Edit: For another application of Object Oriented Ontology in the real world, please check out this post from The Trickster’s Guide to Geopolitics, written by a friend of mine who specializes in foreign relations and ultimately introduced me to Object Oriented Ontology.
I have been kicking around ideas for a long essay for a while, but I think I may have narrowed down some of the key ideas to do a quick blog post (which, by the way, I have been absent for far too long…soooo…hi again!). In previous posts I have mentioned my strong disagreement with the general postmodernist approach dominant in Paganism today. Principally, my objection rests on the inability of postmodernism to analyze the world or provide any new information. I am no fan of postmodernism in general, and less so in theology, but there aren’t very many good alternatives. Many Pagans have revived Neoplatonist approaches, but these stop short in their ability to interpret reality outside theology, and no philosophy used to explain theology is sufficient if it stops where the rest of reality begins. Recently, I’ve begun to delve into Speculative Realism–a new branch of philosophy that posits that reality exists outside human perception–but more specifically I have become quite attracted to Object Oriented Ontology (OOO). First put forth by Graham Harmon and elaborated by Levi Bryant, OOO posits that all things are objects and have objective reality. Everything in the universe is an object with equal footing and equal stake in the interactions that occur. This deprioritizes the human mind and human perception in determining whether or not phenomena occur. For those familiar with Schroedinger, this effectively negates the superposition of alternate states prior to the collapse of the wave function through observation, since, whether or not a human observes the cat living or dying, the cat object and the cesium object are still involved in a phenomenon that will produce either a living or a dead cat, and no human observation will change what happens when that cat and that cesium interact.
Key to understanding Harmon’s and Bryant’s objects is the concept of “withdrawal”. Withdrawal is the key feature of an object to never be fully comprehended by the observer (negating absolute knowledge in the process). For instance, for every object called “apple” there is a particular quality that allows us to call them all “apple”; yet when we describe them by color, by feel, size, weight, texture, taste, aroma, chemical composition, etc. etc. it can be demonstrated objectively that no two apples are identical. And still we know them all to be apples. In a sense, we could say that withdrawal is simply the Platonic quintessence described through different means, but OOO rejects overmining in which objects are described as surface manifestations of some inner essence. Similarly, OOO rejects undermining in which it is asserted that objects in reality are simply projections of human consciousness, understanding, or will. Withdrawal, in short, is the fundamental quality of an object to deny us complete and direct understanding, asserting that all knowledge is incomplete and indirect.
But what does this have to do with the divine? As I already stated, any philosophy that informs our theology should be equally capable of grappling with the world around us. And since Speculative Realism has many advantages over other philosophical modes (including prioritizing the phenomenon of global warming as a hyper object over the profits of individual businessmen) in grappling with the world around us, it seems only logical to therefore apply it to our theology, and therefore to our gods.
The first observation one can make in applying OOO to the gods is that, by doing so, we assume their reality. This means that, unfortunately, Jungian interpretations of the gods as metaphorical archetypes projected by the human psyche are utterly incompatible with this approach. It can be argued that these interpretations never had a valid stake in the conversation to begin with, since a metaphorical interpretation precludes essential being, but it is sufficient here simply to point out that the vogue intellectual mainstream of 20th Century Paganism isn’t necessarily comfortable with the idea of reality, preferring to live in the world of idealism, and to move on.
By observing the reality of the gods, we can proceed no further on what this actually means without some sort of indirect knowledge of who and what they are. If we speak primarily of the gods of classical antiquity, as well as the living gods of traditional religions the world over, the germ of knowledge is contained in the accumulated traditions of their divine cults. For the gods of antiquity, this germ of knowledge is contained in the myths, both oral and written, for no person approaches Athena, or Ishtar, or Horus, or Dionysius except by having encountered this germ indirectly through myth or by those who have transmitted the myth. Without it, knowledge of the god is gone, and we are unable to recover it.
But what of personal gnosis? This quintessential feature of modern Paganism is how we as a faith community cope with the loss of the localized cult structure of classical Paganism. By adopting individualized, atomistic features of Protestant Christian tradition (expected considering the countries where the Pagan Renaissance was born), we have availed ourselves of many of the otherwise impossible requirements of classical temple worship. Over the last century, this has grown into a tradition whereby we prefer to work with a divine personality rather than in service to it, and we do not speak of worship and adoration so much as we phrase it exactly as we have: to work with. To accomplish this goal, we speak of personal relationships with the divine (similar verbiage is essential to the Protestant rule of faith) which are built, strengthened, and maintained through meditation and the making of offerings. This gnosis is, therefore, defined as direct personal knowledge of the divine. In the postmodern conception of religion that dominates Pagan literature, this gnosis is the divine equivalent of personal experience, which is prioritized above all else in postmodern epistemology. This presents us with a problem. Either personal gnosis is incompatible with OOO or we are fundamentally misunderstanding the phenomenon of personal gnosis.
I would argue that it is the latter. Gnosis is not the primary avenue through which we come to know the divine; it is the secondary avenue, and it completes a hermeneutic circuit with the myths that form the primary avenue in our approach to discerning the gods. The objection to this seems obvious–the myths are from a period deep in the past, and their knowledge of the world around them was so incomplete that the gods had to take on the roles of that which was unexplainable. Therefore, the myths supply insufficient detail about the true reality of the gods, and gnosis fills the gap. This objection fails, however, to internalize the interrelated nature of the two. As previously stated, the germ of knowledge necessary to approach the gods is contained in the myth. We then approach the gods via gnosis armed with this germ, and our gnosis feeds the germ. We return to the myths with what we have encountered in gnosis, and it enlightens greater meaning from the myths that we therefore carry with us to gnosis, etc. Gnosis then exists first to establish the conduit of communion with the gods, and second to enrich our understanding and appreciation of myth. Our interactions with others who encounter the same myths and the same gods enriches the community of Pagans, and we are strengthened by it.
There is much more to be said about objectifying the gods, but here is a perfectly fine place to stop for now. The fruit of our examination has produced two observations:
- The gods are real and are understood through accumulated traditions known as myth; and
- Gnosis and myth form a hermeneutic cycle necessary to properly approaching the gods (as objects).
These two observations may ultimately produce more questions than they answer. But for now, it is the foundation of a positive alternative to postmodernism and a necessary maturing of Pagan theological identity.
An Examen of Witches 