Wouldn't it be great to be back in hunter-gatherer days? Back before the human spiritual quest had been corrupted by the "relentless onslaught of Western scientific materialism" and "dogmatic male- dominated religion"? Back when there were shamans—spiritual leaders—who could plug us into "the realm of the magical," show us "the reality behind apparent reality," and thus lead us to understand "how the universe really works"?The quotes come from Leo Rutherford, a leading advocate of neo-shamanism, which is a subset of neo-paganism, which is a subset of New Age spirituality. But the basic idea—that there was a golden age of spiritual purity which we fallen moderns need to recover—goes beyond New Age circles. You see traces of it even in such serious scholars as Karen Armstrong, who wrote in A History of God that early Abrahamic religion had created a gulf "between humanity and the divine, rupturing the holistic vision of paganism."
As the author of the just-published book The Evolution of God, about the history of religion, I'm primed to do some debunking. But before I start, I want to stress two points: 1) I think it's great for people to find spiritual peace and sound moral orientation wherever they can, including neo-paganism; 2) I don't doubt that back before Western monotheism took shape there were earnest seekers of a "holistic vision" who selflessly sought to share that vision.
Read More
No comments:
Post a Comment