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The Delphic Maxims mention “evil” twice, first as something to be hated, and secondly as something to be abstained from.
But what, precisely is evil?
evil (adj.)
Old English yfel (Kentish evel) “bad, vicious, ill, wicked,” from Proto-Germanic *ubilaz (cf. Old Saxon ubil, Old Frisian and Middle Dutch evel, Dutch euvel, Old High German ubil, German übel, Gothic ubils), from PIE *upelo-, from root *wap- (cf. Hittite huwapp- “evil”).
“In OE., as in all the other early Teut. langs., exc. Scandinavian, this word is the most comprehensive adjectival expression of disapproval, dislike or disparagement” [OED]. Evil was the word the Anglo-Saxons used where we would use bad, cruel, unskillful, defective (adj.), or harm, crime, misfortune, disease (n.). The meaning “extreme moral wickedness” was in Old English, but did not become the main sense until 18c. Related: Evilly. Evil eye (Latin oculus malus) was Old English eage yfel. Evilchild is attested as an English surname from 13c.
According to Merriam-Webster, evil is an adjective to describe something as “morally reprehensible” or “causing harm”, and a noun for “the fact of suffering, misfortune, and wrong doing” or the something that causes it. Extreme moral wickedness…or just the stuff we don’t like. What is or is not evil seems awfully personal.
Evil tends to be an interesting subject in Pagan communities. Views of what constitutes “evil” as a definition and as an action or behavior vary, but tend to emphasize the “I know it when I see it” subjectiveness of the idea of evil. Of the many discussions (online and IRL) that I have encountered on the topic, my favorite definition comes from an essay on the Wiccan Rede from Proteus Coven–evil is a rip in the fabric of empathy.
All of this really leads me to sometimes think that either everything might be evil (either that, or nothing is)–after all, everything has the capacity to directly inflict harm and misfortune on someone, somewhere. No one lives in a vacuum and even the most altruistic of acts is going to have a downside somewhere down the line (Newton’s Third Law–every action has an equal and opposite reaction, sometimes I think it applies to more than physics). And if everything is evil, perhaps it all cancels out, and nothing is more evil than the next, except in the context of the beholder.
When I ran these two maxims through Google Translate, the result I got was “hate wickedness” and “abstain from wickedness”. Wickedness certainly is implied in the dictionary definitions for “evil”, and indeed, definitions of “wickedness” include the description of “evil”. But I like the word “wickedness” better than that of “evil”–it isn’t as loaded of a term. When we think of evil in its usage, it often to carry an additional subtext–either as an absolute that is part of a moral dichotomy (good vs evil), or as some Supernatural Big Bad Being.
Ultimately, I have to say that evil isn’t supernatural. It isn’t a moral absolute, or the opposite of good. Evil isn’t a specific action or person or event. Evil can’t be defined. But it does exist. Evil happens, and it isn’t everything, or nothing.
Evil is a rip in the fabric of empathy.
Now…I guess I just need to take the time to discuss what the heck that means!!
Ancient Greece was no feminine paradise. Women knew their place, as was all too apparent 200 years after Sappho, in the city that gave birth to one of the greatest political experiments of all time. You could argue that what happened here in Greece gave us the building blocks of Western civilization–a belief in democracy, a belief in freedom of speech, and a fixed and firm notion that women were very definitely second class citizens. Women were often not allowed out during daylight hours. Some had their faces completely veiled. Only a few were educated and a woman’s greatest celebrated virtue was her silence.
~Historian Bethany Hughes, in the BBC’s Women and Religion series, “Priestess: Handmaid to the Gods” (episode 3)
There is but one Delphic Maxims I really and truly have a problem with, and it is this one. I try very hard to meet a culture on its own terms, to not perpetuate presentism, and so, I understand and fundamentally disagree with Delphic Maxim #95–Rule your wife (Γυναικος αρχε). And, seeing as this is the first Monday of Women’s History Month, it seems a fortuitous time to tackle this particular maxim (seriously, I did this by accident, not design). The roles of women through out history is complex. In many civilizations of antiquity (and clear through until modern history), the overall role of women has been one of secondary to men, with the occasional person that seems to be an exception until one takes a better look at the events surrounding them.
Lets start with this poem by Semonides for an idea of the views of women as wives in Greek society. According to Semonides, women are made by the gods in the image of (or perhaps from) the sow (fat and slovenly), the fox (fickle and sly), the dog (nosy and yapping), from the sea (unpredictable and it will get you in the end), the donkey (easy, but works hard), the skunk (an unattractive slut that will steal anything not nailed down), the dainty mare (a gold-digger with a pretty face), and the monkey (pure ugliness and evil), and the queen bee (the only good one among the lot, and impossible to find). At the end of his poem, Semonides proclaims, “Zeus made this to be the greatest evil–women.If they seem to be helpful, they prove in the end to be an evil for whoever has them. He never goes the whole day in cheer,that man who has a woman.”
But, wait! You might say…judging an entire culture by a comedy writer? Imagine what people will say about us if all they had to show was the celebrity roast series!!
True. And I would hesitate to judge an entire culture on the work of one poet if it wasn’t actually representative of the culture’s views of women as a whole. Instead, we have the creation of Pandora as a punishment, the poet Hipponax who describes the day a man marries and the day he buries his wife as the only two days when a woman is pleasurable, the reduction of rights for women through development of the Greek state, the myth of Medusa who was punished by Athena for being raped, the common place and accepted rape of a number of mortal and immortal women by Zeus, the view of Aristotle that a woman is “a defective by nature” and equivalent to an “infertile male” (the Greeks also thought that it was only the male sperm that was responsible for creating a child and women were just vessels for babies). I could go on, but its sort of depressing.
But wait! What about Spartan women? And Sappho, and…
Unfortunately, in much of history, the exceptional woman proves the rule. First of all, most women were not educated beyond what they needed to do to do their job. And their job was to oversee the home and produce children, preferably male children. Earlier in Greek history, women (mostly aristocratic women and women in wealthy families) had rights, and even had responsibilities outside of the home…allowing wealthy aristocratic women like Sappho (an admired contemporary of Solon the Wise, one of the purported maxim authors) to be married and run schools for unmarried women to prepare them for marriage and to write poetry. Among the Spartans, women were given incredible (at the time) freedoms, precisely because Spartan women gave birth to Spartan men*–their fitness and intelligence giving rise to fit and intelligent males, and because someone was needed to oversee the home and the slaves while the men were off earning glory in battle (BTW, the clip from The 300 is actually a quote from Plutarch and attributed to the Queen of Sparta, Gorgo).
Just as the democracy of ancient Greece echoed down and influenced history, so did its misogyny. While women in Rome were allowed more freedoms than women in latter Greek antiquity, their role was still restricted. And when women were the exception to this second-class stature or were allowed to deviate from the restricted gender norms, they still prove the rule (for example, the Vestal Virgins and the festival of Bona Dea). It is interesting to note that part of the reason for the early success of the Christian cults was in part the comparative egalitarianism. In the (very) early Christian church, women were considered more equal in measure to men than in the majority culture (though still not equal)…at least until Augustine decided that women were responsible for men’s lust because he was miserably trying to control his libido to keep his vow of chastity. And from there, for the next ~1700 years, women have been treated like crap, with religion as part of the reasoning of why it was acceptable.
Eff that.
ah, modern misogyny is alive and well…
In some ways it seems like we’ve come so far, right? I mean…we can even vote.
I like the Delphic Maxims. Most of them can be read in a way that is illuminating within their historical context and can be applied to modern day life. Most of the few that cannot be read this way can be reinterpreted to have meaning in a modern context. This one cannot. Ruling one’s wife (or being ruled as a wife) may have been an important part of many ancient cultures, but AFAIC, that is something to learn from and to resist. I am not a child, I do not need to be governed by my husband. I do not need to submit to him as an example of my femininity or worth as a woman. And he is man enough to not want a woman that needs to be defined and governed by him. And since I don’t belong to a faith that demands obsequiousness to old words carved in stone or scratched onto parchment, I feel completely and utterly comfortable throwing this one out the metaphorical window.
Rule Your Wife?
Not interested.
Heck no!
*Spartan culture is a bit more complicated than this, and is quite interesting, in how this idea of men as warriors and women as the head of the household and makers of those warriors was carried out. Wives were chosen primarily for their character and their physical fitness. Because male children were raised communally in the agoge, and because of the emphasis on physical perfection biological paternity was not particularly important and divorce was allowed. For a woman, honor was found in childbearing–as with a man that died in battle, her name could only be inscribed on her gravestone if she died in childbirth.
**This one links to a really good blog by a former Evangelical Christian raised in a homeschooling Christian Patriarcy/Quiverfull family…I’ve followed her blog on and off over the past few years, and it is incredibly interesting. I refuse to link to a CDD site though, if you want to know about Christian Domestic Discipline, Google it!
Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for rights.*
At the beginning of this Maxim Monday enterprise I wrote about “being overcome by justice”, and its intersection with the 2nd principle of the Unitarian Universalist Association. In it, I quoted Martin Luther King, Jr. a couple of times. Somehow in a stroke of kismet or coincidence, I picked its companion maxim for Martin Luther King Day, not really thinking about the timing, until just before I sat down to write. I had an entirely different post in mind until then…something in line with service (which I’ve talked about before) as a form of practicing justice…
The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.*
I think that this maxim happens to be one that Martin Luther King, Jr. might have been a fan of.
I’m not sure there is much I can say on this subject though, that he didn’t say. And on that matter, I’d prefer to let him speak for himself.
There will be hundreds of posts and articles and news clips on Martin Luther King today, as a historical figure, as an icon for justice and civil rights, and as a husband and father. I encourage everyone to watch or read them–the Civil Rights era is an important period of our time that we could all use to be more cognizant of…but this post is not about that, not precisely.
I think we all can agree that practicing justice is a good thing to do, even if we differ on what that means in our own lives, and how we feel compelled to express it. Men (and women) like Martin Luther King do (and have done) a far better job of orating and demonstrating how we can be more just than I will ever be capable of doing. But what I can do–probably my most important contribution towards bending the universe towards justice, is to teach my children what it means to be overcome by justice and to practice what is just, by talking to them about justice and our failings in living justly with honesty and integrity to the best of my ability and demonstrating just actions in my dealings with them and others.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.*
Today my Chickadee asked me a very serious question that I wasn’t quite ready to answer,”Why did a white man kill Martin Luther King? Is it because he was black?” For an almost six year old, this is a serious question that she just didn’t know the answer to. But for me…this question was just a little bit heartbreaking.
Just last week, my baby girl though of skin color as nothing more than nature’s Crayola box. Just last week, my baby girl would tell you that “I’m not white, I’m peach” and would correct anyone that might suggest her bus buddy with brown skin was “black”. As far as she was concerned, our skin colors were no more significant than the colors of flowers, and they should be accurately described. In a mostly white neighborhood, the most significant physical trait of her bus buddy was not the color of her skin, but that “Miss M has ponytails that are better than mine because they have poof.”
And now, not only did she want to know about The Man With A Dream (as she has taken to calling Martin Luther King)–a question much easier to answer than what would follow, but she wanted to know why someone would be mean to someone for having a different color of skin. And then she wanted to know why people would think that they were better than other people for having a different color of skin. And then she wanted to know why people had owned other people. And she wanted to know why we are white, when we are really peach, and why people that are brown are called black, and why any of that matters, because we are all just people. And then she wanted to know if having white skin made people do bad things.
We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.*
…And I had a hard time answering some of her questions. I was raised in a family where skin color was treated like eye color…and I come from a place of racial privilege–I’ve experienced prejudice, but never on the basis of my skin color, and never as overt as that sort of prejudice can be. I might intellectually understand that racism exists and where it stems from (we *do* do Civil War reenacting), but I don’t really understand the depths of hatred that it can and has descended to–I don’t get that kind of hatred, and I sure as hell don’t want my children to. I might be guilty of saying something that is prejudiced simply because I come from a place of racial privilege, but that would be/would have been from ignorance, and not maliciousness (and I sincerely apologize if that has ever happened).
How do you explain all of that to a six year old? Especially a six year old with a heart like butterfly wings (seriously, the kiddo gets upset at the idea of hurting someone’s feelings on accident), especially when there are six year olds around the world that LIVE this, on a daily basis. And if not now, from us, when and how will this lesson be taught?
The Hubby and I did our best to explain that people’s minds and hearts can and do change over time. And that people that lived a long time ago had different ideas of what was right and wrong from ours, and that even then they argued over what was right and wrong like we do today. Just because something was right (or wrong) then, doesn’t mean it has to stay that way…as our sense of morality grows into one that is more compassionate and more just, we can change what we do and say to be more equitable and to embrace equality…not just on a basis of race, but everywhere, for every quality that makes us different from one another.
We tried to tell her that sometimes people are afraid of people and things that are different from what they see or do on a daily basis and that sometimes people are afraid of change. That sometimes when people are afraid, they think they need to fight against what they don’t understand, that the fear makes them hate, that the hate can poison their hearts, that poisoned hearts can make them do bad things. We talked about the fact that people are just people, different and beautiful for it. We talked about Martin Luther King, and that he believed in justice for all people that were disadvantaged, whether it be because of skin color, or economic status, or any of the other things that divide us, and we watched The Man With a Dream talk about the day when “little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.”
I think that he might have liked to see Chickadee and Miss M skipping down the sidewalk, hand in hand, on their way for a play date. I think that maybe, for all that practicing justice often means protesting, it can also means two heads bowed together over a coloring book, drinking cocoa, and watching My Little Pony. Practicing justice is about doing what is right. And what is more right than two six year olds than playing, together, oblivious to the controversies that might have stirred before they were even born?
The Hubby and I have a family motto: Take what you can get and be content with what you have while you work for what you want. It sounds sort of Delphic, if you don’t mind my saying so. Especially in light of Delphic Maxim #73: Be happy with what you have (Κτωμενος ηδου).
What I have:
A pretty fantastic husband that loves me (and whom I love). Two healthy, beautiful, and bright children. Relatively good health. A roof over my head, which is mostly furnished. Food in my pantry. Employment for myself and my spouse. Good neighbors. Friends and family that give a damn. Clothing to wear, books to read, a beach to swim at. Most of the conveniences of modern life–electricity, indoor plumbing, personal transportation. The ability to vote, an education, freedom of religion, health insurance, a car to drive. Money in the bank to pay most of the bills. An interesting hobby (Civil War reenacting and Victorian era natural history), people that actually read the stuff that I have the capability and capacity to type (thanks First Amendment and WordPress!), Netflix & the internet (for entertaining the children on rainy days), all the yarn a hooker could crochet with (a crocheting joke), a sense of humor, a wonderful congregation that basically furnished our apartment when we moved into our new place and didn’t have the money to do so.
What I have is enough. My needs are mostly met, the needs of my family are mostly met, and a good number of wants and desires beyond our needs are met. My life is not perfect, but its good. And in fact, my life does not need to be perfect, because that would be boring. There is certainly stress, particularly since we are just now getting to the point where we can address our debts, and because we have some issues and concerns with the children and their education, with my health, with The Hubby’s job, etc. There are things we lack the money to do (sending our kids to a good school or being able to stay home from work to homeschool) or to buy (The Hubby and I are still sleeping on an air mattress for now–the car needs rear brakes and front tires first). What we do have might not keep up with most of our neighborhood (our pretty cheap apartments were here before the million dollar homes), but we are still doing better than a large portion of the population across the globe. There are places that lack access to clean water, where women can’t vote, where families are starving and where governments are brutally killing their own citizenry.
On being happy:
I’ve come to the conclusion that the modern expectation of happiness is unrealistic. It seems to be based in the idea of some sort of manic ecstatic state free from want or worry. Happiness ranges from serene contentment to fierce joyfulness, and everything in between. Happiness is not perfection, and it isn’t found in stuff. Happiness comes from within, and from the people we love and the things we do (though the things we do occasionally require “stuff”). One of the most interesting things I’ve discovered as a parent is that, by reducing the number of toys the kids have*, the amount that they play with the toys they have as well as the level of cooperation between the kids has increased. And you can guess that occupied, cooperative children make a momma happy.
Earlier this month I talked about maxim #133, which is comparable to this one: “do not be discontented with life”. Part of not being discontented with life has to do with being happy with what you have. This is where the idea of simplicity and gratitude come in for me. I think the first part of being happy with what we have originates in being thankful for it. The second part starts with recognizing, separating, and prioritizing our needs and our wants, and having the ability to use that information to simplify our distractions (mainly in terms of the stuff we own and buy, but sometimes the people that we associate with or the things we do when we are doing too much, etc) and live in mindfulness. Of course, a third part of being happy is not feeling guilty when we mess up at these two things, or when we maybe feel a bit of envy, etc.
Things to consider: Lammas is coming up…and while there were probably other maxims that might have been a more obvious connection to the holiday, at Lammas, our family celebrates the Summer’s Bounty as a time of harvest and reward. Often we think of reward as a material reward, but finding contentment in what we already have (as opposed to what we covet) is its own reward. This Lammas season, what do you have? Does it meet your needs (or even exceed them)? Is it emotionally “enough”? Does your “stuff” perhaps overwhelm you? How can you change your relationship with your “stuff”?
*With the multiple moves, we halved (or maybe third-ed) the toy stash. We also put a good numbers of toys in storage containers and put them up, and only get one out at a time, maybe once a week for the afternoon. Its actually been awesome for mess clean-up (all the toys no longer get dumped out), as well as decreasing conflicts over toys.
Delphic Maxim #48: Be a seeker of wisdom (Φιλοσοφος γινου)
Just because it amuses me somewhat at this point, I had to check out what Google Translate had to say about the Greek for this maxim, which it translates as “philosopher construed”. Interestingly, the word philosopher is Greek in origin (see here for the definition of philosophy), reportedly coined by Pythagoras, and meaning “lover of wisdom” from the two root words philos (loving) and sophia (wisdom)/sophos (wise). The word “construed”, meanwhile, has a couple of definitions mostly revolving around the idea of understanding something through inference or deduction. If you put these ideas together, the meaning of “be-ing a seeker of wisdom” becomes one of also loving wisdom.
But…what exactly is wisdom? The Hubby puts wisdom (since I just asked him) as “the proper application of knowledge and the insight to know when to use it”. It could just be wifely bias, but I think that is freaking brilliant. Don’t tell him I said that, dear readers…it would go to his head. According to Dictionary.com though, he’s not too far off the mark. Wisdom is not just knowledge itself, but the right application of knowledge…an idea that I’m pretty fond of.
A couple years ago, we had a thread on Pagan Forum that inspired me to write my own “10 Commandments”, one of which aligns quite nicely with today’s Delphic Maxim: All knowledge is worth having, but use the symbols of the Divine with prudence for they have Power. If any of my readers are familiar with the works of Jacqueline Carey, they will likely recognize the first part of this as a saying of Shemhazai, one of Eula’s companions (and if you aren’t familiar with Jacqueline Carey, I highly recommend picking up a copy of Kushiel’s Dart!).By my reckoning of the Divine, everything can be a symbol of Divinity and can have Power as such…which means that knowledge, while worth having is not always worth using (and I’m sure all of us can think of examples of this from history, either world-wide or personal).
So what does this maxim mean to me? Be a lover and a seeker of wisdom. Not just of knowledge itself, but of how and when to use it in a way that does justice of one’s self for others.
bay witch musings 