrested). There is absolutely no
need to rely for our knwoledge of ancient religious texts on Taylor's
translations, nor for our interpretation and understanding of them on
figures of nebulous learning, and possesed of mtoives and agendas that have
nothing to do with ancient traditions: e.g. G.R.S. Meade, MacGregor Mathers,
A.E. Waite; Mme. Blavatsky, Alester Crowley. Jung, Kerenyi, and von Franz,
Joseph Campbell, etc. We should instead read: Plato, Plutarch, Pausanius,
Julian, Homer, Sophocles, etc. with as little imtermediation as possible.
4. Many modern people have been loyal to the Gods wither more or less
openly or in their hearts, but lacking any integrated structure of
traditional worship, remained isolated and alienated in this regard. If
these persons have also attained the greatest intellectual and artistic
acheivements, they are the ones whose examples we should follow and make
known to others. Good examples of this sort of person would be: Goethe,
Keats, Wagner.
I hope I have seemed too overbearing or bombastic. I have merely set forth
what I believe, and how I intend to act. I hope to find here at least a few
of similar mind. If you find what I have said provocative, I hope you are
stimualted to discussion.
I have for a long time now considered myself a Roman rather than an
American or anything else, and so am disposed to join Nova Roma, but would
appreciate some response from civites or magistrates, or memebers of the
Julian list, whethery they consider my motives and intentions compatible
with theirs.
warmest regards,
Malkhos
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