19 May 2023

What Western Polytheists Can Learn from Muslims

"Choosing the Rose" by Portaels (1860s)
Islam is said to be the fastest growing religion in the world. Currently around a quarter of all people on earth identify as Muslim. According to Pew Research:

“If current demographic trends continue … Muslims – a comparatively youthful population with high fertility rates – are projected to increase by 73% … As a result … by 2050 there will be near parity between Muslims (2.8 billion, or 30% of the population) and Christians (2.9 billion, or 31%), possibly for the first time in history.”

Conversion to Islam also seems to be relatively common, with nearly a quarter of American Muslims being converts, so the Islamic growth factor is not only down to having more children. 

There is undeniably something dynamic about Islam, and Muslim communities appear to be getting at least some of the crucial aspects of being human very right. Most praiseworthy is the Islamic reverence, or at least strong respect, for mothers – the saying goes “heaven lies beneath the feet of mothers”. By way of example, when a young man asked Muhammad if he could join the military (because he longed to do so) though his mother objected, Muhammad is said to have replied “stay with your mother. I swear to the God Who chose me as prophet that the spiritual reward which you receive for serving her even one night and making her happy with your presence, is greater than a one-year long holy war”. A more contemporary example of the Islamic reverence for mothers took place in Morocco after the 2022 FIFA world cup, when the Moroccan team (who had just become the first ever Arab team to reach the semi-finals) was honoured by the King along with their mothers, after heart-warming videos had gone viral throughout the Islamic world of players running to embrace their mothers after winning a match.

Any spiritual tradition that venerates motherhood is operating in accord with the regenerative aspect of nature. When we look at the most prominent Gods of ancient Rome we see what aspects of nature they revered most: Venus and Mars – thus love, fertility and virility (Mars is not only a God of war but also agriculture). To get these very fundamental things right is to light the path to success, though it’s clearly a path on which many descendants of Europa have lost their way. It is not so much that we are not sexually active but that too few of us are in long term relationships.* This not ideal, as a tale from Ovid’s Metamorphoses demonstrates:

“The Propoetides – fools who denied Venus divinity – she stripped off their good names and their undergarments, and made them whores. As those women hardened .... their features hardened like their hearts. Soon they shrank to the ... heartless, treacherous hardness of sharp shards of flint.

The spectacle of these cursed women sent Pygmalion ... slightly mad. He adored woman, but he saw … these particular women transform, as if by some occult connection, every woman's uterus to a spider. Her face, voice, gestures, hair became its web ...

So he lived in the solitary confinement of a phobia, shunning living women, wifeless. Yet he still dreamed of woman ... [The story of Pygmalion from bk X, as translated by Ted Hughes]”

Thus, when we engage in sex without love Venus is displeased – the sexually active Propoetides lost not only the ability to love, but also the gift of fertility (btw, I am not here implying that modern women are equivalent to the Propoetides, I repeat the story for its cautionary tale). Venus is not a Goddess of lotus-eating pleasure, she is a divine mother. She is, as Lucretius writes:

“… mother of the Roman race, delight of men and Gods, Venus most bountiful … by your power creatures of every kind are brought to birth and rising up behold the light of sun … first birds of the air proclaim you, Goddess divine, and herald your approach, pierced to the heart by your almighty power … you make each in their hearts’ desire beget after their kind their breed and progeny … [bk I, as translated by Ronald Melville]”

While fertility declines so too I detect a subtle swell of angst as one nation after another has less children, and the ranks of the elderly grow. Some even say there will be a great replacement … which reminds me of another great replacement, namely that of the Palestinians. Many years ago I read an article that really stayed with me (but which I have been unable to locate again) – it was about well-educated Palestinian women who wanted to wreak revenge for the loss of their ancestral homeland. They decided to do what they knew would upset their usurpers the most – they refused the prospect of annihilation by having as many children as possible. Thus the Arab population of Palestine was 1.4 million when they lost their nation in 1948 and 5.4 million in 2023 – in the last decade the average Palestinian woman got married at age 20 and gave birth to three or four children (despite low financial wealth). There is nothing to stop Westerners doing the same thing except ourselves. If we live with love as our highest ideal and hold motherhood in reverence we too can find our way out of the desert.


* With the inevitable result that fertility, especially amongst young women (who are the most natural acolytes of Venus) has declined sharply: Births in Australia | Australian Institute of Family Studies (aifs.gov.au).

Sources: 
T Hughes, Tales from Ovid, Faber and Faber
Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe, Oxford World's Classics
'Single shaming': Why people jump to judge the un-partnered - BBC Worklife
It’s not just you: New data shows more than half of young people in America don’t have a romantic partner - The Washington Post
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2 comments:

  1. NaldonSunday, 28 May, 2023

    Very glad to have found your blog. Unbelievable work, let me know where I can continue to follow and support!

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