'Strange Rites' by Tara Isabella Burton

Of the books I read during my Religion Phase, 'The Case for God' by Karen Armstrong was one of my favourites. It was marketed as a rebuttal to the various New Atheist books in vogue at the time; the cover is similar to that for 'The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins, but blue where Dawkins is red. I imagined the books battling each other to the sound of Star Wars' 'Duel of the Fates' whenever I left the room.

However, the book largely sidesteps, or indeed implicitly agrees with, many of the New Atheist arguments. Instead, via a potted history of religion and theology, mainly focused on the Judeo-Christian traditions, the book argues that religiosity is an incredibly important part of human nature, going far beyond the crude literalism attacked by the New Atheists, whose understanding of theology she derides as 'poor' but also 'not radical enough'. For Armstrong, supernatural entities are not the basis of religion: the search for transcendence is.

As much as I liked the book, I also found it frustrating because it was, ironically, not radical enough. A former nun, Armstrong's immersion in the traditional religions had left her oblivious to the various ways the religious behaviours she celebrates are expressed by the nominally irreligious. I wanted her to go further in exploring religiosity as human nature, but at the time I could find no book that delivered on what I wanted. I remember finding a conference on the subject, but being unable to attend due to my limited budget. George Steiner's 'Nostalgia for the Absolute' scratched the itch a bit, but it wasn't enough.

Eight years later, I've found the book I wanted: 'Strange Rites' by Tara Isabella Burton. I first heard about the book and its core argument via the BBC Sounds podcast 'The New Gurus', on which the author was a guest (the podcasts cover art also uses a similar stained-glass art-style to the book cover). 

Burton compares the World Wide Web to the printing press which was the essential catalyst behind the Protestant Reformation in Europe: those who disagreed with the established church could print and propagate their ideas, leading to Christianity fragmenting into many smaller sects. The World Wide Web is like a Super Printing Press, enabling everyone with access the ability to spread their own ideas, or find whatever beliefs suit them. Together with cultural shifts towards individualism, emphasizing the importance of the self and growing distrust of institutions, this has led to us living through a Super Reformation (or, to use Burton's more America-focused term, a new Great Awakening), in which an increasing number of people are 'religiously remixed', combining ancient and modern beliefs and practices in heavily individualised ways.

An early chapter establishes Burton's understanding of what religion is, based on the works of sociologists Emile Durkheim, Peter Berger, and Clifford Geertz. For Burton, religions fulfil four needs: meaning, purpose, community, and ritual.  

The grand narratives of religion provide an explanation as to why things are the way they are, imbuing reality with meaning and putting adherents lives into a wider context. Adherents are also given a role, a purpose, in the grand narrative, and asked to change their behaviour in various ways: personal decision-making, for even the small and mundane, is linked to and influenced by the universe-spanning narrative. Groups of adherents together form a community (physical or online), with all the psychological benefits that belonging to a community brings. Rituals help re-affirm the grand narrative, bind the community together, and mark the passage of time. 

A single religion in a person's life can cover all four needs, as historically was the norm, but modern individualism encourages a more 'pick and mix' approach to cover all the bases. For example, someone could pray to the Christian God on Sundays, practice meditation on Mondays, go to a Yoga class on Wednesdays, profess a belief in Karma, and make changes to their diet based on the perceived 'Vibrational Energy' of the food.  Religions have always influenced each other, sharing ideas and practices, or splintering into new sects, but the process is happening faster than ever before, in our Internet-connected globalised world. (I once knew someone who believed that Jesus went to India and learnt Yoga during the 'Missing Years' not covered by the Bible.)

The bulk of the book then explores various modern religions identified by the author: fandoms, with particular emphasis on the extremes of the Harry Potter fandom ('Snapewives'); Wellness culture, which utilises spiritual and religious practices to sell products and create a loyal customer base; modern Witchcraft; sexual subcultures; social justice activism; techno-utopianism; and the many regressive, atavistic online cultures from across the online 'Manosphere'. The chapters are engaging but somewhat superficial, giving an overview with varying amounts of depth, but paint a convincing picture of these subcultures as neo-religions.

There's an interesting comment in the chapter on social justice activism about how its opponents deride it as a religion, without realising how accurate they may be, and I would have preferred this to lead into a greater examination of the religious nature of political ideologies more generally. In popular parlance that nature is usually only identified by opponents: socialists and communists deride capitalism and neoliberalism as religions which put their faith in the Invisible Hand.

It's a relatively short book, so an easy criticism is that there is plenty more which could have been included, but I prefer a book to leave me broadly satisfied if eager for more, to one that overstays its welcome. I'm extremely happy to have got hold of this, and highly recommend it, especially if combined with the other titles mentioned at the start of this review.

'Inventing Hell' by Jon M. Sweeney

Our popular conception of Hell is very medieval rather than biblical: it owes more to Dante than to the Bible, and Dante's Hell owes more to Greek myth than it does to the Bible. In this slim volume, Sweeney takes us through the development of the Medieval Christian view of Hell, which finds its ultimate expression in Dante.

In the Old Testament, there is very little mention of the afterlife. Sheol, the ancient Israelite underworld, is a dark, gloomy, underground place where people go to 'rest with their ancestors' after they die. It's an inevitable, bland destination, not a place of reward or punishment.

The afterlife changes with the influence first of Zoroastrianism, then with Greek myth and philosophy. The Greek god Hades, a colourful character rules a slightly sadistic underworld with ironic punishments. The Elysium Fields, where the chosen of gods go for an afterlife of happiness.

Platonic philosophy teaches the immortality of the soul in more detail than the Bible. There was already monotheism in the Roman Empire by the time Christianity arrived, but Plato's religion was elitist, reserved for the rich higher-ups. Christianity popularized Platonic monotheism; the Gentile converts to Christianity knew little about the Jewish traditions they were supposed to be succeeding, and so turned to what was more familiar to them: Greek Philosophy. Early theologians thought Socrates et al were precursors of Jesus, sent by God to prepare the gentiles for Christianity. Paul, in his letters, and Socrates, in his dialogues, seem to echo each other - Judah had been conquered by the Greeks, who had attempted to Hellenize their culture. The Romans, who had adopted Greek culture as their own, continued to spread its ideas and myths to the Jews. Paul was a well-educated 1st century Jew.

Early and Medieval Christianity expanded on the Jesus myth with a range of apocryphal gospels and 'expanded universe' stories. On Holy Saturday, after his death but before Resurrection, Jesus descended into Hell to rescue the righteous who lived and died before him (they would have been automatically ineligible for salvation) - confronting, overpowering, and therefore enraging Satan in the process, leaving him more resolved to make the sinners suffer, taking his anger out on them. Before Dante, there were a bunch of other 'tours of the afterlife' narratives which are almost short prototypes for the Divine Comedy.

Scholastic theologians, Thomas Aquinas chief among them, spent a long time thinking about angels and demons. Aquinas was a massive influence on Dante; Aristotle was a massive influence on Aquinas. More Greek philosophy, merged with Christianity over a millennium after the crucifixion, re-introduced to Europe by way of Arabic translations of the original Greek re-translated into Latin. Christianity becomes not just Platonic monotheism repackaged, but Aristotelian theology re-interpreted with biblical images.

The Prophet Muhammad turns up in Dante's Inferno. Arabic translations had brought Aristotle back to Europe. By Dante's time, there were at least two (known) Latin translations of the Qur'an. It is not, therefore, impossible that Dante was inspired by the Qur'an's many, many, many descriptions of a fiery tortuous afterlife for sinners.

Inventing Hell's overview of these Hellish sources of inspiration is enjoyable, fast-paced, and actually quite fun. Sweeney's writing style is chatty and easy-reading, and the jokes are not cringeworthy. The book is, however, obviously very simplified for a popular audience, and felt a little too short. It is not a work of scholarship, but as an introduction or a refresher, it is really very good. I would have been quite happy if it was a bit longer, with more details on the sources, the philosophy, the myths, the 'expanded universe' stories, etc. 

The final chapter, in which Sweeney explains why he doesn't like Dante and hopes Hell will become less important to the Christianity of the future, felt like a rushed conclusion. The author is too eager to distance the Bible and Christianity from Hell, minimizing the fact that, despite the manifold extra-biblical influences on the idea of Hell, a punishing afterlife is still part of the New Testament. If you were able to remove the legacy of Dante and the Medieval Hell from Christianity, the fires of torment are still there. Sweeney comes across as in denial about the Bible's contents, wanting to push the aspects of Christianity he dislikes onto Dante.

"Ultimately, I choose not Dante's vengeful, predatory God who is anxious to tally faults, to reward and to punish. Instead I choose the God who creates and sustains us, who is incarnate and wants to be among us, and the God who inspires and comforts us. That God is the real one, the one I have come to know and understand, and that God has nothing to do with the medieval Hell."

This sounds nice, but ignores the vengeful, predatory God of the Old Testament (see Leviticus chapter 26 for one example of many), who obviously doesn't originate with Dante. It ignores Jesus' God, who will throw the goats into the fire, will burn the chaff of humanity in a big bonfire. It ignores the God of the epistles, who will do similar. It ignores the Jesus of Revelation, who will slaughter his way across the Earth, crushing people in 'the great winepress of the wrath of God', etc. Yes, Dante's sadistic afterlife isn't very nice, and the God who oversaw it wouldn't be very nice, but if you could strip Greek myth and philosophy from Medieval Christianity, leaving only the biblical influences, you'd still have a vengeful and capricious God. Sweeney comes across as someone who wants to be Christian because they've always been one, but, now they've matured, they don't want to be associated with all the crueler, sinister aspects of the Christian and Biblical traditions, so shift the blame for that onto something - in this case, Dante and his Greek influences - which they feel they can reject while leaving their faith broadly intact. It's an amusing, but unconvincing, display of mental gymnastics.

In conclusion: this book is good for its quick summary of the evolution of Hell, but unconvincing in the author's goal of distancing Hell from the Bible and Christianity.

Revelation 13: The Beasts

Straight after the vision of the Woman and the Dragon (see previous post), John is stood on the coast, watching a beast with 7 heads and 10 horns rise out of the sea. It is like a leopard with the feet of a bear and the mouth of a lion. The dragon (Satan) gives the beast power and authority over the earth.

One of the beast's 7 heads is mortally wounded, but mysteriously heals.

The beast uses its earthy power to spew blasphemies against God and make war on his servants.

John sees a second beast rise from the earth: it is like a horned lamb which speaks like a dragon, and uses the power of the first beast to make the people of earth worship the first beast and blaspheme God. The second beast performs miracles, which convince the people to worship the first beast.

'And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: and that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.'

What are we to make of all this?

The Old Testament prophet Daniel has a dream of four beasts rising out of the sea; he is told these beasts represent four kingdoms. A beast like a lion represents the Babylonian Empire. A beast like a bear represents the Persian Empire. A beast like a leopard represents the Greek Empire. The fourth beast, with ten horns, represents the Roman Republic.

Daniel's dream sequence ends with the 'one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven... And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion.' The Messiah descending from Heaven to conquer the world.

The Babylonian Empire (lion) was conquered by the Persians (bear). The Persians were conquered by the Greeks (leopard). And the Greeks were conquered by the Romans (ten horns). The Roman Republic became an empire.

John's Beast from the Sea is a composite of Daniel's four beasts: leopard, bear, lion, ten horns. It represents the new and expanded Roman Empire.

The seven heads represent the emperors who had ruled since the transition from republic to empire: Augustus onwards. Although there is considerable disagreement among scholars as to exactly which emperors they are supposed to represent.

There are some clues that one of emperors is Nero. One of the beast's heads recovers from a mortal wound: there was a popular rumor that Nero had been killed by his own sword. It was a surprise when it turned out false. There is also the numerological evidence: the numbers of the letters in the Hebrew spelling of Nero Caesar add up to 666.

Nero is the emperor most famous for persecuting Christians - he burnt Christians alive as torches to illuminate his garden.

So, the first beast, the Beast of the Sea, is the Roman Empire.

The second beast, the horned lamb performing miracles, is the Roman pagan cult, which treated the emperor as a god. The mark of the beast, without which one cannot buy or sell, could be Roman currency, which was printed with the heads of the emperors. Elaine Pagels, whose book is my main source for the historical context for Revelation, speculates that it could represent some bureaucratic stamps or marks necessary to buy or sell.

I have to go to work now, so am ending this post here!

Revelation 12: The Woman and the Dragon

After seeing God's Heavenly Temple opened for business, John's next vision is a sequence of achronological historical flashbacks, rather than a continuation of the ongoing End of Days vision.

John sees sees a pregnant woman in Heaven, sent down to earth, wearing a crown of 12 stars. In various Jewish prophetic works, the nation of Israel is imagined as a woman, God's bride (or, when Israel has been worshipping other gods, a adulterous whore). Her crown of 12 stars represents the twelve tribes of Israel; she is pregnant with the messiah. This is an allusion to a passage in the Book of Isaiah, Israel struggling to give birth to the messiah: 'Like as a woman with child, that draweth near the time of her delivery, is in pain, and crieth out in her pangs; so have we been in thy sight, O Lord.'

Later Christians interpreted the woman as Mary, mother of Jesus, immaculately conceived in Heaven. Later still, some interpreted it as the mother of the future Second Coming of Jesus.

John sees a great red dragon in Heaven, whose tail drags a third of the stars to earth. The great red dragon is Satan; a third of Heaven's angels fell with him.

The dragon stands before the woman, waiting to eat the newborn child, 'who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron'. The child - Jesus - escapes and ascends to God.

'And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.'

Ideas about fallen angels had been developing for a few centuries before Revelation was written; the idea had become popular as a way to absolve God of blame for evil in the world. In the Book of Enoch, a group of angels falls from Heaven because they lust after human women. In the Book of Jubilees, 9 out of 10 angels fall with the Evil One, and vow to obstruct God's will for the rest of time. The the Life of Adam and Eve, Satan, the brightest angel, is cast out of Heaven for refusing to bow down to Adam. Thus to Jews familiar with these then-popular books, fallen angels were associated with lust, pride, and a stubborn will to stop God's good works.

Revelation adds more references to the mix. In many ancient Mesopotamian creation myths, the greatest god in the pantheon defeats the chaos dragon before he can fashion the universe, often from the serpent's corpse. Order from Chaos. The gods did not fashion the universe out of nothing: in the beginning, there was chaos, normally imagined as a vast ocean, ruled by the primordial chaos dragon, who went by many names: Tiamat, Leviathan, Rahab, etc. In ancient Mesopotamia (and many other parts of the world), the Cosmos, created and managed by the gods, was seen as constantly under threat from the forces of Chaos, led by the great dragon of the waters.

There are a few scattered remnants of the ye olde Israelite version of this myth scattered through the Bible. Psalms celebrate God's defeat of the serpent Leviathan, or Rahab. Ezekiel likens the king of Egypt to the old dragon, who God is totes gonna destroy.

In Isaiah's allusion to the ye olde myth, he suggests that God did not properly destroy the chaos dragon in the beginning, but will do so... 'on that day'.

The creation story that now opens the Bible, written during the Babylonian exile, is intended to subvert ye olde combat myth. Reading it closely, we see that God does not create the universe from nothing, as later Jews and Christians tended to assume.

'And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.'

The primordial chaos waters are there in the beginning, but there is no combat. God merely has to speak the light and the earth and the living creatures into existence. So this myth one-ups the combat-based creation myths that preceded and competed with it: God is so powerful, he doesn't even need to fight a chaos serpent before he can get to the business of creating.

And, if there are any great sea dragons that you might think of as primordial chaos serpents, God created them: Genesis specifically mentions that 'God created the great sea-monsters'. None of them existed before God made it so; none of them was an obstacle to his creative power.

The Book of Job alludes to this re-imagined Leviathan, who has gone from primordial chaos serpent to one of God's playthings: in his speech to Job, God implies he could quite easily catch Leviathan with a hook, play with him, and cook him up as a banquet.

The Book of Revelation fuses the fallen angel myths with the chaos dragon combat myth, and ties it to the history of Israel.

After Satan, the dragon, the serpent, is cast out, a voice in Heaven cries out, "Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! For the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time."

The dragon spends his earthly time persecuting the aforementioned woman, Israel, who flees into the wilderness. Being 'in the wilderness' is a recurring motif in Jewish texts: Moses led the Israelites for 40 years in the wilderness, under God's protection. After the Babylonian exile, the Jews were once again 'in the wilderness' - they were no longer in their homeland. A few years before Revelation was written, Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, and many Jews were exiled from the Holy Land - once again, they were 'in the wilderness'.

The serpent spews water from his mouth - chaos water from the chaos serpent - hoping to kill her with a flood, but she is saved by the Earth. The dragon is angry, and declares war on the woman's offspring: those who keep God's commands and hold fast their testimony about Jesus.

(To be continued...)

Revelation 1-5: Ascending to Heaven

Over the past few days I've been re-reading the Book of Revelation. When I read through the Bible a few years ago, I sped through Revelation, not taking it in very well. It's a trippy, angry, difficult book - not one of my biblical favourites. But it has now become extra-relevant to the fiction-in-progress, so here I am, re-reading and organising my thoughts on it.

The book is a letter, a history, and a prophecy of the future; three books in one. Written and circulated around 100CE, Revelation contains references to events and politics of the time, obscured by symbolic imagery and numerology. At this time, Judaism and Christianity were not so thoroughly split: this book, like the Gospel of Matthew, belongs to the Jewish Christian tradition which emphasizes the importance of the tribes of Israel, and looks down on Gentile converts to Pauline Christianity. It is steeped in Jewish lore, chock full of references to other Jewish prophetic works. Hidden meanings and obscure references make it difficult for the modern reader.

In the first chapter, John describes his meeting with Jesus on the isle of Patmos:

"one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest. The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and this face was like the sun shining in full strength."

Jesus dictates instructions to the 7 churches of Asia Minor, and commands John to write about his coming visionary experiences in a book. The epistolary prologue doesn't interest me very much. In the section addressed to the church of Pergamon, John's Jesus commends the congregation for holding on to their faith while living in the shadow of 'Satan's Throne': historians believe this refers to the Great Temple of Zeus, the Pergamon Altar, which was once the pride of the city. Early Christians believed the pagan gods were demons tricking humanity away from the true God.

Once John's Jesus is done telling off or congratulating the 7 churches, our narrator turns around and sees a door leading to Heaven. He ascends and sees the throne of God, which is similar in appearance to when it was seen by the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel:

'A throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne. And he who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian, and around the throne was a rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald... From the throne came flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder, and... before the throne there was as it were a sea of glass, like crystal. And around the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind: the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like an eagle in flight. And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say,

“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty."'

In front of the main God Throne there are 24 smaller thrones, where 'elders' sit, wearing white robes and gold crowns.

At God's right hand there is a scroll, sealed with seven seals, and none could be found to open this scroll containing the future, and our narrator was sad.

“Weep no more", says one of the elders, "the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”

Oh great, thinks our narrator, the conquering Jewish Messiah has come. Those familiar with Jewish lore of the time would have understood the Lion of Judah to be a reference to the expected Messiah, a fierce warrior who would restore Israel to glory.

John looks up, and sees a slain Lamb take the book, causing the divine assembly to burst into song: "for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation," etc.

In the aftermath of Jesus' crucifixion, ideas about the Jewish messiah had to change. The conquering Lion messiah had not come; instead there had been Jesus, a Lamb slain on Passover, a sacrifice whose blood washed away sins and redeemed humanity. John's vision here illustrates these changing ideas, and confirms Jesus the Lamb as identical to the expected Lion. But his conquest is not over the living enemies of Israel, but over Death and Sin. The Messiah has already come.

The Lamb starts opening the seals...

(To be continued...)

Summary-Review: 'Ilium' by Dan Simmons

This book is such a mess. Here is how I imagined Simmons talking to himself when coming up with the ideas for it:

"I want to write another science fiction story. Something truly ground-breaking; clever science fiction which shows the world how clever and knowledgeable about literature I am. Hmm... what should I write? Hmm... something that shows I know Great Literature...

I could write Homer's Iliad... in space! No; the Iliad... on Mars! A far-future terraformed Mars, with the Greek gods as super technologically advanced post-humans living on Olympus Mons, who for some reason are recreating the events of the Iliad.

Yes, that's fucking great.

The protagonist could be a 20th century Iliad scholar whose consciousness has been artificially preserved, and whose task is to monitor the Iliad events on Mars and compare them to Homer's account, for some reason. This way the reader will know that when I'm deviating from Homer's version, I'm fully aware of it and doing it deliberately. The scholar protagonist can also quote the Iliad while watching the events and talk about the merits of different translations and interpretations; fuck, that'll show 'em how clever I am!

SF fans reading it may be reminded of Roger Zelazny's 'Lord of Light', in which super technologically advanced post-humans recreate Hindu mythology on a colony planet in order to keep the masses under strict control. But I'll go one further than Zelazny and have my post-humans recreating Greek mythology for no obvious or believable reason except FOR TEH LOLS, and cos I'm clever.

That would certainly show people that I know my classical literature - but would they know I love more modern stuff too?

Hmmm... I've done "Canterbury Tales in Space" and "John Keats in Space", and soon "Iliad on Mars"... Hmmm... What else to do?

Nabokov... in space? No; 'Lolita'... on the Moon? No.

'Ada, or Ardor'... on a far-future earth? YES: on a far-future Earth reminiscent of Michael Moorcock's 'The Dancers At The End of Time' - because Moorcock's story also features incest. Fucking yes - I am on to a winner with this one!

I will retell Nabokov's story of incestuous lovers struggling to reconcile their feelings for each other with the social taboo... on a far future earth in which that social taboo no longer exists!

So while Nabokov's story is an intense and uncomfortable psychological study, and Moorcock used incest - once - for shock value, to highlight the decadence of End of Time society, I will do none of that. My incestuous character shall not be conflicted or feel guilty about lusting over his cousin; he must comment in every chapter on how sexy his cousin's tits are, to the point where the reader finds him tedious and wishes for him to have any psychological depth whatsoever, yearns for him to have any motivation beyond seducing his cousin. I shall make the reader bored of his incestuous lustings, to show that incest is a normal, boring part of this far-future society, or at least that's what my fans might say, I dunno. I'm so clever.

That would show I know and appreciate 20th century literature, but what about all the good stuff between Homer and Nabokov?

Readers must know I am well-read in this too.

I've got it.

There will be super intelligent, biomechanical constructs who live on the Moons of Jupiter.

One of them will be an amateur Shakespeare scholar; another shall be an amateur Proust scholar. These constructs can chat to each other about how great Shakespeare and Proust are, and refer to the theories of various 20th century literary critics. They can quote extensively, perhaps even whole pages of Proust to show the reader I really know my shit.

Later on I can probably work in a retelling of Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' or something, to really hammer it home. I'll figure something out.

All that will show people how well-read and clever I am.

I'm a fucking genius."

This book is so bad in so many ways. I was tempted to give up on it multiple times, but I was interested enough in the story to keep going. Had I found a decent online summary, I would probably have happily given up; alas, I found none and persevered. My review will therefore summarize the whole story, perhaps saving some people from the effort of reading its 500+ pages. Spoilers ahead.

So, 'The Iliad on Mars'. Thomas Hockenberry is a scholic, a 20th century scholar whose job is to monitor the recreated Iliad events and report to the gods on how accurately they match Homer's descriptions. Perhaps there is an explanation in the sequel as to why this job is a thing. Hock is an extremely bland character, an observer not a doer. For most of his story he feels like an empty space for the reader to insert himself: he watches the story, or has it imposed on him, and doesn't start to drive it until one pivotal scene, which I shall describe later. When he starts to have character, he becomes quite unpleasant: he remembers his old 20th/21st century life, and moans about the 'Political Correctness Brigade' having so much sway back then. I'm fine with unpleasant protagonists, but he's unpleasant in an extremely boring way.

While observing, the scholics use 'Morphing Bracelets' to disguise themselves as a Greek or Trojan character of their choosing. There is a bullshit quantum science explanation as to how this works.

Hock's story is narrated in first person. He spends his first few chapters simply watching events, introducing the Greek and Trojan characters to the reader, and reflecting on his life as a scholic.

Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, chooses Hockenberry for a special task: to kill Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, for some reason. Perhaps the reasons (a) why she chose Hockenberry in particular, and (b) why she wants Athena dead, are given in the sequel. We are given nothing convincing in this book; we accept and move on. To aid him, the goddess gives him three useful magic-science items: a levitation harness, a Quantum Teleportation (QT) Medallion, and the Hades Helmet. 

The gods use Quantum Teleportation to travel around Earth-Mars, to instantaneously go from Olympus Mons to Troy - now Hockenberry has this power, and, because this medallion is special, his "QT trail" can only be tracked by Aphrodite. There is a bullshit quantum science explanation as to how this works.

The Hades Helmet makes the wearer invisible to everyone except Aphrodite (we can assume she stole it off Hades and changed the settings). The fact that the gods have invisibility technology, and the means to select who it doesn't work with, makes me wonder why the gods didn't just make the scholics invisible to humans but not gods. The scholics are supposed to observe and report, not interfere, yet we are told that because of the bullshit quantum science behind morphing, this can and does interfere with events - so why not just make them invisible? I suppose the morphing is important for plot reasons.

Aphrodite is seriously wounded in combat by the Trojan warrior Diomedes. She is out of action, cooped up in a healing tank in the Infirmary of the Gods.

The gods can't track or see him; Hockenberry is free to do as he pleases.

And what shall his first act of freedom and self-determination be?

He teleports to Helen of Troy's apartment, morphs into Paris, and has sex with her.

Yep, he rapes her.

Post-rape, Helen confronts Hockenberry with a dagger, asking who he really is. "A woman may forget the color of her lover's eyes, the tone of his voice, even the details of his smile or form, but she cannot forget how her husband fucks." Hock reveals his true form, feels pathetic, and...

"Your penis is larger [than Paris']."

And after rebuking him for raping her via deception, Helen... invites him to bed again for more sex.

Let's just go through that scene again. Hock, a gawky scholar character, is now invisible and untraceable to divine authority, free to do as he pleases. So he disguises himself as the husband of the Most Beautiful Woman in the World and tricks her into having sex with him. While she rebukes him for raping her, Helen compliments Hock's big cock and says he was 'earnest' and 'sincere' during sex - she then invites him to bed for more sex. This is so crass and awful it sounds like a rape-fantasy porn scene. 

Hock doesn't feel very guilty about deceiving Helen. He rapes her and feels alright about it afterwards. I know rape occurs a lot in Greek mythology, and it's probably been included here to echo the Greek gods raping mortals so often, but it's handled so badly. It feels more like a creepy adolescent fantasy than a wry comment on the prevalence of rape in classical myths.

And Helen becomes his quasi love interest for the remainder of the book.

After this act of male empowerment, after his rape victim decides she does want to have sex with him anyway, Hock feels like he should do other things with his power to evade the gods. He is upset by the thought of Helen's fate in the Iliad, so decides to change events to save her and all of the people who will suffer because of the fall of Troy.

He decides to unite the Greek and the Trojans against a common enemy: the Gods of Olympos.

We will return to Hockenberry & Co later, but now we must turn our attention to "Ada in the Future".

Ugh.

Daeman is a womanizing knobhead, off to a party where his objective for the evening is to seduce his cousin Ada. That's his motivation for the whole story. After a few chapters it seems even Simmons got bored of one-note incest Daeman and relegated him to a background character role. It is quickly established that incest is not a taboo on this future Earth - Daeman even comments at one point along the lines of "it's weird to think incest used to be taboo" - so there is nothing interesting about Daeman, no psychological conflict or guilt or shame. As far as he is concerned, he is just lusting after an attractive female - her being his cousin makes literally no difference to him. It feels like the whole point of 'Ada in the Future' thing is ruined within a few chapters, and Simmons moves on and almost forgets about it - Daeman's incestuous ambitions are barely mentioned for the remainder of the book.

At the party, he fails to seduce Ada, but meets Harman and Hannah. Harman is an older man approaching the maximum lifespan allowed: he wants to fly a spaceship to the space stations in orbit where the post-humans who govern the Earth supposedly live, so he can beg for a longer lifespan. Hannah is so bland I could have forgotten she was in this book.

The 4 of them - Harman, Hannah, Daeman, and Ada - go on a little trip to try to find a spaceship, They meet Savi, the Wandering Jew, a mysterious old woman who seems to know a lot about what's going on, and Odysseus, the Greek hero. The group of 6 travel around Future Earth in Savi's 'sonie' - an aerial vehicle - to look at things and have boring conversations.

The general population of Future Earth have no culture or literature or education, and are completely ignorant of how the technology they use works. Harman is the only person in the society who can read, and he can only read slowly, mouthing the words as he goes.

So, as they're travelling around and having conversations, the four ignorant people often ask Savi or Odysseus about their world and the technology in it. They invariably reply in a vague way which leaves the four just as confused and ignorant as before, but allows the reader - who can understand big words and has been reading the novel's other two storylines - to get a better idea of the world and what's going on. When one of the ignorants respond with "I don't understand" - a phrase repeated so often it seems to have become a joke even to Simmons by the end - the knowledgeable one replies with some variant of "Ah, but you will soon!" or "Yeah I know but it's fun talking in this vague way lol". They are so blatantly talking for the reader's, not their companions', benefit. The conversations are painfully artificial.

What's more, when an ignorant one asks about something which the reader will already know about - how a compass works, for example - the knowledgeable one will not bother explaining, simply saying "It doesn't matter" or "By magic", because the reader needs no explanation. So Savi will give a long bullshit quantum science explanation for some technology they encounter, which goes completely over the heads of her companions but may benefit the reader, but refuses to explain simpler things which may actually be understood by her companions. (Given how thoroughly bullshit the quantum science explanations are, "By magic!" would also be a more honest and accurate answer.) It left me wondering why any of them trust her when, as far they're concerned, she is talking complete nonsense. Harman wants a spaceship and thinks she's the means to find one. Ada fancies Harman. Hannah...? And Daeman... fancies Ada? You could almost forget Daeman was still with them, so little he contributes to the group's adventures and conversations.

After plenty of conversations and the occasional action set-piece, the group splits. Ada, Hannah, and Odysseus return to Ada's home - Odysseus begins preaching and teaching, becoming a sort of cult figure. Harman, Savi, and Daeman fly to the 'Mediterranean Basin' (the inland sea has been drained), to find a way to get to the orbital space stations. Daeman's reasons for joining Harman and Savi are very weak: he is afraid of the Allosaurs living in the forests by Ada's home, and doesn't want to teleport from Ada's home to his own because now he understands the technology a little more: Savi had explained it involves destroying his old self and creating a copy elsewhere - Daeman finds this disconcerting. He decides to join the crazy quest rather than ask to be dropped off at his own home on the way to the Mediterranean (Ada lives in North America, Daeman in Paris).

Now we must leave the Earthlings and turn to our third storyline.

Mahnmut and Orphu are moravecs, autonomous biomechanical beings living on the moons of Jupiter (there are also moravecs living on asteroids). They are recruited by the Five Moons Consortium, along with a bunch of other moravecs, to go on a mission to terraformed Mars. Their objective: place and activate a mysterious Device on Olympus Mons.

Mahnmut is roughly humanoid in shape and is an amateur Shakespeare scholar. Orphu is like a giant crab, and is very enthusiastic about the works of Marcel Proust. The two of them converse about their literary heroes, discussing 20th century critics, quoting huge passages, and generally having a great time nerding out together. (I wasn't joking earlier when I said whole pages of Proust are quoted.)

The other moravecs are given no personality - which is lucky for the reader because they may otherwise have cared when they all died when the ship gets shot down as it approaches Mars. M&O crash into the Tethys Sea on Mars, and spend several chapters trying to make it to shore while also chatting about human literature. Although Simmons tries to amp up the tension here, the whole 'Trying To Get To Shore' section is overlong and dull. Since Simmons clearly enjoys writing their smartypants Shakespeare-Proust conversations, and has invested in the characters by giving them personality - they are perhaps the best characters in the novel - there is no real sense of danger in their story. I didn't believe Simmons would be willing to kill either of them off, especially not so early in the story, so this section just drags on and on. 'WILL THEY MAKE IT TO SHORE?' the narrative asks, again and again. Of course they will, and they do.

Once ashore, they encounter a photosynthetic species, the Little Green Men, who conveniently have a fleet of ships and can spare one for the moravecs' journey to Olympos. A storm hits while they sail, and the two moravecs quote The Tempest at each other, and Simmons explains some of the unfamiliar terms for the reader's benefit.

Oh, the Little Green Men are servants of Prospero, the wizard from The Tempest.

During this story we are treated to the Most Thoroughly Bullshit quantum science conversation in the whole book, and possibly in all literature. Ey m8, says Orphu (I'm paraphrasing heavily), you know cos consciousness is a quantum wavelength, what if the literary greats of the past, with the force of their quantum consciousness imagination, created new quantum universes? What if quantum technology is the reason the Greek Gods, and Shakespeare's characters, are coming in to the world? The barriers between this world and quantum universes are weakening and allowing the fictional to become the real. I reckon that is totes what's hapnin.

Not only is this thoroughly bullshit, it makes the book feel so much cheaper, like cheesy crossover fanfic or The Pagemaster for adults.

Eventually, M&O board a fancy hot air balloon and start flying to Olympos. They are captured by the gods and taken to Zeus for questioning.

This all covers the first 300 pages; now the 3 stories start to converge and get more exciting. Or rather, it now feels like the stories are actually beginning. The chapters covering Hock's efforts to unite the Trojans and Greeks are done relatively well. Conveniently for M&O, Hock turns up at Olympos just as Mahnmut is being questioned, so helps them escape. Mahnmut borrows the Invisibility Helmet in order to plant the Device secretly, then joins Hock in Troy. The gods learn of the Greek-Trojan alliance and decide to bomb Troy to show off their power; Hock compares the carnage during the bombardment to news footage he remembers of 9/11 and the Iraq War - these paragraphs felt very jarring, like they were thrown in for topicality.

Once the extremely slow build-up is over, Ilium feels like a trashy yet very entertaining action movie. During the chaos, with explosions and screaming civilians around them, Helen finds Hock and kisses him goodbye and good luck before he teleports away, in a scene that would definitely be accompanied by suddenly emotional music in a movie adaptation, and would perhaps be in slow motion.

(I forgot to mention earlier, there is a scene where Hock gets captured and interrogated by a group of women. One of them holds a knife to his testicles to get him to talk. Hock describes this knife as a 'feminist blade'.)

The Device activates. Imagination supplies the soundtrack 'I am the Doctor' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7VmOZ4Ppj8

In Troy, portals open up in the sky and on the ground, through which Olympos is visible. The converse occurs around Olympos. We learn that Troy was not on Mars after all - it is a version of Earth, connected to Mars with quantum tunneling or something. (No doubt the sequel will confirm Troy's Earth is in the quantum reality created by Homer.)

Strange tripods emerge from some of the portals.

"I think I know who these guys are," says Orphu.

At this point I'm ready to throw the book across the room if the tripods are Martians from a quantum reality created by H.G. Wells. Thankfully they are not: it is an army of moravecs, here to lay siege to Olympos. They join with the Greek-Trojan alliance, and march through the portals towards the home of the gods. The Little Green Men also show up and join the alliance. Zeus erects a huge force field to protect Olympos.

The stage is set for the sequel, the siege of Olympos.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, Daeman & Co visit Jerusalem, where the sonie is captured by strange robotic things called Voynix. The group escape in a vehicle called a crawler. In the Mediterranean, they find strange chairs which enable them to travel up to a space station, and then break.

The reader is treated to an extended horror sequence, which is done rather well but is overlong. The group explore the space station, floating zero G past bodies and severed limbs and ruined technology.

They encounter Caliban, a strange lizard monster who speaks in a vaguely Shakespearean way. Savi is killed but we don't care because she was little more than a mouthpiece for Simmons to explain things to the reader. Daeman and Harman wander round the space station, eating little, growing their facial hair, and wondering if they'll be killed by Caliban or find some way to escape.

The spacestation is Prospero's island - we are now at The Tempest in Space.

Prospero, an AI hologram, explains that Ariel, a mysterious entity on Earth, saved Savi's Sonie from the Voynix and programmed it to rescue them from the space station. It is parked outside. Turns out the sonie was a spaceship after all and if Savi had been aware of this they could have skipped a lot of the wandering around. The characters accept this revelation calmly, not freaking out at all at the pointlessness of their earlier travels. It feels a very lazy way to get them to escape. Prospero even jokes that it is "another deux ex machina."

They plan to destroy the space station - but wait, what about all the people in the infirmary!? For when a human on Earth gets ill or injured, they are sent up here for recovery!

So rather than a fast escape sequence we get a long admin sequence in which Daeman and Harman travel to the infirmary, fiddle around with the functioning technology to send the recovering people back to Earth. The power cuts out - Caliban is out to get them - and there's one person still in the healing tanks: Hannah. The bland character from earlier returns as the bland damsel in distress. This sequence becomes even longer.

So yeah, eventually they all escape and return to Earth. Odysseus vaguely and ominously speaks about the need for everyone to prepare for the Ultimate War spreading to this Earth. Obviously none of the characters have a clue what he's on about, but the reader does.

In the final chapter, Hock visits a character in hiding who he knew earlier in the story and updates him on the Troy-Olympos situation, about the Greek-Trojan alliance, about the Moravecs and the Little Green Men, about the War Against The Gods.

"Are you shitting me?" the character asks.
"I shit thee not," Hock replies.

END OF BOOK

The mostly action-packed final 200 pages of this book almost, almost made me want to read the sequel. However, there are plenty of negative reviews of Olympos from people who thought Ilium was a masterpiece, so I won't be bothering.

There is a decent, entertaining novel hidden within Ilium, which could be revealed by a determined editor. In an interview I heard Dan Simmons say that when you're starting off as an author you can't publish big tomes; they can only come once you're established. Ilium has led me to believe that many editors must give up once an author is established enough to sell by name alone; the quality of the product doesn't matter so much once author's brand is well known.

Much of the first 300 pages could be removed. The long multi-chapter travel sequences (Mahnmut and Orphu travelling to shore, Daeman & Co wandering round the Earth) could be more effectively told in one or two chapters. Hock doesn't need to spend so much time watching the Iliad events before gaining agency. The incest aspect could be entirely removed; Daeman could be removed, leaving Harman as a more interesting protagonist. Unnecessary Nabokov references are unnecessary.

I like literary allusions and references, but I don't like them smashed into my face while I read. Simmons seems to throw in as many quotes and references as he can to pad it out. I wonder whether he does this when he isn't confident in his own story, or when he's overconfident and is feeling super clever. This was one of the problems I had with The Fall of Hyperion, and it is far worse in Ilium. The Shakespeare-Proust conversations could be cut heavily, as could Hock's Iliad scholarship talk.

Ilium is blatantly soft science fiction, science fantasy. The technology is magic. I like soft science fiction; I am quite happy for a story to use 'By science!' instead of 'By magic!', as long as it accepts that that is what it is doing. Ilium does not do this; with the bullshit quantum explanations, Simmons is trying to convince you it is serious, hard science fiction. With the aggressive literary references and allusions, Simmons is trying to convince you Ilium is serious, Great Literature.

It all has an air of desperation about it. Ilium obviously invites comparison to Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light, mentioned earlier. Zelazny does not try to explain how his gods' technology works; he confidently states what the technology does, trusts the reader to accept it, and gets on with the story. Zelazny is also not aggressive with his allusions; the focus is on his own story and characters. Read Lord of Light; give Ilium a miss. There are better ways to spend your time and money.

I loved Hyperion, and persevered through its disappointing sequel. After reading Ilium, I probably won't touch another Dan Simmons novel. Maybe, just maybe, I'll read Song of Kali, his shortish debut novel sometime, from back when his editor probably cared more about the quality. Maybe.

'The Book of Black Magic' by A.E. Waite

As research for a piece of fiction, I've been reading about European magic. The extant manuscripts of the various Grimoires of Black Magic in the British Museum date from the 15th century onwards, though may have been written earlier. Black magic is strange, or to paraphrase the author of the book I've read, it is a mixture of the grotesque and the imbecilic.

The Grimoires teach that through the glory and power of God, one can summon and control infernal spirits. In popular culture we think of black magic as a godless deal with demons - it is strange to think those who practiced it believed themselves holy. There's a Jewish legend about King Solomon: God gave him the power to control demons, and he used demons to build his temple and help him out whenever he wanted. There are also Christian and Islamic versions of this legend - in the Islamic version, Solomon also has a magic carpet. Many of the Grimoires claim to be based on the magical writings of King Solomon, who shared the secrets of demon-control.

In Jewish mythology, demons are not fallen angels - they are creatures God abandoned bodiless and unfinished at sunset on the 6th day, to mark the importance of ceasing work to rest on the Sabbath. They are not inherently evil, though are jealous and spiteful of humanity's completeness. Thus demons are another of God's creatures on Earth, over which man is supposed to be the ruler, and so in Jewish magic systems the wizard sorcerer chap is hoping for God's assistance in placating one of his subordinate creatures - analogous to praying that your horse will carry you to your destination without rearing up and maiming you.

(I have a separate book on Jewish magic which I have not read yet.)

The Solomon-inspired magic was adapted to a Christian setting and audience. The wizard sorcerer chap calls on the power of God to help him summon and enslave a fallen angel to do his bidding. Jesus commands demons in the gospels (the Pharisees think he is in league with Satan because the demons obey him so quickly), and so a devout Christian should also be able to to command demons with Jesus' support. As the Pharisees thought Jesus was bad for his command over the demons, the Church authorities think the sorcerers are evil for their command over the demons. So the reasoning goes.

(While most Grimoires claim to originate with King Solomon, a few others claim to be the work of a Pope, who was holy enough to have been taught the magical arts by an angel of light.)

Most of the rituals concern personal and material gain: summoning a demon so it can lead you to treasure, or make a woman love you, or harm an enemy. Very cliche and selfish objectives. Not very holy. I was trying to imagine the sort of person who - hundreds of years ago - would have turned to such rituals. Poor, lonely, awkward, and yet with an ego big enough to think they were holy and great enough to get God's assistance in enslaving a fallen angel. I pictured a modern-day Internet Troll living in the pre-modern world.

In preparation for a ritual, the sorcerer is supposed to fast, refrain from social contact with other humans, and sleep as little as possible for so many days, presumably so by the time they carried out the ritual their mental state was sufficiently ruined hallucinations came very easily. Specific prayers must be repeated throughout the fasting days, and at the sorcerer must bathe in holy water and bless every item to be used in the ritual - his robes (white linen, embroidered with certain symbols depending on which ritual is being performed), the incense, the parchment or vellum, the candles, the magic circle, etc.

There is only one extant ritual which calls for a blood sacrifice for the sake of blood sacrifice. I'll spare you the details, but it involves killing both a black hen and a young lamb. A few others feature human body parts in their reagents list -
the author notes that human bodies would have been easyish to find back then, when mortality was high, life expectancy low, and the death sentence was a punishment for many crimes.

Curiously, the cliche of sorcerers sacrificing a goat as part of their rituals comes from a misunderstanding: the Grimoires teach that the magic circle should be drawn on virgin kidskin which has been carefully prepared. Sorcerers could not rely on the local tannery for this, and so would prepare their own. Obviously, since the goat's tanned hide was to be used in the ritual, the sorcerer would bless the goat repeatedly - before, during, and after slaughtering it - and so to any casual observer, it would look like blood sacrifice for the sake of blood sacrifice.

In case it's not obvious, I think this magic stuff is bollocks. At best a historical curiosity, at worst a way of seriously damaging your mental health. I tried to imagine how I would react to it, living hundreds of years ago. I found myself feeling sympathetic towards the Inquisition. If your worldview takes the existence of evil demons as a fact, and your holy books warn against greed and lust and malice, it is so easy to imagine these Grimoires having been forged by demons to trick the poor, lonely, and egotistical down a dark path. They are like the pre-modern equivalent of scam e-mails, promising 'EARN $5000 PER DAY - SUMMON A TREASURE-FINDING DEMON' or 'THE ONE TRICK WOMEN CAN'T RESIST - INFERNAL SPIRITS WOO 4 U', but rather than making you lose the contents of your bank account, you lose your soul too.

1917 + 100

This year is the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, an event which I know little about. Yesterday, I went to an event at a local bookshop, an author talking about his recent book on the subject. The author self-identifies as a Trotskyist: his book argues that the revolution started off great but degenerated into totalitarianism due to various factors (e.g. war) putting pressure on the new system - totalitarian oppression was not, in his view, an inevitable consequence of the revolution.

During the Q&A session, an old rotund man wearing red corduroy trousers stood up to speak: he disagreed vehemently the author's Trotskyism. The late 20s and early 30s were not a dark time; Stalin saved the country from collapse; it was the Red Army, not the West, who finally defeated Hitler; Stalin got the country together, and showed how successful communist industrialism could be.

I've never met a real life Stalinist before. I'd heard the word, and guessed its meaning, but I hadn't quite accepted that it meant there are people alive nowadays who genuinely, fervently believe that Stalin was a good guy, a hero. Earth is weird. Thankfully, he was at least in the minority.

This is my second encounter with people from the Far Left. The first was in 2013. I was trying to get politically active but didn't know where to begin; I heard about the founding conference of a new political party called Left Unity, and decided to attend. I didn't know what to expect.

I couldn't make it through the whole day. The bickering over the minutiae of policies they would never implement. The heated discussions over wording which would only put off voters ('We're Marxists and we need to say that we're a Marxist party!"). Calling each other 'comrades' - this surprised me most at the time.

The whole thing had a very cultic, divorced-from-reality feel to it. At yesterday's event, someone invited me a meeting of the Socialist Party. As he spoke to me I was reminded of Jehovah's Witnesses trying to spread their gospel.

In his 'Nostalgia for the Absolute', George Steiner includes Marxism as one of the modern mythologies which attempt to fill the gap left by the decline of the traditional religions. Bertrand Russell described communism as a religion in his 'Proposed Roads to Freedom'. The first major history of communism was titled 'The God That Failed'. Christopher Hitchens likened his falling out of faith in communism to losing faith in God. 

Marxism has its belief in history progressing inevitably towards an apocalypse and a 'remaking': a global proletarian revolution and the establishment of a communist utopia. A belief which can stand next to the Judea-Christian and Zoroastrian apocalypses in its farfetchedness. Marxism has its prophets and false prophets (the Far Left seem to argue a lot about which of the Russian revolutionary figures was a legit prophet, and which was false). Marxism split into lots of sects: Trotskyism, Stalinism, Leninism, etc.

From my brief encounters with Far Left members, I felt like there was little to no questioning of whether Marx was actually right. Capitalism must be overthrown; that's a given, now we just figure out the details. Don't question the faith; just believe. Look at how bad capitalism is; it needs to be defeated.

Similar criticisms can be made of the die-hard capitalists. In 'Sapiens', Yuval Noah Harari describes capitalism as the most successful religion of today. All religions describe their rivals as man-made, whereas theirs is the truth come from Nature or God. Capitalism has its belief that it is the natural state of man remodeled for a technological time: humans once competed for resources to survive, now they compete for money. Businesses have quite a Social Darwinist outlook towards their competitors; the fittest survive; adapt to the market or perish! And capitalism has its mythic beliefs: economic growth can be eternal, even on a planet of finite resources; the Market, the collective will of all buyers and sellers, knows best and will reward the just and punish sinners; those with more money are inherently better than those with less; trickle down economics; by serving money, we help bring prosperity to all.

(I played with the idea of capitalism and communism as rival religions in 'The Book of Mammon', which I finished writing in December.)

I can't bring myself to share the modern political faiths. My earlier reading has coloured my worldview. I started following politics and current affairs after having read a lot of science fiction and so many books about religion. These two strands combined with modern politics to make the world look like a nightmarish dystopia full of strange new religions: the capitalists who cling to their beliefs against a rising backlash, and point out the flaws in the rival faiths. The various anti-capitalist sects, who spend their time pointing out why capitalism is a false faith, rather than outlining why theirs is the true way - when they do argue positively, I am reminded of the capitalist arguments, and of the various works of religious apologetics I've read. No one wanting to convert you gives the full picture: the best facts and statistics are cherry-picked for the greatest emotional appeal.

(There are also, of course, the adherents of the traditional religions, some of whom attempt to combine their old faith with the new: the Christian Capitalists who believe that they can serve both God and Money.)

Religious people can see the flaws, the plot-holes, the man-made nature of rival faiths. There are thousands of Christian websites pointing out the flaws in Islam, and thousands of Muslim websites pointing out the flaws in Christianity. Etc. One of the worse books of Christian apologetics I read during my religion phase was 'Evidence That Demands A Verdict' by Josh McDowell. Over 800 pages of fine print, this book is supposed to lay down in detail all the arguments and evidence in favour of literalist Evangelical Christianity as the One True Faith. I couldn't finish it: the leaps of faith, the false dichotomies and trichotomies, the out-of-context quoting, the sheer misrepresentation of the opposing side, the brazen dishonesty - all of this was exhausting and infuriating. In the introduction, McDowell said that he had never encountered anyone who could refute his arguments. There are many, many, many detailed refutations on the internet, which he has studiously ignored.

At the time I felt like this was very sinister, as though McDowell was consciously peddling dishonesty. I imagined that he justified this to himself by thinking that since Blasphemy Against The Holy Spirit is the One Unforgivable Sin, he would be forgiven his lies since it was in service to the light, and he may have converted people to Jesus or strengthened people's faith, thus making it less likely that they would blaspheme the Holy Spirit and be condemned irredeemably to Hell. 

(This kind of reasoning makes it very easy to justify atrocities using the Bible. If someone is teaching blasphemy, encouraging blasphemy, then they are taking away people's chances of salvation. With the One Unforgivable Sin, there's no "three strikes - you're out!". One Strike - Eternally Tortured! Hence the blasphemer is a threat not just to their soul, but to the souls of everyone around them. And blasphemy can spread, and thus so many souls can be doomed to eternal suffering. Better to wipe them out - God will forgive the killing. The Popes promised that God would forgive all the Crusaders' sins if they fought against the blasphemers who held the Holy Land.)

Now I'm not so convinced of his sinister dishonesty. In an interview, McDowell said that "the Internet is the greatest threat to Christianity" because it enabled people and children to encounter skeptical and blasphemous views that good Christians would do best to ignore. I now think that his faith is so strong and so secure, and he does not read genuine opposing views, only critiques his imagined caricatures of them, and he is totally oblivious to the dishonesty and intellectual acrobats in his book. He lives in a Christian echo chamber; the flaws of other views are pointed out, while the flaws of his faith are ignored. He cannot comprehend a well-meaning critique of his views; it could only be the Evil Other tempting him away from the light.

In recent years we have witnessed the Internet's tendency to radicalize: many people today get their news and views from social media. They are more likely to 'Like' news and views which supports their existing opinions; the algorithms controlling social media, programmed to encourage Newsfeed scrolling to generate more advertising revenue, know to send a person more content that they are likely to agree with and 'Like'. Differences of opinion on our personal digital feeds become less common, and so we become in severe danger of, through echo chambers and reinforcement, being convinced that we know The Truth, and that those with differing views are a monstrous alien Other, who hate what we hold dear and would bring ruin to us all, in service of their false faith. 

A leftwing journalist recently interviewed Conservative MP Anna Soubry; in the comments below the video were people calling him a traitor for giving this woman a platform and letting her voice her views. A leftwing blogger recently wrote about how he's come to admire a Conservative MP Ken Clarke; in the comments were people calling him a betrayer.

People are so convinced of their political views that they can barely stomach the idea of encountering genuinely-held alternate beliefs, rather than imaginary caricatures. I try to keep my news sources diverse; I 'Like' articles I disagree with, when I feel as though they've given an insight into alternate views. (Hence why I follow and 'Like' Breitbart and Guido Fawkes posts, for example.) The comments section underneath any news or views article nowadays is a depressing hellscape of opposing views, demonising each other, shutting down debate.

The main thing I've learned so far from following politics is that no one knows the best way to run a country or the world. We have flawed ideas which we can and often do, to our personal and social detriment, treat as absolute truth, as though attempting to satisfy the religious cravings left behind by the decline of the old faiths. People don't like the idea that no one really knows the truth; we want someone or something to believe in, to anchor us in a universe of stupendous majesty and chaotic unknowns. Is it possible that we can, as a species or society, overcome this desire for absolute truth, and accept that anything we believe now may in the future be falsified without a moment's notice? I highly doubt it. 

'The Prince of Darkness' by Jeffrey Burton Russell

In The Prince of Darkness (1989), Jeffrey B. Russell has condensed his academic quartet on the history of the concepts of evil and the Devil from antiquity to the modern world - The Devil (1977), Satan (1981), Lucifer (1984), and Mephistopheles (1986) – into one slim book intended for a popular audience. The academic quartet has a total page count of 1223; The Prince of Darkness is only 288 pages including appendices and index. There is an astonishing amount of information in this small volume.

Burton begins with the ancient world mythologies, looking at the elements in them which influenced the Devil concept, such as: the chaos monsters including Leviathan and Tiamat; conflicts between gods, such as the Greek war between the Olympians and the Titans which ended with the Titans imprisoned in Tartarus; gods and spirits of death and destruction; and Zoroastrianism, with its good god and bad god in conflict across the cosmos until the end of time. 

Following this, we get an overview of the ancient Hebrew tradition leading to the development of fallen angels: the early Hebrew monotheists ascribed both good and evil to the One God, but the Jews later wanted to distance evil from the God they worshiped, to absolve him of blame, so they had God delegate some evil to the angels, loyal servants under his command, such as the satan in the Book of Job (this is modern Judaism's view of Satan: a loyal servant of the good-bad God). This delegating God calls for angel volunteers to act as tempters, satans: 1 Kings 22:19-23:

'And Micaiah said, “Therefore hear the word of the LORD: I saw the LORD sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing beside him on his right hand and on his left; and the LORD said, ‘Who will entice Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?’ And one said one thing, and another said another. Then a spirit came forward and stood before the LORD, saying, ‘I will entice him.’ And the LORD said to him, ‘By what means?’ And he said, ‘I will go out, and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’ And he said, ‘You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go out and do so.’ Now therefore behold, the LORD has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; the LORD has declared disaster for you.”'

Delegated angels became rebel angels in Judaism's apocalyptic period, when the the Jews were convinced the world was going to end any day now. During this period a lot of texts, now considered apocryphal, developed different versions of the fallen angel myth. In some stories, Satan is kicked out of heaven for refusing to bow to newly created humanity. In others, angels fall to Earth lusting after human women. In others, the evil lord Mastema, Prince of Evil, leads an army of evil against God, constantly trying to thwart God's good plan. 

Early Christianity was a branch of Apocalyptic Judaism; the New Testament further developed apocalyptic and diabolical concepts. The early Christians believed that Satan was ruler of the world, 'the prince of this world', who would be punished at the end of time (any day now) by being shoved into Hell. Jesus' sacrifice had broken Satan's complete hold over humanity: those that turned to Jesus were saved. The pagan gods existed, but they were fallen angels who ruled the Roman empire. In the second century, Justin Martyr developed one of the first fully fleshed-out Christian cosmological worldviews: in it, he described 3 categories of evil beings: Satan, a great angel, who fell from grace through sin at the beginning of time; the rest of the fallen angels, who fell from heaven when they lusted after human women; and demons, the hybrid monsters of illicit angel-human interspecies sex. The evil ones had control over the world; Jesus' first coming signaled the beginning of the end of their reign. At the second coming they would be cast into Hell.

Over the centuries this worldview changed. There were stories about Christ's descent into Hell during the 3 days between death and resurrection: he breached the doors of Hell, preached to the righteous (who were only in there because they happened to be born too soon to convert to Christianity in their lifetimes), and locked Satan&Co up, turning their old Kingdom of the Dead into their prison. Satan&Co did not have complete free reign on earth; they had been imprisoned by Jesus, who would finish the job at the second coming. 

The earlier threefold division between Satan, fallen angels, and demons was abandoned: they all became the same, angels who fell with Satan at the beginning. Satan's power over earth and his imprisonment were combined somewhat contradictorily, both simultaneously occurring straight after his fall: Satan&Co were imprisoned in Hell after their rebellion, but also have considerable powers over the Earth.

There are chapters covering: the entertaining mythologies of Gnosticism and Manichaeism, both dualist cosmologies with a good god and a bad god; early Christian heresies, and how Satan became associated with them; the Desert Fathers, monks who believed the Devil was constantly tempting them; various theologians and how they reconciled evil with a good God – these early theologians culminated in Augustine of Hippo, who synthesized their ideas into the classical view of Western Christianity. 

Medieval Christianity is the next stage of Burton's history. As Christianity became popular, it got mixed up with a lot of pagan traditions (Saturnalia was a pagan festival of gift-giving over the Winter Solstice. Eostre was pagan deity of Spring who had a festival at the Spring Equinox.), and so the Christian Devil got mixed up with a lot of pagan traditions: he gained horns and cloven feet from the god Pan; he enjoys Pagan-style celebrations, sacrifices, the Wild Hunt. Lilith is Lucifer's mother. The Devil of Medieval folklore has a lot of strange similarities to Santa Claus. Throughout history there has been a divide in religions between the popular/folk religion of the masses, and the reasoned out religion of the elites. This divide was far wider in olden days, when literacy levels were extremely low and so the masses could not read sacred texts for themselves. 

We get an overview of Medieval theologians such as Anselm, Eruigena, and Aquinas, and a look at Cathar dualism (a medieval gnostic Christianity). And then along came Dante, who created one of the most important depictions of the Devil: trapped deep in the Earth, at the centre of the universe, farthest from God, in a cold, dark, place; immobile, bestial, pathetic. Dante's Satan is contrasted with the brightness, warmth, and lively mobility of Heaven. To many theologians, evil is nothingness, non-being: Satan's pathetic immobility shows him as the personification of evil as lifeless non-being.

In the Middle Ages, clerics wrote mystery plays to bolster the faith of uneducated laypeople. Some told the stories of Satan's rebellion, Adam and Eve in Eden, and on through Old Testament scenes. The plays end with the passion, and therefore triumph, of Jesus over Satan. Satan in these plays, while evil, is also made into a comically inept supervillain whose plans are foiled by God.

The witch hunting craze influenced popular perception of the Devil. How the Devil was thought of during the Reformation. The early development of the Faust legend; diabolical themes in the plays of Marlowe and Shakespeare (Doctor Faustus and Hamlet, respectively). A whole chapter is devoted to Milton's Paradise Lost, because it is one of the best things ever written and massively important in the history of the Devil idea. 

And then we get to the rise of unbelief in the Age of Enlightenment. Rationalism and empiricism weakened Christianity, belief in God and the Devil. Some branches of Christianity tried to adapt to this by almost eliminating the Devil from their theology. God and the Devil were seen as primitive superstitions. The Marquis de Sade, from whom we get Sadism, used the atheist argument to advocate cruelty and hedonism: if you enjoy torture, do it, because pleasure is good. Geothe wrote Faust, presenting a new Devil for a new world ('Mephistopheles in the most important literary Devil since Milton's, but the difference between Milton's Satan and Goethe's Mephisto is the difference between a basically Christian and a basically secular world view').

A Romantic movement arose in response to the Enlightenment. They valued emotions and feelings over reason and logic. They gave new meaning to traditional symbols. Satan, fighting against Jehovah, was a heroic figure fighting for freedom from illegitimate authority. Jesus, against Satan, was a hero fighting unjust worldly authority. Thus in Romantic eyes Satan could represent heroism, individualism and the strive for freedom, but also isolation and selfishness. The artists of this period played with the Devil concept in interesting but often incoherent way. William Blake's mythology, especially The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Lord Byron's Cain: A Mystery. Percy Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, which combines the Greek Prometheus with the loving Jesus and the heroic Satan. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the first science fiction novel, about a man gaining Godlike powers, creating life: diabolical imagery surrounds the monster, but Frankenstein replaces supernatural horror with scientific horror. Victor Hugo's The End of Satan.

Romanticism split into Naturalism, which spurned the supernatural in favour of realism, and Decadence, an exploration of human sensuality. The latter led to a rise of occultism. Baudelaire's The Flowers of Evil. Lautreamont's The Chants of Maldoror. J-K Huysman investigated the occult Satanism of his day and wrote the novel The Damned, a fictional account of his experiences in this secret world. Huysman was so repelled by what he witnessed that he converted to Catholicism. 

After being attacked on scientific and historical fronts, religion was then attacked by psychologists: Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, Carl Jung. Freud argued that the Devil was the personification of repressed unconscious desires. Klein argued that since children easily divide the world between good and bad, while adults learn ambivalence and shades of grey, the religious divide between good and evil is a sign of psychological immaturity. Carl Jung saw the Devil as an important psychological symbol that helped us face up to the existence of evil. Dostoevsky's The Devils and The Brothers Karamazov defends religion while facing up to problem of evil and presenting compelling evil characters. Twentieth century horrors re-emphasized the problem of evil. Satan in modern literature: Tolkien, CS Lewis, Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus, the short stories of Flannery O'Connor, etc. The Devil in pop culture and music. LaVeyan Satanism ('their Satanic Bible is a melange of hedonistic maxims and incoherent occultism').

Burton believes that a lack of belief in a transcendent evil force makes the world more dangerous, and he looks at the arguments on both sides. My own opinion on this matter is undecided.

This is an astonishingly erudite book, and contains an incredible amount of information for less than 300 pages. My only complaint is that the Devil in Islam is not explored: Burton says in his introduction that this is treated in the Lucifer volume of his original quartet, but I feel like he could have fit even a short chapter on Islam's Devil into this book. Nevertheless, I thoroughly recommend this book for a relatively easy-reading history of the Devil and evil in human thought. 

An Islamic Bookshop

Today I went for a wander around one of the more multicultural areas of Nottingham. Not understanding the languages of overheard conversations, shop signs and products made me feel like a tourist going 'Ooooo! Look at all the foreign things!' It was like a mini holiday. Among the strange products I found ELDERFLOWER AND LEMON FANTA (see photo).

I found an Islamic Bookshop, which had a whole bookcase devoted to various editions of the Qur'an with different levels of prettiness and ostentation. I did wonder before going in whether all Qur'ans would be on top shelves, but I guess that only applies when the bookcase has more than just Qur'ans on it.

I browsed around: some of the sillier books were those with titles such as Hell & Its Denizens and The Inhabitants of Hell, which contained a lot of the usual fire and brimstone stuff common to religions with a damnation vs paradise afterlife dichotomy, but with a bit more casual sexism than you would get in a modern Christian work (while the Bible is horribly sexist, far more than the Qur'an in my opinion, Christianity has moved on quite a bit from it - women are allowed to speak in churches, for example): the author of one of these books quoted an ancient Muslim who had a vision of the queues for entering Heaven and Hell (waiting to get their Spiritual Passports stamped at the border crossing), remarking that there were far more women in the Hell queue because <old fashioned sexism>.

There was an extremely colourful book titled ONLY LOVE CAN DEFEAT TERRORISM.

I just had to buy A Concise Encyclopedia of Jinn. Islamic mythology features 3 intelligent species: angels, who God made from light; humans, who God made from clay; and Jinn, who God made from fire. Islamic angels do not have free will: they serve and obey God automatically. Humans and Jinn do have free will; Satan is a Jinn in Islamic mythology. Muhammad, as recorded in the Qur'an, preached to both humans and Jinn, invisible fire people. This fact is not mentioned often enough.

The book explains everything we 'know' about Jinn, using the Qur'an and Hadith (the secondary Muslim text) as main sources, and contains a lot of amusing speculation. Since Muhammad was the final prophet, who spoke to both Jinn and humans, and he implies that Jinn had prophets before him, the book concludes that Jinn culture probably has its own series of prophets leading up to Muhammad, but obviously we don't know anything about these invisible-fire-person prophets.

Jinn eat and drink. And fart. One story from the Hadith says that Satan times his farts to cover up the call to prayer. (I had to check the citation online: this is actually in the Hadith.)

Mythology be craycray.