Terrorism and Evil – A Pagan Response
  “Evil is a construct that pagans try to avoid. “
                                                                        Starhawk  1.
 Evil. Time has not dampened its potency as a word or deed. The scientific mind, since The Enlightenment has scorned the idea of some absolute Evil Being which acts to enslave human souls. The Age of Reason sought to expel the fears and superstitions which surround all human miseries. What began as a reaction against the intellectually crippling Christian Dogma (and the abject evil of a Church hierarchy), rationalism became the prevailing paradigm of the age up to the present.  Evil, however, persists. And the evil of our time was brought home with the attacks on September 11, 2001.
     Events of that day quickly became packaged and sold as the work of evil-doers  Even formerly skeptical rationalists were forced to admit at least the human perception of evil exists, and so too, evil itself. Perhaps not as an autonomous being, but that evil as pathology within the human condition and a malignant force in human affairs, certainly seemed evident on 9/11.
     In his 2001 essay, Confronting Evil [ Tikkun Nov/ Dec 2001 ] Andrew Kimbrell defines evil as, “ that dysfunctional human condition which leads us into repeated patterns of wrong-doing….a kind of ultimate illness which fatally erodes our sense of responsibility for, and ultimately connection to, all else.” 2   He adds that an evil act is one of alienation from the other. We can extrapolate from this that evil as a force in human affairs acts to produce alienation from self, others and the whole fabric of life. Kimbrell goes on to delineate two forms of evil – ‘hot’ and ‘cold ’.  Hot evil is the form which concerns most moralists – crimes of passion, sex and violence.
      Cold evil, according to Kimbrell, is institutionalized through our technologies and technocracies. “We are witnessing the technification of evil. Modern society has created a technological, institutional plane where ‘The System’ effectuates evil in circumstances where individuals and their emotions or morals play no significant role.”  3  Kimbrell’s observations are part of a long history of commentary on the evils of industrialization stretching back to William Blake. Indeed, Blake even invoked the image of cosmic Evil when he condemned the atomizing effect of 19th century industrialism upon culture, community and the individual.  Implicit in this understanding is evil’s collectivity. But when modern pundits speak of evil they are keen to insist that it (like madness) is contained within the individual or group acting as individuals. Cultural or collective sociological evil is resisted as a concept; and of course the idea of cosmic evil as an autonomous entity is rejected out of hand.
     History, myth and depth psychology, however, give us quite a different insight. The brutal decadence of Rome, The Inquisition, the white-supremacist European slave trade, the fire-bombing of Tokyo and Dresden, modern carpet-bombing and terrorism are all examples of collective will in service to evil. This is upper case evil or cosmic Evil, if you will.  Put another way – evil has been a dynamic animating force throughout history and throughout time.
       In Jungian psychological terms, both good and evil have their corresponding archetypal symbols within the individual and collective unconscious psyche. Collective archetypal symbols, whether reflected in myth, religion or historical figures, have a timeless character which manifests within the human drama. So from the perspective of depth psychology, the obvious evil of September 11, 2001 is not a singular act of deranged individuals, but rather a manifestation of our collective ‘will to evil’. But, in order to maintain our utterly unsubstantiated self image as a good, God-fearing people, we project our evil onto those who get caught in the act or onto those who serve as scapegoats.
      And again, in Kimbrell’s view, as a society, we have abrogated our collective ‘will-to-evil’ unto our technologies and bureaucratic institutions. ( the technification of evil). This is in spite of and in contradiction to our societal mores, moral codes and (as we have seen in the case of torture) our legal codes. Cold evil is enabled, says Kimbrell, by technological distancing. “Through technological distancing, the victim becomes little more than a computerized abstraction.” 4 And this distancing is endemic to our bureaucracies of corporatism and militarism, while infecting the individual by ensconcing us within what he calls a “techno-cocoon” of comfort and isolation.
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                                                   Evil and Paganism
    
      Pagans do not reject the idea of evil. Wiccans and other neo-pagans tend to reject the idea of evil but, contrary to Starhawk’s premise, paganism does not. For example: Animism still exists among indigenous peoples throughout the world, including Japan and China. They are decidedly Pagan and their cosmologies always include evil as a malevolent agent induced through sorcery. The indigenous people of North America know evil well since the Europeans first set foot upon their land, bringing along with them plague, genocide, war, alcohol and a bible. And if we define paganism as polytheism in which the Earth is revered as sacred and divine, then the Hindus are the largest pagan sect. Although hardly dualistic, Hinduism asserts that we are living through an age of “darkness’ called the Kaliyuga (lasting  60,000 years) which is filled with every sort of evil.
       Historically, Western pagan traditions began in the ancient Mediterranean. The sacred marriage of God and Goddess, the birth of a ‘Child of Wonder”, and the idea of righteous livelihood in accordance with divine order were all theological products of ancient Egypt, where the use of spells and amulets to combat evil is well documented. Indeed, in Egyptian mythology and magical practices were cognizant of evil as an ever present force as the pervasive use of amulets would attest. While Hellenizing many forms and practices, Greece and Rome embraced Egyptian religious traditions as well as other Middle and Near Eastern gods and practices like some cosmic melting pot of religious devotion. In general, we can say that in the Greco-Roman world, goodness was associated with devotion to ‘the gods’ and evil with atheism.
     The Eleusinian Mysteries of Greece, while not encumbered by dualism, gave the seeker an experience of life’s continuum beyond death and a vision of the unity of all humanity. At Eleusis, and through other mystery traditions, separateness, alienation and dysfunctional patterns – the stated effects of evil – were conquered. Plutarch, in Anthologies , said of this effect upon the individual ‘mystes’: “Such a person looks over the uninitiated and unpurified crowd of people living here…who hold onto their evil things on account of their fear of death, because they do not believe in the good things that are in the other world”. 5 
     The dualism of good versus evil was embraced by Western pagans in the first and second century C.E. in the form of Mithraism, a Persian mystery cult derived from the older Mazdaism. Through the Mysteries of Mithra, Persian Mazdaism  introduced  Roman paganism to  the mythic battle between the forces of Light and Darkness according to historian Franz Cumont. In his seminal work, Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, Cumont states: “Mazdaism brought long awaited satisfaction to the old-time Roman desire for a practical religion that would subject the individual to a rule of conduct and contribute to the welfare of the state. Mithra infused new vigor into the paganism of the Occident by introducing the imperative ethics of Persia”.6 The Magi, from whose title we derive the word magic, spread Persian dualism throughout the pagan world both B.C.E. and C.E. The Persian solution to the problem of Evil, was to worship it alongside the god of Goodness and Light. The rites performed to the Persian Lord of Evil (Ahriman) were by any standards depraved and insane and survive in western religious tradition as the Black Mass.      
     The point here is that the concept of evil, even cosmic Evil, has been imbedded within the collective Pagan psyche for millennia. And once an archetype becomes imbedded within the collective psyche it manifests in a semi-autonomous manner – denial is irrelevant and for the purpose of this discussion, counterproductive. Starhawk’s comment quoted above, says more about the roots of Wicca than it does about Paganism.
     Wicca is a product of a 19th century, British fascination with the occult. While influenced by the Romantic period of Celtic Myth and legends, Wicca is, fundamentally, a child of post-enlightenment rationalism. It is this rationalistic scientism of modern Western civilization which rejects evil – not paganism. That said, there may be a somewhat unconscious motive for Wicca’s state of denial, a motive which points to a complicity that is difficult to face. The mix of occult practices and Celtic Mythology which spawned Wicca in the early 20th century in Great Britain, also fathered Nazism in Hitler’s Germany. While groups in Britain like The New Order of the Golden Dawn were active before the First World War, they had their counterparts on The Continent, Indeed there was even psychic warfare being waged across the English Channel during both World Wars. It is common knowledge that Hitler and his inner circle were obsessed with the occult. What is not so well known is that elite German SS officers were initiated into a mystery cult as Knights of the Holy Grail. Ancient Celtic and Norse Mythology helped form the German zeitgeist of the early 20th century, as part of a back-to-the-land movement called “volkish” thought. Religious historian Robert Ellwood notes,”…in the decades before World War I a form of late romantic nationalism – volkish, Wagnerian, Nietzschean, sometimes anti-Semitic – was shouldering its way in alongside modernity.”7  Added to this mix were the efforts of the neo-pagan German Faith Movement. What began as a healthy response to the evils of industrialism, the neo-pagan movement morphed into an ugly nationalism. This dynamic is true in all human systems. No matter what social movement we cite, in time, we see it’s polar opposite emerge. Until we Pagans accept responsibility for the evils and excesses of  Nazi Germany we will never awaken to our highest calling nor the destiny of our time. It behooves all humanity to acknowledge the dark side of our collective psyche and accept responsibility for the great evils of war, brutality and terrorism. Only then can we progress spiritually and materially.
     In his 1975 essay, Evil and World Order, William Irwin Thomson states: “All forms hold energy against the flow of time.”8 Given enough time all forms will dissolve according to the Laws of Thermodynamics. Most often this ultimate transformation occurs in the crucible of opposition. Thomson continues: “…man lives at the interface of opposites: earth and sky, sea and shore, life and death. Yet it is precisely the interface between opposites that is the place of transformation, and the energy from that transformation comes from remaining poised at the perilous edge, a slight movement to either side brings dissolution into uniformity.” 9 This includes good and evil. As a pagan dogma, Starhawk puts it this way: “…dark and light, life and death, creation and destruction exist in balance and to cut off or condemn one aspect opens us to the imbalance that leads to cruelty and horror.”10 Unfortunately, by rejecting evil,  Starhawk commits the same sin of omission she condemns. Her fear is that to accept evil means to project it upon ‘the other’. There is, of course, another option - to accept the existence of evil and accept responsibility for it as part of our nature and our mechanized industrial order.
     Rather than rejecting Evil as a concept paganism takes a proactive stance in combating its effects. The creation of sacred space, calling in of ‘The Directions’, honoring and worshiping the Earth and Sun as sacred beings in the creation of ever-widening circles of community is the pagan response to the endemic evil of militarism and the atomizing effects of industrialism. This cannot be stressed enough; it is a core pagan belief, whether we reference animism or the Eleusinian  Mysteries, that the Earth and all her beings are sacred. By keeping faith with this Sacred Hoop of Life, Pagans maintain a direct affront to evil. And, I believe, it is only from this pro-active recognition of evil that paganism can effectively address the issue of terrorism.
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                                             A Pagan Response to Terrorism
    The Mysteries and Wisdom of the Goddess (Earth) wedded to the Radiant Intelligence emanating from the Godhead (Sun) forms the core of Pagan mystical and religious belief. With the collective human spirit as their divine child we have an image of a cosmos that is conscious, alive and interconnected with the evolution of human consciousness. This unity principle – the primal urge toward a shared ethos in community in harmony with the Divine – we call Good. Evil is the ever-present force that attempts to rend the communal fabric beyond repair, often with great success. War is the ultimate evil. Terrorism is war’s bastard stepchild. It exists but none of the masters of war will accept responsibility for it. Indeed, after 9/11, the United Nations was asked to define terrorism so it could be effectively battled and it failed miserably since any such definition tread upon too many toes. One man’s terrorist is another’s ‘freedom fighter’. 
     Terrorism is the strategy of war which is used against a civilian population to create paralyzing fear, dysfunction and chaos Often it is used to advance the machinations of war and achieve dominance. Terrorism is evil. As Pagans, wisdom teaches us to look past appearances toward fundamental causes. History teaches us that the Western Imperial Powers have employed terrorism as a matter of statecraft for hundreds (if not thousands) of years. Joseph Conrad referred to this poetically as The Heart of Darkness in his novel depicting the genocidal imperial conquest of the Congo by Belgium. And so it is. The phrase acknowledges in a cognitive way the inherent evil of the modern state. Contrary to popular fiction and appearances, it is not the tactic of the powerless, but rather of the very powerful. The cutting off of human heads and affixing them to stakes, scalping, biological attacks and massacre were all tactics used by the European colonial powers in their genocidal wars of domination and by the United States in Vietnam. Shall we not mention the firebombing of entire cities in the Second World War?  In Central and South America the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency trained local militias in the use of terrorism. The same was true in Afghanistan against the Soviets. Terrorism is and has been the province of the covert services to empire.
     A pagan response to terrorism is first to condemn it as evil, categorically and to accept responsibility for its continued use. But then, Pagans must look to our own complicity in the cultural and cosmic genesis of terrorism, imperialism and technocracy. In other words we must not feed the gods of war but instead channel the gods of peace, compassion and light – we must be in the world of darkness, but not of it. In addition Pagan celebrations of life must include prayers and rituals that bring Darkness into the Light as a restorative measure to a world that is horribly out of balance. Then we can turn our attention to the ultimate forces at play, educate ourselves and ask probing, knowledgeable questions about terrorism’s ultimate source and determine responsibility for its use. For this to occur, the cloak of “national security” must be removed as a tool for suppressing pertinent facts and intelligence. In no other case is this more prescient than the attacks of September 11, 2001.  With an eye toward history and another on the Heart of Darkness we may gain some answers to the disturbing questions that surround the events of that day, answers that hold the potential to transform even the cold technocratic “Heart of Darkness”.

Footnotes:
1. Starhawk, “Pagans Reject the Idea of Evil – A Pagan Response to Terrorism”; Beliefnet, 2005
2. Andrew Kimbrell, Confronting Evil”; Tikkun, Nov./Dec. 2001
3. Ibid

4. Ibid

5. Marvin W. Meyer, The Ancient Mysteries-A Sourcebook; Harper Collins, 1987, Pg 9

6 .Franz Cumont, Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism,  Dover, 1956, Pg. 155

7. Robert Ellwood, The Politics of Myth, State University of New York, 1999, Pg 42

8. Thomson, Evil and World Order, Harper Collins , 1976, Pg. 1

9. Ibid, Pg. 4