Within the texts we have read a pattern of growing complexity emerges, not only of our conception of divinity, but of our relation
to divinity. The move from polytheism to monotheism suggests an evolution, not in a strictly linear sense as Langer suggests and
Kirk cautions us against, but of complexity by degrees, similar to the 'great chain of being' in a concentric formation. As the deities
we envisage change in their function, so too do our relationships to them change reciprocally.
In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, we see a world where the individual human is conceptualized as a means of
sustenance. The gods only require humans to provide them offerings and sacrifice. Humanity's fate was to be annihilation
by famine when Demeter withdrew from the world her power of sustenance. Persephone is the symbol by which we are to
understand the cyclic nature of birth, death and rebirth. She is the fallow Earth which when impregnated with the pomegranate
seed will germinate into woman, the fertile Earth, capable of continuing this cycle of life. Her rebirth therefore is not spiritual but
physical, like the seasons of the agricultural year: fallow, seed, and reap.
In Hesiod's Theogony, this fertile ground is much more chaotic and complex. The seed of the world's creativity has
given way to a ripe multiplicity. Nature has run riot, a chaotic fecundity, which threatens to choke the whole of creation with
monstrous life feeding upon itself just to endure. Some form of order has to be established on these suspect social relations,
so that this eternal cycle of rampant incest, infanticide and cannibalism can be stopped. Without cooperation, a collaborative
effort, any attempt to curb this life feeding on life scenario will result only in the active agent exchanging roles with the
dispossessed, leaving the cycle to continue; there is no honor among thieves.
J's genius is Yahweh, an ironic, if accessible god, whose interrelationship with humanity in general, and the tribe of Israel in
particular, illustrates the same idea as Theogony. The story of how a progenitor should deal with his progeny. The seed
is now a chosen family line, and their story is the struggle of Yahweh juggling the roles of creator and parent. Where
we had father destroying son to avoid being dethroned, we now have a more complex struggle of sibling against sibling for the
blessing of the sire, and the promise of the god. The growth process is so well articulated, it is hard not to respect Jah for his
efforts at emotional restraint and forgiveness, and consequently to forgive him for his immature acts of destruction, and desire
for his seed to grow in his image.
In Persephone's sacrifice we saw the flickering images on the wall of the cave, in the New Testament we get the opportunity to
stare into the flame. With Jesus we have an incarnate god who urges us to see the flame within ourselves and not the shadows
of the world. The interior experience of the individual is stressed, and the concept of a soul is introduced. The
physical rebirth that Persephone is a symbol of, becomes the spiritual salvation of a right life in the sacrifice of Jesus. The seed
is then the self, and the growth of this internal life becomes the singular responsibility of each individual. No longer do we look
to the heights for our salvation, but within our own conscience, to see if our actions match the model of this right livelihood.
Personal conduct becomes the method of transcendence, not which orthodoxy your supplicant to. Salvation is not whose seed
we sprang from, but what seeds we sow.
In Milton's Paradise Lost, this individual choice is the crux upon which we rise or fall. The seed has become a germ
with which humanity is inoculated; the spiritual immune system can not fight the disease without a taste of the apple. The
fall then is the antibody with which to kill the pathogens of a life lived in sin. The seed of transcendence was there from the
beginning, it requires, as Sean said, "a maintenance of grace" in order to bring forth the fruit of new life. By acknowledging our
individual falls we show the world the path out of this mortal coil and up the Tree of Life.
The form of deity corroborates the society's spiritual and physical orientation. As a society's knowledge of self becomes more
intimate, a deity will embody the society's thickening description. We began with the Greek texts, which delineate and distill
human drives, and ended with Milton's thicker description of a pre-psychology. (this conclusion was offered by Sean, a
member of our interpretive community, as I had failed to include a conclusion.)