4/19/24
Mapping my journey onto Siddhartha’s
There’s a pattern that I see in many of the mystical books I’ve read that have to do with connecting to the divine and maturing as a person:
Religious education.
Ascetic submission & discipline.
Release of the above to follow the internal voice.
Connecting with the world deeply, & eventually being subsumed by carnality.
Transcendence of the worldly patterns, remanifestation of the first two bullets in a post-worldly form (as compared to pre-worldly). This rebirth seems necessary to maintain connection between self and spirit, and spirit and divine. Consciousness - self - interconsciousness.
Each above developmental epoch contains necessary revelations for the travel. I see them in my own life and in others. The step between each stage requires humility and sacrifice - but it appears worth it? I cannot, in my own mind, justify the being subsumed by carnality. There’s no world in which the appetites are the nexus of virtues. So I won’t treat them as such. However, I do need to learn proper relation to them and how to avail my senses to feel deeply in each space, without baggage or friction.
The latest surfacing of this pattern was in Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, I read last night.
Hesse has an interesting story. His father was a protestant theologian and missionary in India. He was raised in Pietist tradition, meaning small intellectual gatherings of believers regularly. You could imagine the resulting familiarity he’d had with the latest ideas about God.
His mother wrote of him in a letter to his father:
"The little fellow has a life in him, an unbelievable strength, a powerful will, and, for his four years of age, a truly astonishing mind. How can he express all that? It truly gnaws at my life, this internal fighting against his tyrannical temperament, his passionate turbulence [...] God must shape this proud spirit, then it will become something noble and magnificent – but I shudder to think what this young and passionate person might become should his upbringing be false or weak."
His grandfather was a doctor of philosophy, who gave him access to his library, and his mother a lover of poems and music. A perfect balance! The conditions for recruitment into the Kallipolis.
He was sent to seminary around the age of 14 after completing a classical education. He rebelled, frequently running away and attempting suicide at one point. He was sent to a mental institution then a number of other schools. In his last year of school he took up drinking, smoking, and writing. Which began his journey that would cement him into the intellectual who’s who of Germany. The rest of his life was equivalently volatile.
Among the many others with that internal torment - he followed that pattern. And as alluded to in his works, the tormented soul must do so to find a true path to God. This is personally encouraging & worrying.
I believe he was heavily influenced by early Western Esotericism, and developed a personal Christian Theosophy… but I cannot tell.
I see themes that apply to my own experience (given I am a worm comparing myself to dragons).
Persians funding the Second Temple
It was interesting to trace more closely the thread of Persian involvement in the development of Jewish religion and Christology.
Judeo-Persian relations is a massive field I’ve only begun to scratch the surface of - but of what’s accessible to me, it appears that Persians believed they were worshipping the same God as Jews and helped the Jews accomplish their goals. Additionally, without dreams and divine intervention, the Persians knew that the messiah was coming and found him using science and technology! Magi following the stars.
Of course, it is documented the Persians were worshipping Ahura Mazda. Cyrus was lauded as a messiah in Isaiah for freeing the Jews from Babylon.
It seems Isaiah mocks the Zoroastrian god with verses 9-20 here, but does so in a strawman fashion (classic) as Zoroastrians don’t worship the fire, but use it as a symbol of the divine. Not actually an idol. Similar to the cross in function. Cyrus is called the Lord’s shepherd in verse 28, His anointed in 45:1. In fact it’s worth including the whole bit here of the Lord’s words to Cyrus:
1Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus,
whose right hand I have grasped,
to subdue nations before him
and to loose the belts of kings,
to open doors before him
that gates may not be closed:
2“I will go before you
and level the exalted places,a
I will break in pieces the doors of bronze
and cut through the bars of iron,
3I will give you the treasures of darkness
and the hoards in secret places,
that you may know that it is I, the LORD,
the God of Israel, who call you by your name.
4For the sake of my servant Jacob,
and Israel my chosen,
I call you by your name,
I name you, though you do not know me.
5I am the LORD, and there is no other,
besides me there is no God;
I equip you, though you do not know me,
6that people may know, from the rising of the sun
and from the west, that there is none besides me;
I am the LORD, and there is no other.
7I form light and create darkness;
I make well-being and create calamity;
I am the LORD, who does all these things.
“though you do not know me.” So interesting!
Here’s the letter from Artexerxes to the prophet Ezra in Ezra 7:
Artaxerxes, king of kings,
To Ezra the priest, teacher of the Law of the God of heaven:
Greetings.
13 Now I decree that any of the Israelites in my kingdom, including priests and Levites, who volunteer to go to Jerusalem with you, may go. 14 You are sent by the king and his seven advisers to inquire about Judah and Jerusalem with regard to the Law of your God, which is in your hand. 15 Moreover, you are to take with you the silver and gold that the king and his advisers have freely given to the God of Israel, whose dwelling is in Jerusalem, 16 together with all the silver and gold you may obtain from the province of Babylon, as well as the freewill offerings of the people and priests for the temple of their God in Jerusalem. 17 With this money be sure to buy bulls, rams and male lambs, together with their grain offerings and drink offerings, and sacrifice them on the altar of the temple of your God in Jerusalem.
18 You and your fellow Israelites may then do whatever seems best with the rest of the silver and gold, in accordance with the will of your God. 19 Deliver to the God of Jerusalem all the articles entrusted to you for worship in the temple of your God. 20 And anything else needed for the temple of your God that you are responsible to supply, you may provide from the royal treasury.
21 Now I, King Artaxerxes, decree that all the treasurers of Trans-Euphrates are to provide with diligence whatever Ezra the priest, the teacher of the Law of the God of heaven, may ask of you— 22 up to a hundred talents[a] of silver, a hundred cors[b] of wheat, a hundred baths[c] of wine, a hundred baths[d] of olive oil, and salt without limit. 23 Whatever the God of heaven has prescribed, let it be done with diligence for the temple of the God of heaven. Why should his wrath fall on the realm of the king and of his sons? 24 You are also to know that you have no authority to impose taxes, tribute or duty on any of the priests, Levites, musicians, gatekeepers, temple servants or other workers at this house of God.
25 And you, Ezra, in accordance with the wisdom of your God, which you possess, appoint magistrates and judges to administer justice to all the people of Trans-Euphrates—all who know the laws of your God. And you are to teach any who do not know them. 26 Whoever does not obey the law of your God and the law of the king must surely be punished by death, banishment, confiscation of property, or imprisonment.[e]
Some people claim this warrants that the Jewish law came from the Persians and that Ezra actually wrote them, not Moses (which we’re pretty sure Moses didn’t anyway), but I don’t see evidences for that here. That said, Moses was trained in the Egyptian ways allegedly (Acts 7:22) and so you’d imagine that would influence how he thought and influenced the law.
Interesting how “the people of Trans-Euphrates” know the laws of the Jewish God.
Notice how in Matt 2, in the Magi’s prophecy (from Micah 5:2-4), the Christ is given the “Shepherd” title just as Cyrus was. It’s so interesting to me that Zoroastrian astrologers from Persia recognized the messiah via the stars and Jewish prophecy and travelled to worship him. It opens the conversation a bit in considering the roles of non-Jewish people pre-Christ. They seem to have been a lot more involved in the Jewish story than I was taught.
One claim I’ve heard that I’d like to look more into is that the Jews went into Babylon uneducated and came out educated in law, astrology, mathematics, language, etc and we can see this in their textual traditions. Daniel being a chief example. Too bad Alexander burned all the Persian libraries!!! There’s so much more to know. I weep over this. The integration of Persian education would heavily influence the Jewish conception of a founding God.
Some even argue in Deut 32:8-9 that the “Most High” is Ahura Mazda, who granted Yahweh his divine allotment, that being the Israelites. This would line up with other historical timings, like how other gods became national in the late Iron Age. Another supporting idea is that the early Israelites were polytheists that evolved into monolatrists around this time. At first they worshipped Yahweh amongst other gods (Canaanites also appeared to worship Yahweh btw) including El, Ba’al, Molech, and Asherah primarily. Side note - there are some claims that Israelites practiced child sacrifice in worship of Yahweh until the reforms of Josiah in the 7th century BC. I haven’t dug deeply into this, but plan to at some point.
Okay I’m super in the weeds here. Point is, Cyrus gave the Israelites the money and freedom to build the second temple - heavily influencing second temple Judaism. The scriptures speak of him in a way that is unique for a non-Jew. Then the connection with the magi is pretty cool. The symmetry with Jesus is everywhere. A new temple is born, Christ as the head of the living church. This entrance is marked by the gold and worship of the Persians, as it was for the second temple.
Another one of these days I’d like to write out the similarities between Zoroastrian & ancient Israeli mythology and eschatology - they’re very similar! Zoroastrian is claimed to be older. I haven’t looked into it enough yet.
(“The Lord loves him” referring to Cyrus, Israelites called their god “The God of heaven” just like Cyrus did, Persians laid the foundation of the temple, “I will make all his ways straight” Israelite god to Cyrus)
Deviations in global values.
An interesting paper was published in Nature on the 9th detailing the deviation in value systems of 76 countries from 1981 to 2022 with a sample size of 406K individuals. There are three main schools of thought seeking to find the historical origins of cultural differences in values:
Collective vs individual.
Emancipation vs obedience.
Secular vs sacred.
A second vector to address is whether global value systems are diverging or converging.
Over the 4 decades the researchers found significant divergence! Emancipation-Obedience (EO) was the highest correlated theory. Almost triple that of Secular-Sacred (SS) which was predicted to be much more indicative.
Not enough time to write full thoughts on this, but here’s the paper. Worth reading.
Poem I liked from today -
The More Loving One
W. H Auden, 1907 - 1973
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empt sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.
“It takes time to live.
Like any work of art,
life needs to be thought about.”
Albert Camus.
Have patience, my soul. You are surely on the path.