When I was learning Wicca (Correllian), a phrase which I came across was "the Book religions"*. This was used as a generic, "catch all" term for Christianity, Judaism and Islam, based on their connection to Abraham and the various Testaments/books/Bibles which derive from that.
I'm not familiar with Judaism, nor Islam, although I like some Jewish traditions such as having a break from the working week (Shabbat) and the family focus (up to a point - undue emphasis on being married is NOT healthy, and some elements of Judaism suffer - in my opinion - from flaws such as conservatism and being outdated), so this post will be focused on Christianity.
The trigger for this post was finally being able to read Colonel James Churchward's book "The Sacred Symbols of Mu". I've been fascinated with symbols and rituals most of my life (I was recently telling my partner how I used plan rituals for a week when I was a young child - things like getting up early, and meditating on the dawn and bird's chorus), and have enjoyed studying runes in recent years (actually, that would be over a decade now). So ... I have been looking forward to reading this book since I first heard of it, as a teenager. I recently joined the Melbourne Theosophical Society's library service (this is open to members of the public), and this book was one of the ones I borrowed.
I've now started reading it, and am finding it quite a disappointment.
Part of that is the scientific weakness of the content, and - to my engineering viewpoint - poor presentation, which is touched on in the introduction to the online version of this book (at http://www.sacred-texts.com/atl/ssm/index.htm):
"Churchward's Mu theory hasn't achieved even the marginal credibility of Atlantis. For one thing, his science is absurd. The Pacific appears to have been free of large land masses for billions of years. In fact, the Pacific basin may mark the place where the Moon was expelled from the proto-earth. Coral atolls that dot the Pacific have taken millions of undisturbed years of activity to form. And the Pacific was one of the last regions on the planet to be settled by humans; this is proven by linguistic evidence, and the well-documented oral traditions which describe the history of the Polynesian migrations.
It doesn't help matters that Churchward's books are largely absent of apparatus such as footnotes or bibliography, and his basic source material cannot be independently confirmed. In his Mu-monomania, he employs circular and tautological reasoning. Often, he will make a startling assertion, and before supporting it, will move on to some other train of thought. At other times, he writes factually about, say, Egyptian mythology, without any clue for the reader as to why this proves anything about Mu. The reader is simultaneously entertained and irritated by this intellectual shell game."
Although this introduction does then continue to say:
"However, Churchward may have the last laugh yet. There was a large land mass in the Pacific that was submerged during prehistoric times: Sundaland, the continental shelf around Indonesia, which was exposed during the ice ages. It was most certainly the route that humans used to get to Australia, as only a few kilometers of water separated Sundaland from Australia at that time. Although it was submerged slowly as the result of rising sea levels at the end of the ice age, the region has some of the most violent volcanoes on Earth (such as the famous Krakatoa). A documented eruption in that region about 60,000 years ago may have decimated the human race, producing a 'population bottleneck' during which our species was reduced to a few hundred individuals; this has emerged from mitochondrial DNA studies. Some have hypothesized that Sundaland may have been home to an early lost civilization, perhaps the home of the mysterious voyagers who charted the anomalous ice-age maps which the early modern map-makers incorporated in their atlases. While not Mu or Lemuria, of all of the nooks and crannies where a lost civilization might have existed, Sundaland is one of the most plausible; only time will tell."
I may find this book less of an annoyance if I had read the other boks first; I'm also interested in how Churchward's concept of Lemurians compares with that of Blavastky and the other early theosophists. (I think it doesn't; I think Blavatsky wrote of humanity now being a "fifth root race", evolving into a sixth, and that Lemurians were an earlier, less capable root race. I also have a recollection that Rampa may have described Lemurians as being purple, with a roundish body ... which ties into something I read recently (possibly in Churchward's book!) about a Greek myth that male and female were created when the round bodied, eight-limbed "people" threatened to roll up Mt Olympus, so the Gods split them into two, male and female.)
However, my main irritation is actually that the point of view from which Col. Churchward interprets the information he (allegedly) has come into contact with is that of a Christian paradigm: Deity comprises a God above Earth.
I'm - in part - Wiccan: to me, the powers, energies and wonders of Earth are AS spiritual as anything that comes from higher realms.
In fact, as a twist on that, in some rituals (particularly Qabbalistic - e.g., the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram), there is use of imagery or physical stances where one is throwing arms up to "the heavens" and drawing down the powers of Heaven or God. I may indeed use that, if I wish to contact higher frequency energies (although the truth of the matter is that such higher frequency worlds are all about us, and all we need to do to tune in to them is change our freuency of focus - much as we just twiddle a knob on a radio rather than physically put or point a radio up or down to change its frequency), but I am also just as liable to use that stance to connect to the powers of the Universe - those from other stars, planets, galaxies and realms in "Outer Space". We all come from material from "Outer Space" anyway: our Sun, our planet and our bodies are ALL made from material scattered through space which aggregated to form stars and planets, and the life on this planet. For more on that, have a look at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_evolution;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_formation_and_evolution; and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebular_hypothesis.
So Col. Churchward's bias in thinking that the material he is examining is solely related to a "God in Heaven" type of situation is (a) annoying, as it is a put down of Mother Earth (in my opinion), and (b) possibly wrong.
What if, as Erich von Daniken postulated back in the 1970s, These beings appearing from the sky were in fact from alien civilisations? They would, then, be appearing in the skies, but not necessarily from "Heaven".
Since von Daniken, others also have written about alien influence, good and bad, in human affairs. The notion that advances in technology have been, in part, due to a helping "hand" (or whatever they have that corresponds to a hand :) ) from aliens is not new, and has been cast back through history. In fact, an idea I first came across in Lobsang Rampa's book "The Hermit" (see also here) is that aliens cross bred with humans to force evolution to happen a little faster; recently, an Internet post I have come across claim that the alien race is known as the "Annunaki" (the link I gave talks about the other alien races, and their various motivations for being involved with humanity).
This digression on to aliens also raises a question: what are the religious beliefs of aliens? My experience is that this is best expounded on in Stuart Holroyd's excellent book "Briefing for the Landing on Planet Earth". This book is excellent for a whole range of reasons, one of the main being that it provides a genuine, balanced, sceptical viewpoint of the phenomenon being reported. If you haven't read it: please do so (although it does appear to be out of print).
Now, back to the Christian mob.
The other irritating things I have come across which led to this post (I am actually fairly happy - just a little facetious, in case you're wondering :) ), are a couple of films:
"The Seventh Sign"; and
"The Knowing".
"The Seventh Seal" assumes that the Christian Bible is true in its stories of an Apocalypse as interpreted by the Christians. The film "The Knowing" goes even further, and is about the rapture (seen the links where atheists are volunteering to look after pets who have been left behind after "the rapture"? Good publicity for the atheists, and - hopefully - provokes a bit of thought :) ). I don't accept either of those world view points.
As a Wiccan, I have thoughts about the Descent of the Goddess when talking about creation myths: it would be nice to see those in a film, although I acknowledge the financial reality that we probably aren't a big enough market.
I suspect my main concern is that people - including me - are at risk of getting caught up in biases that are so pervasive and subtle that we won't even recognise them for what they are.
I've been blest by the Goddess in that most of my life, particularly the personal growth and spiritual experiences I've had, have been of a nature that breaks those barriers down. Some of the shamanic journeys I've been on at times (without drugs, by the way: I think techniques like using the Assemblage Point are far more powerful and useful) have been particularly helpful at breaking viewpoints I have been socialised into.
Well, I suppose I shall just have to keep on trying to break free of limitations. At least there were some redeeming aspects to the film "The Seventh Sign", messages about hope, life and caring for others.
And now, for a final thought: my partner has just pointed out that I am writing all this stuff about Christianity on a Sunday :) I should also point out that I have friends who are Christian, and have respect for parts of both the original form of Christianity, and some of the neoChristian forms now practised.
Love, light, hugs and blessings
Gnwmythr
* I think this term was created by Orpheis Caroline High-Correll, who is mentioned at the Corellian Nativist Tradition website. The Correllian tradition split a few years ago (I might post about that, one day, from the point of view of an Australian); I'm on the side of the CNCI mob, incidentally.
This post's photo is yet to be posted.
Tags: ET/UFO/UAP, creation, about me, cross-fertilisation (ideas), Lobsang Rampa, myths, perceptions, religion, self knowledge, society,
First published: Sunday 13th September, 2009
Last edited: Sunday 13th September, 2009
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