On the Desecration of Altars and the Return of Strange Idols

Image: CNS / Paul Haring 

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News of the removal and destruction of South American pagan idols from a church in Rome by a group of ultra-conservative Catholic militants obviously caught my attention ...

To be fair, whilst the police are treating this as a theft (and possible hate crime), I think those responsible for throwing the figurines into the River Tiber have a religiously valid case for so doing.

For what might appear to the innocent eye to simply be a wooden statue of a pregnant indigenous woman, is, of course, a representation of Pachamama, the fertility goddess who, in Inca mythology, presides over planting and harvesting and sustains life (even if she also has the power to cause earthquakes).

Placing it alongside other pagan artefacts inside a church just round the corner from St. Peter's is, therefore, a provocative and sacreligious act. There's even a commandment covering the matter and, if I'm not mistaken, members of all three Abrahamic religions, take idolatry or the worship of false gods extremely seriously.

So, whilst I'm not a Catholic, I can sympathise. And, if I were a Catholic, I'd find the presence of an Amazonian Earth Mother squatting in the place where one might reasonably expect to find the Virgin Mary kneeling at prayer, pretty outrageous too. The fact that the Vatican approves of this kind of thing would only serve to infuriate me still further.   

However, as I say, I'm not a Catholic. In fact, as a Nietzschean, my love and loyalty very much lies elsewhere. So the above story made me smile rather than gnash my teeth in rage. It also made me think of a scene in Lawrence's novel The Plumed Serpent, in which Ramón and the men of Quetzalcoatl remove the holy images from the church at Sayula and replace them with their own neopagan bits and pieces as part of their coup d'état and revaluation of all values.

Ramón has assured the local bishop that this is an act of reverence; as is the destruction of the Christian relics. But the fact that it's carried out by armed soldiers led by the demoniacal little fellow Cipriano with his black inhuman eyes and goatee surely gives us pause for thought ... Even the Nazi book burning was regarded by those responsible as an auto-da-fé and a necessary cleansing of the spirit.   

See: D. H. Lawrence, The Plumed Serpent, ed. L. D. Clarke, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), Chapters XVII and XVIII. 

Towards a Queer Ethology 1: Bambi's Revenge (The Case of the Carrion Deer)

Mmm ... the sweet taste of ribs and revenge

Many of us having read Felix Salten's 1923 novel (first translated into English from German in 1928), or having seen Disney's animated adaptation (dir. David Hand, 1942), are familiar with the story of Bambi and his life in the woods; particularly his first terrifying encounter with Man the hunter, who later claims the life of his mother, much to the young fawn's distress.

The film, predictably, downplays the more violent and sombre, naturalistic elements of Salten's text, which was written for adults and intended not only as an ecologically concerned pro-animal tract, but also an anti-fascist political allegory (the book was subsequently banned by the Nazis and many early copies destroyed).

Thus, for example, the movie omits the scene wherein Bambi is shown by his father (and Great Prince of the Forest) a decaying human corpse, in order to demonstrate that Man too is mortal, despite his posssession of guns.   

I thought of this scene when reading a recently published report by forensic scientists of a white-tailed deer in Texas filmed scavenging human remains. Typically herbivores, deer have been known to occasionally enjoy birds' eggs, fish, and dead rabbits. But this is believed to be the first recorded incident of Bambi enjoying the sweet taste of Man and revenge.    

 

Note: readers who are interested in knowing the full details of this case should see Meckel, L. A., McDaneld, C. P. and Wescott, D. J.; 'White-tailed Deer as a Taphonomic Agent: Photographic Evidence of White-tailed Deer Gnawing on Human Bone', in the Journal of Forensic Sciences, (May, 2017).

To read part two of this post - Who Fucked Bambi? (The Case of the Deer-Loving Monkey) - click here. 

To read part three - When You Feel a Little P-Pervish, P-P-P Pick Up a Penguin - click here.