Statues and Ancient Religious Art in Modern Religion

I know that the Abrahamic religions tend to dislike idolatry.  In fact, they dislike it a great deal.  This has recently come to the forefront of religious conversation when Egyptian conservatives began pushing to have the ancient statues and religious sites of Egypt covered with wax or otherwise hidden because the statues are idols and forbidden.

What statues are included in this classification of idolatry? Everything from the Sphinx to the temples to statues around cities.  This seems to be a fairly broad category, and from what I can tell is not only an attack on religion but an attack on history as well.  Those statues, those buildings, have existed for thousands of years, through many bloody human wars and accidents and gods only know how many mistakes that have destroyed or nearly destroyed other such specimens of ancient work.  And now they want to hide away the beauty of Egypt’s history?  It’s as if these particular conservatives would like nothing better to do but rewrite the history of their country to wipe out any mention of a Pagan or non-Abrahamic (or in this case, non-Islamic) past.

This doesn’t just apply to Egypt either.  I’m certain this occurs in other countries as well, where certain group attempt to eradicate signs of what they consider to be idolatry or symbols of a Pagan history, and the US is not exempt.

My question is: how do the idols hurt you as a conservative?  It’s not as if you’re the one worshiping them, or adoring them, or doing anything with them.  Why is it so wrong for other people to appreciate ancient artwork?  Even if those people aren’t Pagans–and many are not–what about archaeologists and artists and just plain old tourists who like ancient history?  How are they hurting you or  conservative ideals by appreciating ancient artwork?  Religious extremism is not a good reason to hide away statues and buildings and art that contribute to worldwide knowledge and culture as a whole.  Who hasn’t seen a picture of the Sphinx?  Hiding the statues would only make those conservatives look ridiculous, as people know what they look like underneath the cloth or wax covering.  We would still know they were there.  The only solution for those groups is to destroy the statues, and that’s not a solution that I think anyone would advocate or allow except for religious extremists like this.

Hiding historical artifacts does not make the historical past go away.  It’s wishful thinking at best, and infringement on collective culture, history, and religious beliefs at worst.

In the News: Belief in God Boils Down to a Gut Feeling

Found an interesting article on Yahoo! today called “Belief in God Boils Down to a Gut Feeling.”

They have an interesting premise.  It seems like they’re saying that analytical people, or those who are more reasonable, are less likely to believe in God/deity.  Which I find kind of funny.  I’m a highly analytical person, myself, and very reasonable, yet I believe in deity.  How would I fit into this analysis they have going?

Sure enough, people who went with their intuition on the math test were found to be one-and-a-half times more likely to believe in God than those who got all the answers right. The results held even when taking factors such as education and income into account.

In a second study, 373 participants were told to write a paragraph about either successfully using their intuition or successfully reasoning their way to an answer. Those who wrote about the intuitive experience were more likely to say they were convinced of God’s existence after the experiment, suggesting that triggering intuitive thinking boosts belief.

They basically boil this down to how you answer a math question.  So apparently they can predict whether I’m more likely to believe in God/deity based on how I answer a simple math problem.  Unfortunately, while I don’t particularly care for the tone of the article, I seem to have proven their theory with my answer.

I can see how intuition would link with belief, as long as you’re somewhat in tune with that intuition.  But I find it a little hard to believe that a belief in God/deity is dependent on whether you are more intuitive.  There are some people I know who are not very intuitive at all (I say “not very” because everyone has intuition, it’s just that some people are more tuned in than others) yet still believe in a deity of some kind.  So I can’t make that leap that they’re trying to prove in this study, that belief in God boils down to a gut feeling or intuition.

What do you all think, my lovely readers?

Names at the Grand Canyon

Just to say up front: there really isn’t much of a point behind this post.  It will probably be short.  I’m just expressing something I find very interesting.  A bit of history and culture, if you will–a learning opportunity.

While I was hiking the Grand Canyon, I noticed that some of the rock formations in the canyon had some very intriguing names.  Most of the formations were named by Clarence Dutton in his book “Tertiary History of the Grand Canyon,” published in 1882.  Being a white man of European descent, it makes sense that he would perhaps be familiar with the mythology of Greece and Rome and would pull names from those pantheons.  Some of the mesas and buttes are named for those gods: Diana’s Temple, Venus Temple, Juno Temple.

What I find even more interesting are the names of the mesas and buttes not named after Classical deities.  Some of the formations are named after Hindu deities and Buddhist and Egyptian and Nordic deities.  Very few of the formations (officially speaking) were given Native American names.  More often, the lookout points along the rim were given–and still hold–Native names, such as Yavapai Point and Hopi Point.  The names used for the formations include Temple of Ra, Isis Temple, Wotan’s Throne, and Vishnu Temple.

It strikes me as curious that in 1882 America someone would name formations like this.  Don’t get me wrong, I like it.  It even seems fitting to me to name so many things in and around the canyon with mythological and religious symbols.  I found the Grand Canyon awe-inspiring.  It was much more of a spiritual experience than visiting the vortexes.  But the majesty, the beauty, the wildness of the canyon is almost incomprehensible to our tiny human minds that can only comprehend so much.  It just surprised me when in the middle of my hike I’m studying one of the signs pointing out the formations in the canyon and I see the name Vishnu on there, and then Ra and Isis and so forth.

If you get a chance to see the canyon, it’s well worth a visit.

More Information:

• Arizona State University
• National Park Service

Some Ethics of Hypnosis

While most people seem to know what hypnosis is, there also seem to be a number of misconceptions about it.  For example, people seem to think that being hypnotized means you will do whatever you’re told.

When choosing a hypnotist, please do choose based on your level of comfort and the hypnotist’s credentials or respectability–just as you would do for any other doctor or lawyer or therapist (I hope).  If the person can’t tell you who trained them or where they’re certified . . . don’t visit them.  Easy.

The hypnotist has a responsibility to the client, of course.  The hypnotist needs to make sure their client is at ease and comfortable with them, otherwise it will be rather difficult to make progress.  In general, the client is nervous about visiting a hypnotist, but if a good working relationship can’t be established, the hypnotist has a responsibility to refer the client to someone else who may be a better match.

The hypnotist also has a responsibility to behave ethically.  During my training, I was told of a dentist who had received some kind of hypnosis training and was behaving very, very unethically in his dental practice as a result.  Now, he wasn’t practicing as a hypnotist, he was practicing as a dentist . . . but it’s a good story that illustrated what kind of responsibility a hypnotist has to the client and what should NOT be done.

Now, being put under hypnosis does not mean you will have to follow whatever suggestion is given to you.  You will not commit any act that is against your ethics, beliefs, or self-preservation instincts.  So if a hypnotist handed you a knife and told you to slice your arm, you would only do so if it was not against your beliefs, morals, or self-preservation instincts.

Being hypnotized does not mean that you can’t say no.  During my training, the instructor did a group hypnosis as an example for the class.  It was stage hypnosis, but it was done with volunteers and was done as an example of how stage hypnosis differs from clinical and spiritual hypnosis.  It was very amusing, and an effective example.  Anyway, there was one woman who, when asked to take a “pet bird” from the bag, wouldn’t do it.  She was definitely hypnotized, but she found everything so funny that she couldn’t or wouldn’t participate in the suggestion.  Another woman took a “bird” at the suggestion, but when she was told to feed it, she wouldn’t feed it seeds, she had to feed it meat because it’s a vulture.  So although a person can receive and hear a suggestion, just being hypnotized does NOT automatically mean they will follow it, even when it is compatible with beliefs, morals, or self-preservation.

A hypnotist cannot force you to do anything you truly don’t want to do.  Now, having said that, there are ways around those morals or ethics, which is where the story told in training of what not to do comes into play.  But most hypnotists are very aware of ethical boundaries and very aware of what can be done with hypnosis.

Weekly Deity: Columbia

*I hesitate to add Columbia to this series, but since she is considered a goddess by some, I decided to examine her in more detail.*

Columbia is the personification of the Americas, more specifically, the United States.  She is the patron deity of the US, and her name means “Land of Columbus.”

Attributes

Although her depiction has never formally been pinned down, in general, Columbia is shown as a beautiful young or middle-aged woman.  She is gowned in a dress that is either white or has a stars-and-stripes motif like the American flag.  A cap of liberty sits on her head, also called a Phrygian cap.  Commonly she is shown with any of the following: an eagle, a sheaf of wheat, a cornucopia, the American flag, a laurel wreath, or implements of war.

Mythology

As a pseudo-goddess, Columbia does not have mythology.  She is not from ancient Greece or Rome.  The best way to discuss this figure is to talk about her history and how she has been perceived since her “creation” in the 1700s.

Columbia emerged out of the colonization of America and the unconscious need of the British settlers for an identification, a symbol, for the new land they had taken over.  The symbol actually seems to have come from British thought, as a means of personifying the new land, and then this symbol was communicated to the settlers in America, who changed it and made it their own.  “Columbia” was originally just the Latinized name for the Americas, combining the root Columb– of Christopher Columbus with the suffix –ia to form a Latinized name for the country (in the same vein as Britannia).  Then the personification followed.

Columbia was soon considered a symbol of freedom.  She became associated with the ideals of the United States after America broke from England, and later became a common symbol of Manifest Destiny as well.  After WWI and WWII, she fell into some disfavor and was replaced with today’s more common figure Lady Liberty, who is related to the image of Columbia but is somewhat less militant in appearance than the figure of Columbia, who was at times dressed up in the implements of war and shown as an image of American might.

from Wikimedia

Today, a number of statues are still in place that reflect the figure of Columbia.  The most notable at the moment is the Statue of Freedom on top of the Capitol building in DC.  Although this statue is not actually named “Columbia,” and it is unknown whether the statue was meant to reflect the pseudo-deity or not, it is often considered to be an image of Columbia because it displays many of the characteristics associated with her. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Freedom)

Light and Dark Sides

Columbia is an interesting mixture.  On the one hand, she is a personification of freedom and liberty.  On the other hand, she is a war-like figure that has been associated with some not-nice things.  Since she is not a deity with an actual mythology, we can only form an opinion based on how she has been used as a symbol for the last 300 years.

Her Light side would probably include the ideals of freedom for all and liberty.  She would not seem to be a symbol of slavery or oppression.  Which makes her all the more interesting because she is also the “goddess” of Manifest Destiny, a time in American history that none of us should be proud of.  She was a symbol of American involvement in the World Wars–again, not something that any American should really embrace or be proud of, as many atrocities and horrible acts were committed.  She was also a symbol of the Revolutionary War, which makes more sense given that the colonists were fighting for freedom from Britain and Columbia would have been seen as an embodiment of that desire.

It is the Manifest Destiny portion of her history that always trips me up.  Manifest Destiny (for those that don’t remember high school history), was the period in American history in which the east was expanding to the west, when settlers were given license to move into the American West and bring “progress” and “light” to the “heathens” that lived there.  And, if said “heathens” could not be transformed, then they were forced to live elsewhere or murdered.  The idea of Manifest Destiny was used to justify a great many things, from war to genocide to land cultivation.

I think that when working with a figure like Columbia, it is important to note that she does have both of these sides to her.  She is both Dark and Light, and denying her involvement in the darker sides of American history does a disservice to her and to the practitioner.  Just as denying dark events in history only sets us up to repeat them, denying the Darker sides of Columbia denies an entire side of her history and personality and makes her unbalanced.  There is a reason she has been replaced by the figure of Lady Liberty—Columbia is less relevant to a populace that was fewer wars and wants peace.  The figure of Columbia is much more militant than the figure of Lady Liberty as a personification of America.  Focusing only on the freedom aspect of Columbia does not transform her into a Light figure; on the contrary, it makes her lopsided and unbalanced, and denies the aspects that make her what she is.  Denial of her role in Manifest Destiny and war is setting you up for a lopsided experience as well, as I would think that acknowledging only one aspect of her personality means that you are ignoring that she has a more dangerous side to her personality that could come out to play at any time.  Hello, we’re involved with two losing wars no one wants to be involved in; that right there is an effect of Columbia, though the conflicts are still spun out in the name of Liberty.

Some resources:

• An interesting article from Virginia.edu: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~cap/liberty/origins.html
• Wikipedia is a good place to start looking for information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_(name)