Over at Salon.com Laura Miller has written a fascinating review of two new books that explore humanity’s deep attachment to relics, ancestor worship, and “biddable magical forces”. The books: “The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist” by Matt Baglio, and “Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World’s Holy Relics” by Peter Manseau (co-author of “Killing the Buddha: A Heretic’s Bible”), seem to point to the reality that no matter how secular our culture or transcendent our faith we still find ourselves drawn to an ethically diverse world of strange powers which we engage with decisively immanent devices.
“Relics are potent, largely because the value of these objects lies not in their testimony to the ordinary lot of humanity, but in their promise of transcending it. The devout believe that holy relics can miraculously cure diseases, heal broken relationships, deliver loved ones from misfortune, straighten out misguided children, and so on and so on, ad infinitum. Their adoration is utilitarian. This isn’t about flesh and blood, but about magic. The inclination to believe in biddable magical forces capable of acting for or against us appears to be irresistible to large numbers of people in every nation on the planet.”
Miller seems quite dismissive of Manseau’s attempts to view the world’s relics through a humanistic “circle-of-life” lens, and instead favors the more face-value religious worldview that the figures in Baglio’s book about an exorcist in training inhabit. Of course exorcisms aren’t just for driving out Christian demons, but (as I’ve pointed out before on this blog) are a part of a larger spiritual struggle against religions that appeal more directly to the desire to control those “biddable” forces.
“The deftest church officials have used the furor to extend the battle for spiritual dominance on other fronts. According to the dutiful Baglio, “occult ties” are listed as one of the primary causes of demonic possession, with “occult” defined as everything from performing satanic rituals to participating in séances, tarot card readings or other forms of divination, the use of “an amulet or talisman,” transcendental meditation, engaging in Wicca ceremonies, using crystals and other New Age paraphernalia, frequenting psychics and even reading the Harry Potter books, which were condemned by the Vatican’s official exorcist. Anything, in short, likely to compete with the church for your spiritual interest and dollars can lead to an infestation by Beelzebub or Asmodeus (names that originally belonged to Middle Eastern gods who were rivals of the famously jealous God of the Old Testament).”
To a certain extent these books seem to underline a point made by Michael York in his book “Pagan Theology: Paganism as a World Religion”, that the “pagan” religious impulse never died out as the dominant monotheisms (and later, post-Enlightenment rationalism) took prominence around certain parts of the world. Instead, to varying degrees, the “world” religions adapted, absorbed, and tolerated just enough of these practices to remain relevant to their geographically and culturally diverse adherents. We shouldn’t be surprised that a variety of relics are still venerated across different faiths, or that the Catholic Church is ramping up the exorcisms to meet a need (and combat competition), these conditions point towards the idea that a polytheist condition is natural for humanity and can only be suppressed for so long. If it’s true that the natural instinct when reaching towards the unknown is to acknowledge a multiplicity of powers/forces, we will never truly see magic, “paganism”, or “superstition” ever really leave us.
