Star Trek Into Darkness, The Key of Solomon the King, and Save Me

Jewish date:  24 ’Av 5773 (Parashath Re’eh).

Today’s holidays:  Feast Day of Ignatius of Loyola (Roman Catholicism), Lughnasadh Eve in Northern Hemisphere/Imbolc Eve in Southern Hemisphere (Neopaganism), Feast Day of St. Bill Gates (Church of the SubGenius).

Greetings.

I know posting on this blog has gotten irregular. Sorry about this.  Life is busy.

I would like to comment on a number of different things relevant to this blog:

1) Star Trek Into Darkness:  Preemptively, your humble blogger would like to note that he eventually wants to write a great grand review of religion in Star Trek, all series and movies, but as he saw it recently, he would like to jot down some thoughts on it now so they do not get forgotten.

Much ink (or rather the electronic equivalent thereof) has already been spilled on what is right and wrong with this film.  Considering the focus of this blog, I will note that what Harrison did with the photon torpedoes is such an obviously bad idea that he should never even considered it (duh!) and proceed to discussing religion.  This is not an especially religious film, but like Star Trek in general, it touches on it.  The movie starts out on the planet Nibiru, which is inhabited by humanoids who have not yet developed warp technology and thus, according to the Federation’s Prime Directive, must not be contacted at any cost.  Spock gets quickly trapped in an active volcano with a device meant to freeze the molten lava so the volcano does not erupt and kill the natives.  Due to the Enterprise being hidden under water—something which everyone says makes no sense—Kirk faces the dilemma of whether he uphold the Prime Directive, in which case Spock dies, or get the Enterprise out of hiding and where the transporter will work properly to save Spock, in which case the natives will probably see the ship—a clear violation of the Prime Directive.  Kirk being Kirk, the natives see the Enterprise rising out of the ocean.  The natives’ behavior soon afterwards suggests they believe they have seen a divine being or have had a prophetic vision.  To say the least, Admiral Pike is not happy.  

Religious misinterpretation of Federation activity actually has been done at least once before in the Star Trek universe.  The Star Trek:  The Next Generation episode “Who Watches the Watchers” revolves around someone on a technologically primitive planet inhabited by Vulcanoids mistaking Captain Jean-Luc Picard for a god known as the Overseer.  That episode deals with the consequences of such a mistake and how to deal with it—not to mention religious epistemology—in far greater length and detail than Star Trek Into Darkness, which says nothing about what, if anything, Starfleet does to clean up the mess on Nibiru.

Your humble blogger is not aware of anything quite like either of these fictional incidents happening in reality, though cargo cults approximate them to some degree.

Also noted is a little peek into the Vulcan belief system.  Whether Vulcans believe in the supernatural or not has never been discussed, albeit Mr. Spock once claimed to specifically not believe in angels.  However, the Vulcan belief system includes things like monasticism and mysticism which would normally be religious on Earth.  There is some arguing in this film over whether the needs of the many really do outweigh the needs of the one (reflecting Star Trek II:  The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek III:  The Search for Spock).  Also, Spock claims that war is “by definition” immoral, which sounds like an all-too-human attempt to skirt the problem that morality is intrinsically a matter of opinion.  Certain properties, such as weight and temperature, are matters of objective fact.  But whether an action is good or bad cannot be objective in the same way; no matter how hard one looks, one will never find goodness particles or evilness waves.  Spock seems to be trying to make morality objective by defining what is and is not moral.  One can argue about whether some action objectively fits this definition.  (And your humble blogger assumes that Spock, being no mental slouch, has a definition for war and every other relevant term.)  However, since the definition is not rooted in objective reality, it remains an opinion.  Klingons just as easily can claim that war is by definition moral (and act on this presumed morality, too).  Defining what is moral or immoral does not make it objectively so.

Also:  Considering that Vulcans have been depicted at times waging war, the Vulcan belief system appears to have a priority system.  Vulcans may consider war immoral, but they may well consider other things, such as being murdered by enemy soldiers, to be worse, thus making war the lesser of two evils.  Real humans tend to agree on this issue, though there are a few true pacifists.

2) The Key of Solomon the King (Clavicula Salomonis) translated by S. Liddell MacGregor Mathers:  This is a grimoire repeatedly mentioned as source material in your humble blogger’s previous reading on Neopaganism.  It certainly looks like the source for Gerald Gardner’s High Magic’s Aid, the procedures for working magic being largely the same.  Unlike High Magic’s Aid, The Key of Solomon deals with working magic in a Jewish (or pseudo-Jewish) context.  There is none of the Neopagan business of duotheism, polarity of the sexes, or ritual nudity.  Magic instead is presented as an exercise in manipulating spirits for one’s purposes.  Much emphasis is put on the necessity of piety to work magic.  Consistent with this is the lack of any procedure for divination; after all, the Torah explicitly forbids several kinds of divination.

And, no, there is no convincing reason to believe that King Shelomoh (Solomon) actually wrote this book.  There is nothing in the Hebrew Bible to suggest he practiced any form of magic.

3) Save Me:  This gem of a show showed up recently on Hulu.  It is story of a woman with poor moral habits (such as drunkenness, petty theft, and embarrassing behavior) named Beth who accidentally chokes.  She survives, though feeling like she died in the process.  Reborn, she finds herself religiously moved and believes that God communicates with her.

One major issue that this show deals with is how would someone who experiences a sudden conversion would behave.  (This sort of thing does happen in real life at times.  See The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.)  Given the profundity of Beth’s conversion, she tends to go to extremes—absurd ones, as this is a comedy.  Having no previous religious experience, Beth frequently has no idea how a religious person is supposed to behave and makes some very strange mistakes.  For example, in one episode she prays constantly.  She also embraces love for her fellow humans and other creatures to the point of loving her husband’s ex-mistress Carlise and a spider.  At one point, she decides to read the (Christian) Bible, but finding the King James Version too hard, she turns to The Children’s Bible and proceeds to misinterpret the parable of the Good Samaritan.  (Come to think of it, she never seems to get very far in either version.)  In another, she “honors” her parents by calling them excessively.  Trying to “honor” her daughter Emily into honoring her back proves socially embarrassing for the latter.  Despite everything being played for laughs, religious behavior Beth undertakes on her own really is no stranger than what a lot of converts do.

(And to be fair to Beth, none of the other main characters displays much knowledge of Christianity or religion in general, which is sadly normal for Americans these days.  (See Religious Literacy by Stephen Prothero.)  Emily even hollows out a Bible to hide marijuana in.)

The other major issue is the nature of prophecy.  For Beth, this is something in the way of a comedic version of the sorts of things one would expect in Ezekiel and Jonah (or Evan Almighty):  She is told to do all sorts of strange actions in a gender-neutral voice, and she is not allowed to shirk her duty.  Refusing to do what God demands only results in pain for Beth, and compliance is quick.  Beth is assumed to be some sort of crackpot for claiming prophecy, though with the lack of theological sophistication of the characters, none of them ever thinks about empirically testing whether she can consistently make correct predictions.  This is despite that around Beth periodically occur unusually well-timed events (lightning striking Carlise, Beth’s car hitting a squirrel, various injuries to Beth, rain falling, the power in various houses going out, etc.) which serve to progress the plot, tie up loose ends, and bring Beth together with her family and friends.  Beth’s husband Todd is unusually generous in interpreting what happens to Beth and chalks her prophecies up to intuition.  Untraditionally, Beth prophetically has access to knowledge about people which she should not have.  Semi-traditionally, she actually has two visions of God, once in the form of Betty White(!) and the other as a black man.  (For comparison, YHWH or some suitable representative has a form which looks like it is practically on fire in Ezekiel.)  Less traditional is God claiming to have taken corporeal form when Beth was a child and played friend with her; while Christians generally regard Jesus as God somehow become corporeal, your humble blogger is not aware of them promoting the idea that He has made a habit of pretending to be human.  Then again, God in this series never claims to be the god of Christianity or any other religion, so some flexibility is warranted.

All in all, an enjoyable effort in theological fiction.  I am saddened that its run seems limited to just seven episodes.  I hope NBC changes its collective mind and continues the series.

’Aharon/Aaron

Thoughts on the Fast of ’Av

Jewish date:  9 ’Av 5773 (Parashath Wa’Ethḥannan).

Today’s holidays:  The Fast of ’Av (Judaism), Feast Day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel (Roman Catholicism), Display of the Embarrassing Swimsuits (Church of the SubGenius).



Today is the Fast of ’Av, the saddest day in the Jewish calendar, marking some of our worst tragedies.  When one reviews the laws for fast days, one of the first things one reads is that fasting and associated practices, while obligatory on certain days, are not an end in themselves.  Thus to spend a fast day touristing or playing video games is forbidden. because that would be missing the point.  Fasting and suffering are a means to the end of repentance.  This post is meant to comment on a contemporary mistake that we have yet to correct.

In previous generations, our ancestors saw fit to act on what they believed was going to happen soon.  YHWH forbade King Dawidh to build the First Temple, but since Dawidh’s son Shelomoh was supposed to build it, Dawidh made all the preparations he could ahead of time.  When many thought that Shim‘on “bar Kokheva’” bar Koziva’ was Mashiaḥ, many took up arms against the Romans to fight the wars that Mashiaḥ is supposed to fight.  And when many thought that Shabbethay Ṣevi was Mashiaḥ, many repented their sins and prepared to move to Israel.  The attitude was that one should act to move events along.  The fact that Mashiaḥ did not actually come at those times is irrelevant to this point.

We are closer to the fulfillment of Messianic prophecies now than at any time in the past 2,000 years.  Not only have we reestablished the Jewish state, but it has survived despite the constant hostility of its neighbors, including terrorism and unprovoked warfare.  All three of the major Abrahamic religions are scrambling to deal with this unprecedented historical change, with adherents trying to adjust their beliefs to the altered situation on the ground or rationalize their way around it.  And while we Jews have been a big winner in this new era, for too many of us the consequences of this new era have not sunk in.

As happened at the start of the Second Temple Period, few of us have returned home to Israel voluntarily, preferring to remain in the Diaspora.  Many of us who did come came because they had little choice in the matter.  Persecution and genocide, both before and after the formation of the State of Israel, have given Jews every reason get out of Europe and the Muslim world.  Those living in places of tolerance, such as the United States, have felt less motivated to make ‘aliyyah.  In such comfortable places, it is very easy to claim to be a Zionist but never act upon it.  Moving to Israel may be a dream or an ideal, but “maybe sometime in the future” very easily becomes “never” in practice.  I myself was guilty of this error until YHWH coerced me into reconsidering.  It is one thing to say one believes that Israel is where Jews belong; it is an entirely different thing to live it.

Even among those of us who live in Israel, the consequences of what we are supposed to be doing have generally not sunken in completely.  Yes, we tithe our produce, and we do not celebrate an extra day of major holidays.  But ever since the destruction of the Second Temple, we have not been able to fully practice Judaism.  Without the Temple, or at least proper access to the Temple Mount, many of the rites that are supposed to performed daily, on Shabbath, and on major holidays cannot be performed.  Part of the problem is the government, or to be specific, every government Israel has had, starting in 1967.  Almost immediately after the Temple Mount was liberated, Mosheh Dayyan returned it to Islamic control, where it has remained, aided and abetted by the police.  The police would rather violate freedom of religion to keep Muslims relatively happy in the short term, even though it is their job to enforce religious tolerance and pandering to violent Muslims never works in the long term.  Muslims are essentially allowed to do anything they want up there, even blatant violations of Israeli law, such as destruction of antiquities, while Jews are openly discriminated against.  Many Jews are turned away for no valid reason, while those who do ascend are warned not to pray and may be harassed by the police and Muslims.  Bringing sacrifices is something the police cannot conceive of permitting at all.

The strange thing is a general lack of concern, even among the observant, for the Temple Mount and the Temple service.  Many of us pray for complete redemption and sing about how we want Mashiaḥ now, but we expect YHWH to do everything and ourselves to do nothing—unlike what our ancestors did.  Very few of us bother to visit the Temple Mount.  Very few of us protest against Muslim desecration of our most holy site.  And very few of us have done anything to get ready for restarting the Temple service.  When confronted with their indifference, many will make excuses based on ritual purity (in contrast with what Jews did in earlier times or that certain sacrifices can be made even while ritually impure) or feign fear of Muslims should Jews reclaim the Temple Mount (despite Muslim complaints about Jews having little to do with reality).  Simply ignoring a large chunk of our religion is irrational, and I can see no way around the problem other than to reclaim the Temple Mount.

May YHWH help us get past the delusion that the status quo must be preserved and lead us to repent.


Various relevant articles:

• “The 9th of Av: A Time to Mourn... A Time to Build”
• “The Temple taboo”
• “Danon: Equal Prayer Rights on Temple Mount Now” (Someone is trying to get my vote.)
• “Muslim Extremists Force Jews From Temple Mount”  (As I keep saying on my Facebook account, the police suck.)
• “A historical description of Tisha Be’av”
• “Weeping in the silence – Tisha Be’av”

Also note the Temple Institute, who are working to get ready everything needed for the next Temple.