One of my colleagues asked me was, why the name I chose my blog name narnijskiego fauna. Responding briefly, I would say that this was one of the nicest characters or the story of Lewis and even the Greek Pan, a Roman Faun (probably the root of both common names), is one of the nicest people of the ancient pantheon. But let me expand a bit of this explanation. Pan was the god of forces of nature, the guardian of the mountain forests, wild and domesticated animals, the patron saint of shepherds. Although its name suggests that it could someday be a major "universal" god of the Hellenic religion, in our consciousness survives as a symbol of the magic of nature. The cult of the Lord (Fauna) has always involved a Greek (and later Hellenistic) love of nature, experiencing its beauty and holiness, was connected with the worship of sacred groves, dryads, ghosts of meadows, forests and trees. The belief that God (the sacred) manifests itself in the beauty and the forces of nature was a feature of many religions, but the role of the Hellenistic hierofanii was quite special. Arnold Toynbee points out that "organic" sensibility of Indian Buddhism, "Big Dipper" has developed only under the influence of Hindu mystics and contacts with the Greek philosophers, who arrived in India along with the armies of Alexander. Probably
Hellenic word (but Slavonic, Germanic and Celtic), love of nature had its source in the beauty, inhabited by those peoples of the lands, but also in the fact that the nature of our ancestors fed, but it is not for them, never a great threat.
If so, it is not strange that the people living in hostile and dangerous deserts of the Middle East have a different relationship to nature. Making the land (desert) "subjecting" was a matter "to be or not to be" for those called upon to live between the Nile and the Euphrates.
meeting between the "desert people" and "people of meadows and forests" that took place three centuries before the beginning of our era, as a result of the victorious march of the Macedonian army chief, was perhaps the most momentous and fraught the effects of a historical event since the invention of farming techniques. One of the most important and the consequences of this meeting was the birth of religion, which after several centuries, became the religion of half of humanity. The new religion, though she was Jewish syncretism that combines elements of helleńskimi, the ratio of the cults of nature drew from the Jewish, not Greek heritage. Professor
Kravchuk said about her confrontation with paganism:
" .... Antique cults, pagan, Slavic, and our Mediterranean - had a very nice feature which is forgotten - they were all associated with nature, with nature worship. In these beliefs are sacred groves, each star is something living, and finally with us, Slavic nations, there are sacred trees. I come to the first Christian missions to our lands. What will begin to spread their faith? From chopping the old, sacred trees, against which the Gentiles made their victims. And here, sir, is the beginning of an environmental disaster. Laughs at you? Let the laughs from the old Mr. Kravchuk. But I prove that my reasons are deeply rooted in the Old Testament. There, at the very beginning, in the words of God it says "make for yourselves the land has been subjected." Man is the master of all creation, is the owner and can do whatever he wants with the land. Because it is his, for he is Lord God. Quite different was the attitude to the land of our pious pagans. Yes, devout pagans. You can read about in the texts of Greek and Roman. For the Greeks, Romans and Christians were atheists because they do not recognize the gods. Christians had their God, which for the Romans and Greeks was a stranger and the Christian God was an atheist, because they did not recognize the gods. Christianity brought with it an imperious attitude toward the world. Value you, and not cohabitant. While for us, once again I stress, the pious heathen whole world is on an equal footing ... "
Similar sentences can be found in the first volume of the Ancient World Religions series by the most eminent Polish experts think of antiquity, Professor Tadeusz Zielinski:
" ... The true opposite of the Hellenes was ancient Israel. Driven by his God, the Lord of hosts, he came as a foreigner and the winner of the "promised land". Do not fed filial affection for this land, which has never been his mother - lived it wrong ghosts. And that her imperious, predatory attitude toward the earth, and he also instilled the religions, some of which came from it: Christianity and Islam, the land of his mother became a slave - obey, but a vengeful (...) verily, God is utterly burned Mohammed This vast land of rags - ancient gods around him tender care. "
Led by Christians struggle with the cult of nature was of course part - no longer so important to Judaism - the fight against idolatry. The God of Abraham and Moses was a jealous God. For many centuries, nature has ceased to be holy, and its patron saint - you (or at least its image), has become synonymous with the devil. Forgotten love to nature, returned only (unfortunately for a short time) in the late Middle Ages to the person of Francis of Assisi. Blade hierofanii directed against nature, however, proved to be a double-edged. Prominent American conservative thinker, born in Hungary, Professor Thomas Molnar in one of his books, draws attention to precisely that: "... Christianity from the beginning contained within it the seeds that have ripened, then turned against the shell of religion, which it has issued. Seeds These tend to rationalize and de-sanctification. "
Zdesakralizowanej nature assigned the role of soulless machines. Deprived of her attribute of holiness. When the scientific revolution as a result of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was noted that this man is a part of nature, the whole religious outlook had to collapse. And though to see that our life is "a form of existence of the protein" could become a rediscovery of the wonders of nature, then the unquestioned belief that it is a mechanism meant that European thought has gone in the opposite direction - born of nihilism.
However, I believe that there is a way out of this spiritual trap faced by the Atlantic civilization and that it goes through some form of reconciliation of Christianity and the pagan worship of nature. For Christianity itself is certainly a chance, but a potential "political" trap. Two thousand years of fighting against idolatry can not just cancel.
idea that the path from materialism to Christianity can lead by paganism (especially by the paganism of nature) is obviously not my own invention. In this direction led, under many anthropologists, scholars of religion, whether Christianity sympathetic thinkers and writers of the second half of the twentieth century. An example might be if only the author ekranizowanych's "The Chronicles of Narnia", the English writer and Christian apologist, and CS Lewis, who converted when his friend JRR Tolkien (author of "The Lord of the Rings") convinced him that the pagan myths are not fabrication, but they are true (in the spiritual and symbolic dimension). It is no coincidence that Lewisowska Narnia is inhabited by wildlife, dryads, ghosts of forest streams, centaurs, and other good forces of the ancient cult Nature. Positive attitude to the ancient paganism was Tolkien, but also Chesterton. Hope that this effort will be taken in the direction where I can draw on the interest, which - especially among the Jesuits and Dominicans, and therefore the Church's intellectual elite - raised from the work of Simone Weil years. Recall that this extraordinary thinker, fell in love with Christianity, seeing it as a continuation of religion of Hellas.
underscores that he did not dream of the revival of paganism, because such a revival today, I think it is totally impossible, and and undesirable. But I dream - although I know it's unrealistic dream - to see and theological recognition by the Church (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant), the role and sanctity of the foundation of Christianity, which was the antique paganism, with particular attention to this forgotten element - the worship of nature. Christianity, which really for the most part was a continuation of ancient Hellenistic religions than Judaism, that the pagan roots treated since the beginning of its existence as something embarrassing. Tried to conceal from myself my own background, like a child who is ashamed to be one of his parents and erasing his own identity in part from the inherited trait. A shame really did not have what. Most of its elements, precious and beautiful sublime and above all, in the truest sense of the real fact was given directly or indirectly from his Olympic-loving father of the Greeks.
I hope to write about this at greater length in one of the following entries.
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