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Thursday, December 15, 2016

Powers In The World: Tuatha

 Hagia Pharmaka  -  Holy Drugs


I wrote a post about Powers in the world in which I sort of compared Drugs to ancient dark deities. I think that everyone of the 8 people who read it thought it was a metaphor, as if I were saying that drugs are like dark gods.

http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-powers-of-world-hagia-pharmaka.html

No-o-o...
It was not really a metaphor.
What I meant was that the same psychology and physical processes that led humanity at other times and at other places to conceive of a pantheon of gods were actively at work in the present day cobbling together a pastiche of gods and goddish things that go bump in the night.
Really.
I mean it literally.

I was going to use the name Lwa to refer to them, but the Haitian people already have a very good usage and claim on it, and I did not think it right to steal even that divine nomenclature from them.
So I decided to use the ancient Irish Tuatha, literally "gods", and which is pronounced pretty much like "Tu-e'-he" or "Tyu-e'-he".

 Riders of the Sidhe by John Duncan.  A depiction of the 
Tuatha De Danaan  the Divine Beings of the Goddess Danu
Wikipedia

This whole business of the Tuatha (Tu-e-he) within our modern world which prides itself on knowing the distinction between fact and fiction as well as that between Church and State came to me in a bloody hurry one morning - sort of boisterously and staggeringly like a noisy reveler coming home in the early morn - when I was reading the news at 5:00 AM during one of those unpleasant periods when there was a mass shooting every day.

The news article said that the US House of Representatives began their day with a moment of silence as an observance for those slain the day before.
There were a lot of these moments of silence. If they had an individual moment for each shooting victim they US House may not get any work done.

It was very unclear who were the objects of the moment's prayer: did they pray for the dead? did they pray to the gods of death who welcomed the dead into their domain?
It was suddenly very unclear, for these are the legislators who are building the Weapon Society and extending it through such stratagems as "Stand Your Ground" laws - a law of which type led to Treyvon Martin's death in Florida.

I thought they just might be praying to the god of death... even though I'm sure most of them were totally unaware that their prayers were to accompany the sacrificial victims to the underworld. 


Mayan Lords of Xibalba Underworld

In the center is the Death god. On the left is the Weapons god, making implements of violence upon his forge. On the right is the god of Force and Compulsion.

We who thought to have drained the divinity from the world are now feeling it come back in new forms to destroy!

Lastly, these Tuatha correspond to the Saints and the intercession of the Saints in the Roman Catholic Church's view. The Tuatha are not merely anthropomorphized entities; they are also acts and process. For example, in Islam the Sunni lords of Saudi Arabia denounced any observance of the Prophet's Birthday, whereas the Shi'a - and many Sunni Muslims - will offer respect. But the purists of Arabia believe all respect is due to God alone.
Following this creed, they have destroyed the ancient cemetery of Baqi'a years ago, wherein the first Muslims were buried.

In monotheistic cultures - such as Islam and this Judaeo-Christian one - there in one God.
This Holy emerges from personal human history.

Then there is often an intermediary layers of Saints, Powers, intercessions, images, goals of holy pilgrimage, etc. which form the Tuatha. In this layer of Tuatha lie the superstitions, the egoistic prayers, the Pascal wagers, the failed and re-failed prophecies of end of the world, etc.
These phenomena emerge as the individual opens themself to the world and the world opens itself to the individual.

Then there is the world itself at the bottom layer, and forms the environment for intelligent life.


I believe that the modern Western world tried to throw the Tuatha out the front door, only to discover they have re-entered through the window. Any thinking person knows that there are powers in the relationship between intelligence and the world.

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