The West beyond the West 

St. Brendan's Island, Turtle Island

"From Pilgrimage to Crusade" –

The Conquest of Paradise

"North America, Turtle Island, taken by invaders
who wage war around the world.
May ants, may abalone, otters, wolves, and elk
Rise! and pull away their giving
from the robot nations."
- Gary Snyder, Turtle Island

–

Gary Snyder speaks for the wilderness and for indigenous people,
from a perspective far distant from the 'mainstream' 
of American civilization.  He was also 
one of the first Westerners to immerse himself 
in the study of Zen in a Japanese monastery.

Another of the great American voices 
from well outside the rat race was
Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk and writer.
He became a radical critic of our society during the 1960s,
causing many of his writings to be suppressed by his order.

In 1961, his Mystics and Zen Masters was published,
containing an essay, "From Pilgrimage to Crusade", exploring
how the original ideal of the humble pilgrimage
evolved into the crusade
which crushed the infidel and claimed new lands for Christendom.

Merton points to the roots of both in the
ambiguous example of Abraham,
who set forth from his own country to a land
that God would show him,
without knowing the way, trusting in divine guidance.

Like him, the pilgrim goes out defenseless into the world,
leaving wealth and worldly attachments behind,
in "an exercise in ascetic homelessness and exile.
He entrusted himself to Providence . . ."

Merton, citing Mircea Eliade's works
tells of how the pilgrim re-enacts the 'Sacred Journey',
a primal human imperative from earliest times,

"in search of a . . holy place, a center and source of . . life.
This hope is built into his psychology . . . 
his heart seeks to return to a mythical source,
the place of the creation of the world,
paradise itself. . ."

In pre-Christian times, powerful sacred sites
found in every land
were the focus of these journeys.

There people hoped to establish stronger connections
to the great Powers that sustained Life.

But, with time, notions of religion changed.
Sacred power ceased to be identified with nature,
the land lost its holiness.

As this happened, it became territory
that anyone with enough power could conquer.

 Power was still understood to be granted by a spiritual force, 
but the appeal of new lands to be won and their riches enjoyed
asserts itself, and voyages are taken
in the belief that somewhere,
there is a land promised by God to the faithful,
ripe for the taking.

The ancient Israelites, after all,
are said in the Hebrew Scriptures to have
conquered Canaan, 
"the land of milk and honey," 
wresting it from its original inhabitants
according to the will and direction of Yahweh.

The Celtic civilization was one that,
at least for a brief era, managed to combine Christianity
with valuable elements inherited from the earlier beliefs.

The legendary isle discovered by St. Brendan,
and the other voyages of the Celtic Christians were, says Merton,
"a reawakening of the archaic mythic theme
of the 'return to paradise'. . .

"The pilgrimage of the Celtic monk was not . .
just endless and aimless wandering for its own sake. 
The external and geographic pilgrimage was . .
in profound relationship with an inner experience
of continuity between the natural and the supernatural,
between the sacred and the profane,
between this world and the next:
. . both in time and in space.
For the Celt, as for archaic and primitive man,
the true reality is that which is manifested . . .
in symbol, sacrament, and myth." 

The inner and outer journey are then a 
"dialogue between man and creation
in which spiritual and bodily realities
interweave and interlace themselves 
like manuscript illuminations in the Book of Kells."

Centuries later, man and creation were less united; 
the quest for material wealth 
had gained the upper hand.
The Crusades had come and gone. 
Growing from the seed of the earlier ideal of pilgrimage,
ending in disaster, they "became a consecration of violence."

As Christopher Columbus set forth to reach the wealth of the Indies, earlier myths were still in the air.
Merton notes that "Christopher Columbus was most probably
aware of the Brendan legend as well as . . .
medieval descriptions of the 'Lost Island,' or Perdita:

"There is a certain island of the Ocean called Perdita,
and it excels all the lands of the earth
in the beauty and fertility of all things.
Found once by chance, it was later sought again and not found,
whence it is called Perdita.
To this isle, Brendan is said to have come."
~ De Imagine Mundi  

 (note on the font)*

"The Renaissance explorers, the conquistadors,
the Puritans, the missionaries,
the colonizers, and doubtless also
the slave traders and pirates,
were in there own way deeply influenced by the
mythic paradisiacal aspect of the Americas.
But it was a paradise into which
they could not penetrate without the most
profound ambiguities."

The greed and ambition of these men
was colored deeply by myths,
now giving them inspiration and legitimation 
for their deeds.
Paradise was no longer the sacred place of power 
where the ascetic wanderer would come face-to-face with God,
but, especially in the tropics,
it offered "the lush and tempting beauty and 
fantastic opulence of nature. 
There were the true and legendary riches,
from the mines of San Luis Potosí
to the . . . fountain of eternal youth.
There were the Indians . . 
appearing now as idyllic 'noble savages'. . 
now as treacherous devils . .
sunk in the worst forms of heathenism.
Thus the European white man set foot on the shores of America
with the conflicting feelings of an Adam
newly restored to paradise
and of a Crusader about to scale the walls of Acre."

"The mentality of the pilgrim and that of the Crusader
had fused together to create a singular form of alienation. . . 
Centuries of ardent, unconscious desire
for the Lost Island
had established a kind of right to paradise
once it was found.
It never occurred to the sixteenth-century Spaniard or Englishman 
to doubt for a moment that the new world 
was entirely and rightly his.
It had been promised and given to him by God.
It was the end of centuries of pilgrimage.
It was the long-sought land of promise and renewal. . ."

We know what happened next.
The people already dwelling in this land
were brutally attacked, enslaved and massacred.
There were scattered utopian experiments,
"But for the greater part,
the pilgrims were rushing upon the Lost Island
with a combative ferocity and a wasteful irresponsibility
that have tainted the fruits of the paradise tree
with bitterness ever since.
Somehow it has been forgotten that
a paradise that can be conquered 
and acquired by force is not a paradise at all."

What else but this is portrayed again
in the modern myths of Middle Earth and Earthsea?
Anyone who reads the descriptions of the growing 
lust of the Númenóreans for the Blessed Land
and their fateful quest to take it by force,
can hardly doubt it,

or of the proud seizing of the otherworld
by Earthsea's mages, who wished to achieve

"Life immortal,
. . in a great land of rivers and mountains and beautiful cities,
where there is no suffering or pain
and where the self endures, unchanged, unchanging, forever . . ."

"Where," the Summoner said, "where is that land?"
"On the other wind," said Irian.
"The west beyond the west."

—

The latest headlines are of cloning,
biotechnology, the patenting and genetic engineering of organisms,
and radical possibilities of life extension.
The quest for immortality is alive and well today.
Our civilization is showing few signs of respect
for the ancient mysteries of life's sources
embodied in the DNA.
We would take it by storm.
What winds will blow then?
Will such a civilization's hubris and irreverence
have no consequences?

–

If you have not yet been there, now is the time to visit

Our Avalon page

*
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*note: you should see this quote in the font called Blackadder ITC.
If you don't have it, see if you can find it - it's a nice one!