Death and Resurgence

The wild Nature God was killed by rationalist philosophy and monotheism.  "The great God Pan is dead!" was heard.  Fierce Yahweh, sky god of scrubland and mountain, lost his weird vital numinous power.  Rigid institutional systems of thought and moral stricture killed the primal Shaman God.

But the God that was, is back.  He slept and dreamed in a hidden catacomb til there came a readiness for him, a dire need, as the civilization that drove him to his grave is failing, as people can no longer bear its clutch, and go running for the hills.  But his time is no more, the world has changed and can't go back.  So if he is to return to preside, it must be in a new form, taking account of what has prevailed since he's been gone.

And so, he returns twofold-- logical and analogical, rational and nonrational, of dualism and monism, moral and meta-moral, of clear sense and of mythopoesy, complete.  He is yet the primal Nature God, with all the old wild magical-mystical force, but informed by the complex systematization of civilization and its body of acquired knowledge, his new myth the Myth of Eco-Self, of "I am I AM" of man and God oned in Nature.  And this means we must converse I-and-I, to be of one Mind in covenant, because only in this way can God remain with us.  If we need him to stay, we must become his people, we must find what it is he wants of us and we must strive to work it in the world, with his help.  We must enter the mind-space where our being can meet with his Being, dwell together, commune with the Mystery, approach the Presence!