Drawing Down the Moon (47 page)

CES is adamantly polytheist. “Polytheism,” a CES pamphlet states, “accepts a concept of Divinity based on the plurality of the Gods in human perception.” What a Christian might call God, a priest of CES might call “the gods”; but both stand for the totality of divinity.

In this very Jungian view, the parts of a human being are infinite. Likewise the parts of “the gods.” When they are brought into harmony, health results; sickness comes when they are in disarray. In this scheme the goal of life would be to bring one's own individuality into balance with these forces, into harmony with
Ma'at,
a word the ancient Egyptians used to describe the preexisting original order of the universe.

Unlike many of the “new” religions, CES does not print its own religious books. There is an occasional pamphlet and one can still get back issues of the magazine
Khepera.
But generally CES relies on the basic texts of scholarship on Egypt and the best translations of ancient texts.

If CES has one basic recommended introduction to the study of Egypt, it is Dr. Henri Frankfort's
Ancient Egyptian Religion
. Frankfort stresses that to understand Egypt we have to begin to understand the mythopoetic outlook, a totally different way of perceiving reality, and dispense with our evolutionary bias. Whereas most Westerners are used to the idea of revelations from a single God transmitting one central truth, the ancients “admitted side by side certain
limited
insights, which were held to be
simultaneously
valid, each in its own proper context.” There was no single truth, no central dogma, no single coherent theory to explain reality, no one holy book. Frankfort wrote that this habit of thought, which is so unlike our own, “agrees with the basic experience of polytheism.” The universe is alive with multiple forces. The question of their “unity” does not arise. There are many gods and they are immanent in nature.
⁴¹

In addition, Frankfort writes that many of our assumptions about Egypt are incorrect. For example, it is wrong to say that Egyptian religion evolved from more primitive forms, or that modern religions evolved from Egyptian forms that were more primitive. Nor was the worship of animals and animal gods a transitional phase toward the worship of human forces. Frankfort argues that the Egyptians viewed the universe “as a rhythmic movement within an unchanging whole” and believed that only the changeless participated in divinity. Since animals, unlike humans, have no history, and since the lives of animals change little in comparison with those of humans, animals shared more in divinity, in the eternal, than did humans.

Like Frankfort, the members of CES have a view of Egypt that is very different from the popular conception, which, they are quick to point out, has been distorted by Egypt's conquerors. For example, we commonly think that in Egypt all religious power was invested in a priesthood, and that priests always functioned as intermediaries between a worshipper and the divine. But Harold Moss contends that this is a mistaken view; Egyptians had personal shrines and worshipped individually. One tenet of CES is that people should contact the gods daily. The priests are used for exceptional circumstances. Moss told me, “It's controversial whether the Egyptians were really that sacerdotal. I think they were less so than Catholics today. The religion was political, but not in the sense of a state arm to oppress. The priesthood functioned to advise in all major undertakings. It oversaw rituals for fertility, for the rising and setting of the sun. The religion had the same ethical base as the Hopi religion—the great national festivals were for the purpose of securing the bounty of nature.”

Moss also told me that CES did not follow Egyptian burial customs and practices; his own travels to Egypt convinced him that those customs were conditioned by the environment of the Nile Valley and had continued to be practiced there long after the religion had faded. Most members of CES favor cremation and the return of their ashes to the earth. “The real question,” Harold said, “is what of the ancient Egyptian religion is truly for all the world and not simply for the Nile Valley? What parts of this religion fit in with the life of the United States?” He concluded that these questions must be solved by practice, not dogma. “We're trying to avoid the mistake of the Christians. They started out with a whole lot of writings which they then spent the rest of their existence defending and trying to live up to.”

 

In practice, the Church of the Eternal Source is a federation of independent cults, each led by a priest or priestess who maintains services for a particular deity—such as Horus, Ptah, Sekhmet, Hathor, and Anubis—supervises initiatory procedures of that cult, and corresponds or meets personally with those students who express interest. Each cult is autonomous. Rituals are held separately. Most students reach CES through correspondence with one of its priests or initiates, who advise a course of study. Books and later rituals are suggested. If at a certain point a student makes a commitment to a particular deity, the study program is tailored in that direction.

As of 2006, the church has about six functioning priests and priestesses, three major shrines, three fully dedicated temple rooms, and substantial congregations in California, Oregon, and Idaho. The church also conducts correspondence with students in the United States, Britain, Canada, and Africa. The Egyptian New Year's party continues, and has developed into an ecumenical Pan-Pagan gathering for many Neo-Pagans in California.

Religious practice in CES is centered on the personal shrine, which is created by each individual and may or may not be devoted to a particular deity. In addition to study of Egypt and worship at the shrine, members of CES are encouraged to learn psychic and divinatory arts (“Divination reminds us on a day-to-day basis that the macrocosm and the microcosm—the universe and man—are interrelated in function”), to produce works of art with Egyptian symbolism, to explore the wilderness and nature, and to involve themselves in community actions.

A church pamphlet, “Our Modern Practice of the Ancient Egyptian Religion,” states:

The pamphlet says that the church provides information and instruction about “things Egyptian” and various occult techniques, but all from the following general standpoint: The church does not manipulate or coerce its members. “Power” is understood to mean a sense of wholeness that comes from living in harmony with the flow of the universe (Ma'at). The church does not believe that power shared is power lost, but rather that knowledge is increased as it is shared. There are no secrets. CES does not claim to teach “Ultimate Truth,” which, according to the pamphlet, “is endlessly discovered for and by one's sef, throughout one's existence and incarnations.”
⁴²
Moss reiterated this point by observing, “When a person assumes that his or her revelation is the only true one, it only says that this person has had very few religious revelations and hasn't realized how many there are.” The pamphlet goes further:

Harold Moss once observed that the Church of the Eternal Source faced one great hindrance as a religious organization—it lacked charismatic individuals. Its appeal has always been to intellectuals who enjoy scholarly pursuits. “My own approach to religion is intellectual,” Moss told me, “and since I am writing most of the introductory letters to people, as secretary of the church, this is a stumbling block. The only people the church has gathered are those who have been captivated by this force which reaches through Egyptian art across the centuries and which seduces people. Then a person has to be driven to want to understand what sort of intellectual force produced such a culture.

“Our smallness is a source of disappointment to some of us. The number of people who are interested in ancient Egyptian religion is rather limited. But we have made a beginning.” Moss became reflective and began to talk about why he has not lost his fascination with ancient Egypt. “I have always been wrapped up with the idea of permanence and commitment. And Egypt was a very conservative society, where obligations were often life-long, and where permanence and commitment were stressed. In our society, we often collide with one another like molecules in a gas; we interact briefly to form submolecular species and then go our separate ways. This is all part of the unfolding of the universal life force to understand itself, and I understand this intellectually, but it bothers me. Perhaps Egypt becomes, for me, a kind of utopia, where things never change.”
⁴³

If the Church of the Eternal Source remains small, its importance for Neo-Paganism is disproportionately great, for it emphasizes more clearly than any other Neo-Pagan group a commitment to diversity, multiplicity, and freedom. Writing to
Green Egg
several years ago, Moss summed up the essence of CES:

In a recent series of films on Pagan elders, Harold Moss said, in November 2005, that, “Polytheistic religions, in general, command a reverence for diversity. Human diversity is a sacrament. That is the important thing we have to teach.” In 2005, Harold Moss told me he now lives on a farm and does work as a music critic and audio producer. The Reverend Donald Harrison died in 2004. The Church of the Eternal Source has several new priests and priestesses. There are also several new Web sites (see Resources).

When
Drawing Down
the Moon appeared in 1979, one of its most glaring oversights was the omission of Heathenism. While I had received many publications relating to Odinism—
The Runestone, The Raven Banner,
and others—I found myself in a quandary. Some of the information I received was from groups genuinely seeking a Norse Pagan path, but there were other groups clearly using Odinist symbols and mythologies as a front for right-wing and even Nazi activities. I even had a neighbor, around the corner from me in New York City, who was a leading member of a Nazi political party and who was communicating his religious ideas in the forum of the
Green Egg.
His cramped apartment on Ninetythird Street was crammed with books—one wall was filled with Nazi regalia and literature; the other wall was filled with books on the occult, with particular emphasis on Norse and German (and Vedic) mythology.

In addition, the common notion within much of the Pagan movement at that time was that Norse Paganism was filled with such people. And since the Heathen community was generally more conservative in its values and ideas
anyway,
stressing concepts like family, courage, and warrior virtues, it was easy to become confused. In the end I just gave up, deciding it was a can of worms I just didn't want to open.

But Pagans interested in Norse mythology wouldn't go away. There were serious seekers, flourishing organizations, and good scholarship. There are even places where indigenous Heathenism continues. For example, public Pagan worship was outlawed in Iceland over nine hundred years ago, but the ancient restrictions were repealed in 1874. In 1972, Nordic Paganism was officially recognized as a legitimate and legal religion, and Icelandic Pagan groups exist today.

The problem of being confused with Nazism is one that almost all Heathens have had to confront. As Alice Karlsdóttir, who used to edit
Boreas,
a journal of Northern European Paganism, said to me, “You will always find fringe people attracted to Paganism. Just as Witches have to contend with the occasional news report of weirdos torturing animals and calling themselves Witches, we in Norse Paganism have our own fringe types. There's been a general assumption that the Norse religion is connected with the Nazis because the Nazis used Norse symbols. And Neo-Nazis sometimes get attracted to Odinism, because the trappings are the same.” And Prudence Priest, the editor of
Yggdrasil,
wrote me, “How are we ever to reclaim the swastika—symbol of both Thor's hammer and the wheel of the sun (and dating back thousands of years before Hitler's perversion of it).” Karlsdóttir told me of putting on a Norse ritual at a large Pagan festival and finding that many who came to it were wary that it “would be negative,” an impression that was only dispelled by the ritual itself.