Beards and Funny Hats

Religion is … what? A way of thinking, an explanation of things that exist, a code of behaviour and morals, a social network? Perhaps a style of dress, and certain kinds of music. Surely included in it is adoration or fear of someone. Also some things that aren’t normally thought of as religion—works of art and of science —frequently offer such praise, even when the object of this isn’t recognized or identified. There are those who maintain that any religion has as much usefulness and value, or as little, as any other, and that they can be exchanged and combined, and this is probably true. Except for Christianity. But Christianity isn’t so much a religion—it’s more an expression of reality.

This can be seen as a religious book, and even as a statement of religious conservatism. At the same time it is part literary criticism, part ideas history. No doubt there is something in it that almost anyone could disagree with. For those to whom the term will mean something, it may be considered an attempt at a spiritual mapping of culture.

The culture looked at is mainly that of Europe and the west. The things examined are grouped according to the working of those imposing spiritual powers—enemies of man—that are listed in some books of the Bible.

It was in Egypt that the children of Israel were enslaved, and from there they were delivered from death. Daniel later saw a vision of powerful empires of Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome, all of which would exert power over the nation of Israel, as historically they did. The revelation to John displayed again powers of Babylon, Antichrist and—completing the circle—Death and Hell. Some of these are looked at in the book.

Egypt—the death religion of mummies, the underworld, pyramids, of Isis and Osiris. The Egyptian Book of the Dead

Babylon—the goddess worship of Gnosticism, the “bride” Magdalene, witchcraft, deistic and Buddhist-influenced liberal theology, Freemasonry, fantasy literature, and the influence of these things on sexual politics of the 20th and 21st centuries, and of hostility to America.

Persia—the Aryan super race, and the quest for destruction of the Jews. Illustrations in Islamic architecture.

Greece—the fatalistic tragedy inflicted on men by their worship of the giants and heroes—the god-men. The tragedies of Aeschylus and Euripides. The love of the English Romantic poets—Keats and Shelley—for things Greek. Inescapable fate in the novels of William Faulkner.

Rome—the awful hardness of Rome, which became The Church. Medieval concepts of the clergy and the monastic orders, rather than the wider laity, as “the church,” and the representation of these ideas in Gothic architecture. Divine status accorded to Mary. The dilemma of allegiance to what one doesn’t really believe in the novels of Graham Greene. Antichrist—the ferocious God-hatred of Nietzsche and Shelley—prototypes of Hitler and Marx.