Metaphor and fact in religiosity
For years now I have adopted the view that religious narratives are fundamentally allegorical even when they contain elements of fact. Their goal is, nonetheless, thoroughly practical: to provide a framework within which society can flourish in a manner that is sustainable (i.e. viable over the long-term). The allegories help form the baseline of values and core teachings upon which a corpus of prescriptive statements is established.
Memorable and teachable
Any narrative that contributes to such a framework has to have mnemonic and didactic value. Stories that are hard to remember cannot spread through word of mouth and shall not be easily communicated to people. This is a major problem for intergenerational relations, because the parent will not be teaching the child as much as they could. Same principle for stories that do not contain lessons that are widely applicable: people will not find those stories useful and will eventually ignore them.
This approach emphasises the role of the tutelary figure: the teacher, the scholar, the priest, the hierarch, the shaman, always depending on the specifics of the culture in question. This person performs the vital function of harmonising the private good with the common good in what we may generalise as the wellness of the place with the wellness of the space. The tutelary figure is the person that uses religion as a system for their teachings, adapting insights to the particularities of present life as well as the individual qualities of each member of the social whole they are addressing.
A myth, for example, is not an event that actually happened. It is not a statement of fact in and of itself. The tutelary figure, owning to their experience, can discern the meaning of the myth, the moral of the story, to comment on quotidian affairs, such as to give personalised guidance on one’s struggles in life. Through this tutelage, the lesson drawn from the myth becomes relatable because it applies to immediately recognisable phenomena.
Facts and their constraints
Facts, then, are interesting details that can reinforce the effect of narratives. Though the totality of religion cannot be factual, as that necessarily means that religion must be filled with accompanying data sets or relevant resources: those are not mnemonic, for instance.
Facts may render stories specific to their context: if a story is tied to the given details of the place and people involved, then it may not be as generalisable. A story about an artisan’s craft in ancient China, for instance, might not apply to a modern European if it is all about details of that field of endeavour during that specific era. The generalisation will have to be done beyond those specificities.
Data sets about such details are no mere supporting material though. They are an integral part of a wider approach to how things are handled. Consider a scientific paper, for example: in principle, it is all about facts. The paper’s data has to be verifiable by independent means and its findings shall be reproducible elsewhere. Without verifiability and reproducibility, there are no facts that can be relied upon. They are, at best, curious artefacts potentially worthy of further investigation.
Imagine that if religion is factual, it too has to be consistent with the practice that frames the scientific paper, meaning that each of its claims is substantiated by details which themselves are peer-reviewed and thoroughly examined in independent settings. And those facts have to be applicable today as well as for the indeterminate future, so their reproducibility remains robust to changes in the environment.
I am not aware of any religion that is purely factual of the sort here considered. Religions claim to be factual on some accounts and admit to their allegorical nature on others. Though once this point is granted, then one can only wonder where exactly the boundaries are set and whether the goalposts will keep shifting if expedient.
From facts to ideology
My claim that religion is fundamentally allegorical is not to discount religion, but to salvage it because it is a potent tool for social cohesion. I wish to carve for religion a place that keeps it relevant long-term, given the obvious descriptive power and potential for innovation that science, its putative competitor, has. To me, religion and science apply to different facets of life and are thus compatible once each focuses on its strengths.
This approach also saves science from the trap of scientism, namely, the ideology of fastening upon the scientific corpus cultural teachings that themselves cannot be strictly aligned with the scientific method because they then lose their mnemonic and didactic value.
A defining feature of our era is said scientism. People try to find all-encompassing guidance for their daily life in tenuous factoids of the sort “a paper found such and such”, “scientists may have found how this and that are related”. People rush to use those preliminary findings as the basis for far-reaching claims that the data does not support. They do not even know how to treat the source material with the requisite scepticism.
It is common for those under the sway of scientism to rely on an implicit metaphysics while pretending to eschew metaphysics altogether, thinking they are practical and believing they are smart by avoiding “all that nonsense”. As a result, the average person overestimates their competence and ventures to do things that are potentially self-destructive.
Scientism debases both science and culture because it stands at an awkward intermediate state between the two, combining their parts in the worst possible way.
I want to help people find focus in their life instead of getting pulled in to futile squabbles over science versus religion, my religion versus your religion, and so on. I see myself as the figure who has responsibility to inspire—and at times to challenge—people to aim for a state of clarity, instead of giving them grist for the mill they are caught in. I am not converting anyone to anything: they will know what to do once they put things in order.
Against this backdrop, I extend what I have written thus far with commentary on the article titled On becoming a magus from the Under The Juniper Tree blog (hereinafter referred to as “the blog” in the interest of brevity). It gives me the pretext to expound on what I was anyway going to cover. Using excerpts from the blog makes my points more relatable, so I do not need to draw my own examples: I can rely instead on what another person states since it is representative of broader patterns of thought that I have encountered.
Metaphor and symbolism
From the blog:
The magician, in the tarot world, is represented as someone in robes (Jesuschrist) able to control the four elements: air (swords), fire (wands), earth (pentacles) and water (coups). He is shown displaying these things in a table, in calmness.
Tomberg is his Meditations on the Tarot, expounds about this topic and how occultist like Eliphas Levi said that Jesuschrist was the ultimate magician and that the rest of us mortal wouldn’t ever be more than warlocks.
Should we take this literally? Are the four elements a statement of fact? What does that entail for chemistry? Can I describe the desk and computer hardware I am now using in terms of the four elements and have this be a reproducible description? Can I, for example, have a precise measurement of the earth and wind present in my keyboard?
I think the four elements are metaphorical as a simplification of a much more complex reality. Using this metaphor, I can come up with lots of interesting stories about the world which may make people think about different parts of their everyday life. I like the four elements in that regard. If, however, I take the four elements literally, then I carry the burden of proof to demonstrate exactly what those elements mean, how do we study them, where do we use them, and so on.
Same principle for Jesus as the ultimate magician. If this is a statement of fact, then we have to contend with all sorts of questions that essentially ask how can we prove that any given person actually is who they claim to be (e.g. son of God, the trinity, etc.).
If Jesus is the ultimate magician who is, ipso facto, superior to all of us, then it is entirely possible that he is a pretender and not the real deal, without us ever knowing how to tell the difference. I do not actually believe this, but such is the possibility we have to entertain. A pretender could even be malevolent, such as to cause confusion, sow hatred, trigger holy wars, and sit back to see the world burn.
How would we, the lesser people, even have the acumen to correctly rank the magicians, so that we can tell who is the ultimate among them? And which even are the criteria for said ranking? Even in something as mundane as football, it is futile to define the “Greatest Of All Time”, “the best midfielder ever”, and so on. If you do not believe me, start a poll online and you will get all sorts of conflicting accounts. Who is right, who is wrong, and how do we make that judgement call? And this is just football, mind you, not “the ultimate magician”.
These and many more are questions that naturally follow from the basic notion that Jesus qua ultimate magician is a fact. We cannot hold back those questions because then we are no longer rigorous with our claims.
If, however, we take this metaphorically we again have lots of interesting topics to discuss about common issues, while recognising that we are formulating stories that fit our needs. Jesus as the ultimate magician thus becomes a valuable story-telling device for the present and the future.
When we admit that we are reading resources in a spirit of openness to interpretation, we remind people not to obsess over the specifics of what is in front of them. We emphasise the teachings and invite everyone to think for themselves or, anyhow, to not take every statement or symbol at face value.
Furthermore, we adapt the lessons to the prevailing realities. Interpretation becomes a tool that empowers us. We are not limited to the scope that the facts delimit.
Continuing from the blog:
I am a firm believer of the phenomenology of magick; as a christian it couldn’t be otherwise; Solomon had control over demons (or djinns), Elijah called fire upon the prophets of Baal, and my dear St. Theresa D’Avila levitated and mastered the inner self out of abandonment and trust; centuries of grimmoires have been preserved to this day, like the Lesser and the Greater Key of Solomon, the entire tradition of the Ars Goetia and the book of Honorius to talk with God amongst other tests.
Consider the story of Elijah here. If God literally rained fire on those who practised a different religion, why can we not believe that this is also happening nowadays in roughly the same part of the world for basically the same reasons? And if we cannot think of the modern day equivalent of Elijah, perhaps we will surmise that God skipped the prophets and opted for politicians this time? There are countless such questions, each with far-reaching implications.
Furthermore, if this is a literal event, then it raises questions about God, such as whether he has favourites among the people and why would that be, that he seems to have no problem with innocent children burning alive and their settlements reduced to rubble, and much more. Is fire the best way to convince people?
Plus everything I mentioned above about validating the claimed facts.
I am not searching for answers here. I am pointing out what happens once you commit to a literal reading of the stories.
If, however, we take it metaphorically then we have a useful story in our hands: for instance, we can speak about how one’s unflinching commitment makes them extraordinary, which is a practical lesson for everybody.
Same idea for St. Theresa levitating. What does that even mean in a factual reading of the story? Was she suspending the force of gravity? And if so, what was holding her body together? Was it some piece of equipment instead? Who developed it and what was the underlying technology? We can ask endless such questions and continue scrutinising the answers as we search for verifiable and reproducible evidence. Absent the evidence, the only charitable reading is that of allegory. Otherwise, we have to admit that we do not know the facts and are filling in the blanks with what we wish to see there.
If we say that this is all magic that we simply cannot comprehend, then we are faced with the challenge of putting forth a description about—and attendant belief in—something we claim is indescribable. If it can be talked about, it is describable. If it can be described, it can be done so with greater accuracy. If, moreover, it can be demonstrated, then it can be measured. So we are back to examining facts and building up the requisite capacity. And if it is not demonstrable, then the supposed events are allegorical, which is perfectly fine.
Symbols and practicality
From the blog:
I consider that everything is real when it comes to this kind of topics: I do not deny the existence of Hera, but her condition; for me it’s just a fallen angel or a nephilim instead of a goddes, and the same goes with the gods of my ancestors - Baal is just a minor nephilim, or son of the angels that left the sky.
What does “real” mean though? Metaphors are also real because they describe that which is common in phenomena. But we understand that the metaphor itself is not factual: its relation to reality consists in representing the abstraction from the multitude of relevant patterns.
For example, Aesop’s fable of the ant and the grasshopper pertains to everyday experiences of people even though we are neither ants nor grasshoppers. Aesop did not record a historical event but only a story he made up; a story with mnemonic and didactic value.
If, however, we claim something like “Hera is real” and by that we mean that she is a figure of some kind, be it an angel or whatever, then we again need to withstand the scrutiny of fact-checking. This would distract from the symbolism. It would be akin to saying “the story of the ant and the grasshopper actually happened”.
Hera is not a person. There is no lady in the sky waiting for us to do something for her. Hera is a symbol that we invent—and are open about our myth-making practice and our poetry—to encapsulate in a few words (again, mnemonic and didactic value) a long list of beliefs that a society may consider important because it has tested them through aeons of experimentation, such as:
- Children need a mother figure in their midst.
- Families benefit from having a just matriarch figure around (e.g. the grandmother in an extended family that everybody loves and listens to).
- The extended family distributes the workload, making it easier to raise children and take care of the elderly, while still handling everyday work.
- Societies are stable long-term when social reproduction (biological + cultural continuity) extends from the family, to the neighbourhood, and continues outward.
- Resilience long-term is about sustainable intergenerational relations.
We do not have to appeal to Hera to make those and related points. A secular teaching at some public school can have the same effect. However, history shows us that religious communities are the most enduring across continents. So, communicating this in religious terms will likely remain relevant long-term.
At any rate, Hera is a symbol: a name or alias for a long list of beliefs which themselves are about day-to-day issues. Anything else is going to engender countless questions like I hinted at in the previous section.
Names/aliases/symbols are part of our everyday affairs. Imagine if instead of “Protesilaos” we have to use all possible descriptors of me: that would make for an incredibly tedious discussion. Extend that to everything we name and you quickly realise how language will not be usable if it cannot employ these mental shortcuts.
We rely on names/aliases/symbols to keep things focused. At some level, we accept imprecision for the sake of usability. Strictly speaking, “Protesilaos” is inaccurate because it applies equally to a child and to an adult, even though those are different people in terms of their body, their interests, their knowledge, and more. Same idea for “Protesilaos” from yesterday and “Protesilaos” right now because there still are differences between them that the name itself does not capture. For example, yesterday’s guy had not written this article and thus had not created the relevant synapses in his brain.
Coming back to religion, metaphors empower us to keep things focused by avoiding unnecessary details. Otherwise, we exhaust the attention span of people and, as such, we cannot instil in them what they need to learn (again, mnemonic and didactic value).
Furthermore, saying that Hera is real, in the sense of a person or angel or whatever, we now introduce a discussion about otherworldly forms of being. This discussion is factual or metaphorical? If it is factual, then we have to have the relevant evidence. If it is an allegory, then we have to question what purpose does it serve and whether that is constructive or not in light of social affairs.
The significance of faith
From the blog:
For the magi not only needs discipline and knowledge, but also trust and faith, faith in something greater than himself, faith in a world that can’t be reduced to debt and GPI and politics, faith in the fact that, as Borges said, there are more things.
Indeed, there are more things. Such as other people in present time and other people on an intergenerational scale. There is the country and the environment, and all of the species, and so on. Recognising the others is a prerequisite for the aforementioned framework of sustainability.
The defining feature of our era is that “more things” are subordinated to the practice of ruthless short-term profit maximisation and its concomitant pursuit of perpetual growth, which is how forests are decimated and oceans are polluted, people are uprooted from their ancestral lands through structural poverty or brute force or the sabotage of drugs, waters are exploited in the interest of oligarchs, and so on.
Faith in other things needs to be couched in terms of the practicalities of sustainability within the confines of the world we live in. It is not about other beings in other dimensions. Faith in other people, for example, brings forth concerns for justice. Faith in generations embeds a sense of duty and of restraint beyond one’s self. This continues for other topics, but the core idea is the same: it is about recognising that we are not alone here and that we have to keep things orderly for the present and the indeterminate future. Sanctity, then, is a shorthand for saying at minimum: respect the person, respect the community, respect those who were before and those who will come after, respect the environment, live within your means. Et cetera.
Faith in Hera as a given figure, however, or the nephilim, or whether Elijah actually wielded fire, or if Jesus qua ultimate magician is literal and he actually controls the four elements, inevitably invites the kind of endless scepticism that disorients us from the goal of sustainability for our communities. Instead of taking the symbolism and adapting it to our life, to teach young and old folks alike, we run into controversies about the one and only truth; controversies that humanity has never resolved—and how could it when it cannot even define the best footballer ever? And, no, I am not joking.
None of this is limited to religion, by the way. It is how the curious and persistent intellectual shifts their attention away from the practicalities of daily life into questioning every possible detail they are aware of. Overthinking is guaranteed to happen if you are strict about “the truth”, because you need to be rigorous throughout and to apply the highest possible standard in your scrutiny. Overthinking is not a viable path because our body prevents us from withdrawing into a world of pure thought until we can figure out everything: the body demands action, so we accept our condition as embodied mind.
A sustainable option for the uncompromising thinker is to learn how to thrive in liminality: to live between fact and fiction, to study the data while also discerning in it abstract structure, with one foot in the world of practicality and another in the world of thought.
Those granted, faith performs the vital function of keeping people involved and committed to the collective good. This is what religion can do best. The average believer is not questioning their precepts: those are not negotiable for the very practical reason that the person who is not ready to think things through will make a mess out of their own life, just how the person under the sway of scientism does. The precepts are there to give people support on all those issues where they need it.
And here, too, the typical modern person errs because they conflate the freedom of opinion with the capacity to live with the consequences of one’s thoughts/deeds. Everybody can speak their mind, but few will actually commit to the unflinching pursuit of their thoughts and live accordingly. Fewer still will do it even if it involves great personal cost, like in the cases of Socrates and Baruch Spinoza.
An empty shirt
When we make a literal reading of symbols and names, we end up in a situation where we have insufficient evidence to support our claims. It is why such an approach tends to beget fanaticism, which escalates into coercion, as it lacks the means of persuasion through reason.
The 20th century Greek poet Giorgos Seferis alludes to pointless squabbles and campaigns in his poem Ελένη (Helen), which concludes with why would people do all this warfare and constant struggle:
για ένα πουκάμισο αδειανό για μιαν Ελένη
[for an empty shirt for a Helen]
“Helen” here is a reference to Helen of Troy. She is the stated reason for the Trojan War. Helen is not an actual person. She is a symbol, a metaphor, an artistic device to communicate something deeper. In Helen we find the recklessness of people, for example: people who kill each other over unattainable trophies.
Helen is a myth, which remains ever-relevant. There is such a Helen right now in the Middle East, where the United States is waging a war on Iran over unclear goals and with no coherent strategy. A Helen exists in Eastern Europe for similar reasons, for the Russians, the Ukrainians, and those in the European Union.
In the context of religiosity, Helen as the empty shirt is what we get when we lose sight of the teachings and insist on the reality of the names or stated claims. This is not mere distraction though. It is far more pernicious, as it begets the kind of fanaticism that says “my god is more real than your practices” and then brings fire and steel on them. It is the same fanaticism that in many parts of the world continues to haunt those who believe in something different; the fanaticism that makes the perpetrators feel righteous and justified about all the atrocities they commit.
We do not get such phenomena in discussions that stick to the facts or in those conversations which at the outset admit to their allegorical character. Where we find unreasonableness is when symbols are taken literally. This happens with religion, though it also happens with sport when our team’s colours become our identity that pits us against all other supporters via hooliganism, or in art when we wage culture wars over whether the Helen character in Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey movie can be a black woman or not (again, Helen is fiction, not an actual Greek woman of antiquity). These are all empty shirts, which nevertheless have the potential to lead to actual harm.
The intellectual’s responsibility is to stay focused on the essence, avoid empty shirts, and communicate with others dispassionately so that they also focus on what is the deeper issue.
A matter of initiative
With those granted, we are left with how I originally concluded my previous article about the way of the wizard (2026-08-03):
Perhaps, then, the safest option is become a wizard yourself.
The wizard I have in mind is the philosopher (literally “friend of wisdom”) who learns to deal with that which is liminal; the person who goes beyond the apparent tension between fact and fiction, religion and science.
The point here is not to demand personal accountability for systemic phenomena as that would be unfair, but to suggest that those who are concerned about what is happening around them have to start from somewhere.
If we see the world that envelops us erode before our eyes and if we believe that we have the means to do something, then we act to the best of our abilities with the hope that others will be inspired to do the same. In the process, we recognise that there may be compromises along the way and that efforts will have to continue over the long-term.
This is how I approach it for my immediate environment: I have no material resources to donate and no army of volunteers to mobilise. I am just a dude with a blog living in a remote mountainous region. I have ideas that I am sharing without strings attached. Fundamentally, I remind people to not take themselves too seriously because that is how they self-destruct or destroy others.
Maybe those combined with my admittedly limited efforts to make connections and maintain a semblance of community can amount to something. Though there is a chance that they will not achieve anything because I simply am not the right person for this sort of initiative. I cannot know unless I try in earnest. Since there is nobody else I know who is leading by example, I will do my part and see what happens.
It is my style to not make promises or talk big: I do what I have thought through very carefully, live with the consequences of my actions without regrets, and then I comment at length on what I have learnt.