Notes on a Plural Future Spirituality with Plural Identities

Interesting speculative piece by Remi Sussan:

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"Recently I have been reading an extremely interesting study from Benjamin Sommer, "bodies of gods". His main thesis is that the gods of the "fertile crescent" (Phoenician, Babylonian, Canaanites) had the particularity to have several bodies, and even several "personalities" or "souls". The basic fluidity of these gods may manifest in two forms: fragmentation and overlap. Because of fragmentation a god appear to be in different locations, and even have different selves or personalities.

The author shows as an example of this the following invocation by Assubanipal of the two Ihstar of Niniveh and Arbela:

Exalt and glorify the Lady of Nineveh,

magnify and praise the Lady of Arbela,

who have no equal among the great gods!

Their names are most precious among the goddesses!

Their cult centres have no equal among all the shrines!

A word from their lips is blazing fire!

Their utterances are valid for ever!

I am Assurbanipal, their favorite . . .

I grew up in the lap of my goddesses . . . …

Showing distinctly the existence of two goddesses of the same name. Benjamin Sommer insists to say that the plural is indeed used, and that the syntax shows that they cannot be seen as two different attributes of the same goddess.

With Overlap, gods merge in each other, some are seen as aspects of some others:

"Your head is Adad, who [makes] heaven and earth [resound] like a smithy,

Your brow is Shala, beloved [sp]ouse who contents [Adad’s heart],

Your neck is Marduk, judge of heaven [and netherworld . . .

Your throat is Sarpanitum, creat[ress of peo]ple . ."

According to Summer, the One god of early Judaism, as described in the old testament, shared with other south Mediterranean gods the same capacity to have several bodies. The God of the ancient testament wasn't at first a bodiless pure spirit, but a kind of liquid entity able to appear under several forms.

Sommer only briefly mentions Egypt, as it is not his field of study, but I have simultaneously read Eric Hornung, "the one and the many", and it seems that the Egyptian gods also exhibited this kind of liquid nature. For instance, Hornung notices that the so-called Egyptian syncretism was not simply the absorption of one god by an other; for instance, in Amon-Re , Re is not abolished in Amon, or the reverse. Amon and Re both continue to have their cults, etc. But Egyptians created a third god, a "compound entity" from these two deities. Hornung explicitly compares this process to chemistry, where various compounds are associated in order to create new molecules.

I have also the strong impression that India shared the same paradigm. I don't know for fragmentation, but I'm sure for overlap. Gods divide, and transform easily in each other; look for instance at these extracts from the Ganesha Upanishad:

"You are speech. You are consciousness. You are Bliss. You are Brahma. You are Being-Consciousness-Bliss. You are the Non-Dual. You are plainly Brahma. You are knowledge. You are Intelligence. "

"You are Brahma, You are Vishnu, You are Rudra, You are Agni, You are Vayu, You are the Sun, You are the Moon, You are Brahma, Bhur-Bhuvah-Svar. "

So according to Sommer, one may classify religions not with a unique axis (monotheism/polytheism) but at least two, including the duality fluidity/fixity. Greek mythology is an example of a polytheism where gods and goddesses have just one self, one personality, and early judaism would be an example of a monotheism where a unique divinity may have several bodies and selves.

What should we deduce of that? First an interesting epistemology and ontology. One of the main features of myths and religious though is that frequently they express in a narrative, intuitive embodied way some very abstract notions lying at the core of our way of knowledge. For instance, it's now quite well known that the Christian vision of history culminating in an "Apocalypse" paved the way to our common conception of linear time, a concept shared today by even the most atheist of our thinkers, in opposition to the older vision of cyclical time, shared by many traditional societies. Gregory Bateson mentions an other interesting example , showing how myths may express different versions of the notion of order and disorder.

"Among the Iatmul of New Guinea, the central origin myth, like the Genesis story, deals with the question of how dry land was separated from water. They say that in the beginning the crocodile Kavwokmali paddled with his front legs and with his hind legs; and his paddling kept the mud suspended in the water. The great culture hero, Kevembuangga, came with his spear and killed Kavwokmali. After that the mud settled and dry land was formed. Kevembuangga then stamped with his foot on the dry land, i.e., he proudly demonstrated “that it was good. (…) the Iatmul have arrived at a theory of order which is almost a precise converse of that of the book of Genesis. In Iatmul thought, sorting will occur if randomization is prevented. In Genesis, an agent is invoked to do the sorting and dividing. "

What a future religion may gain from this concept of "fluid gods"? By making the multiplicity the hallmark of perfection, such an ontology may provide narrative for a future psychology where the frontiers of the "body" and the self are increasingly blurred. This include of course, the idea of future uploaded superintelligences able to copy themselves in different supports etc.. But it may help people today to understand their current situations, their own existence as a network of online persona, avatars, agents, what Anders Sandberg calls the "exoself". It may give us a new vision of our mind, as a population of various personalities and entities. I don't speak here exactly about Minsky's society of mind, because, as I understand it, agents in a society of mind are not conscious: I speak more here about multiplication of conscious selves, a kind of "multiple personality disorder" but seen positively. Chaos magicians frequently point at this idea, and it is also used in some sci-fi novels such as Walter Jon Williams' Aristoi. But chaos magicians are frequently original in their ideas but superficial in their approach, and it may be interesting to build seriously some ontology and mythical narratives about this notion of fluidity."