‘An Alien People Clutching Their Gods’

My Sunday morning read is always Douglas Murray and his weekly column Things Worth Remembering published in The Free Press. This week his column has a Christmas theme, naturally, and one of things he focuses on is T.S. Eliot's poem "The Journey of the Magi". He selects one line in particular: I had seen birth and death / But had thought they were different. I selected a different line to highlight in the title to the post: an alien people clutching their gods. The former line focuses on the birth of Christ signaling the death of paganism. The latter line reflects that the Magi returned to pagan nations and now saw themselves outside of that system, alienated from it.

Let's read the poem now:

“The Journey of the Magi” by T.S. Eliot

“A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worst time of the year

For a journey, and such a long journey:

The ways deep and the weather sharp,

The very dead of winter.”

And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,

Lying down in the melting snow.

There were times we regretted

The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,

And the silken girls bringing sherbet.

Then the camel men cursing and grumbling

And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,

And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,

And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly

And the villages dirty and charging high prices:

A hard time we had of it.

At the end we preferred to travel all night,

Sleeping in snatches,

With the voices singing in our ears, saying

That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,

Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;

With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,

And three trees on the low sky,

And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.

Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,

Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,

And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.

But there was no information, and so we continued

And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon

Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,

And I would do it again, but set down

This set down

This: were we led all that way for

Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,

We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,

But had thought they were different; this Birth was

Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,

With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.

The poem is a beautiful rendering of numerous theological points in language that moves beyond dogma to a broader sweep of philosophy/theology. The poem reflects a high contrast between the monotheism that Judeo-Christian philosophy reflects and the polytheism of paganism. Setting aside issues of the Trinity lets accept that the story of the birth of Christ represents an affirmation of monotheism. Thus Eliot describes a birth and death being present in a single event, the birth of Christ and the death of paganism. These themes were explored in my post earlier this year, Naomi Wolf Calls for Revival that built off of Naomi Wolf’s Substack piece, Have the Ancient Gods Returned?

Like the Magi in the poem, modern man has "returned to our places, these Kingdoms" where paganism, not the Judeo-Christian principles, dominate — at least in the halls of power. Those of us who hold to Judeo-Christian principles, like the Magi are no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation/With an alien people clutching their gods. Eliot in the words he gives the Magi prefigures the crucifixion (I should be glad of another death) securing a permanent freedom from paganism at some unspecified future time.

I am an agnostic. But I am not a faithless agnostic. I do not doubt that there is something greater than us and all human institutions. I just cannot definitively conclude what or who that is. I do know that it is not the State. Sometimes we refer to the State as a competing religion. But I am beginning to think it is more like a pagan priesthood, assuring us that there are many gods of inconsistent temperament that only the State (priesthood) can interpret their wills and have us all make propitiation to them through the State. And the State, as the priesthood, will dictate the who, the how, and the why of our lives "because the gods" wish it so.

The ancients might be excused from their belief in paganism because they understood much less than we do about the laws of nature and how they can be used, not merely suffered. The modern pagans ask us to be incoherent about the natural world that the Judeo-Christian principles say was created for our greatest happiness and realization. A great comment from @gossamercat on another post of mine says it best:

I’ve always thought it ironic that realists, at least those who are religious, believe in a higher power and that man is special, but understand intuitively that on this earth, man is an animal that lives in the physical world, and is subject to the same drives, laws and constraints as other biological organisms. Utopians, who tend not to believe in God according to what I see today, believe that man is an animal like any other but treat man as special and god-like in his ability to deny biology and order the world as it ought to be.

Neo-paganism appeals to narcissism and self-destruction. Judeo-Christian principles are a salvation in and of itself from self-destructive thoughts and behaviors in the here and now, without regard to whether there are any additional benefits in an after-life. Christmas and Hanukkah are good times to reflect on the gift we have been given that originated in the Judea that the Magi visited over two millennia ago.