Cenobites and Angels

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I recently became aware of Hellraiser. Actually, I’d seen images of Pinhead around for years, but never realized that he was a Cenobite until reading Douglas Cowan’s Sacred Terror (see my post on Vampires, Mummies and the Holy Ghost). In fact, Pinhead is featured on the dust jacket of the book and comprises a large part of Cowan’s evidence. Curious enough to watch the movie, I steeled myself for the macabre and terror, but although there were gory scenes it was no more disturbing than the Republican National Convention.

Pinhead for president?

Pinhead for president?

This movie draws its lifeblood from religious, particularly Christian, imagery. Cenobite, of course, is an old word for “monk” and in the movie Cenobites are interdimensional beings known as “demons to some, angels to others.” In a strange convergence of themes, I had recently viewed Dogma again after a gap of a few years. Here Loki and Bartleby are fallen angels, who, rather like myself, move from Wisconsin to New Jersey. Both of these films are pervaded with a healthy ambivalence towards those beings who have the potential for so much good but who opt for what most of us would consider evil.

Angels have a long pedigree in ancient religions, probably originally being gods who only ever achieved supporting roles. Not all gods were created equal. At Ugarit we find a whole class of deities below the power and dignity of reigning gods. Besides, in a non-scientific worldview, angels, especially fallen ones, had great explanatory value. When things unexpectedly go wrong and you’ve made all the proper sacrifices to appease the resident deity, bad angels might just be the cause. Theirs was a world of naive realism; what the eye observes is pure reality and what the eye doesn’t see is divine. Today we know this to be overly simplistic — reality is so complex that even our brightest can’t completely comprehend it. Yet when we have trouble explaining things, even in a scientific world, many are ready to point to the angels in the wings.

Religi-Religi-Religi-Religulous, That’s All Folks!

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Tell me where is fancy bred,
Or in the heart or in the head? (Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice)

Every great once in a while, a must-see movie comes out even for religion specialists. We have to lay aside our Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensias for a while, stare at one of the talkies and scratch our heads. Last year my students asked me what I thought of Bill Maher’s Religulous, but I didn’t have a chance to see it (couldn’t afford it on the big screen, and who has time during the school year anyway?). So I finally got together with a friend to watch it on the small screen.

First off, the film is funny — hey, it was written by a comedian, so it’d better be funny! As Maher ticked off point after point after point where religion falls short of the mark, I felt as though I were watching Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great on the television.

Let's be friends

Let's be friends

Maher scores some big points for having done his homework on mythology and pointing out the mythical elements in mainstream Christian thinking, but I was left with some very basic questions: what about those who hold to religion for good reasons? What about those who don’t strap bombs on in the name of religion? What about those who promote humanitarianism for religious purposes? Can they be classed together with dangerous folk who use religion for nefarious rationales to get back at their enemies (generally anyone they don’t know)? The scenes of religion-inspired violence were extremely disturbing, but I was curious about the benign varieties of religion. Do they do any more harm than taking a toke, as Maher does a time or two in the film?

It occurred to me that religions offer a way out from what can be a very humdrum world. Evolution is certainly fact, but the long, slow process of evolving into something better fit for its environment doesn’t spur on the emotions like the Battle Hymn of the Republic. But isn’t that it in a nutshell? Religions show their flashier colors when they are in conflict, like peacocks competing for the affections of a peahen. Even those interviewed by Maher tended towards the more flamboyant practitioners of their faiths. What should really be on the docket is hatred. Religions may aid and abet those looking for excuses to harm those different from themselves, but religion is often the catalyst, not the cause. As religion goes through the long, tedious, and often painful process of evolution, it is sure to breed virulent strains that are nasty and evil, but once in a while the panda’s thumb emerges and humanity is ready for its next painful step forward.

Profit Priest and the King

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As a staid academic with the internal passion of a Bruce Springsteen or Lou Reed, if I had any musical ability I’d have opted for a life on the stage. As I struggle to forge my passion into words on paper (or in electrons) I consider those who should have perhaps considered other options as well. I have never really been a fan of Christian Rock. The whole rebelliousness and sense of sticking it to the man lose something when you bow your head in submission the Sunday after and ask some ordained member of the establishment for forgiveness. It tastes even worse than Light Rock, the talc of real rock world. Nevertheless, there have emerged in the strange history of Christian Rock a few true innovators who have not only challenged Christian convention, but who have taken music itself in new directions.

Norman's Iconic Look

Norman\’s Iconic Look

My favorite among the innovators has always been Larry Norman. The original “Jesus Freak,” Norman appeared on the San Francisco rock scene only to be rebuffed by Christian artists who held Pat Boone as a kind of icon, and rejected by mainstream rock as being some kind of Christian fanatic (he was). Norman’s music, however, was a strange blend of tradition and visionary foresight. When they saw there was money to be made, along came other artists trying hard to match Norman’s footsteps, most of them falling far short. Daniel Amos, probably one of the most unusual Christian groups ever, proved themselves way ahead of the curve, and if they’d had a good publicist might have made secular airtime based on their forays into retro and punk before they were trendy. Stryper, a hair band of heavy metal stripe, threw Bibles into the crowd at concerts.

Yes, they're dudes, Father forgive them!

Yes, they\’re dudes, Father forgive them!

They later disbanded because of their concern with hypocrisy, something a true rock-n-roller would never feel compelled to do. Meanwhile, mainstream Christian Rock rendered itself into treacle that would easily wash off with a shower of pure intentions.

Rock addresses head-on those gritty, messy, and even dangerous elements of human life — our emotions. After some 4000-plus years of organized religion we still have difficulty addressing or accounting for their insatiable pull on us. Staring out over the lecture theater and toting up the number of ipods present, I would have to guess that music still meets a need that religion might have missed.

A few years back, in a wave of nostalgia, I went to see Larry Norman in concert. I’d grown beyond any real enjoyment in the genre, but here was a true innovator, one whose name very few Christian Rock aficionados even recognized. The concert was held at a Christian college where there were maybe forty folding chairs arrayed in a depressingly small space in the gym. Norman could still rock, his acoustic guitar and spare band providing all the support he needed. I even had the chance to chat with him after the show; no security guards need apply. As I later reflected, perhaps this is what my life would have been like if I’d had some ability and taken to the stage instead of rocking the glamorous adjunct professor gig. While having my eardrums taken through their paces at an Alice Cooper concert last fall along with a bunch of other fat, balding, wannabe rebels I experienced a kind of secular epiphany. Alice had converted to Christianity some years back — seen chumming with none other than Pat Boone himself — and his music at the time suffered. Now that he’s returned to his macabre fantasy world, his ability to churn out compelling music has returned. Outside, away from the cannabis fumes and liquor-enhanced air, although I didn’t personally participate in their consumption, for a moment it felt like I’d lived my rebellious dream.

The Dark Light

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Like many Americans, last year I was fascinated by Christopher Nolan’s gripping and gritty Batman film, The Dark Knight. Admittedly, the untimely death of Heath Ledger added to the poignancy of the film, but his unfaltering performance as the Joker was no laughing matter. I was transfixed. Not only was this vision of the character previously immortalized by Cesar Romero and Jack Nicholson a sea-change, it was also an epiphany.

In attempting to understand ancient religion, you can’t get far without having to address priests and prophets. Priests appear at the dawn of civilization, the establishment’s religious functionaries. They had (have) a vested interest in the continuation of the reigning power structures. Priests make their living from a population settled enough to tax. Prophets, however, have a far older pedigree. Israel recognized prophets as we all know from the Hebrew Bible, but other ancient religions also had their prophets too. Prophets were religious functionaries from outside the established power structures — they challenged conventions, demanded radical changes, and caused migraines for more than one priest. The prophet seems to have evolved from the shaman.

Not a Joker! An Amazonian shaman

Not a Joker! An Amazonian shaman

The shaman was what anthropologist call a “liminal character,” an outsider. They simply do not play by society’s rules, but they are feared and respected by society. The shaman may see or hear things that are beyond the perception of your average citizen. The shaman may be dangerous. This is what I saw in Heath Ledger’s Joker. A disturbing character who challenges and yet at the same time brings focus and resolution to a fractured society. A wounded healer. He represents a fossil, a shaman in twenty-first century Gotham. The other Jokers, Romero and Nicholson, didn’t quite attain this level of spiritual catharsis. Although I knew Batman was the good-guy, the Joker, laughing when he should have been crying, the agent of chaos, was the most religious character in the movie. He was the Dark Light to Batman’s Dark Knight.

Everlasting Cats

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“The mystical divinity of unashamed felinity, round the cathedral rang ‘Vivat!’ Life to the Everlasting Cat!” I’m not sure if this is T. S. Eliot, Andrew Lloyd Webber, or a chimeric mix of the two, but it is an interesting bit of mythology. My daughter is the consummate Cats fan and has been asking me to write a post on Cats and religion. When I read (or hear) the above lines of poetry, I must confess, my mind wanders to Xenophanes who stated that if horses could draw they would draw their gods like horses. Ditto for cats.

Everlasting cats, however, have their roots deep in religions of the ancient world. Although the word “cat” never occurs in the Bible (“dog” is there plenty of times, with even a “bitch” or two) cats are certainly within the biblical culture. Eternal Egypt knew of an everlasting cat — Bastet, the “cat goddess.”

Bast to see this as an everlasting cat

Bast to see this as an everlasting cat

Hailing from Bubastis, Bastet (I just can’t call her Bast, since it sounds like slathering meat with some kind of ambiguous liquid, something I can’t stomach as a vegetarian) seems likely to have some connection with the sun. Regarding yesterday’s post, the ancient Egyptians had a plethora, a veritable superabundance even, of solar deities. Bastet was called the Eye of Ra. She was also associated with war, appropriate enough to anyone who’s read Erin Hunter’s Warrior series. As a goddess, Bastet qualifies as an everlasting cat.
Little Bastie doesn't seem so playful any more

Little Bastie doesn't seem so playful any more


So do the numerous cat mummies from ancient Egypt. Preservation of the body was an aspect of realizing life beyond life for the Egyptians. It would also obviously help to keep the mice out of heaven. T. S. Eliot was C. of E. (Church of England, not Copt of Egypt) and had a savvy sense of wit. Ignoring the biblical snubbing of cats, he named the wisest and most respected of Old Possum’s Practical Cats with a biblical name — Old Deuteronomy. Although I am not a cat owner (is anybody really a cat owner?), I do have great respect for felines, mystical or not. And I am not alone as long as the ancient Egyptians kept a mummy or two around and an Eye of Ra to keep that solar barque on its course.

Michael Jackson, Isaac Newton, and the Alphabet

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Here is my second podcast, complete with musings about Michael Jackson and the alphabet, neither of which I’m an expert on! I find the linguistic aspects less interesting than the big picture of how this whole wonderful enterprise of writing got started.

Bible Guy

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Strange bedfellows?

Strange bedfellows?

In my Nashotah House teaching days, standing sentinel in my office was the 8″ action figure of Bibleman. I first discovered Bibleman while surreptitiously skulking through a Christian bookstore seeking Veggie Tales paraphernalia (don’t ask). I quickly rounded the corner in the kids’ section and there he was, encased in purple-and-yellow body armor, packing a Bible and laser sword and a packet sealed forever from the curious eyes of Biblegirl. I knew then and there that I had to have him. I sent my wife back to buy him later.

Naturally curious, I found a website and learned that an entire culture and money-making industry had grown around this ultimate good guy. He had a sidekick called Cypher (sold separately), and arch-enemies with such names as Primordious Drool and Wacky Protestor. I marveled at the missed opportunity here — they could have called them Text Critic and Doctor Mentary Hypothesis! Fascinated, I watched video clips of Bibleman’s deft swordplay in a scene that brought back the poignant death scene in Robocop. This was certainly not the old-fashioned fundamentalism I’d grown up with. But even with a Schwarzenegger build and phallic light sword, this guy was KJV and GOP all the way.

Shortly after taking another surreal job, this time at Gorgias Press, my wife showed me a related article in the newspaper. Wal-Mart announced that it was planning to carry Bible action figures, manufactured by One2believe. The line includes Noah, Moses, Daniel, Goliath, and of course, Jesus. I must admit that I was let down that David and Bathsheba figures did not seem to be available. Jesus does have a pull-string, however, for quoting his favorite Bible verses. Even as I throw the paper aside in vexation, I know that come fall, when I find my way back into a classroom at Rutgers, Bibleman will likely have a new companion on my office shelf, and it may be the son of the Big Guy himself.