Natural And Unnatural Religions

There are many different ways to classify the world’s religions. The usual way is by reference to their group origin: Dharmic, Taoic, Abrahamic etc. Others make the division into Western and Eastern religions, or esoteric and exoteric. A previous VJM Publishing essay made a distinction between spiritual and political religions. This essay will try a new approach: a distinction between natural and unnatural religions.

The central contention of this essay is that there is a natural religious tradition common to the entire human race, and that the many deviations from this are mostly unnatural. In this sense, religion is an inherent behaviour, like making music or building shelter. These natural religions follow a typical path, with some local flavour.

The natural religions start with ancestral veneration. This itself begins with the understanding that the ancestors are the reason why you yourself occupy the societal niche you do. Those who came before you battled the elements and outside enemies in order to defend the space that you now subsist in. Gratitude for this is the first spark of natural spirituality.

Ancestral veneration leads to the understanding that those who follow you will venerate you. As they enter into the niche you have saved for them, if this niche is a good place in which they can thrive, them venerating you is natural. A person who understands this will steward society into a better future instead of acting selfishly and exploiting it.

An appreciation of both those who came before and those who come after leads to an appreciation of natural cycles. In the same way that the Sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening, the human being rises in their youth and declines in later adulthood. These cycles are a fundamental part of life. Knowing this, a naturally religious person will – without needing to be prompted by an authority – celebrate the high points of the solar cycle: the solstices and equinoxes. The fact that the world will get darker (or lighter) after a certain date is imbued with a deep spiritual significance.

An appreciation of natural cycles leads to an understanding of reincarnation. If the Sun rises every morning after setting every evening, and if the Spring comes after every Winter, it’s logical to believe that a new birth occurs after every death. This is essentially The Cyclical Argument given for the immortality of the soul in Phaedo.

When Socrates made this argument, he was not stating something he came up with himself. Because Greece of the time followed a natural religious tradition, he was simply stating a widely-believed fact. The ancestral veneration of the Greeks had developed into a pantheon of gods, much as it had in India, China and other places that followed natural religious traditions. This had led to the celebration of the high points of the yearly cycle. From there, the priests among the Greeks (as those in other places) came to understand the truths of reincarnation and karma, as described in Phaedrus, Republic, Timaeus and other dialogues.

Thus it can be seen that the natural religions develop naturally. The unnatural religions, by contrast, are made up for a particular purpose.

For example, Christianity was invented by Jews to place themselves at the centre of the lives of anyone who adopted it. Much of the New Testament was written by Paul, who acted intentionally to bring this Jewish religion to Rome, knowing that Rome could serve as a springboard to spread it to the ends of the Earth. His success has centred Western life around Jews ever since Constantine.

As a result, the Crusaders were more concerned about liberating Jerusalem from Muslim rule than Spain. This is a highly unnatural state of affairs, but, being Christian, Jerusalem was at the centre of their lives, with Europe decentred. Unnatural religions devote the attention of their followers away from their ancestors and towards the creators of those religions.

The Baha’i religion is a transparent attempt to bring all world religion under an Abrahamic umbrella. The deeply unnatural quality of Baha’i is seen in its insistence, against all evidence, on the equality of all human races. Only someone with a desire to subjugate the entire world under one rule would insist on the equality of all its peoples. It’s typical for an unnatural religion to claim to be universalist, but to be arranged so that one particular group is central and thus inevitably in charge, even if informally. In the case of Baha’i, like the other Abrahamic religions, this is Semites.

Unnatural religions do not generally believe in reincarnation and karma, instead pushing a “one judgment for all eternity” narrative in order to create maximum fear, this in order to maximise control. Neither do they use spiritual sacraments, knowing them to decondition people from the brainwashing unnatural religions depend on for power.

Also characteristic of unnatural religions is a rejection of one’s natural allies. The subjugation of women was not a religious principle before Abrahamism, because it was understood that a husband and wife are on the same team. Rabbi Yeshua preached “I have come to ‘set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law’; and ‘a man’s enemies will be those of his own household.’ He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me”. Yeshua, like any psychopathic cult leader, demanded that followers put him above their own families.

Natural religions, by contrast, emphasise the importance of one’s own ancestors.

Unnatural religions also hate and fear the natural world. Covering all women in burkas is exceptionally unnatural, but Abrahamist sexual prudishness considers anything related to sex to be sinful. In fact, all of biology is denied in the unnatural religions: Abrahamists today deny both evolution and racial differences, an echo of how they used to deny heliocentrism. Perhaps the most invidious aspect of this hatred of the natural world is the hatred of natural spiritual sacraments, especially cannabis and psilocybin mushrooms. This is one of the major causes of the world’s spiritual ignorance today.

Elementalism is a hybrid of natural and unnatural religions. It’s unnatural in the sense that it was deliberately created and not a development of inherent spiritual instinct. However, it is natural in its emphasis on appreciating the cycles of life, on the use of plant-based spiritual sacraments, on the importance of fighting evil and on the truths of reincarnation and karma.

*

For more of VJM’s ideas, see his work on other platforms!
For even more of VJM’s ideas, buy one of his books!

*

If you enjoyed reading this piece, buy a compilation of our best pieces from previous years!

Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2023
Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2022
Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2021
Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2020
Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2019
Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018
Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017

*

If you would like to support our work in other ways, make a donation to our Paypal! Even better, buy any one of our books!