We've always loved a good redemption story
How to use Canonization plays for the development of your own soul
Why Canonize?
When the Roman Catholics sought to bring all the world’s cultures and religions under belief in the their true God, their missionaries came up against a major hurdle. People had strong reasons to worship their own gods and wouldn’t give them up without a better one.
Many pantheistic religions allot different aspects of our reality to different deities precisely because followers want to address their grievances with the entity directly responsible for their plight.
Or, since the impiety to speak such desires out loud was unthinkable for many, they would at least like a deity who could more directly bless or guide them in a specific realm of existence.
Kind of like how, if your house caught fire, you’d want to summon the fire department and not the oval office.
It was also just hard to imagine petitioning the universal Christian God to bless your crops and smite your enemies (especially if He supposedly created both).
Besides, what could the infinite possibly want in exchange for pissing rain on your tiny plot of dirt? Thor’s domain may have been far smaller than Yahweh’s, but at least you could picture the terms & conditions of an arrangement with the god of thunder.
And so it was that the canonization play was born—a way for the church to explain the origin stories of the various saints who would replace or merge with the old gods and their domains of influence.
Now, a superstitious merchant who once prayed to Hermes for his caravan’s safe passage could burn a votive candle to St. Christopher instead. Alternatively, a young-peasant’s-daughter-turned-warlord whose legend refuses to die might get church sanction (complete with a set of pope-approved rituals) through a mythologized retelling of her life. No need to leave the fold, St. Joan is coming to a church near you!
Proto-Canonization
Actually, canonization stories are the most recent iterations of an age-old genre. Tales in which a renowned hero, often of foreign cultural origin, comes to embody the everlasting values of a state, creed, or people aren’t the sole creation of the papacy. They just get a special name because the Catholics made an institution of it.
This would explain why so many myths of the ancient Greeks, Egyptians, and Mesopotamians mirrored and overlapped: each culture was canonizing the others’ gods and heroes.
For a time, bringing foreign or nascent religions into the orthodox fold was a function the Taoists fulfilled for the emperors of China. One could argue, as Scott Park Phillips has in his book Tai Chi, Baguazhang, and the Golden Elixir, that at least one of China’s most renowned classics is a work of canonization. Journey to the West tells the tale of the rise, fall, and redemption of the Monkey King, a simian trickster-warrior-magician turned Buddhist monk who bears more than a passing resemblance to the Hindu deity, Hanuman.
Another was the story of Nezha, Beijing’s secret patron deity, whose struggle with dragons mirrors Krishna’s conflicts with the Naga serpents and Hercules’ battles with snakes and hydra.
Old-Fashioned Canonization Recipe
Canonization plays and myths exist across all cultures and their protagonists share some common traits:
They all attain immortality
Whether that everlasting life exists only as enduring fame and glory, as the highest seat in heaven and the worship of the masses through time immemorial, or as the attainment of awakening into Buddhahood, these people achieve something mere mortals rarely do, living beyond the life of their fleshly bodies.They’re all controversial in their time
Many canonized figures start as folk heroes or local legends whose deeds are so remarkable that their name spreads. The people worship them either out of admiration, fear, guilt, or all of the above until, eventually, a higher religious or state authority must address their rising popularity and power.
Usually, the first response is less than positive because these figures threaten the status quo and those in charge. But because their popularity cannot be ignored, they come to be accepted by all.They’re different
These people aren’t just different, they’re extreme, and it shows in all sorts of ways. Joan of Arc preferred to dress like a boy. The Buddha’s earlobes were said to touch his shoulders. Nezha was born an amorphous blob of chaos before taking on the appearance of a boy. Nearly all are either breathtakingly beautiful or unmentionably ugly and peculiar in their own unique ways.With great power comes great destruction…
These heroes can’t help but take their extreme powers to extreme and regrettable ends. Hercules murdered his own family. The Monkey King warred against heaven (and almost won). St. Augustine was an admitted “slave of lust” who abandoned his lovers and concubines–effectively ruining their prospects in an era when women had few livelihood opportunities outside of marriage–before finally converting to Christianity.…But they redeem themselves
As remarkable as canonized figures are from birth, it is their accomplishments after screwing up cosmically that make them worthy of exaltation. Once St. Augustine turned his charisma from the bedroom to the public sphere, he convinced millions to respect their own bodies and the freedoms of others. The Monkey King undertook a 15-year-long quest to protect China’s pre-eminent monk on his quest to obtain Buddhist scriptures from India. Hercules’ 12 labors are performed as penance for the unspeakable acts he committed in his fit of madness.
But first, you must act.
What no canonization hero ever did was stay home. While most of us may look more like an amorphous blob at present than a yoked Nemean lion-slaying caveman, we can still take on the shape of an admirable human being through our actions.
The stars of this peculiar genre of cross-cultural mythology all did terrible things and great things, they led complex lives filled with many triumphs and regrets. But they all–every single one of them–dared. What sets them apart from the rest of humanity and puts them in such rarified company as to transcend cultures and creeds is the fact that they are completely unafraid to be themselves.
It’s better to fix mistakes you once thought were right than to waste your life doing nothing in an attempt to commit no wrongs.
Beyond the stories’ lively and varied contents, canonization stories reveal to us that while no culture or belief system lasts forever, there are nonetheless deeds so great and universal that even our enemies would do anything to preserve them.