By Selwyn Duke
It has been said about former athletes who wax nostalgic about their glory days and embellish their exploits that "the older they get the better they were." It's an amusing way to put it but also very true, for as the past fades into the montage of history, past events often assume a character dictated by the current whims and priorities of those who tell the stories. The same is true of civilizations -- today's storytellers have a tendency to romanticize the pagan peoples of antiquity that they have a great affinity for -- hence the image of the "noble savage." It wasn't always this way though. Up until relatively recently in the Western World the uttering of the word "pagan" conjured up images of demonic practices, savagery and of a world bereft of Christian virtue.
Of course, it's fashionable to dismiss such notions as the result of closed-mindedness, ethnocentrism and prejudice. We're just so thoroughly ensconced in the cocoon of our own time and place that we cannot break out of it and gain the perspective that says that not just beauty, but also Truth is in the eye of the beholder, say today's sultans of sagacity. It's hard, however, to strike that relativistic note when you truly understand the depths of turpitude to which virtually all these pagan cultures sank, for human sacrifice and cannibalism, pillaging and perversion, and all other manner and form of wickedness were the order of the day.
When learning about the lifestyles of the decadent and infamous, ancient Rome is always a good starting point. Rome produced the Emperor Tiberius, who would swim au natural in his pool with young boys -- he would have them pinch him all over his body and called them his "little minnows." And what price was to be paid by a lad who would resist his pedophiliac overtures? It was a pair of broken legs. The well-known Caligula would abduct brides on their wedding day and have his way with them, and if they didn't please him he would return them to their husbands dead and claim that he had done them a favor. Messalina, wife of the Emperor Claudius, would abandon the palace in the evenings in favor of a brothel, where she would spend nights with a sign on her door that read "Lycisca, the Wolf Girl." After killing his mother the Emperor Nero examined her body in the most improper of ways and is said to have then exclaimed "What a beautiful mother I had!" Then, of course, there are the non-European pagan societies -- they are the ones that have found favor with academia and Hollywood. Truth be known however, the Romans didn't have much on them. Why, there were tribes whose worship revolved around the phallus, and whose members' every thought seemed to have been infused with sexual content. Homosexuality was widely accepted in the pagan world, and we are told that two tribes in Papua New Guinea were exclusively homosexual and had to kidnap children from neighboring peoples in order to perpetuate themselves. Not surprisingly, the feelings of inner ugliness that being knee-deep in vice evoked were represented on the outside, as these primitives would routinely mutilate their bodies. They engaged in body-piercing in the form of bones through the nose and plates inserted in the ears and lips, ritualistic scarring, various types of body painting, the wearing of gaudy make-up, etc. Now, this is not to say that all of these cultures could be painted with the exact same brush -- some had attained greater virtue than others. But the fact of that matter is that the picture of the pre-Christian pagan world had a very limited palette -- and all the colors were dark.
This all changed when one thing and one thing only occurred: Christianization. And this is not opinion, but simply a fact of history. For, while you would have to be a believer such as I to believe that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life and that God's grace was and is a prerequisite for the mitigation of vice and human frailty, anyone can understand that the values a society embraces matter. And the fact of the matter is that Christianity brought a standard of morality to the table that theretofore had been unseen in the world. Sometimes it was spread by the sword and sometimes by missionaries who risked life and limb, but regardless, it taught that human sacrifice and cannibalism must end for "Thou shalt do no murder." It taught about God's plan for human sexuality, which proscribed deviant behaviors and taught that sex is not meant to be an animalistic act, but rather one of beauty -- a unitive act that enables a man and a woman to become one flesh within the bounds of holy matrimony. It taught that the body is the temple of the soul and therefore should not be marred or defiled. It taught that God loves all, friend and foe, the familiar and foreigners -- it taught that everyone is a child of God. An undeniable fact of history is that when the cross was planted the flower of humanity bloomed, and the weeds of wickedness that had roots down to the depths of Hades wilted under the light of Truth.
Then there was an ominous development. Some time ago, like a Phoenix rising from its own ashes to fly again, the paganism that had lain dormant for so long in western civilization was resurrected. Since then, we have been gravitating toward it at an alarming rate. Of course, many people recognize this regression, although it is usually not characterized as paganism. Some call it our rapid moral decay, or the decline of traditional values, and some just ask "what's happening to our country?" But these are simply different ways of saying that we are returning to the misbegotten ways of the distant past.
Now, I realize that many people may think that my characterization of what ails us is simply an attempt at colorful prose -- that I am only trying to pique the readers' interest with hyperbole. But I can assure you that I'm being quite literal, and if you don't believe me just consider the cultural trends in our society -- what do we see? We see a society that has embraced the credo "If it feels good do it." We now talk about sex constantly; we seem to be obsessed with it -- like the ancient pagans. Virtually every movie and show is infused with sexual subject matter, and sexual innuendo has become so common that it never even occurs to people that such allusions may be improper. We have legitimized homosexuality to a great extent -- like the ancient pagans. We have celebrations, like the euphemistically named "Gay Pride Parades," during which we pay homage to sexual behaviors -- like the ancient pagans. We now have nudist camps -- even for teenagers -- which bespeaks of a lack of a sense of modesty in dress that parallels that of the ancient pagans. We now engage in wild, lascivious dancing, like the "Freak Dancing" among American youth -- like the ancient pagans. We now pierce our bodies in strange places and adorn them in all sorts of bizarre ways and mar them with the form of body painting we call tattooing -- like the ancient pagans.
But the similarities aren't restricted to sexual behavior and appearance -- they extend to spiritual practices as well. There are all the young girls who are getting involved in Wicca [witchcraft]; there is the use of mediums for the purposes of contacting the dead; there is the belief in the power of crystals; there are those psychic hotlines that are all the rage nowadays. Then there are all the so-called far eastern religions that have made inroads into our culture, such as Buddhism, and far eastern spiritual practices such as transcendental meditation. And now, we are becoming so explicitly pagan that we are embracing pagan images in the most brazen of ways. For instance, there is a proposal in California to allocate four million dollars in tax money for the purposes of erecting a display that will be a tribute to homosexuality and will include a representation of the Aztec feathered serpent-god Quetzlcoatl. Never mind the fact that this pagan god is one in whose name thousands of people a year were sacrificed in the most horrid of ways -- their hearts were ripped from their chests while they were still alive and their body parts hung in the marketplace. The above is just a small snapshot of the wave of paganism that has washed over the shores of western civilization -- it would be difficult to present the whole picture in one essay. But suffice it to say that it is as if that old Chinese curse has been visited upon us: "May you live in interesting times."
Before proceeding, I do want to point out that we are not the first society of the modern era that attempted to paganize the Christian. In fact, while we are embracing paganism incrementally and from the bottom up, there was a regime and a leader that sought to impose paganism on their people from the top down. They aimed to destroy Christianity and replace it with a pagan religion centered around the leader. They went so far as to rebuild old pagan temples and made pagan symbols and letters of an old pagan alphabet intrinsic symbols of the regime. They then engaged in murder and mayhem on a massive scale and sparked a conflict that scars the world to this day. The regime was the Nazi one and the leader Adolph Hitler.
At this juncture I want to make the main purpose of this piece clear. The reader might assume that my goal is to convince others of the validity of Christianity and the perils of resurrecting the ghosts of our pagan past. But while in my heart I would love to see that goal realized, it is necessary that I subordinate it to the one that is of primary importance: to simply convince the reader that what we are witnessing is in fact a wholesale return to paganism. I realize that many are completely ambivalent about spiritual shifts, and yet others actually welcome the advent of a spirituality that will free them from what they might call the shackles of traditional religious laws. Regardless of your point of view though, whether you like the scenery along this road or whether you see a sign that says "Route 666" and see an abyss at its end, understand what road we are on so you will embark upon the journey with your eyes wide open.
It is not hard to understand why this is happening: people want the trappings of spirituality without responsibility. Any belief that you make part of the fabric of your life lends meaning to it; Christianity does that of course, but it also holds up a standard of morality and teaches that we will be judged based on our adherence to it. That doesn't appeal to the little child inside of us who wants to have his cake and eat it too. These pagan beliefs place no such demands on us; at most, all you have to do is adhere to some regimen of physical and/or mental exercise and you are told you can become enlightened. The beliefs also seduce the human ego with the promise of personal power. Just meditate in this or that manner and you will develop superhuman mind control and transform yourself into a demigod; just worship like the ancients did and you will tap supernatural powers that can make your dreams come true. Really though, this harks back to the oldest lie in the Good Book, the one that seduced Adam and Eve into committing original sin and had them cast from paradise. "Eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and you can be like God," said the serpent. Yes, follow my prescription for power and greatness and you can be like God; you will find the god in you. The problem is though, that if something sounds too good to be true it usually is.
I realize that many will still think that I'm overstating the case. "This is the stuff of good fiction," you may say. "Few take these things seriously and even those who do are just indulging a fantasy of theirs, like children playing cowboys and indians. And these things are all make-believe anyway." Well, I'm not going to here and now spend time trying to convince materialists of the reality of the spiritual, and I do know that many of us just laugh these things off as so much folderol. I also realize that many will not agree, even if Selwyn Duke talks until he is blue in the face, that our moral decay is the result of our straying from our Judeo-Christian foundation -- what that implies many find threatening. And, yet others will not even regard what I am calling moral decay as just that -- in their libertine world view it is a long-awaited loosing of the binds of a stifling morality, a loosing that will finally allow the full flowering of glorious individualism. But the fact of the matter is that there is an indisputable correlation between paganism and barbarity. So, what I will ask all to consider very seriously is that we are entertaining a very dangerous notion: namely, that we can take on all the appearances of a pagan people, that we can embrace the images and many of the practices of paganism, and not descend into a completely pagan state that even the most relativistic among us would label as barbarism. It is the notion that we can engage in "Chinese Menu Spirituality," where we choose one from group A and one from group B, not realizing that there might be corrupting agents in the alien cuisine that will destroy the nutrients in the traditional fare. It is the notion that we can forget the recipe that created a great dish, but yet recreate the dish for our children whenever we need to get them away from the alluring junk food that is poisoning them. We need to think about these issues in a very sober manner, for when you're drunk on pleasure and zig-zagging down the wrong road you sometimes cannot even see what you're putting in your mouth. And there is no one who will save us from ourselves at the eleventh hour. The red lights are flashing, but it's a warning signal -- not a siren. There is no spiritual cop who will pull us over before we crash into the gates of Perdition.
