Ebony's Pearls

Trinkets Game in Bag
Originally uploaded by nodigio

Numenism did not spring full-blown from the head of any of our founders. In the early years, Numenism struggled to find itself and develop its own voice, and it did so through the voices and wisdom of others. Each element added to Numenism underwent extensive debate, argumentation, research, and testing not just to see if it fit into the worldview we were developing but to see if it stood up under the intense scrutiny, to see if it was right for Numenism. Not all philosophies, not all thoughts or research belonged in Numenism.

There’s a lot we abandoned along the way as not appropriate because it didn’t withstand our testing, didn’t fit into Numenism because we didn’t have the connections to it yet, or because it was too unique and sacred to some other religion.

In the first case, we completely abandoned it. It was provably false, it was outdated and not modernizable, it lacked any connection with reality, it promoted ideals or behaviors we felt were destructive, or any of a variety of “it’s not worthy” reasons. Yes, this makes us sound elitist. Elitism is not a dirty word or a negative concept. Through elitism, we are encouraged to better ourselves and those around us. It is through discrimination, discernment and knowledge that we grow and improve ourselves. The things we abandoned kept us stagnant or actively damaged us or took away the advances we’ve made.

In the second case, we tabled it for further research, perhaps when we had more information or were able to make the bridges and connections. These were concepts, ideas, knowledge, behaviors that we felt might fit into Numenism, just not right now. From time to time, we bring these up and re-examine them and where we are in our spiritual development as a religion. Sometimes, we find the connections. Sometimes, we re-shelve it again.

In the third case, we study the concept, the meaning of the symbols and rituals until we can unravel what is at the deepest core. Many times, we can reach the essence of the symbol or ritual and discover we already have that in Numenism, in ways that are meaningful and sacred to us, so there is no need to use what the other religion has. We always learn and grow from the experience. In those times when we learn something completely new, we study that essence to see how it applies to Numenism, to us, and we incorporate that knowledge into Numenism in a way that makes it Numenist, and not an appropriation from another religion.

Let me share some examples.

Our primal founding concept, the one that took years to develop and eventually lent its name to the religion, came from many sources. Originally, Numenism was a Christian study group formed at the end of WWII to explain to the participants what happened, the atom bomb, the massive death and destruction, the entire known world being caught up in it, and the major advances in knowledge and technology. Christianity of itself couldn’t provide real answers, only platitudes and submission. Having been soldiers, this was unacceptable. There had to be answers, there had to be a way to understand what happened and why, so the founders, the original study group members reached back into history and studied the philosophies of the ancients and they reached out to science, to the modern scientific method to find a foundation upon which to base the rest of the studies.

At that time, they were still in the mindset of Christianity – which is not a bad place to be, but they found the concepts of the Christian God and of Jesus to be too simplistic and narrow to appeal to adults. The goal was to learn more about the nature of God and Jesus and to build a connection that was dynamic and meaningful and fulfilling.

Thales and Anaximander of Miletus provided the arche and the beginnings of our methodology. What we know of Thales is predominantly what others wrote of him, but Anaximander was Thales’ student and some of his written works survived. Unlike Anaximander, though, we don’t subscribe to the indefinitiveness of apeiron. We do believe, like Thales, that there is an underlying principle to the universe, and we believe this principle is divinity. Pythagoras was among the earliest philosophers who contributed to our view and use of magic through his recognition of patterns and orderliness, and his inclusion of woman as equal participants, although we disregard his belief about beans. Heraclitus contributed his concept of things always being in flux, which enlarged Pythagoras’s patterns. Heraclitus gave us the word “kosmos” and the concept of the coincidence of opposites. It was Anaxagoras who sparked the concept of holography: "There is a portion of everything in everything." We also share Anaxagoras’s belief that the mind is the most important tool that shapes our world. Can you see how these contributed to our most basic premise of divinity? But let me tell you more about it. Other philosophers gave our concept greater substance and definition. Empedocles gave us the pore theory: “Objects emit portions of themselves which mingle with our sense organs and allow us to perceive them.” This in turn was the foundation of our 9 sensory organs and the core of our training for them as well as our way of exploring and learning more about Pythagoras’s patterns and Thales’s arche, and gave credence to Anaxagoras’s holographic concept. Zeno of Elea’s reductio ad absurdum argumentation method has come in very handy in developing our definition and view of divinity. Philolaus contributed his concept of limiters and unlimited in our studies and research, and we found this method as helpful as Zeno’s. Diogenes created the Cynics, and this philosophy also helped us in our search and research for a meaningful and valid concept of divinity which would provide the arche and base of Numenism. For those who don’t know the precepts of Cyncism, they are: “Self-sufficiency (ataraxia), Living by personal example, Exposing the falsehood of conventional thinking, Exposing vice and conceit, and Living according to nature.” Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, and Pyrrho all contributed their pieces, but none so much as Zeno of Citium, the founder of the Stoic Philosohpy, although most of what we know about Stoicism came from Chrysippus. Like Zeno, we believe a rational society would have no need for laws, only guidelines for visitors and children to learn, however, as a realist, we, like Zeno, accept social realities – society isn’t rational, therefore some laws are needed. We also believe that wisdom is the root of virtue. Oddly, we take very little from the actual Stocism (which we feel is inappropriate to Numenism - especially the concept of apatheia – to remain unaffected by external events such as pleasure, for example) beyond their concepts of logic and divinity, but those have a strong impact upon our development of our concept of divinity. Connect the Stoic’s discourses on divinity with Thales’s arche, and you can see the progression of how we developed Dea Nutrix.

But we didn’t rely on Western philosophers. Early exposure to Shintoism during WWII laced all of our studies into divinity. Shintoism has a history going back to 8000 bce, where Greco-Roman philosophy only extends back to 600 bce. Shinto, in its earliest form, had no name, no written scriptures, no explicit philosophy, only an organic and understood blend of nature worship, hero worship, shamanism, divination, and spirituality whose chief purpose was to celebrate and enrich life deeply rooted in everyday life. Exposure to western concepts like Buddhism, Confucianism, and Christianity did little to alter this even though the practice of Shintoism migrated into many shrines and set rituals and a class of tending priests. Shintoism is based on primordial harmony where divine, natural, and human elements are intimately interrelated and with the assumption that humans are innately good. The concept of “kami” – that which inspires reverence, admiration, and awe – blended with the Thalesic arche, the Anaxagoric hologramic divinity, and the Stoic pervasiveness of divinity came together to form what we call “Dea Nutrix”.

All of this coalesced to generate our celebrations, festivals, daily life, attitudes, behavior, respect and appreciation for life, and our deep conviction that we are innately divine, intimately connected to the creative generative force of the universe, and in turn, this presented to us our vision of divinity – a layered, purposed, omnipresent force. We are the work in progress of the divine, and we can choose to further or hinder that work, or to do nothing and still, by doing nothing, contribute to the desires and needs of Dea Nutrix. We, being individuated corporeal beings, are limited by what we can experience and know – but those boundaries are fluid.

For this concept of limiters and unlimited, we thank Philolaus. For the holographic concept of Dea Nutrix, we look to Shintoism, Anaxaagoras, Zeno of Citium, Diogenes, Empedocles, and Thales. For the layeredness of Dea Nutrix, we look to Pythagoras, Heraclitus, and Philolaus. For the meaning of Dea Nutrix, we look to Diogenes, Epicurus, and Shintoism.

And that's how we developed Dea Nutrix. It took us many years and much argumentation, debate, reasearch, and discussion. We acknowledge that for us, divinity is a concept and not a single being, although we aren't ruling out the possibility of one or more corporeal on some plane we don't yet recognize or can't yet sense beings who are singly or collectively what we are calling "Dea Nutrix".

This is a truncated version of years of effort, so I'm bound to have left things out.