Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Pantheistic-Monotheism or the End of the World as We Know IT

That's great it starts with an Earthquake
birds and snakes and aeroplanes
Lenny Bruce is not afraid.

Revelations 12 v 18:19

Most at this time of year contemplate Peace and Goodwill on Men, but with the wars and hodgepodge around the world some of the more religious may consider we are in the end times. Many traditions have a recurring theme of an end time and a savior that would rescue them from the tribulations of said end time.

As the above verse from Revelations illustrates, great tribulations were prophesied for those that did not believe. The irony is there are many other faiths that speak of unbelievers being struck down, such as the original Passover night in Egypt. Another rather cryptic, but foreboding scripture comes from Ezekiel 48:38, "The other night I tripped a nice continental drift drive. Mountains sit in a line. Leonard Bernstein". Is this Lion of Bernstein another savior?

These interesting recurrences of the mystic savior that comes forth to save the "chosen" people is much older than 2,000 to 3,000 years. The Aryans that pushed into the Indian subcontinent had a God (or demi-god if you prefer) named Krishna who was crucified on a tree 3000 BC. This sacrifice was to forgive the transgressions of his people. There are even some parallels to the "Chrystos Mythos" in the incensuous story of Isis, Osiris and Horus. Long story short, Horus is relieved of his deitific "schvauntz", by a rival god which Isis searches for and discovers and impregnates herself with the phallic member of Horus. The result is Osiris, the Golden One, son of the father and technically first born of a quasi-virgin mother.

Here is my point; God is perfect right? So back when he made the perfect universe, V1.0, his perfection may have been similar to an Intel 486. This was the best there was and damn if it was the last chip that would ever be needed. But then God woke up one night and scratched something on a pad and the next morning may have some ideas for a new more Perfect Universe in which his many facets of Godness would not be emulated by animals and the sub-gods needed to explain facets the animal personifications did not explain. He would have one chosen people that would be blessed by worshipping just one god.

Shortly after God helped the Israelites with their exit policy from Egypt they were given 10 simple rules to follow to maintain their status as the "Chosen Ones". Clearly, the perfection in God's plan was the simplicity: 1 god; 10 commandments and everything is copacetic.

Well after 2000 years of obeying, not obeying, mixing cultures the 10 simple rules became clouded. And then Pharisees and Sadducee's got into their legalistic translations of what God's "simple" religion and rules were and that is when the gold, frankincense and myrrh hit the fan.

So God decided to cut the crap and send his son to a virgin to be sacrificed and forgiven for all mans sins. OK, that should cut complexity, the legalistic translations, the Pantheons of gods to be worshipped to glorify the one God and all the other unneeded trappings to pay respect to the Architect of the Universe and transcriber of perfection. God would simply have his son sacrificed and every human being would be forgiven for their sins.

This was a perfect plan and the first 100 years it was masterful, but then the "church fathers" congregated and decided which holy writings should be included in the canon of Christianity. The Gnostics were to mystic, so their writings must not be included. There were other writings that clearly named Mary Magdalene as his favorite apostle--this simply would not do for the church of Peter. So former Pagan, Constantine, finally had a Holy Bible compiled for all to worship--what God meant to be a simple statement of love, "Hey I love you, I have sacrificed my son, now do good and get your shit together." Turned into a mish-mash of sects political struggles, ornate ceremonies and even some down home, ass kicking torture.

Then the prophet Mohammad came along and tweaked the whole Judeo-Christian thing with some legalism, fervent prayer and not just a little ass-kicking. But on the whole it was in the same vein as the original Egyptian, Judaic, Christian perfect religion that always got screwed up by man trying to improve on God's perfection. Sects emerged, Shiites, Sunnis and Wahhabism and now, once again God's perfection is meddled, muddled and mightily stomped by the unruly rain boots of mankind.

Well we see where we are now Christians fighting Christians; Christians fighting Muslims, Muslims fighting Muslims, Muslims fighting Jews, and even some Jews fighting each other. This does not even dip a fang into the Goths, Vampires, Wiccans, Witches, Satanists, Satanic Nihilists, True Golden Dawn, Esoteric Golden Dawn, and the various and changing Crowleyana sects of the month who lay claim to the one and only true path to enlightenment.

I have chosen to convert to a pantheistic monotheism. Their will be no church or human organization. My thought is to learn what the Big Guy had in mind each time Perfection was created.That is before we screwed it up and if I learn that, things should be OK. Seems like Buddha might have said something like this," It's the end of the world as we know and I feel fine...fine"