[MD] new blog

[Arlo Bensinger]

[MP said to dmb]
I'm Christian.

[DMB]
Obviously.

[Arlo]
As one who has come out in the favor of esotericism, metaphor, and 
Campbellian mythological treatment of "theism", I had some hopes that 
Michael was pointing in that direction, and maybe there was just 
misunderstand. And then he wrote, "He sent us Christ to show us it 
can be done" and I realized, quite sadly, this was not the case. 
"Christ" was no more "sent" to us than was White Buffalo Calf Woman, 
Thoth or Quetzalcoatl. All of these are metaphors, analogies as 
Pirsig used the term, and someone arguing from a truly "non-static" 
or mystical perspective would see that. The moment you descend from 
Esoteric metaphor and analogy into "He sent us" (why not "She"?), is 
the moment you move from Quality.

The Christian tradition met the esoterically approached Void through 
the Gnostic tradition, to some degree this informed what we came to 
think of as Deism (although not exactly). But no Gnostic would ever 
self-describe themselves as a "Christian", for they knew that the 
stories and myth of that tradition were (are) culturally-bound 
metaphors trying to capture the indescribable Void. The Mithraic 
Rites, from which much of the Christian myth pilfered, was more 
visibly esoteric than the Romanized exoterically bound dogma that 
would come to define "Christianity", and as such I'd argue had far 
greater Quality.

Moreover, when all these myths are considered in the larger "human" 
picture, as Campbell did, a richer, more meaningful vision of the 
human condition emerges than the consideration of any one in 
isolation, or the privileging in any way of one over others. All of 
these stories, the combined mythos, reveals the underlying 
commonality of mankind (across geography and across history) but only 
when they are all treated as what they are; analogies pointing to the 
Void wrapped in cultural language and tradition.

I suggest viewing these myths as "works of art", as vast sagas or 
novels, that can point us (like any work of art) to the unseeable 
Void. When they hang side-by-side in the human museum one can get a 
better view of the limitations of any, the strengths of any, the 
inherent commonality of all, and the particular cultural differences 
of each. One can critique (for example) the low-quality gender 
imbalance in the Occidental traditions by contrasting them with the 
rich gender balanced traditions of the East, or of many "pagan" or 
"tribal" traditions.

But again, all this begins with "all this is just an analogy". "He" 
did not send "Christ" to us. We have reaffirmed over many generations 
and across the globe the analogy of the "human redeemer born from a 
interbreeding between god and human" (in this Christianity stole near 
verbatim the story of Mithras' birth and role). Better to ask why 
that is (as Campbell suggests), then reaffirm that one of those 
analogies really did happen (which is precisely what "theism" is, as 
Michael eloquently demonstrates).