Ever since reading Wittgenstein, I’ve been wary of attributing “origins” to facets of religious experience. For whatever reason, academic studies sees fit to understand it and see it as an error, finding a primeval origin for the basic building blocks of any religious system. In other words, if it finds the ultimate origin of a belief system or set of rituals, it can somehow discount it. I’m sure that’s not the intent of books like Frazer’s Golden Bough, which might be one of the most offensive (to religious persons, anyway) books that I’ve yet perused. Still, when you craft a hammer, that doesn’t mean someone might not use it for violence than construction, and that’s often the case here.
Where I have less problem with the search for origins comes in folk tales and legend, where Jessie L. Weston’s From Ritual to Romance sits. In sum, it’s a relatively breezy and light read that seeks to find the origin of the Holy Grail myth. Any Christian scholar, or amateur historian of Christian thought, could tell you that the Holy Grail myth itself contains no real basis in Christian theology. Yes, it’s often claimed to be the cup that Jesus drank during the Last Supper, and also a gift from Jospeh of Arimathea, but when do you ever see the later figure in the Gospels in any real theological capacity? Frankly, this tenuous connection always struck me as strange – clearly, this did not derive purely from Christian sources, or else the magic of Merlin or various mythical creatures would lack sense. Le Morte D’Arthur just seems like a jumble of sources at times, and since nearly retelling of Arthurian myth copies most parts verbatim, the same ideas get passed along.
Weston, then, makes the case that the Holy Grail as a concept originate in ancient fertility rituals from the earliest human civilizations. Of course, that’s simplifying what the books says a little bit. Really, the Holy Grail isn’t a specific cup or a holy object; rather, think of it as a symbol for the search for human spiritual enlightenment and understanding. After all, the whole Grail legend makes Arthur into a king, and that ascendance ended up in most European folklore, regardless of its French/English origins (frankly, I think it’s a little bit silly when people fight over whether England had a true “mythology” or not, but I guess Tolkien created one if there wasn’t). It makes sense, then, that King Arthur ended up with Christian associations, since both countries display deep Christian roots over the course of centuries (and millenia).
To go into any further detail requires a lot of background regarding mythology of antiquity, so I am not going to bore you with that. Suffice to say that Weston finds the origin of the Grail myth in vegetation rituals, and the use of the Grail as a cup to the gods/God literally lets an ancient ritual survive in modified form throughout the ages. I am not sure whether I’m completely convinced of that, since this methodology requires many, many assumptions, but it’s fascinating (and short) all the same. But all that depends on whether you want to accept their methods.
To explain a little further on the “origins” point (which, really, is a separate topic):
Frazer and studies like this tend to “explain” religion from a very particular, Western Enlightenment, logical-rational standpoint. Since they hold these as the standard by which all ideas and practices must be examined, most every aspect of religion looks rather dumb. That’s a natural expected result when you analyze religion from that standpoint: faith looks dumb. It can be categorized and demarcated, and then shuffled away in the mind of the reader, who clearly understands how superior they are to the people of past ages.
To do this, they must assume that religion is a theory – that is, religion sets up a framework from which to view reality. That assumption derives from the traditional view of Christian theology, especially of the Catholic designation, where scholastic theologians explained every possible question you could ever have about a subject (Thomas Aquinas tried really hard guys!). As such, they suppose that, say, if you were to point out that something in Christianity, say, emerged from ancient fertility cults or Jesus is actually = Anubis, Isis, or whatever, then the error would convince the believer otherwise.
That’s a pretty big assumption to make! The problem comes in how religious people treat religion. Do I think that Christianity, personally, consists of my opinion on how the world works? No, I do not. I think, in fact, it is the Truth – i.e., the really real reality – and whether or not I choose to accept it, the way the universe works isn’t contingent on an opinion. A religious person does not have any opinion; they are accepting those beliefs because they believe them to be the case. They do not look for additional facts to support their point unless their religious consists of an intellectual assent to the facts. I don’t think most people convert that way, do you?
The phenomena seems much more complex, as someone who is personally religious and who has studied many religious. This is also why I find apologetics against other religions distateful; many people have their own reasons for believing in other things, and much as I believe them to hold wrong beliefs, I would find it very difficult to convince them otherwise. Respect seems a much better “in” than browbeating some guy about how he’s wrong about things. Most religions, if not all, do not find their origin in empirical evidence, nor did they derive out of a logicial framework; to judge them on that reveals the primacy of your own personal beliefs, not the validity of the religious belief. Or, as Wittgenstein says.
No opinion serves as the foundation for a religious symbol.
And only an opinion can involve an error.
This probably sounds like crazy talk, but trust me, it makes sense. Interpreting religion and synbols scientifically only leads to confusion, false conflations, and trouble. Lots of trouble.
