Magic Beyond Religion

“So I must work the magic beyond evil, the magic that endures forever” (Rudolfo Anaya, Bless Me, Ultima p. 94).

In this novel, Antonio is searching for answers between two religious mediums: devout Catholicism and a mysterious pagan-like power. His mother is strictly, piously Christian, and his La Grande, Ultima, is something else entirely, but she obviously has a strong power.

A friend of mine once told me that people created religion because it is comforting. (i.e., once we die, there is something more; there is someone more powerful than we are, who’s actually in charge, and He has a plan. And He’s on our side… etc. comforting notions right?) His theory was that man made up religion for his own peace of mind. I agree on some level, but for different reasons. I think there is divinity in this world, and we organize ourselves with beliefs so we can try to wrap our brains around the things we cannot fully comprehend.

It’s Jaques Lacan’s theory of the real and the symbolic order: we order our world of chaos and emotion with language and symbols. So with regard to religion—we give boundaries, laws, rules, and structure to try and grasp the ineffable reality of truth.

Ultima works outside of these boundaries: she works beyond “good vs. evil” beyond “black and white” beyond “Christian vs. Pagan” - she uses magic beyond any of these.

I took a world religions class (at my Catholic high school) and we visited a Buddhist temple. I distinctly remember not understanding a word the small old man was saying. But I also remember feeling something very powerful in this service. The incense and the atmosphere were entrancing. Even though it was very far from my own Christian beliefs, there was something tangibly…otherworldly. In a good way.

I truly believe that my church was founded by God Himself. But I also have no doubt that there is truth and divinity outside  my church’s doctrine.

Maybe God gave us confines so that we can wrap our brains around a tiny piece of the universe? Maybe we really couldn’t handle every truth without some sort of structure curtailing it slightly. Maybe one day we’ll know it all—and we won’t need “religion.”

Deal with the Devil

“For man always seeks a happiness far beyond that which is meted out to him.  But man's greatness consists in the very fact of wanting to be better than he is” (Alejo Carpentier, “Kingdom of this World” p. 179).

The characters in this novel go through awful difficulties. They live through a revolution where some are tortured, tossed aside, and eventually turned back over to slavery.  This book of incoherency and complete lack of structure, ends with a long paragraph of entirely lucid brilliance.  After experiencing this mad, upside-down, reversed, jumbled world, the author wanted the readers to know that through all the nonsensical aspects of life, you have to keep going, you have to keep progressing.

There is a German legend where a man named Dr. Faust makes a deal with the devil. There are many different versions of the legend (but the one my Classics professor likes is Goethe’s rendition). In the story, Faust exchanges his soul for unlimited knowledge and pleasure of the world. The deal is, as soon as Faust says (something to the effect of) “I could stay in this moment forever” then the devil gets his soul. So the devil gives Faust everything he could possibly want, in hopes that in any given moment, Faust won’t want to change his circumstances.  But Faust never says it. In the ending twist, Faust describes a time in the future where he is constantly changing. And says, “I could stay in that moment forever,” the moment of constant striving, moving, progressing, is where he could stay.

Different versions have different endings, but here, Faust tricks the devil and with a little help from God, Faust is saved from hell because of his desire for an unchanging state of always changing.

In the words of one of my favorite hymns, If You Could Hie to Kolob:

The works of God continue, and worlds and lives abound;

Improvement and progression have one eternal round…

There is no end to wisdom

There is no end to light…

There is no end to truth

There’s something innately necessary about progression. Maybe Faust or Carpentier are trying to say that somehow we’ll be protected from the devil if we keep moving forward?

But stagnancy is not an option.

something about the beat

(Marc Anthony "Valio La Pena") 

When you were listening, could you sit still?!

Neither could I!

There’s something about this music that just makes you want to move your body, right?!

Talking about music is like dancing about architecture (ie very difficult to describe) but there’s obviously something powerful here that should be acknowledged.

Let’s compare this to a minuet, or a waltz:

It might make you sway a little. (Or maybe, as I found myself doing, make you conduct an invisible orchestra.) But it doesn’t instill the same instinctual pulse, the same carnal desire to move to the beat as that salsa number.

I recently attended an open forum where Dr. Paul Kerry led a discussion on how our (U.S.) society of courtship and dancing has disintegrated from the controlled, statuesque technique of European ballroom, into the base, carnal, sexual movement of our modern social dance (mostly through rock and roll).

In the book “The Closing of the American Mind” by Allan Bloom, the author says that Music is the medium of the human soul. He says, “Music is the soul’s primitive and primary speech and it is without articulate speech or reason…. Even when articulate speech is added, it is utterly subordinate to and determined by the music and the passions it expresses” (71)* So how you use this very powerful medium, hits something in the very soul. 

Dr. Kerry’s theory was that the change came in the percussion. He said there’s something about a drumbeat that innately drives the listener to move their hips. This, of course makes the dance more sexual. But I think it’s more than just the drums. It’s the rhythm—the syncopation, the pulse…

So should everything with a beat be banned from a wholesome campus such as BYU? To prevent urges to break the honor code…? Maybe.

Because obviously there’s something so powerful about this force that needs to be acknowledged.  Something human about this release of tension, this thrust into a world with no rules, with just passion, emotion, and desire: maybe it puts people in Lacan’s realm of the REAL. 

Listen to that song again, just try to stand still. I swear it’s impossible.

*I only have a copy of the chapter, not the citations for the book, but if you wanted to find it, the quote is found in the chapter entitled “music”

Eve and Existence

“…he could expect nothing from those pupils who accepted his doctrine passively, but that he could expect something from those who occasionally dared to oppose him. The former group… could not ascend to the level of individuals” (Jorge Luis Borges, “The Circular Ruins” 58-59).

This story shows a man who dreams up the existence of another man. With meticulously careful constructing, he finally makes one worthy enough for existence (even if it’s only in his dreams). But he cannot bring to “life” a being that is passive, or completely obedient. Only in doing something original, different than the generation before us, can we progress, move forward into a stage of being an individual. 

Back to the very beginning of human history: Adam and Eve could not live in a state of ignorance forever. They obeyed every word of doctrine that was given to them. The moment that they disobeyed the authority before them, is where their story—and human history—begins. They needed to eat the fruit that gave them a knowledge of good and evil, of opposition. They needed this perfection to be challenged; without it, they would not have been able to produce life themselves.

Before their “fall,” the world lived in a perfect state, but it was never progressing. Nothing could die, but nothing could become. 

Scriptures tell us that God said, “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so…righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad… wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility” (2 Nephi 2:11).

I don’t think one needs to completely disregard every order or every teaching. You just need to be able to question. To “ascend to the level of an individual,” you need to fight for the real truth, for the best answer, for the knowledge of your own.

I wonder if I fight enough for the right to exist.