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I never write much about Hinduism (it being one of the few religions with whose tenets I am not particularly conversant), but I’ve recently come to find it rather appealing. Specifically, I’ve been intrigued to discover the Cārvāka sect of Hinduism, a subset of that very pantheistic religion which wholeheartedly espouses empirical atheism. It seems ironic for the religion with an apparent glut of gods to have had adherents who believe in no gods at all, but Cārvāka, although heterodox, is generally considered to be part of the Hindu philosophy.
The other fascinating thing about Cārvāka is its antiquity – Cārvāka writings attest to the philosophy’s existence as early as 600BCE. It would seem that organised atheism has been around for a lot longer than might previously have been supposed. We have only fragments of the oldest Cārvāka text, the Bārhaspatya-sūtras, and most of what is known about the group has been gleaned from its critics (of which, unsurprisingly, there were many), but a clear picture of Cārvāka’s tenets can nonetheless be built up from what survives.
Cārvākas were primarily empirical in their approach to knowledge, arguing that what could not be observed could not be known, and even what could be observed was subject to scepticism. This is best expressed in the Tattvopaplavasimha, a work from the 9th century CE, in which the author Jayarāśi Bhaṭṭa examines the three Hindu pramana (sources of knowledge), and finds them all to be faulty. The first, inference, relies on subjective reasoning; the second, testimony, fails to establish the reliability of witnesses; and the third, perception, cannot establish that the observer has not been deceived or hoodwinked in some way. As a result, he concludes, we should remain sceptical of all things – including Cārvāka philosophy itself, which Bhaṭṭa adopts simply because it provides a more pragmatic guide to life than the alternatives.
There is a certain wry humour in some of the Cārvāka texts. They can be quite cutting in their criticism of organised Vedic religion:
“If a beast slain in the Jyothishtoma rite will itself go to heaven,
why then does not the sacrificer forthwith offer his own father?”“Hence it is only as a means of livelihood that Brahmans have established here
all these ceremonies for the dead — there is no other fruit anywhere.”“The three authors of the Vedas were buffoons, knaves, and demons.
All the well-known formulae of the pandits, jarphari, turphari, etc.
and all the obscene rites for the queen commanded in Aswamedha,
these were invented by buffoons, and so all the various kinds of presents to the priests.”
As far as life guidance went, Cārvāka’s advice was, “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die!” Since there was no life after death (“after death, no intelligence remains”), it behoved humanity to make the most of the brief lives they had:
“While life remains, let a man live happily,
let him feed on butter though he runs in debt;
When once the body becomes ashes,
how can it ever return again?”“While life is yours, live joyously;
None can escape Death’s searching eye:
When once this frame of ours they burn,
How shall it e’er again return?”
It is unclear if there was ever actually an individual known by the name Cārvāka, or indeed if the sect had a founder at all. In the Sarva-darsana-sangraha (the Hindu Compendium of Speculations, from which the above quotes are taken), Madhavacharya bemoans the popularity of the heretical atheists:
“…but how can we attribute to the Divine Being the giving of supreme felicity, when such a notion has been utterly abolished by Charvaka, the crest-gem of the atheistic school, the follower of the doctrine of Brihaspati?”
which suggests that the school was founded by Brihaspati, a Vedic deity of knowledge associated with the planet Jupiter. Whilst this may make sense to the devout Madhavacharya, it seems unlikely that the Cārvākas themselves would have shared his view – no evidence for Brihaspati, y’see.
Sadly Cārvāka is no longer around, having been overrun by the juggernaut of Hindu orthodoxy some 1500 years ago. It gives one hope, though, to note that even in this most polytheistic of faiths, rationality was able to once gain a foothold. Perhaps the same thing might one day happen again…
Many of my recent posts have focussed on the tendency of Biblical writers and readers to re-write or re-interpret history to further their own agenda. This is a popular technique in the faith, but it isn’t a habit that’s just restricted to Christianity. Scientology is probably the most notable example of a religion that ignores actual history in favour of something their founder made up, but even L. Ron Hubbard’s mad sci-fi ravings pale beside the – ahem – “imagination” of Dwight York, founder of the religious/political movement of Nuwaubianism.
Like a strange mirror-image of the white-supremacist movement, characterised by the ignorant screeds of StormFront, Nuwaubianism promotes an alternative view of history in which “Nubians” are the master-race. Examining his defence of this position is tricky, since there appear to be several contradictory arguments which York uses interchangeably, ranging from the claim that white people were originally genetically-engineered soldiers, “created to fight other invading races, to protect the God race Negroids,” to the idea that Nubians are of extraterrestrial origin, descended from strange “Ether-9” beings with green skin (apparently, their green skin rusted in our oxygen-rich atmosphere, turning them brown). Alternatively, he also puts an ironic spin on the standard racist interpretation of the “Sons of Noah” myth, claiming that yes, black races were descended from Ham, via his son Kush, but that white races could also trace their ancestry back to Ham, via his leprous son Canaan. Then there’s the idea that white men are descended from dogs:
“The pale man originated from the Caucasus mountains, where there was very little plant life and not much means for salt. This condition forced him to rob the Nubian female of her chastity in order to keep his seed alive, it’s called integration. The Caucasian woman who was left in the mountains, resorted to lying with and having sex with beasts: such as the jackal, which is an ancestor of today’s dog. The phrase “dog is man’s best friend” came from this situation. The dog would lick the festered sores of the leper and clean them for him. His seed was kept alive because the Caucasian woman and the jackal mated. This is where you get people who possess an animalistic nature.” Dwight York, The Melaninite Children
It’s all a bit confusing: am I a science experiment gone wrong, an alien slave, a leper or a sort of hybrid dog-man? Please, Mr York, make your mind up – I’ll never get my family tree worked out at this rate!
Mind you, Dwight himself seems to be having some problems figuring out his own ancestry. His birth certificate shows he was born in Boston, although he claims to have been born in the Sudan. His father, according to said birth certificate, is David Piper York, although Dwight claims his real father is Al Haadi Abdur Rahman Al Mahdi, making him a descendant of Muhammad Ahmad, the Sudanese religious leader. Unfortunately, Dwight would also quite like to claim descent from “Ben” York of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which is made rather tricky if he disowns David Piper York as his father. To get around the problem, York claims that his mother and “step”-father were actually second cousins, this granting him “Ben” York’s bloodline through his mother. Of course, given that Dwight York also claims to be an alien from the planet Rizq, one has to wonder how much all this geneology really matters… It’s handy that he comes from a different planet, since this grants him access to useful technology like the NIBIRU spacecraft, into which he is secretly collecting the 144,000 Chosen Few to train them for the upcoming war against Lucifer. The Nuwaubian Rapture has apparently been going on since 2003, although to date, nobody has noticed. A possible reason for this is that the extraterrestrials have been secretly beaming images into the heads of Hollywood filmmakers, so that their films can be used to discredit people who know the truth. Another explanation could be that it’s all a big load of bollocks. Guess which alternative the Nuwaubians prefer?
Listing the other insanities of Dwight York would take more space and time than I have available, but here are a few of my favourites:
• Disco music was invented by the devil
• Nikola Tesla came from Venus
• Aborted foetuses survive and live in the sewers, where they are being trained as an army
• The world’s heads of state are planning to flee to Mars when the Apocalypes kicks in
• York is the only human who still has a functional barathary gland, meaning that he has telepathic and telekinetic powers. Everyone else’s barathary gland has been disabled.
• Many African-Americans are actually descended from Native American Moors, who travelled to North America before the Pleistocene land bridges collapsed (about 15,000 years ago)
• Dr Seuss books serve as an indoctrination into Satanism
Today’s final fun fact about Dwight York: he may well be the most prolific child-molester in US history. When he was being prosecuted for fucking four-year-olds, prosecutors actually had to cut back the number of counts listed from over a thousand to around 200, since they felt the actual scale of his atrocities was too great for a jury to take seriously. He will be spending the rest of his life in a prison cell, although naturally his followers still claim the whole thing was a set-up, perpetrated by the white Satanists. Nuwaubianism does not look as though it will rot in jail with its founder, which is a pity, since a more abhorrent and dehumanising belief system would be hard to envisage.
Strictly speaking, today’s little-known faith shouldn’t really have a place in a post about religion. It has no god to follow; in fact the majority of followers are atheists. It prizes reason and logic over archaic dogma, relies on empirical data over emotional intuition, and is heavily critical of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Most unusually, I agree with the majority of its teachings. Nevertheless, I think there’s a case to be made for including Objectivism in a blog series about unusual faiths, since although it purports to be faith-free, the Objectivist movement has many aspects to it that necessitate a “religious” mentality.
In brief, Objectivism is a philosophy founded by author and thinker Ayn Rand in the 40s and 50s. It teaches that reality is independent of consciousness, that reason is humanity’s most essential tool for understanding the world, and that the moral goal of life is to pursue one’s own happiness. Rand expounded these ideas primarily through two works of fiction, The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957), both of which emphasise the empowered individual ego as being key to progress and success; and through the work of the Objectivist Society, informally know as The Collective.
Whilst Objectivist principles are pretty sound (personally I have trouble accepting the system of absolute moral egoism and capitalism that Rand advocated, but the foundations are very much in line with my own thinking), it is the history, activity and organisation of The Collective that make me classify Objectivism as a cult, rather than a philosophy. The problem is that Objectivism makes claim (by its very nature) to being an absolute truth. It divides the world drastically into an in-group and an out-group: in are the Objectivists and out are everybody else. This insular nature, along with the unwillingness of the group to enter into debate (once a principle has been validated by Objectivism it becomes Truth, and no further discussion can be entered into) has resulted in a very cult-like movement, which excommunicates and vilifies those who digress from its dogma. Nathaniel Branden, one of Ayn Rand’s most loyal followers (as well as her lover), developed a creed of Objectivism, the main tenets of which are as follows:
• Ayn Rand is the greatest human being who has ever lived.
• Atlas Shrugged is the greatest human achievement in the history of the world.
• Ayn Rand, by virtue of her philosophical genius, is the supreme arbiter in any issue pertaining to what is rational, moral or appropriate to man’s life on earth.
• Once one is acquainted with Ayn Rand and/or her work, the measure of one’s virtue is intrinsically tied to the position one takes regarding her and/or it.
• No one can be a good Objectivist who does not admire what Ayn Rand admires and condemn what Ayn Rand condemns.
• No one can be a fully consistent individualist who disagrees with Ayn Rand on any fundamental issue.
and so on. You get the gist. Essentially, Objectivism had become Randism, with Ayn’s proclamations being gospel, and all dissenters being heretics and unbelievers. Indeed, when Rand and Branden’s affair turned sour (he had begun a second extra-marital affair behind her back) he and (rather unfairly) his wife were immediately expelled from the group. It seems few were in fact good enough for the increasingly eccentric cult leader. When she died in 1982, the once-hundreds-strong Collective had dwindled to just a handful of people. Nevertheless, the cult of Ayn Rand is still going today, kept alive by Leonard Peikoff’s Ayn Rand Institute and David Kelley’s Objectivist Centre – each of which denies the validity of the other.
It’s unfortunate that such a promising philosophy as Objectivism should have been so mired in a cult of personality. Had Ayn Rand not encouraged the veneration of her theories and her person, and instead allowed discourse and dispute to flourish, her intellectual legacy might have stood with that of Socrates or Hume. As it is, though, Objectivism is doomed to be remembered not for its philosophical value, but for the extreme and unbending self-righteousness of its early adherents, and the cult that was not a cult in which they lived.
Let’s assume for a moment that you’re the Second Coming of Christ. Whereabouts on the planet are You going to choose to make Your glorious encore? Israel would seem the obvious place, but You’ve been there before, and it’s kinda hot and dusty and full of war – as an incarnate god, You reckon Your last trip to Earth ought to start somewhere nice. America? The fundies would love it (they rather expected You to kick things off there anyway) and You’d get great media coverage, but the Evangelical Right have always freaked You out a bit, and You don’t fancy getting executed again just because Your message doesn’t necessarily match up with theirs. What about good old England? Well, the weather sucks (although as God, You could always fix that by fiddling with the Atlantic currents) and the food is often execrable. Besides, Britain isn’t the hefty quarterback on the global playing field that she once was – nowadays she’s more of a cheerleader girlfriend for the big, burly USA. Japan and China are both out (don’t speak the lingo, plus You’ve never really been that big in the Orient anyway), and You don’t really get the strange mutations that Christianity’s undergone in Africa, so best not pop up there either. How about the depths of Siberia? Yeah, You know – freezing Russian steppe, vast tracts of it. Sounds good? Well, unfortunately, someone’s beaten you to it – he’s all set up in the middle of nowhere, and he calls himself Vissarion.
Vissarion started out as a traffic policeman called Sergei Torop, but when he lost his job a divine revelation indicated that he was the Second Coming of Christ. Adopting the handle Vissarion Christ, he founded the Church Of The Last Testament, claiming that Christianity in its current form was incomplete and lacked the Doctrine of Truth which he preached. The Church has its headquarters in the middle of freakin’ nowhere, out in the far reaches of Siberia, because this is the part of the world that will survive when the giant death-comet of Armageddon impacts the Earth. Did I not mention that? Bet you’re wishing you’d got there first, now. Yes, Vissarion predicts the imminent destruction of civilisation by comet “very soon”. You can’t fault his wisdom in keeping the exact date secret, after all, he’d look a right nelly if the prediction didn’t come true.
Life in the Vissarionite commune is hard – the gulag kibbutz has no running water, poor soil which is frozen for much of the year, no transport links to the outside world and a long list of rules, regulation and prohibitions. Veganism is compulsory, monetary exchange is forbidden, nicotine and alcohol are an ironclad no-no. Vissarion’s followers survive by scratching meagre crops from the mountain terraces, foraging in the woods and bartering with local villages, effectively living in conditions not dissimilar to their Iron Age ancestors. Part of the sect’s message is that hardship leads to salvation, so regressing to a pre-industrial hunter-gatherer society (without the hunting) is their way of ensuring that they get an express ticket to somewhere more comfortable come the inevitable giant death-comet.
The teachings of Vissarionism are a mix of Russian Orthodox Christianity and Buddhism, with the emphasis of Vissarion’s role as the mouthpiece of God. Although he claims to be a reincarnation of Jesus, Vissarion breaks with conventional Christian doctrine (really? You don’t say!) in claiming that he, himself, is not God; merely a mouthpiece for the Lord’s holy utterances. This does not stop his disciples from giving it the full “zOMG! you r teh winz!!one!!eleven!” routine whenever they mention him – “He radiates incredible love,” “Definitely the Son of God,” “He’s the only person I know who lives what he preaches,” “Our tender father” are all descriptions dropped from the lips of his wide-eyed, addle-brained, hippy-starchild fanboy followers. Essentially a cult of personality, then, Vissarionism has much in common with other tiny wee sects scattered around the Siberian mountains. The difference lies in the scope of Vissarion’s vision. He sees himself as a global personality, and regularly jets off around the globe to win converts outside of his tiny frozen commune. To date, there are around ten thousand practicing Vissarionites worldwide, generally organised into small, Amish-esque communities. It seems that all you need is a beard, a twinkly smile and a remote Siberian base to become the Second Coming.
When I was a boy, one of my favourite books was Roger Lancelyn Green’s Myths Of The Norsemen. The stories of Thor, Odin, Loki et al were immensely thrilling, and I whiled away many happy evenings reading about the Æsir and their adventures. I think it’s fair to say that of all the religions, the ancient Vikings had by far the most bitchin’ pantheon – but I never thought any of it was real.
What am I to make then, of the Odinic Rite, a cult for whom Roger Lancelyn Green’s book is basically the Bible? This lot genuinely believe in the Norse gods, not as literary or mythical figures, but as real, present entities, who can be encountered in daily life. They’re big on runic magic, ancestor worship and mead. Many of them have moustaches. They also manage to simultaneously hold fairly right-wing conservative views (they don’t like homosexuals or abortionists) and environmental hippy-pagan opinions (very big on sustainable living) side-by-side.
I want to like the Odinists (how many other religions can honestly wear this T-shirt without a shred of irony?) but they do have a slightly disturbing undercurrent of racial superiority going on. It’s not overt, but there are a number of statements like:
“…we Odinists must ceaselessly seek to restore again in our folk their folk-consciousness and pride and responsibility.”
“HAIL THE FOLK!
HAIL OUR ODAL LANDS!”“The natural religion for the Indo European peoples (often called Northern European) is what today is called Odinism.”
“The legitimate right of ALL peoples to pursue their cultural traditions in a racial or national context has been submerged”
which would hardly look out of place on a BNP site. Maybe I’m misjudging them, but I get the impression that there are very few Black or Asian Odinists out there. It’s very much a faith for white, Anglo-Saxon Viking-wanabees.
Kudos to ‘em, though, for sticking rigidly with a mythology which makes even Mormonism look like a rational and well-reasoned faith. No matter how metaphorically they spin it, I can’t really get over the idea that these guys genuinely believe in Thor…
Like New Age hippy shit? Fond of the ideas of karma, reincarnation, astral projection and spirit guidance? Want to subscribe to Eastern mysticism but lack the requisite language skills? You’re going to love Eckankar…
Eckankar, or the Religion of the Light and Sound of God, is a truly genius mish-mash of New Age psychobabble. At its core, it attempts to unite believers with the Divine Spirit of ECK by means of “spiritual exercises” such as chanting the mantra “Hu” (check out their Spiritual Exercise of the Week). Eckists believe in a duality of body and soul, seeing the physical body as mere raiment for the immortal spirit beneath. It is this spirit which they use to travel to astral realms, communicate through dreams and generally perform all kinds of entirely unverifiable feats.
The leader of the Eckankar movement is referred to as the Mahanta or ECK Master. The incumbent Mahanta is Harold Klemp, who has held the position since the early 80s. The ECK Master is not an object of worship for Eckists, but does serve as a sort of all-purpose guru, spiritual conduit, religious leader and ethical advisor. The post was originally held by the founder of the movement, Paul Twitchell, (a former L. Ron Hubbard disciple. Who would have guessed?) in the 1960s, and is passed down from one leader to the next. In spite of the fact that there is no record of the faith prior to Twitchell’s appearance, the faith has apparently been around for millennia, safe in the hands of such spiritual luminaries as Fubbi Quantz, Gopal Daz, Yaubl Sacabi and Rebazar Tarz. Does anyone else think these names sound a little bit Jedi-esque? My personal favourite is Rami Nuri, who lives on Venus. Yes, the planet Venus – Eckankar isn’t just for Earthlings…
The scriptures of Eckism can by found in Paul Twitchell’s book, the Shariyat-Ki-Sugmad, although of course it was actually written by spiritual beings back in the mists of time, and not made up out of whole cloth by Twitchell in any way. The Shariyat is a collection of Twitchell’s writings on astral projection, reincarnation and so on, although they bear remarkable similarities to the writings of Julian P Johnson, a noted writer on Eastern mysticism from the 1930s. So much so, in fact, that Twitchell has been repeatedly accused of plagiarism…
In spite of the fact that Twitchell’s con is now evident (his widow, Gail, who co-founded the movement, later claimed, “Paul just made up the whole Eckankar thing”), Eckankar is alive and well today, and in America alone the cult claims around 36,000 followers. Numbers in the rest of the world are hazy, but could be as high as 500,000. In the mould of Scientology and Mormonism, Eckankar proves that if you spout enough bullshit, eventually you’ll have a full-blown religion.
This is what happens when you invite the town drunk to leave his gutter and come and address the local tabernacle…
That’s John Crowder, one of the leaders of the Sons Of Thunder movement – basic fundy stuff; biblical inerrancy, blessings of the Holy Ghost, YEC, all that jazz. Amusingly, though, Crowder has a lot of Christians in the States up in arms about what they perceive to be his “non-biblical” message. The main focus of Crowder’s ministry is a sort of Dionysian ecstacy, of the same sort which has been used by fringe religious sects such as the Sufi for centuries. His USP is to add a modern drink-and-drugs metaphor, similar to the “Get high on Jesus” message of the late ’80s, but a lot of conservative (read: “mainstream”) Christian sects see his work as misguided at best.
John’s own testimony carries with it all the hallmarks of LSD-induced psychosis. One of the tragedies of a faith-based worldview is that this sort of lunacy can be perfectly validated – John may be mad, but he can back up all of his inebriated wibble with Scripture quite happily, and as recent posts and comment threads here have discussed, if you accept the validity of the Bible then you have to give his particular brand of mental illness at least cursory credence. You may argue that John’s interpretation of Scripture is dodgy – but then, what makes yours any more correct?
Nyoinyoinyoin, indeed.
If you’re going to build a giant effigy in the middle of your cult compound, you could do worse than produce an enormous fucking teapot (as well as a great big yellow umbrella and a blue vase the height of a three-storey building). I must confess, this theme-park style architecture has already rather endeared me to the Sky Kingdom Cult, and so it’s rather saddening to note that persecution by Malaysia’s Islamic government has driven the poor teapot-worshippers underground. Their leader, Ariffin Mohamed, known to his followers as Ayah Pin, now lives in exile in Thailand, and the cult itself has dwindled to only a handful of members.
As with so many small sects, the Sky Kingdom is essentially a one-man show. Ayah Pin, who claims to be a reincarnation of Jesus, Shiva, Buddha, Muhammad and probably a whole bunch of other folk, is pretty much the be-all and end-all of the group. In his absence, the (now teapot-less) compound has almost been emptied, and it looks as though the Sky Kingdom is pretty much done for. In a way, this is a shame, for as well as having a somewhat eclectic taste in architecture, Ayah Pin also preached a refreshingly inclusive message. His theology was focussed on interfaith dialogue and the peaceful exchange of ideas between opposing factions, so it is rather unfortunate that he chose to set up camp in a country ruled by Islam – not a religion known for its willingness to engage in discourse with other beliefs. Admittedly, his followers believe that Ayah Pin himself is in fact the supreme object of worship for all religions (hence the reincarnation shtick), so there’s a degree of self-interest invested in promoting his message of unification, but it’s still a positive (if unattainable) goal.
The rest of the Sky Kingdom faith is a mish-mash of esoteric Islam, dream interpretation, divine visions and occasional interventions by some rather brilliant elf-like nature spirits called the Orang Bunian. In this respect, it differs little from numerous other small sects across the Asian peninsula. The real uniqueness of Sky Kingdom theology lies in its crazy founder and his penchant for giant crockery, and it’s this that originally brought them to the world’s attention. Unfortunately, popularity also came with persecution, and although it holds on to a smattering of members now, I suspect the Sky Kingdom will soon, like so many colourful faiths before it, be crushed by the intolerance of Islam.
If you’ve heard of today’s Little Known Faith, then award yourself a hundred points and a pat on the back. Hell, you can have fifty points just for knowing where its parent country, Palau, actually is. Today I’m going to tell you a little bit about Modekngei (no, I’m not sure how you pronounce it either), Palau’s indigenous religious faith.
Modekngei means “United Sect”, and was founded about a century ago by a Palauan islander named Temedad. Temedad claimed to have experienced a vision in which the head of the traditional Palauan pantheon (a motley collection of ancestral spirits, supernatural animals and animist gods) visited him and told him that, basically, they’d been doing it wrong. Apparently the polytheism they’d been practicing for generations was a big old load of bollocks, and they should in fact be worshipping the One True God, Ngirchomkuuk (nope, don’t know how to pronounce that either, at least not without choking). Temedad was clearly a pretty convincing and charismatic chap, since within a few years his new United Sect had spread all over the archipelago, and the islanders had, for the most part, abandoned their traditional beliefs in favour of Ngirchomkuuk worship.
The Germans, who had nicked Palau from the Spanish in 1899, suppressed this new religion (in spite of its obvious Christian roots), but it experienced a small resurgence when Germany lost the islands to Japan at the end of WW1. Unfortunately for the Palauans, Japan then picked the wrong side in WW2, and lost the islands to America. It wasn’t in fact until 1994 that Palau gained independence and became a nation in its own right, and since then Modekngai has enjoyed a renaissance as the country’s official faith (although only about 9% of the population are officially worshippers).
You may think the concept of the Trinity is a tricky one to get your head around, but try being a follower of Modekngai. They not only have to believe in the One True God, but also in the bladek (a sort of leftover animist pantheon from the pre-Ngiychomkuuk days) and each of these concepts necessarily refutes the other – either there is only one god, or there’s a whole bunch of them. Nonetheless, most Modekngai practitioners seem to have little problem with this fundamental dichotomy, and frankly if you lived in a place as paradisiacal as Palau I suspect theological issues would weigh little on your mind too.
Aside from the hangovers of its animist days, the United Sect functions basically as a rather laid-back form of sky-god monotheism (although the usual prohibitions on drugs, alcohol and sex apply). Its most interesting feature is the complete lack of any sort of holy scripture – instead, the tenets of the faith are preserved in lengthy oral chants called keskes. The recitation of the keskes is the principal votive rite of Modekngai, and the villages of the islands often resound with their strange chanting.
In spite of its theological flaws, Modekngai is a rather charming religion, made even more appealing by the surroundings in which its followers worship. Frankly, if I lived here, I’d be pretty unconcerned with my religion’s inconsistencies as well. Pass me the suntan lotion, and screw Thomas Aquinas!
Back when I was a pretty obsessive student of t’ai chi and qigong, I would regularly scout the MBS sections (Mind, Body, Spirit, for non-booksellers) of bookshops in the hope of picking up some rare and thrilling treatise on my chosen arts. On one occasion, I happened across a thick blue paperback labelled with Chinese characters, whose English translation was “Zhuan Falun“. It was in the Qigong section, so I figured it was some sort of Chinese qigong guide and popped it in my basket.
When I got home, I was astonished by the content. I’d never heard of Falun Gong before, but as an introduction, the Zhuan Falun was a real eye-opener. It was mental. Being inclined towards credulity at the time, I read with an open mind, but as Li Hongzhi’s narcissistic ranting continued I realised this was a level of weird that even a chi-spouting, aura-reading, prana-channelling woofreak like myself was going to find hard to swallow. He claims in the book to be a high-level Buddha, returned to Earth to help humanity. He can, he says, walk through walls, travel through time, become invisible, read minds and heal illnesses. He has met with many alien beings from other worlds and other levels of reality, and they all recognise him as a living incarnation of Buddha/Jesus/Krishna etc. He can also play the trumpet.
That last one is true, by the way.
Amazingly, a large number of people have swallowed Mr Li’s bullshit and do indeed venerate him as a minor deity. These are the followers of Falun Gong, the Practice of the Wheel of Law. Originally a method of qigong, it developed into a religious practice derived ostensibly from the ideas of Buddhism – the focus being on attaining personal enlightenment through the practice of special exercises and meditations. And, of course, through attending Li Hongzhi’s seminars, buying his books and audio-recordings and generally following the patented L. Ron Hubbard process of cult indoctrination.
The three guiding principles of Falun Gong are Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance, and Li’s teaching indicates that he views these as qualities embodied by the universe itself. Practitioners who achieve the goal of integrating these concepts into their lives can rise up the karmic ladder and achieve Buddhahood – just like Mr Li! This process is expedited by the Falun Dafa qigong exercises, which are in fact pretty standard qigong routines to which Li Hongzhi has appended a bit of extra supernatural gloss.
The epistemology of Falun Gong is much the same as with any other form of woo – empiricism and scientific experiment are viewed as too “narrow” in their scope, and much credence is given to personal experience and paranormal research. One striking example is Li Hongzhi’s dogged attachment to the idea that Atlantis, Lemuria et al existed and were paragons of ancient human society – he has even gone so far as to claim archaeological evidence for their existence (not, I hasten to add, evidence that is accepted by archaeologists). Essentially, the practitioner of Falun Gong is required to subscribe to a worldview which is in direct contradiction to scientific evidence, so they must either disregard such information or find ways to make it irrelevant. Unlike many wooists, Li Hongzhi at least makes some attempt to address the fact that his ideas seem to be in complete diametric opposition to reality, but his self-aggrandising pronouncements on the topic basically amount to, “because I say so.”
The Chinese government, in recent years, has come down pretty hard on practitioners of Falun Gong. They officially banned the practice in 1999, claiming that it, “advocates superstition and spreads fallacies, hoodwinks people, incites disturbances, and jeopardises social stability.” Thanks to this particular brand of woo’s enormous popularity outside China’s borders, this decision (and the somewhat heavy-handed suppression tactics used by Chinese law-enforcement) has come in for substantial criticism from the international community, particularly the USA, to which Li Hongzhi emigrated in 1998. China has made a few attempts to extradite Mr Li from his home in the States, but he seems content to remain ensconced in his adopted country, in spite of having openly announced that he would give his life to convince the People’s Republic of his sincerity.
Overall, Falun Gong practitioners don’t really deserve the persecution which the Chinese government has seen fit to mete out. They are guilty of nothing more than gullibility, and in fact many of the moral and ethical teachings of Falun Gong are quite laudable (though not unique to the practice). Li Hongzhi, however, is either a madman or a charlatan (having read his books, I’m inclined to credit the former), and as soon as the world wakes up to this simple fact, Falun Gong will quietly roll up into its own arse and fade away…
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