Okay. That's part of the introduction to the thing I've been working on for eight or nine years, specifically the part dealing with the subject of the thread title. I don't have a website so I'm afraid I've pasted it all here, cutting off at the point where I attempt to dissect the various myths about the Mexica being at a stone-age level of technology.Although never having been particularly theologically inclined, it is not a disposition I would necessarily scorn. Often there is much to admire in the person who holds with genuine faith. Unfortunately for my own purposes, having digested the writings of Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins and Andy Martin, there can be no going back. It is unlikely that I will ever subscribe to thoughts of genial white-bearded gentlemen sitting upon clouds, any more than I am likely to start believing in fairies, flying saucers, or the ill-conceived theories of Erich Von Däniken
In spite of which, religion and the nature of belief remain fascinating areas of study. Particularly with regard to what D.H. Lawrence termed pre-moral faith, meaning those earlier theologies which offer description rather than prescription:
"...by the time of Christ all religion and all thought seemed to turn from the old worship and study of vitality, potency, power, to the study of death and death-rewards, death-penalties, and morals. All religion, instead of being religion of life, here and now, became religion of postponed destiny, death, and reward afterwards..."
- Apocalypse D.H. Lawrence, 1931
So how did we first come by religion?
By investigating the world around us and drawing upon conclusions that are at least satisfactory within the context of time, place and culture. It is an entirely scientific approach. The only significant difference between religion then and science now is that having learnt from our mistakes, we are today more scrupulous in how we choose to define what constitutes satisfactory explanation. The current schism between science and theology arises entirely from the fact of the latter relying on criteria that no longer work within the context of present time, place and culture. Contemporary religion for the most part fails to address the schism, or employs get-out clauses - moving the goal posts and mumbling 'you wouldn't understand.'
Let us briefly employ a trivial analogy. Anyone with an interest in the musical avant-garde should recall Can, an adventurous German group of the 1970s still renowned for their experimental approach to sound composition. Can are remembered as significantly influential in pushing back the boundaries of what one might choose to define as music. A lesser known group emerged in England during the early 1990s producing records strongly reminiscent of those early Can experiments. In interview they proclaimed themselves to be very much at the forefront of musical endeavour, despite their albums sounding rather similar to something from twenty years earlier. In essence, their reasoning seemed to be 'Can were avant-garde. By our faithful reproduction of their sound, we too are avant-garde.' It would surely be an insult to the reader's intelligence were I to spell out the basic flaw of such an argument.
Much contemporary religion seems caught in a similar position: reiterating claims and maxims rendered meaningless through being stripped of their original context. This is the inevitable problem of a system which sets itself up as having all of the answers, and having them in perpetuity. Sooner or later there occurs a juxtaposition of eggs and faces.
Similar criticism is often made of science as though it presents some arrogant and inflexible monolith that will brook no argument. 'Science does not have all of the answers,' they say. A more accurate statement would be that science does not know all of the answers, although it tends towards the belief that answers exist. The sentiment stems from a misconception of science as logistics-based dogma, yet the very foundation stone of the discipline is its ability to adapt.
Science strives to explain, and one glance at its history will show that acceptable explanations must not only work, but continue to work. Once a theory is superseded by something more elegant, more consistent with observed detail, that theory is lost - relegated from a fact of the physical world to one of history: no more than a signpost on the road that has brought us to our present understanding:
Religion, or at least pre-moral religion by D.H. Lawrence's definition, seems to have evolved largely through observation of the pre-technological world. Its language of Gods and spirits is no more than that which made most sense at the time: if effect appears to occur without cause, then it must simply be that the cause is invisible to the naked eye. In a stone-age context it would be less easy to envisage static electricity or plate tectonics than an intangible cause which in some way resembles one's self.
Human perception operates within a world of symbols. There is no such thing as an object which can be understood purely as itself once a human observer enters the equation. A chair is a symbol for sitting down; comfort; taking the weight off one's feet. A cloud is a symbol for sky; rain; healthy crops; and by extension the continuation of one's existence. Symbols are only the meanings we apply to the world, so a God may be no less a symbol than is a chair. The difference lies only in the underlying structure upon which we build our model of reality. We see a chair and know its name and function. By the same logic we may observe the action of wind and - lacking knowledge of atmospheric pressure differentials or convection currents - deduce the symbol of a God, there being no better explanation available at the time.
I would therefore temporarily redefine Lawrence's pre-moral belief systems as archaic science. Contemporary religion generally deals with challenges to its basic precepts by ignoring them. Archaic sciences endure whilst the means of making an effective challenge is beyond the scope of the culture at large, and when new circumstances present awkward questions, it tends to adapt and compensate (*1). Contemporary religion therefore comprises the ossified legacy of earlier belief systems which, when forced by progress to make a choice between evolution or extinction, instead took up a defensive stance in the hope that the problem might eventually go away. Which has not happened, so the faithful either keep themselves to themselves, or shoot first. Thus a "worship and study of vitality" has petrified into mumbled discussion about what really happened in the Garden of Eden and gun-toting fanaticism.
Archaic science (if the reader will forgive my continued use of the term) and contemporary faith are therefore differentiated as much by adaptive (or otherwise) properties, as moral perspectives. It would be wrong to suggest that earlier religions are necessarily amoral, but the balance between description and prescription is very different. Judaeo-Christian systems tend to emphasise ideals of right and wrong, providing adherents with an elaborate set of codes by which to live. Whilst many of these codes may be indisputably noble, some - perhaps reluctantly maintained in the name of consistency - should be considered dubious or even offensive by most right-thinking people. Although not without a moral dimension, Nahua theology contains little in the way of judgement (*2) beyond a few warnings against overindulgence.
Let us briefly qualify this assertion. A great many religions frown upon adultery (defined as sexual liaisons taking place outside the bonded pair, or group in a few eccentric and polygamous cases) and it would be hard to deny that some logic informs this disposition. For all its immediate pleasures, adulterous behaviour has a tendency to precipitate extremes of psychological distress for those involved. On the other hand, where later religions (particularly monotheistic and patriarchal variants) are rife with arbitrary pronouncements on sexuality, ethnicity, and the strength of one's faith - such edicts are rare within the archaic science model. And for good reason: what observed effect could possibly lead a logical mind to conclude that one sex is superior to the other, or that homosexuality and atheism signify inherent evil?
Archaic science attempts to describe what is, rather than what it thinks should be. Moral issues are left to the individual (who is credited with the good sense to decide for him or her self) or else perceived as belonging to the unknowable province of the sacred world - in either case, ethical matters are not innate to the metaphysical fabric.
Returning to the theme of Gods as symbols, this is manifestly so with Nahua theology, and any discussion of the same must take this into account. A particularly vivid example is found in Xipe Totec whom we might broadly characterise as a fertility God associated with the ripening of the maize plant. He is invariably depicted as a man encased in the flayed hide of a sacrificial victim and during the Veintena festival of Tlacaxipehualiztli, holy men would impersonate the God by likewise donning the flesh of those recently slain. Having been attired in this grisly fashion for twenty days, the priests would remove the hide (in the event of its not having fallen apart through a natural process of decay) to be revealed once again as healthy and living (although possibly somewhat aromatic) human beings.
This action represents a ritualised echo of the maize husk as it slowly desiccates before finally exposing the wholesome yellow cob within. At a deeper level it provides allegories for the cycle of life and death (that each is born from the other); and the aphorism that nothing worthwhile comes without a degree of suffering.
Whether or not one accepts Xipe Totec as a Deity in the sense of being some disembodied supernatural entity is irrelevant. The salient points are those expressed by the symbols. One may choose either belief or disbelief in the existence of an omnipotent white-bearded creator, but a symbol, being founded upon intellectual comprehension rather than physical substance is a different matter. The question of whether or not one believes in a symbol is as meaningless as that of whether or not one believes in adjectives. Therefore, in all senses that count, Xipe Totec is real.
This accounts, in part, for my enduring fascination with the Nahua universe. Whilst its literal fabric has long been superceded (*3) by the contemporary scientific model (Darwinian theory, for example, sadly invalidates the rather pleasing idea of canine ancestry leading back to a human couple whose heads were relocated to their hindquarters by an enraged Deity), the symbols remain predominantly valid. And of the principal concepts communicated through Nahua symbolism: that one cannot take from nature without giving something back; that conflicting forces may sometimes induce progress; that life is defined by death; and that change is the only historical constant -. for better or worse, these persist and with wider import than any vacuous maxim prescribing obedience to one God, or altruism enforced, not for its own sake, but on penalty of everlasting torment.
The subject of religious conviction hardly lends itself to discussion in the same objective terms as chemistry or biology, and the degree to which the above assertions concord with the substance of the matter may be open to debate. It might be argued, for instance, that Christianity is likewise a purely symbolic construct, and with no meaningful claims towards description of physical reality (although this certainly does not seem to be the belief of its many fundamentalist adherents). Despite the occasional grain of truth that might support such a hypothesis, corroborative evidence seems greatly outweighed by prohibitive.
Nahua theology on the other hand contains much that would appear to justify the reading given here, and without the need to look too hard or render one's interpretation with too colourful a flourish. We find this exemplified in the fluid character of the Gods and Goddesses.
Mexican Deities tend to blend and fuse with one another; personalities shift to the extent that even gender is not always a constant. This much is evident from surviving codices which are replete with supernatural figures bearing signifiers of more than one Deity. These, it could be argued, represent powerful entities who for reasons beyond our comprehension, choose to merge with one another. More likely is that the individuals depicted bear no distinction in their own right beyond serving as carriers of conceptual information - specifically the fundamental symbols which, lacking discrete physicality, may combinate in whatever configuration serves best to illustrate the point being made.
Further to this theme, the concept of religious heresy (as applied to those believing in something other than one's own 'true' faith) was unknown in Mexico prior to its importation by Conquistadores in 1521. Indeed, the populace of western Mexico were so eclectic as to welcome Jesus Christ into their extended pantheon many years prior to the imposition of Christian monotheism which came when the Spaniards eventually turned their attention to that part of the country.
Such magnanimity is entirely consistent within a belief system that recognises its components as symbolic, but not within one that claims a literal and concrete reality of its cast and tenets. After all, if a creed is upheld as empiric historical fact - the 'one truth' built upon foundations as tangible as those of the physical world - how then does it compensate for unexpected challenges to its omniscience? With absolute denial, as the history of Judaeo-Christianity is testimony, which is hardly the adaptive behaviour of a faith that values message over messenger.
In 1519 the Conquistadores introduced the indigenous population of Mexico to objects and concepts for which no local frame of reference existed - a new set of unfamiliar symbols, if you will. As is consistent with a science (rather than an orthodoxy), this intrusion of the alien prompted not denial, but questions, self-examination, and assimilation. Thus the regional theology of western Mexico adopted Jesus Christ as their God of cows, metal and money: an anthropomorphic persona for new symbols which had arrived more or less concurrently from the East. Mesoamerican belief systems are therefore adaptive, explaining or proposing meaning rather than enforcing it - a feature more characteristic of a science than any contemporary theology.
At this juncture one might rightly question the thesis. Nahua theology, it could be argued, derives surely from fanciful conjecture and credulity, whereas contemporary science is grounded in observation and the continual revision of its own findings. Only a fool would deny that assumption and superstition account for some elements of Nahua belief, but it is certainly also true that nascent forms of the scientific criteria listed above occupy an equal and perhaps even dominant role.
For one example, in The Natural History of the Soul in Ancient Mexico Jill Furst eloquently illustrates how the complex Nahua conception of a tripartite soul may be informed by direct observation of changes that occur to the human body immediately after death; notably those which may explain why, in Nahua thought, one element of the soul is often likened to a butterfly.
Furst notes that when a fresh corpse is lain flat upon its back, blood will tend to settle causing lividity - a pronounced red tinge to the skin of the lower areas: the back of the arms, legs and torso. However, those parts of the epidermis (around the buttocks and shoulder blades) in contact with the surface upon which the corpse rests, through being compressed by the weight of the body above, will commonly remain unaffected, even somewhat bleached as gravity squeezes blood from the capillaries. Thus, once rigor mortis has set in, the back of the corpse bears a roseate staining that contrasts to a conspicuously pallid area given the shape of a butterfly by the template of the shoulder blades.
It therefore requires no wild leap of imagination to link the significant details: that whatever animated the body is no longer present, and that something in the shape of a butterfly appears also to have taken its leave of the corpse. If hardly a satisfactory interpretation by the standards of modern medical practice, this nevertheless shows an application of dextrous reasoning within its own cultural framework.
However, science is not informed solely by observation and conclusion. It must also practice the continuing reappraisal of its own findings: sceptical enquiry, the spirit of which is likewise present in our strain of archaic science. Surviving remnants of pre-Hispanic Nahuatl poetry(*4) contain much written in this vein, pondering upon the true nature of the universe: whether it comprises Gods, heavens, and an afterlife, or only that which is revealed to the human eye:
"Where shall I go?
Where shall I go?
Which is the path to the God of duality?
Perchance, is Your home in the place of the dead?
In the innermost of heaven?
Or is the place of the dead only here on earth?"
- Cantares Mexicanos, fol. 35,v.
By the same token, amongst the chronicles of Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún we find native accounts describing the clear distinctions made between holy man and common sorcerer. To us this may seem a little incongruous within the context of such an elaborate and extraordinary belief system. Nevertheless, it is a system which differentiates between reasoned thought and quackery:
"The false wise man, like an ignorant physician, a man without understanding, claims to know about God. He has his own traditions and keeps them secretly. He is a boaster, vanity is his. He makes things complicated; he brags and exaggerates. He is a river, a rocky hill (a dangerous man). A lover of darkness and corners, a mysterious wizard, a magician, a witch doctor, a public thief, he takes things. A sorcerer, a destroyer of faces. He leads the people astray."
- Códice Matritense de la Real Academia, VIII, fol. 188,v.
Perhaps the term archaic science is misleading, its value being reliant more on interpretation than incontrovertible fact. If it gives an impression of the Nahua world as a Spartan haven of logic and reason, then it should probably only be so in relation to the outmoded (and insulting) portrait of hopelessly superstitious primitives who roll their eyes and wave hands in terror of the angry volcano God. Whilst the archaic science model should not be confused with science itself, Nahua theology contains too much incisive detail to justify relegation to realms purely of imagination and fantasy.
Richard Dawkins writes extensively in articulate defence of science, particularly regarding the 'sense of wonder' it presents. Theologically inclined critics often deny the existence of this sense of wonder, describing science as reductionist; lacking in poetry. Religious faith, they insist, is the sole fount of the sublime and inspirational.
Yet in Christian terminology at least, it is rare to find any expression of wonder made purely by its own merits. No iridescent hummingbird or fragrant bloom is eulogised without mention of God's philanthropic glory, and even this limited form of praise is conditional. The fact that God's divine creation is seldom exemplified by frogs, lizards or snakes suggests an extraordinarily myopic perspective. If contemporary religion affords a sense of wonder, it is one filtered through the lens of its own jealous tenets, concerned not so much with the purported object of its focus as demonstration of the observer's piety. Where science seeks only to explain, contemporary religion lays claim to being the very substance of the universe - its testimony is therefore no more reliable than that of a restaurateur called upon to pen reviews of his own eating establishment.
Science describes the world.
Symbols describe human experience of the world.
One should therefore take care to avoid any symbolic language riddled with inherent prejudice and bias. Whilst that of Nahua theology is certainly colourful, its power of poetic description excels without any sacrifice of objectivity.
*1: One might speculate upon the role of the written word in defining a belief system's ability to adapt. Whilst Central Mexico maintained a means of recording information in pictographic form, it was not well suited to the description of abstract ideas of motive or relative moral value. It is logical that the invention of written phonetic script (which may record all aspects of spoken word) tends to pin language down by creating a standard template which reaches future generations in more or less unaltered form (unlike a purely oral tradition). This might also be true of the ideas expressed by that language. Perhaps then it is the written word which contributed to the ossification of the Judaeo-Christian faiths, by setting in 'stone' tenets that might have otherwise remained fluid and adaptive.
*2: Further to this point, the closest Nahuatl analogy we have for the word 'evil' is ahmocualli implying negative qualities and literally translated as 'something not good'.
*3: This said, it is interesting to note that a number of fanciful Mesoamerican myths accounting for the nature of the universe come somewhat closer to established scientific theory than Judaeo-Christian equivalents. The models of prehistory as a series of cataclysmic mass extinctions, and apes representing an earlier form of humanity being two examples. Whilst I am unwilling to attribute this to anything more than coincidence, it might be suggested that Mesoamerican belief systems seem at least conducive to 'thinking along the right lines' in certain cases. Perhaps this might result from their foundations lying in observation of the natural world (as opposed to politically motivated tribalism) which must surely make for a degree of clear thinking.
*4: The texts referred to here were set down in alphabetic script during the early years of Hispanic rule and are reputed to record, in part, older oral traditions which in pre-conquest Mexico would have been beyond the scope of the extant pictographic writing. Although some of these narratives refer to Christian symbolism, their concerns remain firmly m the thematic tradition of pre-Colombian Nahua thought.
Anyway, I've had some positive feedback for the above, but I'd be interested to know what you guys think. Is there any point I've failed to make clear? Is there any point you would regard as flawed? Does anybody recognise this as applicable to other early cultures? Is there anything I've missed out?
Any comments would be appreciated. In fact if you've managed just to read the thing that too is appreciated.
Might I just add, as a disclaimer, comments I have made regarding contemporary religion exist in service of the broader narrative. This article is not presented as an attack on any particular present-day faith and I'm not really interested in getting into any debate that would be, at best, of only peripheral relevance to the thread.
