Drawing Down the Moon (45 page)

Odun's background in the arts seems to be the key to the order's richness and mystery. He has been a choreographer and a designer. He told me he worked with the Lyric Opera of Chicago and designed jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal's nightclub, the Alhambra. I once watched him work with a dancer during a wedding rehearsal in the temple. He ran and leapt and directed her until she moved gracefully to the music of the small temple orchestra. From the little I saw, Sabaean rituals are the most complex and beautifully organized of any Neo-Pagan group I visited. The use of music and dance was truly inspiring. The order has mounted mystery plays; they have synthesized art, dance, song, and ritual to a height I have not seen elsewhere. In addition, there are classes in herbalism, magic, and astrology. The priesthood seems small, with certainly less than a dozen members, but I noticed that many Chicago Neo-Pagans came to work with Odun for a period of time. Most of the Pagans I met in Chicago had dealt with the order—some favorably, some not favorably—and many had been influenced by Odun.

Frederic de Arechaga came to the United States from Spain. He changed his name to Odun Arechaga after his initiation into the mysteries of the god Obatala. He told me that he inherited the Sabaean tradition from his mother, but, whatever its origins, it bears the stamp of his own artistry. The order consists of the small supply store, El-Sabarum, which opens in the late afternoon and seems to cater to members more than the general public. El-Sabarum also runs a mail-order service and an occasional newsletter. Behind the shop is the temple, some space for classes, and living quarters for the priesthood. The temple was completely designed and built by members of the order and is the focus for religious gatherings small and large.

Sabaean theology describes God or the Gods as
Am'n,
a word that is said to mean the hidden, numberless point. Unlike the word
God,
the word
Am'n
can be singular or plural; it suggests neither maleness nor femaleness. The Am'n are seen as a Source, but hidden like the wind, which can be felt but not seen. An article in
Iris
observed that the Am'n “cleanse the imagery of deity to its original premise of self-metamorphosis; man's ultimate responsibility to himself.”
³⁰

The Am'n are seen as total knowledge; they are “indifferent, amoral and pure source.” They are “above being adored.” They “do not exist for the morbid preoccupation of a fanatic. But rather as avenues that can develop the individual to an awareness of himself and the universe that hitherto has remained unearthed.”

For the sake of convenience, the Am'n can be divided. Odun told me that the order represents the Am'n symbolically as five different goddesses. “Poetically we use the term
goddess.
After all, the female is a formidable symbol for creation. We always know who the mother is, and even the mother does not have to know who the father is. Still, the idea of creation must not be misunderstood. We are not feminists. The entire universe is
not
based on the feminine precept. The incident of sex or gender which comes about in an incarnation is only a necessity or need of evolution. Divinity is sexless. The most ancient descriptions of gods are androgynous. But it is very hard for people to concentrate on the abstract. That is the whole purpose of mythology, to familiarize yourself with certain mysteries in an unmysterious way through storytelling.”

The order also divides the Am'n to represent various races, seasons, philosophies, and theologies. The Red Goddess represents Autumn and the peoples native to this continent. The White Goddess represents winter and Caucasians. The Black Goddess represents the spring and blacks. The Yellow Goddess represents the summer and Asians. And the Blue Goddess represents leap year, the day between the years, and the races and peoples beyond earth.

The Am'n are also used to represent five aspects of philosophy—logic, aesthetics, ethics, politics, and metaphysics—and five aspects of theology—atheism, pantheism, polytheism, monotheism, and henotheism. The Sabaean Religious Order adheres to henotheism as the most inclusive. A henotheist is a person who worships one god
without excluding the existence of others.
“A henotheist,” Odun said, “is a person who relates to deity in a personal way. For a time, one might be attuned to Venus; at another time, to Saturn.” An article in
Iris
explained further;

Odun described henotheism as the “ultimate wheel of the fivepointed star which would begin with atheism, go through pantheism, polytheism, monotheism, and finally end up with henotheism before beginning all over again.” These five theisms, he observed, relate to all of human knowledge, to the five aspects of philosophy.

“Atheism seems to relate to logic (the idea that this is this and that is that). At the point when a person realizes that there is a form and a movement to things, this brings about a sense of aesthetics and leads a person to pantheism (the feeling of a tree, or a flower, of the wind). When a person comes to the realization that these feelings, these ‘spirits,' have a kind of personality, this leads to polytheism, and the sensing of these diverse points of view and individualities leads a person to a sense of ethics. At this point, people often begin to manipulate reality and to move in one direction or another. Thus they come to politics and monotheism. At the point when a person realizes there is something beyond all this, they develop a sense of metaphysics and become henotheists.”

Odun said that one could be an atheist and still be a Sabaean, although, later, an atheist woman told me that she had left the order because she felt that her views were too far removed from the general conceptions of the priesthood.

Odun calls the Sabaean Religious Order a kind of finishing school and says that learning about the ancient philosophies and mystery traditions is equivalent to learning to be civilized. “We do not believe in teachers,” he told me. “The purpose of a priesthood is to be a catalyst, to sustain a strength for people who come to it so they can be vitalized.” Most people, he said, are unable to read the ancient books properly and to open themselves to the ancient myths. But despite his stress on ancient knowledge, Odun points out that the order is not anachronistic. There is no purpose to living in the past or attempting to mimic ancient times; most religions failed precisely because they did not take into account the metamorphosis of people, nations, mind. “The object of life,” he told me, “is to know yourself, to learn, to become, to grow; it's the becoming divine, the principle of the mystery of deification.
Sabaeanism
is simply a term given to our people. But they are people who follow their own heads. They are not hung up on a book or on a prophet. They are not idolators of books. They know there are many different paths within Sabaeanism.”

The feeling one gets in visiting the order is of a constant stream of diverse activities. Odun told me that the one thing that was not allowed was wasting time. “We are constantly busy. We build. We teach. We do research. We write mystery plays. We choreograph. We teach dancers. We
are
a source.”

 

My visit to the Sabaean Religious Order culminated in a magnificent wedding ceremony, or “eclipse,” as the Sabaeans call it—literally, the movement of one planet in front of another. The length of an eclipse is decided by divination. If a couple decides to join for a period of years, it is called a solar eclipse; if for a period of months, a lunar eclipse.

The ceremony I attended in the late fall of 1975 was the solar eclipse of a priestess in the Sabaean Order. She was marrying a man who had no connection with the religion. It was, ritually speaking, the most beautiful wedding I have ever seen, surpassing a magnificent traditional country wedding I once attended in England.

The eclipse took place in early evening in the Temple of the Moon behind the small occult supply store run by the order. A door in the shop opened into a large high-ceilinged room lined with two rows of tall gray columns, each topped with a statue of a white elephant. The columns were ringed with wreaths of ferns and daisies. A brownish-gold curtain cut the inner portion of the temple in half.

Before entering the temple, we took off our shoes. Inside, on one side of the curtain, the bride sat on a golden chair covered with a soft animal skin. Her head was covered by a light yellow silk veil that fell loosely in folds like an Arab burnoose. A wreath of ferns and gardenias held it in place. Her dress, which she had made herself, was translucent light yellow with long silk tassels. She was barefooted and held in her hand a single white gardenia. All the women sat beside her—friends, mother, and the groom's mother. On the other side of the curtain, seated on a silver chair, sat the groom with all the men around him. According to Sabaean lore, the woman is symbolized by the sun, and the man by the moon. In this it differs from most Neo-Pagan traditions.

After a while, Odun Arechaga appeared, dressed in white satin priest's garb and a large white cap. He held a long white feather in one hand, and in the other a beautiful sistrum, an ancient musical instrument. Odun spoke of the Am'n. He then told a story. It was a pre-Hellenic myth that forms much of the basis for the Orphic mysteries, often called the Pelasgian creation myth. It went something like this:

“In the beginning the goddess Eurynome, mother of all things, arose naked from chaos, not finding a place upon which to stand. Moving through space she grabbed hold of the north wind and, catching that gust that moved behind her as she turned, she rubbed both winds between her hands to create the great cosmic serpent Ophion.

“No sooner had life breathed into his nostrils and he saw those divine limbs than did he lust to couple with her. But the action of time was slower for him than Eurynome. Whilst he still saw the divine naked matrix she in fact had metamorphosed into a dove and had laid a large silver egg that shone with divine eminence.

“Ophion, desiring to satisfy his lust, wrapped himself around this egg seven times. But so tightly did he coil that the egg split in two!

“Out tumbled a heaven of a thousand suns and moons without number. Planets and comets, nebulae and galaxies of stars!

“Ophion, stupefied and proud, boasted to the very plenum of his creation. He gorged himself on the self-adulation of genetrix and claimed the sole authorship in creation. He looked down upon Eurynome as a mere functionary of his great work.

“Instead, Eurynome bruised his head with her heel, and kicked out his teeth for this presumption. She split his sex as male and female and placed him on the many thousand worlds he created so that in time he can justify and merit that position he once had.

“Since then it seems that all male seeks female so as to regain a fragment of his other half, and somewhat nostalgically we are awed with the expanse of the night heaven, looking out there knowing not where we have come.”
³²

The meaning of marriage is the reuniting of these two halves. To achieve this unification, both partners must die symbolically, they must abandon their individualities and become one. This death and rebirth, then, was the ritual we would witness. And we would do more than witness it, for Odun said that there could be no “observers” present but only those who were willing to participate fully in the rite. Those who did not wish to participate were asked to leave. No one left.

Odun began to shake the sistrum and to move in and out beneath the columns. He gave one candle to the bride and one to the groom. He told them to stand if they still wished to be united. The mothers of the pair stood with the bride, the fathers stood with the groom. The room was darkened. The temple orchestra played dark Middle Eastern themes intensely and rhythmically. There was a predominance of bells and drums. Suddenly, Odun pulled down the silken dividing curtain. It fell on top of the pair, covering them. Odun wrapped the curtain around them. He led them around the pillars in a slow dance, then down a flight of stairs and into a ceremonial chamber. There, out of sight, the couple did various rituals which we did not see. Meanwhile we danced circle dances.

Then the temple priests strewed barley and rice in patterns across the temple floor. While the music continued, the pair, still bundled together, was led up the stairs and through and around the pillars. They were taken into another chamber for divinations, and finally, into a third room where a bed waited, covered by elaborate spreads. They were left alone to consummate the marriage while, outside, the women danced together to send energy to the bride and the men danced together to send energy to the groom. Then we waited while a temple dancer, the one I had seen work with Odun several days before, danced for us with graceful, sensual movements. After a time, the couple opened the door and emerged. All the women danced with the groom and all the men with the bride.

Then the feast began, and what a feast it was! The bride and groom sat at either end of a long table covered with a cloth. Young priests, dressed in white, brought forth a large cauldron that stood on a tripod. With great ceremony they threw spinach and romaine lettuce into the cauldron from large straw baskets. To the sound of cymbals and drums, lemons were ceremoniously squeezed, eggs were shelled and tossed into the mixture, along with anchovies and salt. The priests poured vinegar and oil from large carafes. Finally, one of the young priests rolled up his long sleeves, thrust his arms deep into the cauldron, and tossed the enormous salad. Odun took a lettuce leaf and gave it to the bride, who approved it. Then all the guests dug in with their hands.