Remembering My First Real Teacher!

If you have ever met a true Pagan, consider yourself blessed. These men walk among us in the guise of little gods, asking outwardly for worship, but truly desiring friendship. If you have ever befriended a modern-day Pagan, you are a better man than I. What I would give to know the precious inner pains of these little Achilles! They have been dipped by divinity into the waters, and all that remains of their humanity is that tiny bare spot on their heel. Their humanity, which is to say their need to worship someone, has been reduced to a bodily weakness. Which is not to say that they are incontinent! Far from it! The body’s energies in these men have been rechanneled to such an extent that their Eros has been lodged in it’s proper place: the place between the heart and the mind. No, these men will not leave a discussion table for a night with Helen herself.

And what of the spirited part of man, you ask? Where can you find that in a modern day pagan? It pains me to say this, but I do not know. They will sit complacently by while the most terrible blasphemies are uttered against God. In fact Neitzsche himself might enter the seminar room, raving mad with syphyills, proclaiming the death of God and the disdain of Socrates, and all you will get out of the Pagan is a chuckle, an apology for rudeness, and a pointed question formulated to expose the mad German’s careless reading of “the text”. I tell you, I have seen a modern day Nietzsche apologize to, bow before, and complement a Pagan, before hurriedly excusing himself from the classroom. The Pagan is sobriety incarnate. He cannot help but sober up the impressionable.

As I said, it is in their bodies that the Pagan’s need for worship resides. That is to say, if you wish to meet a modern-day Pagan, look for him among the academic Jews. Who else is born bodily into covenant? And not just any academic Jews: you will not find a Pagan among the liberals. Among the reformed set you will find many activists, transferring their holy anger to the injustices of the world, but you will not find a Pagan. No, a Pagan knows that man needs worship, he knows its proper object, and he rejects the existence of that object. In fact it is in this aspect of his soul that his power lies: he was born a worshipper, but has remade himself into a philosopher. His need for worship contents itself with that tiny spot of heel. Perhaps one day an arrow will fall from heaven and strike him dead to the world, but until that time, he must trod his own path by the light of his own lamp.

I say the modern-day Jewish academic Pagan rejects the existence of God. But of all men you will encounter in academia, he is the most open to the possibility of God’s existence. Not open like a Christian academic is open, (i.e. opened in confident love), but open like a wound, or like a half of a sphere. You will hear a catch in his voice when his dialectical back is against the wall, but do not let your guard down. He will find your weak premises, or he will overpower the room with his silence, but he will not get flustered. He knows that if he gets flustered, you might get flustered. If he starts taking himself more seriously than the conversation, then you might stop taking the conversation seriously. And how would you ever be able to become friends if you could not converse seriously? As I said at the outset, these men above all want equals, true friends, their other half. Their god like outward aspect is merely their default dialectical shield. If you have ever seen two of these men greet each other, then you have seen two half moons knowingly nodding from their priviledged positions orbiting the inner ring of the unmoved mover.