In the same poem, Hyperion laments losing "my eternal essence," an apparent description of his lost
godhood (1:232).
The main impetus behind "celestial marriage" is the "anthropomorphic view of God as man." (45) A recurrent theme in Doctrines and Covenants 132, "Revelations on the Eternity of the Marriage Covenant," is that man has the potential to attain a state of
godhood after death.
In this acceptation, according to Bloom, the ephebe empties himself of his own "imaginative
godhood," which is under the sign of the precursor, the first thus humbling himself, as if he ceased being a poet anymore, thereby being established a "liberating discontinuity," a liberation from under the power of the precursor which existed in himself, an isolation of the self from the presence of the precursor, thus avoiding a self-tabooing (if this isolation from the precursor did not take place, the poet would risk tabooing in himself the precursor, thus simultaneously tabooing himself).
It's attribution of
Godhood to its Western self has caused epistemological, cultural, and planetary ecological destruction which we are only now beginning to understand.
His ideas about progress and exaltation became operative through projects called the "Plan of Progression", "Great Plan of Happiness" and "Celestial Marriage" that had as their objectives the exaltation that elevates a man from manhood to
godhood:
His topics include a philosophical approach to ancient Israelite religion, descriptive currents in philosophy of religion for Hebrew Bible studies, philosophical criticism as biblical criticism, the concept of generic
godhood in the Hebrew Bible, and epistemologies in ancient Israelite religion.
It describes the dark chaos of the hero's rise to
godhood when he reaches Paris and writes Tropic of Cancer.
But the simple fact is that we are in this current predicament because we have for too long ceded Myth to our adversaries, leaving in their corrosive care the schools and universities, the entertainment complex and its manifold, manipulative tentacles, and the journalistic watchdogs turned lapdogs, those complicit myth-makers that were once empowered by the Founding Fathers to strip away pretense to
godhood and expose false idols, and who now eagerly serve as Pharisees and docile votarists, chanting their faint hymns through the thick incense of ink, insular self-delusion, and the occasional leg-tingle.
But in the 1916 "opera within an opera" Ariadne auf Naxos by librettist Hugo von Hofinannsthal and composer Richard Strauss, Ariadne's life is renewed by the arrival of the god Bacchus, who in turn, through the love of Ariadne, attains his full
godhood. Her grotto on Naxos is transformed into a blissful island retreat.
Eventually Zeus matured into
godhood, forced Kronos his father to disgorge his devoured offspring, and dethroned his father with the assistance of his newfound siblings (Hamilton 1998).
On selfhood and
godhood. London, England: George Allen & Unwin.
