Hermes There is a collection of poetry referred to as the Homeric Hymns. It is not the case, nor is it known whether Homer himself was the author of any of these, but they are all ancient, they are in hexameter, and follow the language and usages of the poems of Homer, yet without the heroic epithets so common in heroic poetry, nor with the extended similes: someone is not just "like" something in Homer's Iliad; they are "like" followed by 10 extensive lines of description.
Hermes is the Greek god who became Mercury in the ancient Roman version of the Greek pantheon. Hermes was polytropos - shifting, many faced, many sided, and cunning - and reminds one of Odysseus in the Iliad and Odyssey, who was an individual no longer the hero like Achilles, who in his literary essence was the hero and fighter who would live fast in war and die young.
A new breed of man became important, the skillful debater and negotiator, who did not have immediate recourse to arms to solve a problem, but rather inspected things and thought about them with cunning: turning the world and its paradoxes on the spit of Reason until they were ready to be consumed by his fertile mind!
Hermes was the son of Zeus and Maia, one of the Pleiades. He invented the lyre made from tortoise shell, he sang songs, and - pondering sheer trickery in his heart - he stole fifty head of cattle from the herds of the god Apollo, doing this when he was but a few days old and still slept in a cradle at night: Fear not, little swaddling baby, son of Zeus and Maia. I shall find the strong cattle presently by these omens, and you shall lead the way.'
In addition to being dolios - the schemer, a god of robbers, and those who profit by cunning, and those who profit by force and forceful persuasion, he was the messenger of the gods, the god of boundaries - keeping boundaries sacred - perhaps on the notion of setting a thief to catch a thief -and was also a god of roads: enodios, "on the road"; god of contests and sports" enagonios, "in the contest" or "having game"; and the leader of the souls to the underworld: psychopompos, "drum major of the soul".
In the pagan pantheon, the gods take on many human characteristics, becoming icons of the areas of life which are under their control. Thus we see Hermes playing human roles, and read his biography as a mixture of what we consider the Holy and the Profane. We are amazed at the ancient pagans, and how they scandalously portrayed their gods, the symbols of their highest aspirations.
This was considered by some to be one of the aspects of Western Christianity and higher religion that separated the civilized man from the primitive: the fact that religion no longer turned gods into men and women, and religious rites no longer described their flaws and fights and shameful couplings outside the holy bonds of matrimony, as did the old paganism, which revelled in the liaisons of Zeus - whose devotion we see somewhat reflected in our inordinate love of sexual scandals even now today...in the midst of our Christian devotions: Bibles in the right hand, National Enquirer in the left.
We no longer do this, right? Wrong. Of course, wrong, else I wouldn't be here writing about it.
Hermes is the Greek god who became Mercury in the ancient Roman version of the Greek pantheon. Hermes was polytropos - shifting, many faced, many sided, and cunning - and reminds one of Odysseus in the Iliad and Odyssey, who was an individual no longer the hero like Achilles, who in his literary essence was the hero and fighter who would live fast in war and die young.
A new breed of man became important, the skillful debater and negotiator, who did not have immediate recourse to arms to solve a problem, but rather inspected things and thought about them with cunning: turning the world and its paradoxes on the spit of Reason until they were ready to be consumed by his fertile mind!
Hermes was the son of Zeus and Maia, one of the Pleiades. He invented the lyre made from tortoise shell, he sang songs, and - pondering sheer trickery in his heart - he stole fifty head of cattle from the herds of the god Apollo, doing this when he was but a few days old and still slept in a cradle at night: Fear not, little swaddling baby, son of Zeus and Maia. I shall find the strong cattle presently by these omens, and you shall lead the way.'
In addition to being dolios - the schemer, a god of robbers, and those who profit by cunning, and those who profit by force and forceful persuasion, he was the messenger of the gods, the god of boundaries - keeping boundaries sacred - perhaps on the notion of setting a thief to catch a thief -and was also a god of roads: enodios, "on the road"; god of contests and sports" enagonios, "in the contest" or "having game"; and the leader of the souls to the underworld: psychopompos, "drum major of the soul".
In the pagan pantheon, the gods take on many human characteristics, becoming icons of the areas of life which are under their control. Thus we see Hermes playing human roles, and read his biography as a mixture of what we consider the Holy and the Profane. We are amazed at the ancient pagans, and how they scandalously portrayed their gods, the symbols of their highest aspirations.
This was considered by some to be one of the aspects of Western Christianity and higher religion that separated the civilized man from the primitive: the fact that religion no longer turned gods into men and women, and religious rites no longer described their flaws and fights and shameful couplings outside the holy bonds of matrimony, as did the old paganism, which revelled in the liaisons of Zeus - whose devotion we see somewhat reflected in our inordinate love of sexual scandals even now today...in the midst of our Christian devotions: Bibles in the right hand, National Enquirer in the left.
We no longer do this, right? Wrong. Of course, wrong, else I wouldn't be here writing about it.
And here is where I define what "secular religion" is: secular = of this age, coming from saeculus= and age or century or time of life. I call the religion secular, because it is the religion of this age I speak of, not the eternal religion, not the essence of religion, but the Icon of religion we have created for our present generations, the Golden Calf we worship. What, indeed, is all that nonsense about WWJD - what would Jesus do? - if it is not a conscious effort to create scenarios about the humanity of Jesus? To create scenarios about things which are hidden, but using the logic that all humans are likely to experience similar situations, we create the scenario where Jesus is in the same situations we face today. Cute. In other words, we emphasize the humanity, not the divinity.
Our interpretation is guided by ourselves - we are setting thieves to pass judgement on thieves...or ourselves as children to judge the transgressions of our childlike innocent greed and guiltless lusts. Of course, the religious will say that by emphasizing the humanity, we see the script where Jesus knows what to do, makes the right moral choice, assisted by his divinity...that same divinity we should all pray to.
I say that such a procedure is a pagan myth-making machine. It is worse than pagan myth; it is an entirely new religion which humanizes and belittles the spiritual injunctions of the Sermon on the Mount into a mush of nothingness. If the intent of such a process is to bring the difficult spiritual regimen of Jesus into focus for people, it does not work.
When people wonder WWJD, they rarely come up with radical answers, answers that say leave everything behind, take up your cross, and follow me. When we ask WWJD???, do we ever jump out of the fishing boat of Zebedee?...leaving old Zebedee plumb out of luck, two of his fisher-sons jumping ship and gallivanting around Galilee with Jesus? Not often, if ever. What about films, like Mel Gibson's The Passion? Did not the ancients wail when Adonis died? Did they not weep for Attis? Scratch and claw your rosy cheeks, rend your garments, roll in the dust and ululate with grief...you are not doing anything the ancients did not do, and your unhealthy spectacle of torture and death - often shown at churches themselves! - is nothing different from the pageant presented by Nero in the Colosseum: miscreants and unfortunates dressed as the old gods that die and resurrect being cut down for the approbation of the slavering eyes of the Roman populace.
We have human gods. Our morality is human morality. When the leaders of our society decided to destroy the financial fabric of civilization - who was their master? and when will he return to reward their good and faithful service? (Or consider Islam: what will one say on the Day of Resurrection about jihad that seeks not to elevate man, but to feed the maw of death? ) "Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me," said the Lord. The cross is a symbol of death; not a simple death, a calm death in hospital, feeling no pain, surrounded by loved ones. The cross is a painful death, but symbolic of the painful transition from being a child within a religious community to being an adult who must bear witness to religion, and who must even pass it on to new generations: witness, teacher, worker, fighter, priest, scribe, and hero.
The saying tells us to let the old person in us die and wither away: do not weep for our youth and childhood. St. Paul tells us to put away the things of a child; he was not talking about tops and jacks. In all the Abrahamic religions, we have been called to do the most difficult things for mankind: to transcend its nature and become more. Time is running out on us. The dress rehearsal for our age was the victory of the USA-USSR not destroying each other in nuclear conflagration. That was a great moral victory. Indeed, the greater it is, the more we ignore it! There is going to be need for many more moral victories, great and small. Farewell, the peaceful mind; farewell, content! Our occupation is gone, and our new job is to transform the world.
I say that such a procedure is a pagan myth-making machine. It is worse than pagan myth; it is an entirely new religion which humanizes and belittles the spiritual injunctions of the Sermon on the Mount into a mush of nothingness. If the intent of such a process is to bring the difficult spiritual regimen of Jesus into focus for people, it does not work.
When people wonder WWJD, they rarely come up with radical answers, answers that say leave everything behind, take up your cross, and follow me. When we ask WWJD???, do we ever jump out of the fishing boat of Zebedee?...leaving old Zebedee plumb out of luck, two of his fisher-sons jumping ship and gallivanting around Galilee with Jesus? Not often, if ever. What about films, like Mel Gibson's The Passion? Did not the ancients wail when Adonis died? Did they not weep for Attis? Scratch and claw your rosy cheeks, rend your garments, roll in the dust and ululate with grief...you are not doing anything the ancients did not do, and your unhealthy spectacle of torture and death - often shown at churches themselves! - is nothing different from the pageant presented by Nero in the Colosseum: miscreants and unfortunates dressed as the old gods that die and resurrect being cut down for the approbation of the slavering eyes of the Roman populace.
We have human gods. Our morality is human morality. When the leaders of our society decided to destroy the financial fabric of civilization - who was their master? and when will he return to reward their good and faithful service? (Or consider Islam: what will one say on the Day of Resurrection about jihad that seeks not to elevate man, but to feed the maw of death? ) "Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me," said the Lord. The cross is a symbol of death; not a simple death, a calm death in hospital, feeling no pain, surrounded by loved ones. The cross is a painful death, but symbolic of the painful transition from being a child within a religious community to being an adult who must bear witness to religion, and who must even pass it on to new generations: witness, teacher, worker, fighter, priest, scribe, and hero.
The saying tells us to let the old person in us die and wither away: do not weep for our youth and childhood. St. Paul tells us to put away the things of a child; he was not talking about tops and jacks. In all the Abrahamic religions, we have been called to do the most difficult things for mankind: to transcend its nature and become more. Time is running out on us. The dress rehearsal for our age was the victory of the USA-USSR not destroying each other in nuclear conflagration. That was a great moral victory. Indeed, the greater it is, the more we ignore it! There is going to be need for many more moral victories, great and small. Farewell, the peaceful mind; farewell, content! Our occupation is gone, and our new job is to transform the world.
---
quotes from Evelyn-White translation.
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