Emergentism | Chapter 6: Myth: Poeticizing Reality
Myth, Masks, and Metamodernity
We have articulated the contours of the new Emergentist worldview (Chapter 3), and have even begun to populate its social imaginary with symbols and icons in our attempt to design a new religion for the metamodern age (Chapter 5). But we are only getting started. Our work of civilizational design continues, and we are still a ways from anything like a full religious paradigm that can meet the challenges of the meaning crisis. So what else is missing?
In his book Recapture the Rapture, culture architect Jamie Wheal identifies five aspects that should be part of any decent “tool kit for building ethical culture” around a metamodern Meaning 3.0. According to Wheal, any effective endeavor of this kind will require, like all religions past, Metaphysics, Deities, Scriptures, Ethics, and Sacraments.
We have already discussed the Metaphysical framework of Emergentism (Chapter 4, Parts I and II), as well as the Deity of God consciousness toward which it tends (symbolized by the Kaleidoscopic Eye, p. 137). This brings us to the question of a Scriptural component to this “religion that’s not a religion.” But, what would something like that even look like?
Historically, scriptures—which is to say, collections of stories, myths, and wisdom held as sacred by a religious community—were seen as divinely inspired texts, usually ascribed to revered prophets or special holy men believed to have revealed to the world the eternal and absolute Truth. In this way, traditional scriptures are really a product of 2D consciousness—from which we get Traditional cultural code generally and all the major world religions specifically. What, then, would a scriptural text look like after 3D/Modern and 4D/Postmodern insights, critiques, and developments? That is, how do we conceive of some kind of possible 5D scripture?
The metamodern cultural code that springs from 5D consciousness, we have already noted, is characterized by a particular sensibility—one of “ironic sincerity,” “informed naivete,” and “pragmatic idealism.” It is a sensibility that can be fully aware it is engaging in contingent, perspectival cultural constructions (which were recognized at 4D) even as it commits wholeheartedly to such constructions in sincere aspirational enthusiasm (an orientation developed at 3D).
At the level of 5D consciousness, this is not a contradiction. The sincerity of idealism characteristic of 3D consciousness/ Modern code is synthesized with the self-aware irony endemic to 4D consciousness/Postmodern code, such that irony itself becomes the means of earnest engagement. In this way, the contingent and contrived become the very vehicles for addressing the most profound truths.
Metamodern philosopher Hanzi Freinacht speaks insightfully about this strategy of engagement in his book The Listening Society. Writing from his cottage in the Alps, between an intensive regime of contemplation, reading, and meditation, the incisive philosopher observes:
Most political intellectuals…put on these silly garbs to try to look serious and scientific, while they are all still emotionally invested in their ideas and have tearful (fictional) stories about what makes their own perspective the right one and themselves into the humble hero and servant of truth. I am hereby taking off that silly mask. And so should you, frankly. But how do you throw off the mask? By admitting that you are wearing it—and then using it more deliberately.
What mask is he referring to, exactly? Hanzi Freinacht is not an actual person. He is, in fact, a fictional persona—a mask worn by two writers, Daniel Görtz and Emil Ejner Friis. While the pretension of such a character might have been employed in a 4D/Postmodern context precisely to mock “political intellectuals” with an over-the-top caricature (i.e., a ponderous philosopher lost in endless deep reflection in the Alps), its deployment in a 5D/Metamodern context achieves just the opposite result: it allows Hanzi to be just such a political intellectual, without playing the usual intellectual’s game.
In metamodernist works, the acknowledged pretense is precisely what permits Görtz and Friis to present their idealistic political vision in a truly earnest way. The irony tempers the enthusiasm, placing the entire project in proverbial “scare quotes.” At the same time, the mask allows the writers to perform with all the histrionics of the archetypal philosophical genius. By being outright ridiculous, they are able to be more serious than any living political intellectual could possibly get away with today.
Checkmate, Postmodernism.
In terms of 5D scriptures and 5D prophets, could such a metamodern approach to political philosophy be extended just as well into the field of Emergentist theology? If Hanzi can be a philosopher-mask for metamodern politics, might there be a holy man persona for metamodern religion? An ironic prophet, who can fully embody the archetype of the sage precisely because we know it’s all a pretense?
In this context, allow me (Brendan Graham Dempsey) to properly introduce at last my fellow co-author of this book—a spiritual guide whose insight and message are ripe and timely for the metamodern age: the great sage, Adyahanzi.
Adyahanzi’s spiritual writings offer one example of what 5D scripture could look like. In them, the great sage dances between a series of images and archetypal registers in a way that resonates well with what the metamodern spiritual writer Will Franks calls “imaginal religion,” or what Sadie Alwyn Moon has spoken of in the context of “personal mythology”: namely, an approach to spirituality that embraces the self-consciously constructed nature of religion by generating new, creative expressions of the divine.
Adyahanzi’s visions, for their part, speak to the evolutionary transformations of the divine Self through the poetic register of myth and symbol. His visionary writings translate the Emergentist narrative into a rich, multi-perspectival tapestry of archetypal images spanning all the shapes of consciousness.
If it’s a form of 5D scripture we seek, perhaps we come close to such a thing in his sparse yet profound visionary accounts, such as the text below (which Adyahanzi calls Songs of the Self, and which he has supplemented with AI-generated art):
Scripture: ‘Songs of the Self’
The sage Adyahanzi lived in the world for many years and studied many fields of knowledge. He learned a great deal about different peoples, about plants and animals, and about the travels of the planets in their orbits and the stars in the sky.
But as he approached his twilight years, he grew full and sated with such knowledge. “I have learned a great deal,” he said to himself, “about the outer things of life. Yet, for all this, Adyahanzi remains a mystery to himself. Therefore, I will go to the mountains, where I can look within, and come to understand the final, grandest riddle of them all: my own soul.”
So Adyahanzi gave away his belongings and retreated into the mountains. There, on the Alpine ridges, he spent much time walking and thinking, consorting with himself in the blue air.
But no amount of thinking could get him closer to his aim. At last, finding a small cave, he entered it, and there he sat for many hours in meditation, as the flames of his fire licked the stone walls with light…
The sun set and the moon rose, and the stars shone all night. The heavens glowed as the dark Earth turned beneath the golden candles of the galaxy…
Finally, at dawn, when the wide horizon opened on an amber sky of sunrise, Adyahanzi rose too. “Could it really be!?” he said to himself, amazed. “Have I really been journeying so long through space and time? For I have seen and lived a million lives this night. I have seen my Self across the years! I have awakened from my slumber to my Self, and finally re-membered all the broken fragments of my ageless past.
For Adyahanzi is a soul-wanderer and a time-traveler. He has been countless things through countless ages, and all still live within him.
For now I know the depth of my own Self: that it has been these rocks in eons past, that it has been a speck of algae on the coast, a swimming fish, a lizard on a branch, an ape within the wood. That it has traveled and advanced through ages, never fully understood—but now awakes at last, able to sing the song of what it is in all the languages it’s learned…
For Adyahanzi was a shaman once, antlered and shaggy in the skins of bears and elk, and learned upon a mountain how to listen to the wind, wherein the whole world spoke:
From the soil of Dreams Rises Jacaranda, the Great Tree; From the soil of Dreams She sprouts the branches of North and South, She sprouts the branches of East and West, And the way that leads to the Dancing Place. At the first new moon, The Great Spirit offered His seed into the soil And Jacaranda rises up. Flint she grew from her roots, Sweetgrass from her trunk, Fish and bison from her leaves, And from her flowers came the Ancestors. When the flowers fell to the earth The Ancestors danced the Dance That makes Jacaranda grow tall. And this they taught to all the generations. And so, when the flowers fall, we dance the Dance That makes Jacaranda grow tall. And her big flowers bloom bright, From year to year. So, as children of the Great Tree And offspring of the Great Spirit, We help Jacaranda grow, rise, and blossom. For, without us, she would wither away, Falling back into the soil of Dreams forever.”
So Adyahanzi saw himself in his night vision singing as a shaman at the dawn of all our human days.
“But Adyahanzi was also a bard!” he said then to himself. “For I saw myself sometime after that in the court of a great lord of men, plying my harp in the drinking halls of my master. There I learned to listen to the divine muses, the keepers of knowledge and time.
One night, at a great banquet in celebration of a successful battle, my warlike master called upon me to recite the tale of the Sun God’s triumph, and I obliged, singing:
Sing, Muse, the victory of th’ all-seeing Sun, Who fought the dreaded Dragon in the Deep; Who put the darkness on the fearful run, To rise above the ocean of his sleep. For in the depths, beneath the somber tide, The Sun God slumbered in the Dragon’s throat, Stolen from day to glut the monster’s pride, Who sank and swallowed down his ferryboat. Some time he lay, asleep to his own care, Lost in the silence of oblivion. The days were dark—a darkness past compare: A bleak dusk blacker than obsidian. But finally, the gobbled Sun God woke— Enough, at least, to see his shattered state: The Dragon teeth his kingly body broke; His body’s many parts lie separate. So slowly he assembled all his shape. By arm, by ear, by mouth and leg and heart, The God re-members, that he might escape, And slice the ocean Dragon’s throat apart. His body gathered one by one to rise, He wakens more each part assembles him, And with the final finding of his eyes, He looks—and sees his sword amidst the dim. Then up he swam, toward the Monster’s head, Clutching his weapon in his mighty hand. The Beast, who sensed his rise with rising dread, Could only sink below the ocean strand. There, in the depths, the confrontation rages. The Sun God swung his blade; the Dragon roared! A battle unlike any through the ages, As off its head comes severed by his sword! Out swims the solar deity, in stride, Arising through the water toward the waves, As down the carcass drops the Deep that’s died, And falls into its pieces’ shadowed graves. Then, at the frothing surface of the surge, Sun’s dazzling beams of brilliance break the brine! For now his rays of radiance emerge, And all the heavens sing to see them shine! The darkness cowers and the waters still, As all the world is lighted by his rise— Till every crook and crevice floods its fill Of clarity and clearness from the skies, And all his lucid splendor now can spill From splendid, solar, and all-seeing eyes: The one whose wonder and whose wizened will Illuminates the dark, and never dies.”
So Adyahanzi sang upon his golden lyre in the house of his heroic lord…
“But I was also a man of the one true God!” says Adyahanzi again to himself, remembering. “Sometime, still later: A prophet of the Most High, a scribe for the Word of the Almighty.
It came to me in the night, as I tended my flocks on the open hills, when first I learned to listen to the voice of the Lord…
1 1And lo, in the fifth year of the new king, as I tended my flocks by the rivers of the east, praying and fasting by night, suddenly a mighty cloud appeared before me, roaring with the sound of many waters. 2I looked, and behold: a great wheel of fire and cloud was turning, ablaze with the light of many suns. 3Within it circled many wheels, each one in their own direction. And at its center: the eye of one like a son of man, which spoke, saying: 4‘Behold: I am the Lord your God. Do not be afraid.’
5‘What do you want with me, Lord?’ I asked. And the eye from the wheels shone bright, and the eye responded:
6‘Behold: I am the Alpha and Omega;
The One who was and will be.
7All the world resounds with my glory;
My radiance spans from east to west,
From the bounds of north and south, I am king.
8The earth is my footstool,
And the stars the gems in my crown.
9From age to age, I remain,
Drawing all creatures towards my throne.
10Yet many still do not know me;
The nations stay ignorant of my ways.
11They look to the things of the world,
To wood and clay,
To sand and stone.
12But I am not to be found among them.
13For I reside in the hearts of my people;
He who looks for me will find me there;
14Not in idols or superstitious rites,
But in the very bosom of your breath,
In the depths of your inmost soul.
15There I dwell, and abide for all who seek,
From the high king to the low shepherd,
From the priest to the lowliest orphan.
16Why, then, does brother rise against brother?
Or sister against sister?
17Does a boy throw rocks at a temple?
Does a man spit upon the altar’s incense?
18If a man does not these things, why curse his friend?
Or cause his fellow to suffer?
19For every injury he does his neighbor
Is done to the very Holiness of God.
20Every wrong he commits against his brother,
That wrong is done against himself.
21Go, then, and tell the people:
That the Lord is not to be found in temples,
But in the very tabernacle of the heart.
22Go, and proclaim it from the hilltops:
That God is to be found within;
23That therein shall he find my peace;
That no more shall he wrong his fellow man.
24For he who does shall not escape consequence;
The wicked and the oppressor shall learn;
The idolator and fool shall see;
25When I cast my all-seeing eye upon them,
And reveal to them the folly of their ways.
26Then shall they know, and see within themselves
The path to true wisdom and to holiness,
27When face-to-face they come into my presence
And purge their ignorance in my refining fire.
28Thus says the Lord. Amen.29And, hearing this, I rose, and left my flocks at once to go proclaim the word of the Lord to all the people, 30that they might know to seek for him no longer among outward things of the world, but in the very depth of their hearts.”
So Adyahanzi preached to the people in the time of kings and priests and shepherds of the field…
“But I was also a doctor!” says Adyahanzi to himself, recalling a still later life. “More recently: a caretaker of the human psyche, after the religion of priests and prophets had passed away, and the car and machine proliferated; when cities rose, and the great Self retreated ever deeper into the human mind.
Then, as a therapist, I learned to listen to what the unconscious spoke, that I might coax it out. I sat at the head of my patients as they lay, and on my pad inscribed the images of their deep Self’s transformations.
A patient dreams:
“It is dark. I am in outer space, floating in an abyss of blackness. There are no stars and I am utterly alone. Everything is silent, like a terrifying emptiness beyond time.
I try to remember how I got here—but can’t. I feel that I have always been here, and always will be. When I think this, I shudder with an indescribable agony of loneliness and terror as deep and profound as the yawning emptiness of the void.
But then, I remember: I am growing a rose. I look over and see it floating in front of me, and am filled with the most immense relief and gratitude imaginable. It is absolutely precious to me. I remember that I am here to tend the rose and care for it, to see it bloom.
As I do, it sprouts—and billions of stars flash into existence all around me. My joy at this causes the rose to grow even more. When it does, innumerable stars on every side collide into one another, sinking down into the fabric of space itself. So the heavens form countless whirlpools of stars all draining into the black holes that have torn into the void.
I watch in awe, and my rose grows with my wonder. The stem rises and sprouts tiny leaflets as marbled planets coalesce within the spiral arms of the whirlpools. The stem buds, and fish swim in the deep of the many worlds.
And then, at last, it flowers. I start to weep, because this was my cosmic task—to tend the rose in the void, to see it bloom. For this I braved the infinite abyss; for this I have waited for all time.
The petals blossom out their vibrant velvet crimson against the pitch black of space, and I am awed. Then, as I stand before it, utterly enthralled, a great Eye rises out of the petals. I see it, and it sees me. For the first time since I have existed for eternity in the void, I am seen. And I realize that the Eye is the eye of my lover, and I get the sense that we have found and lost and found and lost one another many times before.
As our gaze locks, and our eyes reflect each other’s, I awake.
So Adyahanzi transcribed the dreams of sleepers of the modern world…
“But I was also an artist!” says Adyahanzi again to himself, coming closer and closer to his most recent memories of existence. “In a world deaf to those it trampled upon in order to grow smart and comfortable, Adyahanzi learned to listen to the unspoken stories and tell their side of things.
I broadcast what the powerful deemed noise, an assembler of forgotten tales and endangered languages, a collage-maker and quilt-sower. I teased from history the voice of the downcast, and let it be heard in poems that revealed a hidden richness drowned by time. I plucked from the treasury of violence and imposition the counter-cry of the human soul, and read it to the world:
sing, muse, the victory of
the dreaded dragon in the deep—
the dark
the low shepherd
the lowliest orphan—
Jacaranda rises up!
Do not be afraid
the dark never dies—
she sprouts the branches of north and south
she sprouts the branches of east and west
as deep and profound
as the yawning emptiness of the void—
the wicked and the oppressor shall learn
till every crook
falls into shadowed graves
from the high king
to the priest—
as children of the great tree
the Ancestors and
the low the lowliest
help Jacaranda grow, rise, and blossom—
for, without us, she would wither away—
tend the rose the void—
So Adyahanzi read his poetry in the galleries and coffeehouses of a rich, fragmented world.
“Indeed,” said Adyahanzi to himself. “I have been all of these selves, since my self is the great Self who has traversed through all these shapes in its winding path of Self-discovery.
Today, Adyahanzi is the one who learns to listen to these many selves as many stages on the way of the great Self—to tell their stories, in their place, and thereby render the great Story of the Self as it has been unfolding through the ages.
Today, Adyahanzi learns to dance the Dance of the ancestors; to wake, remember, and slay the darkness like the sun god rising from the waters; to seek for the Lord within; to tend the rose and open his eyes to the archetypal Self; to catch the missed voices in the chorus of the world.
Today, Adyahanzi learns to listen to them all.
And with this symphony singing in his ears, he descended the mountain, to rejoin the world and its many melodies, and seek therein some harmony of many parts in the Great Whole.
– Adyahanzi
NEXT: Lineage: 1. Eastern and Western Mysticism
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Just finished the physical book..... Well done, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Great synthesis of a large span of material. It fit right in after going through Vervaeke's series and Recapture the Rapture.