It comes to me that when humans live closely with animals they grow in affection for them, even if they use them for food and well-being. In time this affection changes from simple gratitude and reverence for the sacrifice these ‘friends’ make on their behalf. From that the feeling steadily grows and those that were perhaps originally butchers and responsible for the slaughter of these ‘family members’, become themselves revered within society. They gain a certain prominence and respect and their importance changes from a servant to the village to a leading role within it, evolving gradually into priests – those that know the right way to do things.
It has long been an interest of mine as to how what is common knowledge, shared among all, becomes the province of specialists, and how religion grows out of this once common knowledge. I have studied the myths and legends of many different cultures and seen how the vital knowledge of a group becomes mythologised and forms the basis of the religious beliefs of that group.
The first knowledge that parents pass on to their young is how to feed themselves. We can witness this among sparrows as the elders show their young how to pick up grains, and grit to digest the grains. For humans wandering through a landscape myths and stories build around places of abundant food and water, and at what times of year these are available. This knowledge becomes redundant when new technologies and knowledge arise and societies change from wandering to sedentary. Agriculture requires annual tending. It may begin, as in the case of some North African tribes, by throwing a few seeds on the ground of an already fertile area and wandering on to new pastures, returning a year later to harvest their earlier efforts.
When a village begins to grow, specialised tasks evolve into what later will become professions, but at first are merely tasks. The miller, the brewer, the baker, are all examples of early tasks which will become full time occupations of individuals within a small society. Those less obvious skills will be the merry-makers, musicians and story tellers. Among these will be the guardians of the repositories of wisdom shared within society. These will be those who share the traditions of that society and these in turn develop into the tenets of their laws and faith.
When knowledge of a landscape is no longer relevant, since the group is no longer wandering but has learned to stay in one place and cultivate their needs, those same wisdom structures become revered for their own sake with no relevance to ‘modern’ understanding. They become the basis of the religious sentiments of a group.
It has long been my belief that people will revere the animals they depend upon. So we find among the Semitic people, the Goat herders, that the goat becomes the form of their God. This is not to suggest it is exlcusively found among those living in the Middle East.
Pan, it will be recalled was also a Greek God. But this was after the political amalgamation of those territories settled by others. Pan is a god of Arcadia, and Arcadia is a sloppily disguised Akkadia. It was from the Kingdom of Akkad that the original settlers came who gave their name to the land known as Arcadia. These were the goat herders who had fed the cities of Sumeria and record some of their wanderings in the books of the Bible.
We can expect the love and devotion of the true desert dwellers to fall to the Camel or Horse, while further north in the Tundra among the Saami a similar status will be given to the Reindeer. For Europeans that reverence is given to the Bull and to the Horse. The Bull because of the older veneration of the cow, for reasons discussed elsewhere, while the Horse was deserving of reverence for the power it bestows on plains dwellers and conquerors of more sedentary people.
Today of course, the role of the goat has been extended to become the inner secret teaching of the Knights Templars and the Freemasons under the name Baphomet and likened, by the Catholic Church to the Devil in its distorted theology as source of all evil.
Pan, under the name Faunus was revered by the Romans and may be equated with Saturn, whose followers were pictured as Satyrs. The festivals of Faunus and Saturn coincided in ancient Rome around the time of the winter solstice, and were accompanied by much revelry and raucous behaviour. To the extent that any woman found in the streets after sunset was considered ‘fair game’. Knowing this of course some women will have taken advantage of the opportunity to be taken advantage of.
But the goat is not a European God but a Middle Eastern one and this should be understood by those who seek to follow those ancient ways, and consider the outcomes in terms of social conscience and behaviour as displayed in the modern world.
