Mammon and the Black Goddess

  Mamon and the Black Goddess

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 65-15199 Copyright © 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965 by

  International Authors N.V Printed in the United States of America First Edition in the United States of AmericaFOREWORD

  MAMMON 1

  Annual Oration, The London School of Economics nrid Political Science, December 6, 1965

  NINE HUNDRED IRON CHARIOTS 27

  Arthur Dehon Little Memorial Lecture, Massa­chusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, May 14, 1963

  THREE OXFORD LECTURES ON POETRY 53 Michaelmas Term, 1962

  SOME INSTANCES OF POETIC VULGARITY 55 TECHNIQUE IN POETRY 69

  THE POET IN A VALLEY OF DRY BONES 85

  HEAL WOMEN 99

  Ladies' Home Journal, 1964

  MORAL PRINCIPLES IN TRANSLATION 115 Threlford Memorial Lecture, The Institute of Linguists, London, December 10, 1962

  vii

  INTIMATIONS OF THE BLACK GODDESS 141 Combining three Oxford Lectures, Michaelmas Term, 1963

  R. G.

  Foreword

  Mammon and the Black Goddess of Wisdom are deities standing in such extreme opposition that they provide a convenient title for these eight wide-ranging pieces: all of which, with the exception of Real Women, began as lectures. Since what pleases the ear is usually too diffuse v for the eye, I have now tightened the arguments. Their original occasions are listed in the Table of Contents 5 and I thank the City College of New York University for allowing me, under the Jacob C. Saposnehov Memorial Bequest, to repeat Mammon, Moral Principles in Trans­lation, and Intimations of the Black Goddess. The three Oxford Lectures on Poetry were published in Horizon.

  Deya, Majorca, Spain 1964Mammon

  Annual Oration, The London School of Economics and Political Science, December 6, 1963

 

  Mammon

 

  I felt rather shaken last year when asked to deliver an annual Oration to the London School of Economics and Political Science; I concluded that the Committee must have heard of my economic and political naivete, and of my dedication to a poetic way of thought, and wanted perhaps to hear me enlarge on the text 'If there's no money in poetry, neither is there poetry in money.'

  I admit having once used this comeback on a business­man who was kindly urging me to write a best-seller rather than poems which no ordinary mortal (meaning himself) could understand. Yet poets need never have empty purses. . . . This may sound somewhat starry-eyed, like the Biblical injunction to trust in the Lord, for He will provide. . . . But since economists study the science of money, maybe they should be reminded once in a while of certain poetic and religious imponderables with­out which economics make no sense—or no more than do the logistical war-games, played by budding generals at Staff Colleges, which disregard such unlogistical factors in real warfare as morale, weather, accident and miracle.

  Let me start with the etymology of 'money'. A word's first meaning is the usual poetic approach to its subse­quent history. Money comes from moneta, a Roman sur­name of the goddess Juno, whose temple housed the Uepublican mint. Moneta, translated from the Greek Mnemosyne ('mental concentration', or 'an act of mem­ory'), was applied to Juno in the sense that oaths to pay so many coins of approved weight and metallic fineness for Inud, goods or services, were sworn in her name before witnesses. Thus moneta, meaning 'approved coin', gradually superseded pecunia, or 'cattle', the old-fashioned Latin for 'money': cows having been the common stan­dard of exchange (as they still are in parts of Africa) until abandoned because of the obvious variation in value between individual cows.

  An approved coinage is the jumping-off point for the study of economic and political science ; but let us go back farther in ancient history, to the idea of 'barter'; and be­yond that to the idea of obligatory gift-exchanges; and beyond that, to the still purer idea of unconditional gift. What we now call 'finance' is, I hold, an intellectual per­version of what began as warm human love. To be brief: money can be redeemed from the Biblical curse put on 'filthy lucre' only by reviving in it the lost sense of a love- gift—which, of course, is most children's first intro­duction to money, when a kind uncle presses sixpence into their little palms. But, as I hope to show, this cannot be done except in a strictly anarchic context.

  There are two primitive kinds of love: the love of a mother for her brood, and the mutual love of courting couples. Both kinds vary greatly throughout Nature, but seem strongest among birds and primates. Good mothers provide titbits for their brood even if they go hungry themselves; courting couples offer each other not only titbits, but flowers and toys—the bower-bird and the pen­guin are ready bird-examples—in proof of affection. A mother's impartial distribution of food starts a com­panionship between her children which often outlasts their need of it, so that they form packs, flocks or herds. Young monkey kinsfolk behave very well towards each other, even caring for the sick.

  Primitive man, however, took co-operation a good deal further than monkeys: making, it seems, a study of in­sect life—as Proverbs enjoins the sluggard to go to the ant (and, in the original text, also to the bee), consider their ways, and be wise. Indeed, the bee was a well- known metaphor for the queen-mother of matriarchal societies. Anthropologists have noted an insectival type of communism among Australian aborigines and the Tierra del Fuegans, who do not understand private property and share all food and other booty without stint. Mem­bers of a clan are united by perfect loyalty based both on reciprocal trust and—this is important—on common mis­trust, or hatred, of outsiders; even though (as anthro­pological field-workers agree) such loyalty is consistent with an active dislike between individual clansmen.

  Elsewhere, courtship-giving becomes a metaphor for alliances between clans: each clan agreeing to supply the other with a particular product or products. The right of connubium usually seals these bargains and assures a harmonious interdependence between clans. So far, we have not left the love area, but when more gift-products pet amassed than are needed, and can be safely stored, these encourage multilateral treaties. They also en­courage the rise of mercantile clans who dispose of the various surpluses to outsiders. Finally, weights and meas­ures regularize trade; and metal in ingot form is accepted lis an all-purpose medium for buying and selling. Thus maternal love and courtship habits are extended, by meta­phor, to loyalty inside a clan, to friendship between clans, ntid to good business~relations between foreigners. If this were the whole history of money, how pleasant our world would be, and how simple the science of economics!

  At this stage, however, a certain awkwardness arises: caused by the unnatural concept of fatherhood and the entry of male gods into religion, where hitherto the Goddess has reigned supreme. Now, the father is an unim­portant figure in most natural species; often not averse to eating his own infant young, and always neglecting the survivors' education. Among birds, however, the cock is sometimes decently domesticated and helps in nest- building: the pious eider-drake, when the eider-duck has lined their nest with her breast feathers but they have been stolen to make eider-downs, will denude his own breast of its rather second-rate plumage to keep her eggs warm through an Arctic spring. Yet the cock-cuckoo—a bird-disguise which Father Zeus adopted before seducing the goddess Hera and claiming universal sovereignty— never does a claw-stroke of work.

  It seems to have been late in pre-history that women's need of fertilization before child-bearing was discovered by men, who thereupon began calling themselves 'fathers'. Their jealousy of sexual rivals was sharpened by watching fights between rams and bulls for the lordship of a herd. Patriarchy is, indeed, a phenomenon associated with cattle-owning nomads who worship Bu
ll-gods or Ram-gods. Once cattlemen claim ownership of women and their offspring, this leads to frequent fratricidal com­bat between would-be patriarchs, and to raids on peace­ful matriarchal territory. Pastoral tribes are, as a rule, better organized for warfare than agricultural ones; and the plunder carried off tempts them to further conquests. Their disdain of the matriarchs whose land they occupy is justified by another natural analogy: woman as no more than the furrow where proud man sows his seed. In many matriarchal or matrilineal societies, a boy old enough to leave his mother's hut goes to that of her brother. In patriarchal tribes, the father claims him and he is cruelly initiated into the arts of rapine and murder. Thus fear of the father displaces love of the mother as a fundamental religious formula. The Latin word patruus, 'paternal uncle', always connoted severity at Rome—as it still does in patriarchal Spain, where tio, 'uncle', can popularly mean any harsh and difficult character; whereas avun­culus, 'maternal uncle', carries a sense of ponderous but genuine kindness, because he need feel no legal obliga­tion to educate his orphaned nephews.

  When the ancient metaphor of maternal love that could bind communities together by free exchange of gifts, was challenged, the contagion of patriarchal severity and greed spread everywhere. As men of the Late- Christian Era, we inherit our ambiguous attitude towards money from the Jews, whom this problem always troubled. Israel was a nation composed of two warring strains—Goddess-loving Canaanite agriculturists and God-fearing Aramean pastoralists who first subdued them under Abraham. The Aramean god El was bull-headed. However, the native cult proved too popular for sup­pression, even after Joshua's conquests several centuries later, and the Goddess continued in power both at Shechem and Jerusalem. Only when the Judaean mon­archy neared its end did the prophets' bizarre doctrine, of a wise and loving Father who had deposed the lustful and irresponsible Mother, allow the nation to resolve its religious conflict in theory at least. (Among certain West African societies, where a son traces his descent from at least fourteen maternal ancestresses, but has no legal ties with his father, a deep and socially irrelevant affection binds these two; and it is the mother's brother, the avunculus, who becomes the tio.)

  The Israelites had not been a mercantile people, ex­cept during the brief period of King Solomon's alliance with the Phoenicians; but, according to Genesis and the early historical books, they used gold ingots of fixed weight as the price of land. Thus Abraham paid the Hittites four Carchemish minae for his burial cave at Machpelah, and Jacob paid one mina for his plot at Shechem. If drought, pestilence or Midianite raiders forced a man to restock his farm with borrowed money, kinsmen of either party witnessed the weighing of the in­gots, and such contracts were never afterwards disputed. But little love was shown in these deals. The lender took a pledge for his loan, either in land or goods, and though a limit had been set on the transfer of fields containing ancestral tombs—and therefore inalienable—a poor bor­rower could offer his person as a pledge and, in default of repayment, become the lender's bondman. Nevertheless, in order to keep Israel a country of small independent farms, rather than of latifundia worked by serf labour, the Book of Leviticus ruled that lands sold in this manner must revert freely to the original owner or his heirs in the 'Year of Jubilee', which came round every half- century; and that all bondmen should be released after seven years' service. The regulation did not, of course, apply to Canaanites: their perpetual serfdom being authorized by Noah's curse on his grandson Canaan, who had mischievously castrated him.

  One of the last Jewish monarchs, King Josiah, pub­lished the Book of Deuteronomy as a merciful amend­ment of the earlier four books of the Pentateuch-. Shaphan the Scribe attributing it to Moses. Lenders were now re­strained from taking household necessities as pledges, or even from choosing alternative pledges, and forbidden to demand any interest on their loans; also, all debts were wiped out every seven years—these being reckoned not from the date of the contract, but from the most recent 'Year of Release'. The law assumed a degree of gener­osity unnatural in lenders who did not happen to be relatives, or on terms of close friendship with their bor­rowers. Both Josiah and Shaphan must have realized its impracticability, for Israel is enjoined: 'Beware that there be not a base thought in thine heart, saying: "The seventh year, the Year of Release, is at hand"; beware lest thine eye be evil against thy needy brother, and thou lend him naught!'

  Babylonian captivity and Seleucid rule then brought the Jews into close contact with prevailing mercantile ethics, after which the richer citizens showed no inclina­tion to make interest-free loans unless they could be cer­tain of reimbursement. Since David (if it was David) said in a Psalm that, though an old man, he had never seen the righteous forsaken nor his children left to beg bread, this implied that the poor were poor either as a result of idleness or in punishment of inherited sins.

  Nevertheless, shortly before Israel became absorbed by Rome, the Messianic Pharisees reasserted the prophetic doctrine of God's loving-kindness and man's duty to his neighbour; and in such emphatic terms that by the reign of the Hasmonean Queen Alexandra they had gained con­trol of the legislature—successfully opposing the Sad- ducee priesthood who rejected all liberal readings of the Mosaic Law, and interpreting the savager passages of the first four books in humane terms. This movement in­deed grew so strong that left-wing fanatics founded celi­bate communistic settlements beside the Dead Sea— women being naturally scornful of benevolent patriarchy —and cut themselves off from the rest of the nation.

  Other fanatics, who held that celibacy contravened God's first Commandment, 'Increase and multiply!', formed brotherhoods at Bethany, Emmaus, Damascus, and elsewhere, sending out missionary groups to preach the gospel of mercy and repentance. One of these groups —that led by Jesus of Nazareth—attained world-wide fame. Yet Jesus did not repudiate money as a social con­venience, but paid the Sanctuary tax demanded of him, named Judas of Cherioth the company treasurer, and distinguished 'the Mammon of Unrighteousness' (mean­ing wealth won by financial craft) from 'the Mammon of Righteousness' (meaning wealth won by honest toil or trade). This was orthodox Pharisee dogma, based on Scripture—namely that money in itself could be neither good nor evil, since it had been used both for selling Joseph into servitude, and for buying the Temple site on Mount Zion. Jesus' reported words, 'You cannot serve both God and Mammon', were short for 'You cannot serve both God and the Mammon of Unrighteousness'.

  He preached against the Sadducee priesthood who, though forbidden by Deuteronomic Law from distraining on a widow's garment for debt, would (in Job's words) not shrink from claiming her ox or her house, and leaving her to starve. His Sermon on the Mount, reinforced by the parable of Dives and Lazarus, showered blessings on the honest poor, and curses on the dishonest rich.

  The Pharisees tried to prevent impoverished Jews from asking foreigners for loans at interest, by introducing the prosbul—a saving clause that enabled a creditor to de­mand payment of a loan at any chosen period before the next 'Year of Release'. But this clause, sponsored by Hillel, was not enough to keep the poor from becoming poorer, or the rich richer. Jesus desired to reclothe Mam­mon in garments of love, by contrasting the generous master, who forgave his servant a huge debt, with the same servant who seized his fellow-servant by the throat in a dispute about a far smaller sum. He also warned the disciples to think no more about tomorrow's subsistence than birds did; and answered the rich young Jew who had kept the Law meticulously and wanted some assurance of Salvation: 'One thing is wanting: sell all that thou hast and give to the poor!' An unrealistic injunction, because the earnest young man must have felt himself responsible for his dependants' livelihood, and to scatter gold at random among the city mob might have prompted crimes of violence. . . . Jesus' words should therefore be read as his ironical reproof of the young man's sancti­moniousness; and perhaps also as a plea for help—since he and his disciples were themselves deserving poor.

  The economic background of their three years' mission­ary wanderings is seldom considered by theologians.
When the ill-paid Roman legions occupied Asia Minor and Syria, rich men were bled; but poor men, skinned. Banditry, blackmail and squalor abounded. The cost of living in the Protectorate of Judaea and the small Native

  State of Galilee must have been excessive. Everything was taxed separately: houses, land, fruit-trees, cattle, carts, fishing boats, market produce, salt. . . . The Romans had also imposed a poll-tax, a road-tax, a tax on exports and imports. Worse: they farmed these taxes out to financiers; who sub-leased them to contractors; who had to buy police protection. Most of the disciples were working men with families. While on the road, their annual out-of- pocket expenses—apart even from alms given to beggars —cannot have been less than the equivalent of three or four thousand pounds sterling. Surprisingly, St Luke mentions among their moneyed backers Susanna, wife of Chusa, chief finance minister to the Tetrarch of Galilee— in fact, to Herod Antipas, who had beheaded John the Baptist, and against whom Jesus himself preached!

  True, this woe-to-the-rich communism, attested in the early chapters of Acts, soon became impractical and broke down, despite a sharp warning to the faithful when Ananias and Sapphira were struck dead in punishment for capitalistic deviation. And the Pauline Christians, having disowned the Church of Jerusalem led by St James and repudiated ritual Judaism, made light of Jesus' state­ment that the Mosaic Law and its Pharisaic glosses would remain in force until all prophecies were fulfilled. They held that these prophecies had been fulfilled at the Resur­rection, and that the Law had no further power over believers in Jesus' godhead. Church Councils were thus free to legislate on all religious questions in His name; and to admit rich men into heaven by widening the eye of the proverbial needle. As a result, Christian monetary ethics soon corresponded closely with those of the Graeco- Roman world: the watchwords of which were caveat emptor, and sine sponsione nihil—'No loan without col­lateral!' Yet their Master's words—however altered or glossed by Gentile editors—remain embedded in the Gospels, and have often been taken, by Protestant and