[ Back ] [ Up ] [ Next ]

A Reality for the Future

This short passage from the King James version of the Bible has been used time and again as the justification for our rapacious plundering of the earth. Since this passage states that we have been given dominion over the earth – so the argument goes – and told to subdue it by God himself, surely that means that we can do whatever we like with it, to bend it to our will?

The answer is No. There are other ways of interpreting this passage, interpretations which civilisation has until recently been very careful to avoid. This section of Genesis comes before the 'Garden of Eden' story, with its inherent 'proof' that women are the cause of all problems in the Judaic male-dominated view of nature and the world. In this earlier story, male and female are equal: 'male and female created he them'. The pagan view of God is that he or it is nature, the union of Mother Earth and Father Sky, and all the aspects and archetypes they symbolise: for 'let us make man in our own image' must include women as well, or God would be unable to encompass the totality of nature.

This section of the Bible was written by a pagan culture, not a civilised one. So we need to look a little more closely at the whole of that passage, and not just at that so-useful word 'subdue': 'Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion ... over every living thing.' 'Be fruitful, and multiply': so if we are to be realistic about our relationship with nature, we cannot deny our own sexuality, as the civilised wisdom of the Church has taught us to do. And our 'dominion ... over every living thing' must not, it is clear, solely be one of subjugation, for we are ordered in that passage to 'replenish the earth' as much as to subdue it.

It's all too obvious that we haven't done this. Our dominion has been that of the domineering tyrant: we have, as the definition of 'domineering' puts it, 'ruled arbitrarily and despotically, feasted riotously and luxuriously' while others, and the earth itself, have starved. We have taken none of the master's responsibilities to replenish the earth; we have merely played at being the master. But however much we may strut and crow, however much we may pontificate about the 'progress of science' and the 'march of civilisation', the fact remains that that dream of mastery, as we are well aware, is nothing more than an arrogant illusion, fostered and maintained by our careful ignorance of reality.

We seem to be proud of our ability to maintain that illusion; and from that pride, that arrogance, that ignorance, have arisen the demons that harass us in their subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Our civilisation is pandemonium, born of pride. But as Thomas More put it, 'the Devil, that proude spirit, cannot bear to be mocked': so nature 'moves in its mysterious ways', sending us imaginary spacemen in flying saucers, showers of frogs and fishes, poltergeists and all manner of meaningless and meaningful things to mock our pride and to show us that 'there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy'.

We call such things 'supernatural', and say they cannot occur or exist, since they are outside the boundaries of the limited view of nature that science and religion demand. But as we have seen, such things are aspects of the reality of nature: they are not 'unnatural'. What is unnatural is our science, our religion, our politics and economics: for all are carried on in complete and deliberate ignorance of nature, in the belief or hope that nature will conveniently change itself to suit our whims. It gives us a pleasant illusion of control – but it's unnatural, and it's insane, in every sense of the word.

Idealists are just as ignorant. The communards' beautiful slogan 'From each according to his ability, to each according to their need', applied without awareness of the reality of human nature, becomes in practice 'From each according to facility, to each according to their greed'. Revolutionaries are the same: they fail to realise that, in society as in mechanics, a revolution is a circular motion, and that going, round in circles doesn't get anyone anywhere or do anything other than waste energy, or lives, or both. Within our civilisation greed and domineering are allowed free rein; so we need ideals and utopian dreams if we are to limit the effects of those unrestrained aspects of human nature. But those ideals and dreams, in practice, have to be tempered with an awareness of reality; without it they can be – and usually are – worse than useless.

If the view of reality we use is to be sane, not just to us but in its effects on the outer world as well, it needs to be constructed so as to take into account the reality which nature imposes upon us – whether we like that reality or not. That reality includes the energy-matrix we can see behind and beneath the old standing stones; it includes ghosts and ghouls, angels and demons, fairies and flying saucers, and all manner of other things which, as we have seen, are outside the common definition of reality but yet are still real. In a sense we could sum up this other reality in one word, and say that it is magical.

It is magic, in every sense, that our civilisation has lost, buried by the inadequacies of ignorant science and arrogant religion. And it is magic, in every sense, that our civilisation needs, if it is to regain its sanity, its joy, its reason for being. An awareness of the magic of the earth has much to offer us in this respect; as we have seen, that magical world-view is of more value than those of science or religion when dealing with the whole of the reality of nature. Paganism can teach us a great deal about that magic, but we need to use it with care; civilisation has its flaws, but I've no wish to see a return to a culture run by half-crazed witch-doctors instead of half-crazed politicians. We need to go beyond civilisation, beyond paganism, to something that combines the intellect of civilisation with the joy and magic of paganism. We need, in effect, to regain our collective wisdom as well as our collective sanity.

So if our culture is to regain its magi, its 'wise ones', we need to redevelop our awareness of nature, our magicians' awareness. Like magicians, and as magicians, we need to learn to know ourselves; we need to learn to feel for the needs of the earth, so that we can learn not just to subdue it, but to replenish it as we do so. This will and must demand radical changes in our world-view; necessarily and literally radical changes, since we will need to regain an awareness of our roots, in our past and in nature, in order to bring them about.

But it is here that the standing stones can help us, by symbolising our different attitudes to nature. As part of the past, they symbolise both the time of man's closest 'at-oneness' with nature, and his breaking away from nature, the birth of his belief that he could control nature and thus be 'above' it. From that came the birth of civilisation, and the death of magic. But as research goes on into the 'earth mysteries', we are regaining our respect for paganism and for the old magic, and so those same stones are gaining a new meaning, both symbolic and practical. For as 'needles of stone' they symbolise both a way and a means of returning to a realistic relationship with nature, through a new awareness of nature.

And that awareness, I believe, is our one great hope for the future.

Copyright © 1978-98 Tom Graves

[ Back ] [ Up ] [ Next ]