Unleash the Chains
Lucretius said it best, writing On the Nature of Things at the time of Christ. Sympathizing with a potential student, he commiserated thusly: (hierophants = priests) And you, at any moment now, in fear of hierophantic threats will seek to leave me. For think of the endless fantasies your priests devise, that can subvert all reasoned thought, and turn your life to terror and confusion. I came up against hierophantic threats early in my religious education. For a short but intense period of time in my early teens, I prayed after every dinner, hoping that this would serve as expiation for the fact that I wore different cloths at the same time, didn't spend much time in synagogue, and refused to leave my leather shoes home on Yom Kippur. Though my parents kept a kosher home, we had no trouble eating buttered garlic bread with spaghetti and meat balls, nor putting parmesan cheese on the meat itself. As a tween, the disconnect between the rules and our acti...