The loss of fairness and the degeneration of spirituality are two sides of the same coin, two polluted rivers flowing from the same source: the pyramid of domination. For too long, we have been told that religion is a balm for the soul, when in fact, for most of recent human history, it has been a tool created to mold obedient puppets that serve the system. But it has not always been this way.
If we look back to the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods, we discover a relationship with the sacred so authentic that it seems like a dream; in those communities, equality was not a utopia, it was reality, there were no elites, resources were a common good, and sharing was the very breath of the community; in such a horizontal context, religion could not be an instrument of standardization because there were no masters on earth to forge those in heaven.
The deities of that time were not distant, judgmental spectators, nor were they celestial tyrants ready to mete out punishment. They were close presences, vital energies endowed with consciousness that pulsated in everything: in fire, in wind, in animals, in crops, and in human beings themselves. the gods were traveling companions, not jailers, and rituals were not obligations dictated by fear but spontaneous expressions of gratitude towards the deities. People danced for the pleasure of dancing, myths were told that intertwined our steps with those of animals and stars, spirituality was a unifying force, the glue of a free community that reflected its social harmony in its harmonious relationship with the Divine.
Then something cracked. If we take the Greco-Roman period, spirituality had already undergone a certain shift. While the dogmatic and guilt-inducing system that would come later did not yet exist, the figures of the gods were distorted. The gods did not change in their essence; they were still the same, but their faces were scarred. the elites, thirsty for control, understood that religion could become a tool at their service. They needed a spirituality that would justify the injustice they had created, and so they transformed the gods into celestial versions of themselves: powerful, capricious, and vengeful. They instilled the idea that the relationship with the Divine was hierarchical and based on ritual obedience. Those who shunned participation in rituals were not free thinkers, they were traitors. Religion, once a source of inspiration and personal and collective development, had already become an invisible chain, even if it was not yet completely tightened.
But the flame of true spirituality did not die out. During the Greco-Roman period, many rejected the distorted view of traditional religion. Philosophers such as Epicurus, Lucretius, and Pliny mocked the idea of interventionist and punitive gods, proposing a spirituality based on inner serenity and freedom from fear. Alongside them flourished the paths of certain mystery cults such as those of Dionysus, which were not gathering places for drunkards as many think, but places where initiates were offered a transformative experience of themselves, a path of inner growth that escaped the control of the powerful. They were voices of resistance, bulwarks against spiritual flattening.
Then came the coup de grâce: the advent of Christianity as the state religion. With monotheism, spirituality was definitively monopolized and chained, and the vital pluralism of paganism was crushed under the heel of a single almighty and law-giving God. No longer were there immanent forces, but a transcendent sovereign, whose laws superseded human ones, sanctifying the established order. The fear of hell and the lure of paradise became the perfect instruments of social control. It is no coincidence that the virtues imposed by this new system were obedience, humility, resignation, submission, and suffering. Their purpose was clear: to forge devoted slaves, perfect cogs in a pyramidal social machine. authentic spirituality, the kind that liberates, was apparently dead, and in its place arose an apparatus of psychological and social oppression.
Yet this degeneration is not an inevitable fate. If we look at Native American societies before the European genocide, we see egalitarian communities where power was horizontal and based on consensus. Here, the deity known as the Great Spirit or Great Mystery never became a judgmental monster. We wonder why this transformation never took place. Surely because there was no absolute monarch on earth who needed his counterpart in heaven. In a society without ruling classes, there is no one who has the interest or power to disfigure the face of the Divine. Spirituality remains an immanent presence, a bond of harmony with all living things.
The conclusion is that the degeneration of religion is not a theological issue, it is a question of power; where equality and harmony reign, spirituality retains its original purity, while where the pyramid of domination stands, it is distorted, disfigured, and placed at the service of the oppressors.
Scarring the face of the Gods to enslave human beings and sow affliction is the worst of sacrileges, while tearing away these chains within ourselves and in society and allowing Divine energies to flow freely again in human beings is the best way to worship the Gods. it is a return to the sacred fire of the original religion, it is the reconquest of a spirituality that does not demand obedience but offers freedom.
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