Esoteric Coffeehouse

As mentioned last time, I will now talk about the identity of the Navi and their religion from a Paracelsian perspective. Just as a reminder, Paracelsus was a revolutionary philosopher, alchemist and physician living in the 16th century (I already touched upon some elements of his life and philosophy here and here). Now, I’m not saying that Cameron was necessarily acquainted with Paracelsian speculation, but it must be kept in mind that the ideas of Paracelsus had a strong impact on the development of Western culture, though the extent of his influence still awaits research.

One of the first things that you notice about the Navi people is their size. They are approximately twice as big as the ordinary humans. They live in the thick forest, in brotherhood with all animals and plants. They are able to ‘fly’ by becoming one with their dragons and have developed a keen ability of falling from huge heights without really getting hurt.

All these characteristics made me think straight away of the mythology of the sylphs, originating in Paracelsus’ speculations. Paracelsus wrote a strange little work called ‘The Book of Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies and Salamanders and the Other Spirits’. According to the Book of Sylphs, there are spirits in nature which live in each of the four elements: water, fire, air and earth.

The water creatures are called undines (or nymphs), the fire ones salamanders, the air ones sylphs (or sylvesters) and the earth ones gnomes (aka pygmies). Each has its own characteristics and rapport with humans. Of all of these, the sylphs appear most humanly; Paracelsus informs us that they are ‘like men’ except they live in the forest, and are ‘cruder, coarser, longer and stronger’ than the human beings. They have intercourse with men, except, Paracelsus maintains in Renaissance vein, they have no soul since soul is reserved to human beings only. Otherwise, they don’t seem to differ very much from men: they work, eat, converse in similar ways to humans.

Of course, I’m not saying Cameron read Paracelsus, which he probably didn’t; however, the mythology of the elementals later permeated into Romantic literature and the occult tradition as well. It is not impossible that Cameron may have encountered this tradition in some shape or form, influencing his view of the blue aliens.

Yet, Cameron’s movie goes even further than traditional mythology in imagining what the air people’s religion must be like. Since they are forest folk, it is natural that they have a faith that is centered on Nature worship and is fundamentally pantheistic. Pantheism puts an equal sign between God and Nature and is usually expressed by the affirmation that ‘God is all’. In the ancient world, it was mainly the Stoics and the Epicureans that had pantheistic views, while in the modern world the Jewish thinker Baruch Spinoza is the most famous pantheist philosopher. Nowadays, pantheist beliefs appear on the rise, as notions of living Nature and sacred Earth have made gained more currency. Usually associated with New Age thought, pantheism has permeated into some scientific speculation. In this sense, James Lovelock’s Gaia theory seems the closest science has come to pantheism. Indeed, the Gaia theory and Cameron’s Pandora-Earth spirit are closely akin.

Paracelsus and his followers have also been considered pantheists by some thinkers. There is indeed some kinship between Paracelsian thought and pantheism. Paracelsus often talked about Nature as divine, and believed that physicians should inspire themselves from her. To him there was no doubt that the universe was divine and that God was present in it at all times. Paracelsians were fond of declaring that God substantially exists in Nature. Sometimes, Nature was even seen as an actual extension of God rather than a creature, as per orthodox Judaeo-Christian tradition. Consequently, Paracelsians were dedicated to uncovering Nature’s secrets, which could be achieved through a mystical experience. Through their work and faith, they could hope to be enlightened by the mystically conceived ‘light of Nature’. It is important to bear in mind that the Paracelsian enthusiasm for Nature had an important impact on European thought and contributed to the advent of modern science. However, Paracelsians never agreed to separate matter from spirit like science did; their beliefs in the presence of God in nature were contrary to this idea. Moreover, and just as importantly, Paracelsians were not really pantheist in the pure sense of the word: they believed that God was both inside nature and outside of it.

Today, Paracelsian concepts of living Nature seem to be in vogue again, even though few people remember the legacy of Paracelsus. The disenchantment with the spirit-matter divorce perpetrated by classical science has fostered a new breed of thinking that accepts the presence of spirit in matter (the Gaia theory, systems thinking and the complexity sciences are good examples of this). However, the long separation between God and science is not easy to mend. Apparently, pantheism is more science-friendly than a belief in divinity both inside and outside of nature. An ‘internal’ God is much more amenable to scientific research than an ‘external’ God, which would remain aloof to the methods of science. The view proposed by Avatar then is that of the ‘new science’, as it is often referred to – a movement that leaves some room to divinity in Nature but rejects the idea of a spirit outside of it. Interestingly, this new discourse is very close to feminist speculations of ‘Mother Earth’, hence Avatar’s expression of divinity as Eywa, the goddess of Pandora.

References

Paracelsus. (1996). A Book on Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies and Salamanders, and on the Other Spirits. Four Treatises of Theophrastus Von Hohenheim Called Paracelsus. Trans by C.L. Temkin, H.E. Sigerist. JHU Press.
Lovelock, James E. (1999). Gaia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Tags: avatar movie, gaia theory, james lovelock, living nature, mother earth, Mythology, pandora, pantheism, Paracelsus, sylph, sylphs

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