Podcast on a very pagan folk song: "Two Magicians"

The Pre-Indo-European Anatolian Mother Goddess of Agriculture

Thicc Anatolian Neolithic goddess

People always ask me about Neolithic, pre-Indo-European European religion, and how much survived. I usually say that it is not possible to know much about the pre-literate Neolithic Europeans and hard to distinguish what elements of subsequent IE religion were carried on from before. However we can learn a lot by looking at Anatolia.
10,300 years ago, hunter gatherers in Anatolia started farming. This figure (above) of a seated Anatolian goddess dates to about 8000 years ago. 8,500 years ago Anatolians spread across Europe, replacing most of the people (Western Hunter-Gatherers) who were there before and bringing their agriculturally oriented religion which was heavily conscious of seasons and when to plant. To talk about pre-IE religion in Europe, is the same as talking about Near-Eastern religion since it all originates in Anatolia just as Neolithic Europeans did. Indo-Europeans invaded Anatolia and Europe over the 3rd millennium BC - the ones in Anatolia spoke languages (the Anatolian language family) ancestral to Hittite and Luwian. DNA shows that genetically, Anatolians were not altered much by the IE invasion, especially compared to Northern Europe. It is interesting therefore that their religion was so different to other Indo-European religions. For example, Hittite temples were built according to the same celestial principles as Stonehenge (aligned for solstices) and other Neolithic solar monuments.

Also worthy of note is the fact that some Anatolian peoples, such as Lycians, practiced matronymics, and a tradition of legitimacy and inheritance denoted by the maternal rather than paternal line. Lycian women were able to marry foreigners and have legitimate children but Lycian men, even aristocrats, could not. This is very unlike any other Indo-European culture and almost certainly derives from earlier customs of the Near-East!

Cybele

The goddess Cybele was Anatolian in origin; an earth mother credited with inventing agriculture. She is seems to be a pre-IE goddess and as her cult spread across the Mediterranean, she was associated and combined with other agricultural mother goddesses who were obviously derived from the same original Neolithic Anatolian figure. eg. Artemis of Ephesus was a regional cult in which the Greek hunter goddess was transformed into the Anatolian mother goddess. This cult was influential on the later cult of the Virgin Mary. The Roman goddess Ceres, whose name is cognate with cereal, was seen as equivalent to Greek Demeter (the Mother) - and her cult survived for awhile in Rome alongside the imported Anatolian cult of Cybele, who they called Magna Mater. The Romans also associated the Greek mother goddess Rhea (here seated much like Cybele or the prehistoric Anatolian goddess statue) with the Magna Mater.

Artemis of Ephesus

Ceres

Rhea

Just as there is more Anatolian farmer DNA in Southern than Northern Europe, we see more clear evidence of the endurance of the Neolithic agricultural mother goddess in the South, and most of all among the Anatolians living in the region where her cult originated. If you want to know what religion in pre-IE Britain or Europe might have been like, then take a look at the castrated transgender priests and orgiastic cults of Cybele or other Near-Eastern semi-matriarchal cults.

The Post Human Ideal and Transhumanism

“It is also possible to suppose that mechanical inventions, developed even further and further, may reach a point where they will seem so dangerous that men will feel impelled to renounce them, either from the terror gradually aroused by some of their consequences, or else following on a cataclysm which everyone is at liberty to picture as he pleases.” ‘Intro to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines’ - Guenon

Guenon’s theory that horrifying technological advances could be a catalyst, signifying the high water mark for the cult of progress before the West turns instead to a more Traditionally oriented civilisational mode, is represented in popular science fiction as "reactionary technophobia".

Specifically where post human ideals are represented, we find frequent examples of a mania for the dissolution of the organic human in favour of a new “higher”, mechanised version. While there were many films and novels of this genre (beginning perhaps with Shelley’s Frankenstein 1818) which serve as warnings of the dangers of the post-human or post-organic ideal; The Glass Bees, The Terminator, Demon Seed, Colossus: The Forbin Project, etc. In more recent years the trend is to portray post-humanism in a positive light, with sympathy for the cyborgs, augmented humans and artificial intelligences.

Fritz Lang’s Metropolis 1927, foreshadowed much of what was to come in post-human sci-fi. It was remade as an anime in 2001 Metropolis (2001 film), in which the proletariat revolution against machines was preserved, but combined with a separate reaction from a privately funded “Fascist” organisation called the Marduks. Due to the Shinto religion’s belief that a kami (spirit) can occupy a robot, the sympathy for AI in Japanese cinema is more nuanced than the purely progressive representations in the West.

Another anime, Ghost in the Shell, while generally uncritical of the processes that lead to post-human conditions, is not altogether without merit. That being said the spin off series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex features a typically anti-traditional plot-line in which the cybernetic police must battle an anti-refugee terrorist group named Individual Eleven, whose inspiration, a fictional political theorist named Patrick Sylvester, was based on Yukio Mishima and the essays the group disseminates are based on Mishima's "Kindai Nohgaku Shu (Modern Noh Collection)". However, the depiction of Sylvester is not entirely unsympathetic….

‘If one were to give one’s life as a revolutionary leader, that life would be sublimated into something transcendent. In death, a hero meets his mortal end, but he gains eternity.’ Patrick Sylvester.

Such nuances are entirely absent in modern films such as Lucy (2014), in which a kind of false transcendence is celebrated. The review on Gornahoor puts it perfectly.

“Although Lucy achieves something like the Absolute Self, she is still “other”. Although she provides the world with all knowledge as bits on a flash drive, she does not solve the problem of meaning. What do they do with that knowledge? What does it all mean? Ultimately, nothing.” Cologero –Review of “Lucy” 2014.

The left is determined to undermine all conventional identity structures (nationhood, gender, race etc) in an effort to disorientate the individual, seemingly in preparation for the “new man” a post-human cyborg, entirely dependent on technology of diverse forms. It is therefore pertinent to discuss the subject of post-humanism in popular culture in detail.

This text is taken from a Survive the Jive facebook post from October, 2016.

Jive Talk: Book Review - Bronze Age Mindset

British Bronze Age / Ancient History Documentary