Dreaming the Future Closer

Over here, I’ve been thinking a little about the way that historical and political occurrences can have an impact on the image of a divinity.  I want to think about that a little more generically for a moment, so I’m going to post about it here.

I am tempted to think of the historical impositions as ‘distortion’ or ‘interference’ of the older and more spiritual stories.  In some cases, I suspect that is a pretty good description of what goes on.  Once a divinity’s stories become thoroughly entwined with how a people conceive of themselves in the world, as a community, those stories cannot be ‘just’ spiritual.  They become one vehicle for thinking through and exploring that place in the world, and so are prone to revision as experience (personal and communal) alter that sense of place.

Moreover, within the community, those stories become the focus of dialogue and debate about that place.  Communities are made up of individuals and individuals differ with each other about the nature of their community.  Revisions to those religious cum political stories becomes one way of ’speaking’ to others in the community, suggesting alternative and complementry ideas about the community.

Over time, the stories can be more about the community than about any spiritual interaction with divinity.  Of course, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  In fact, the capacity of myths to serve this purpose, I take to be one of the gifts of spirit.  However, I want to make that difference clear: it is a gift of spirit, not a representation of the spirit.  Once made story, it becomes subject to the dynamics that effect all forms of verbal discourse.

That doesn’t mean that the myth is simply ‘dis-enchanted.’  It remains a gift of spirit and though it may undergo transformation, it may also retain its connection to spirit.  In some cases, it may be that the change is what enables it to retain its connection to spirit.

The stories are tools of contemplation, disposing the mind to look in a certain way, to be receptive to certain kinds of spiritual influence, to be a channel through which soul and divinity can come into contact.  The mind is shot through with habits of doing and thinking, and it is those habits that the myth must engage and re- or pre-dispose.  As a community changes, so too do the habits it tends to foster.  The transformation of the myth may be required to properly treat these changes of habit.

Those habits are not divorced from political changes, so even if a myth’s alteration can be attributed to changing historical circumstance, we can’t presume that it is thereby de-spiritualized and profane.  Quite the opposite, we have the additional challenge of considering if that change might sustain the spiritual power of the myths.  We have to consider, too, if it might realign them, disposing the soul toward a different aspect of the divine, even as it might retain the name previously associated with a different aspect.

In other words, we need to take care into our spiritual historiography, be willing to proceed slowly when complications arise.