The Resilience of Our Pagan Past

Two strangely intertwined stories brought to light for me just how pervasive our ancient pagan past is in influencing and inspiring our modern world. The first comes from Salon.com’s “Literary Guide to The World” which features a story on the history of London neighborhoods Whitechapel and Spitalfields. The article focuses on the Masonic (and Satanic) conspiracy theories and supposedly “occult” buildings that crop up in several novels featuring the area, including Alan Moore’s “From Hell”.

“From these two springs — occult architecture and murderous Masons — flow several engrossing novels, all centered largely around Spitalfields and Whitechapel…the apotheosis of creepy Whitechapel lit is Alan Moore’s epic graphic novel “From Hell,” originally published serially over several years in the early ’90s, which combines the Hawksmoor and Ripper streams into a wild, rushing torrent, with stunningly detailed black-and-white illustrations by Eddie Campbell. I hate to overuse the word “idiosyncratic,” but let’s face it: Ian McEwan and Martin Amis aren’t going to touch this stuff. It takes an omnivorously encyclopedic, outsider sensibility like Moore’s (and Sinclair, Ackroyd and West’s) to venture into this territory, and Moore’s the most omnivorous of the lot, openly acknowledging his debt to Sinclair et al. in extensive notes, and dumping into the book all things London (circa 1888), including cameos by the Elephant Man, William Morris, Robert Louis Stevenson, Buffalo Bill and a young Aleister Crowley. The chapter in which Gull and his evil coachman Netley take the reader on a tour of Hawksmoor’s pentagram of pagan churches takes “Lud Heat’s” occult aria and turns it into a full-blown opera of classical paganism, Freemasonry and psychopathology.”

While few of the theories presented in these novels are “true” in the literal sense, people are ready and willing to accept the notion of a world haunted by its ancient religious past. To believe that there is something more than what we are taught in books or told by experts (which helps explain the success of “Da Vinci” quite a bit).

Meanwhile, the Catholic Church has been revealing more of its pagan past, at least when it comes to art with pagan themes. A mural of Love (Cupid) and Psyche commissioned for the Papal apartments of the infamous Pope Paul III has been restored to its former glory and opened to the public.

“An erotic pagan fresco commissioned by one of the naughtiest popes in history has been restored and returned to the public after decades in the dark. The fresco, in a long-closed papal apartment inside famed Rome monument Castel Sant’Angelo, illustrates the classic fable of Love and Psyche – a beautiful girl visited by a mysterious winged lover, punished by the gods when she lights a candle to see his face. The myth – which has a happy ending – was used by the Roman philosopher Apuleius as an allegory of the soul seeking divine love. The wall painting shows Love lying in full-frontal glory while the naked Psyche leans over him, her gleaming thighs and buttocks lovingly rendered.”

Wow! Sounds like some Popes were more worldly than others. But this again shows how our past isn’t so easily erased or turned away from. Why a modern Paganism isn’t so far-fetched an idea when you look at how much we have internalized and inherited from those times. When even past leaders of the current religious mainstream have dabbled in pagan allegory, is it so strange that some of us embrace that period fully?

Tags: Paganism