Yuri Stoyanov

I almost abandoned this in the first five pages because it was so tiffitute. I showed it to my friend Jo and she said there was something wrong with the author. But we can take that with a pinch of salt because she says the same about me. Anyway, I told myself that it wasn’t a proposition from Wittgenstein and pushed on. It really is just the first five pages that are very hard. Like any good philosopher Stoyanov is giving us his definitions first. Not that the book is easy. Stoyanov and the six line sentence are intimate lovers.

What we have here is a history of a religious idea, traced through the various religions that have made use of it. The whole is set in a chronological framework, but is initially rather abstract. Narrative history increases as we move further into the historical period. However, what narrative history there is is necessarily brief and solely in service of telling the history of the idea. I found it extremely useful having read a bit of history and history of religion as for much of the book I was able to orient myself in time and space. I was adrift and close to panic when he started talking about eastern Europe north of Greece and central Asia, areas about which I am entirely ignorant. I would not therefore recommend this as a first book on the history of religion.

But if you’re ready for it, or young enough to think you are, the riches within are beyond measure. I felt a bit like the pig who had pearls cast before him. The mind boggles at how one man can be an expert on so many subjects. Maybe this is something wrong with him.

I particularly enjoyed how it makes you see the history of Europe and Middle East from an entirely different perspective. There are so many though provoking things I can’t list everything, but it made me think about the definition of religion. Lots of people get killed over the course of the book in a variety of interesting ways. The killers appear to have a variety of motives, all of them dysfunctional. Yet whether as an excuse or because they really believed the dualists were evil, there’s an animosity to polytheism. Yet the doctrinal differences are so slight between say Catholicism and Catharism. I understand that in Catholicism Satan is not a god and the saints are not gods, but they are supernatural beings and the people who believe in them modify their behaviour as a result of that belief. For an outsider like me the distinction between Satan or a saint and a god needs to be explained very slowly. Functionally, Catholicism and polytheism are identical. Yet people kill over this kind of thing. Not a particularly pleasant insight into the human psyche, but very useful and interesting. I’m going to be much more careful around nuns from now on.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. I’d particularly recommend the book to anyone who haunts the esoterica bookshelves. Herein are – sensible – discussions of such things as witches, secret Anti-Popes, lost Cathar treasure and the marital status of Jesus Christ.… (més)