Superstition and photography

SPIRITUALITY. PHOTOGRAPHY. Belief, and how it explains what we believe

Above is a voiceover for those who prefer listening to reading.

Whether we admit to it or not, each one of us carries with him or her a philosophy. For some of us, it is laid down in engraved letters of iron, which may over time rust or become pitted with wear, but which are never effaced from the tablet we carry with us, as if bestowed on some Mount Sinai of yore. For others, it may be written in the reflections from a pond of water, where waterlilies poke their heads above the surface and form the only constancy in the message, which for the rest glitters and shimmers in the mirrored light from its surface. For the one, constancy is a comfort, for others, it is the continually changing patterns that make of each day a refreshment.

We each occupy our span with diktats imposed, some, by others, some, by the inevitable, some, by authority and, some, by our very selves. Out of them we form traditions, beliefs and habits. And, when we fail, we ascribe the failure to the eddies and flows of happenstance, arising across our span, or even preceding its commencement.

Whether or not we ever arrive at some point when retrospection rewards us with judgment, in this life or in the next, cannot be certain. In that, uncertainty is the only certainty.

Our philosophies, our beliefs, our habits, our traditions form for us a large part of who we are. And yet they are a very little part of what we display. We are not discreet or abashed, and we are not even private. We are chameleons whose outward adapts, and with an inward made of iron. Or of the reflective water of a pond.

One side is what we display. But it is not what others necessarily see. Some steal through the night like a cat, and yet are observed; others blare down the street like the Brighouse & Rastrick, and yet go unseen. What is seen is not always what’s displayed. And what’s understood is not always what’s seen. Of the outward. But, of the inward, little is displayed. It just is. If we examine it, that is deemed introspection. When we analyse it, it’s deemed obsession. When we commune with it, it’s deemed madness.

Many years ago—do 13 of them make many?—I travelled to Canada to visit a First Nation. Ojibway of the Red River, in Winnipeg. I visited some of their holy sites, where the spirits of those passed reside and with whom those who wish may commune. You do not discover the spirits of First Nations past; instead, they show you the present, the inward that resides in you. And, just as you can never reveal to anyone but yourself what your inward consists of, so you can never show to others by what means and paths you discovered it. Insofar, God is not for everyone; God is for every one. Whatever paths they are—and they differ from one person to the next—they are a material part of what forms us, and they are ensconced in immateriality. They are a paradox, an oxymoronic contradiction whose proof lies for the individual in its unprovability and whose proof to others is impossible.

Early First Nations viewed askance our prime modern means of evidencing our world: the photograph. They theorised that a photograph represents its subject only by taking from the subject a part of his or her soul. The pose, the outward display of the subject, robs the subject of part of their inward. It is true, for those who hold it to be true. And it is false, for those who hold it to be false. It cannot be proved, and thereby is it proved. For it is a philosophy that needs no third-party proof. It neither begs it nor requires it. All it demands, in a modern, caring world, is respect.

Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Voo-doo—did I miss anybody out? Of course, I missed out thousands of belief models. Maybe millions, or even billions of them. When an MNC produces a new form of washing powder, they will give it a name. A snappy name, a sellable name, a name that spells s-u-c-c-e-s-s. But belief is not a saleable commodity. It cannot even be displayed. Nevertheless, it can be manifested. Like a dog that growls at a postman from behind the door. The postman doesn’t see the dog, but its presence is manifested, its attack constrained.

While not saleable, belief is nevertheless marketable. What is in concept a congregation of the like-minded seeks to make of those not of a like mind a member of their number. The economist will tell us that if we avail of a product that is free, then it is we who are the product.

I once subscribed to a product that was free. For many months I took a newsletter written by someone on this portal. Day in, day out, his newsletters plopped into my inbox and, for free, I read and learned from them. At every turn, I was exhorted to stump up a modest cost to support his work and gain access to the full experience. I wrote to him to explain that his writing interested me greatly and that I set much store in what he said. But that my financial commitments did not allow at that time to offer any contribution, so I would continue on the free subscription, and advise him if my circumstances changed. He didn’t reply.

Presently, my circumstances did indeed change and, despite the change not being very great, it did finally allow me to make the contribution he’d solicited. I authorised a debit against my credit card of the princely sum of five American dollars. Hey, presto, Sesame did open before my very gaze. I read with, at first, interest and, subsequently, dismay the polemical diatribes of his followers, tinted with hatred and dismissive of any point of view bar their own. This was the full experience: a journey into partisan arse-licking. Of the titular head of the blog, there was little or no sign. The full experience didn’t, it would appear, include the author. I politely pointed out to those who took exception to my adjunctions to their comments that I had in fact been agreeing with them, as they launched into invective at my address. Others offered apologies on behalf of the assailant and, being American for the most part, said they appreciated a different viewpoint and a different style of English. The full experience, the inward experience of what I had tasted but outwardly, proved in the die to be a comparatively—for me—expensive investment in a product whose free version was by far superior, saving the reader, as it did, from the mudslinging in progress within. Perhaps I proved the economist wrong on that occasion.

What it somewhat crassly illustrates is that the full experience, that which includes the inward as well as the outward can prove disappointing and leave the inquirer with the impression that, while the outward did not exactly make of him a product, as such, it acted as a lure to the discovery of an inward that failed to match up to its promise. The inward can be a secretive place that it’s best not to inquire after. The author of that particular blog revealed somewhere on the published website a figure that spoke to his following. It was simple arithmetic that led me to an estimate of his gross earnings from the blog, before Substack would take its cut, and I’m not sure how much that would have left him out of the 50,000 dollar monthly figure I arrived at, but enough to put butter on his rolls. Not the kind of figure I would have felt should have warranted a begging letter at my address. Perhaps that’s why my reply garnered no response.

In fairness, to my surprise, I find that I now have access to his full experience without payment. If he ever reads this, he may make enquiry and procure closure of that particular Open Sesame, but perhaps he considers my contributions to be remuneration enough for his generosity. Or perhaps it’s a glitch in the system. He could post on my blog, should he choose, and it would likewise cost him nothing. But he doesn’t, or hasn’t thus far.

At the fear of turning rant-like, let us leave that little episode and look instead at photographs, and why they have preoccupied me this day.

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I was led to contemplate photography and this old superstition of First Nation tribespeople when I came across a documentary that touched me. It tells of a young girl captivated by the most kind, gentle and loving man she ever knew. He was someone gifted in the art of photography, not just stills but moving pictures. His name was Gholam.

Because Gholam often had the camera in his own hands, there existed few pictures of him himself. The girl knew of only one: it was taken during a family excursion to the countryside and, in it, are depicted the large group of mother, father, children, aunts, uncles and, for once, Gholam.

The girl, who would hide her eyes behind Gholam’s sunglasses so that she could observe him without herself being observed and was thereby so entranced by him, noticed one day that he had stopped calling round. She searched out the photograph taken that day in the countryside, with them all grouped around and hanging from a large, rambling tree, happy and contented. And she saw where Gholam had been: but his face had been scratched out with a penknife. His body scored over with blue crayon. She asked her mother about the photograph and why Gholam was no longer visible. Her mother replied, “Gholam was not with us that day.” She asked her father, who was reading his newspaper. Her father did not look up and left her question unanswered.

Shortly afterwards she happened to see a photograph in the album of a friend. There, one of the photos had succumbed to similar treatment: the body was scored out and the face obliterated beyond recognition. She exclaimed, “Why, you knew Gholam too!” Her friend replied, “Who is Gholam? This is not Gholam, this was Mohamed,” or, “This was Ali,” or “This was Reza.”

Why these faces in so many photographs of so many people had been obliterated is not fully explained in the film. What’s clear is that the figures formerly depicted were erased. Erased from the photographs and erased from the memory, just as they had been erased from existence. Not died, but erased. Not as if they no longer lived, but as though they had never been.

Gholam, Mohamed, Ali and Reza, and around 4,000 others were liquidated in a purge that took place in 1988, ten years after the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Their bodies were deposited in unknown, unmarked, mass graves. Whose location has likewise in part been erased.

So, are the First Nations tribespeople of North America right? Does a photograph encapsulate, suck up a tiny portion of your soul? So that, to erase the subject from existence, you must also erase them from every photograph that exists of them? Or is it pure superstition? It is superstition, if you hold it to be superstition; and it is true, if you hold it to be true.

The word superstition is dismissal of a belief held by others to be true but for which they cannot produce evidence, even if they can bear witness to its truth, and that defies logic. A court of law will hear and accept as evidence at trial testimony to any perception through any of the five senses: to what was heard, seen, tasted, touched or felt, or smelt by the witness. But it will decline testimony of any spiritual perception. In a deposition, it is labelled as irrelevant to the cause. But, to the witness, it is of the greatest relevance to the cause. And to the spiritually imbued, it is supremely relevant to his or her spiritual connection. Yet, the law passes it over, in the name of Justice, thus defying logic.

A friend of mine, whose father is not depicted in the following photograph, but bears a striking resemblance to this historical figure, told me once of a pilgrimage his mother made, I believe to Lourdes. There came a moment in the coach, of people who were acquainted enough with one another to have forged an atmosphere of bonhomie, when, in the eyes of one of the ladies, there welled uncontrolled, keening tears. Her companions expressed concern and asked what could possibly have upset her. One who knew what was happening quietly explained to the others: “She is in bliss, for she has been touched by the Holy Spirit.”

Photochrom image, circa 1900, of an Ojibway tribesman, by William Henry Jackson and the Detroit Photographic Company, from “The Birth of a Century” by Jim Hughes (London & New York: Tauris Parke Books; 1994; ISBN 1-85043-646-0).

I preoccupy myself with the question of why God is so unprovable. The controversy that rages around His existence and the duty Man owes to Him, our praise and adulation, and the accompanying evidence of abuse by church, Pope, and fundamentalist alike could be resolved at a stroke with a simple sign of certainty, so why does He refuse it to us?

It may be argued that He already gifted to Man signs of His omnipotence, in the form of the Roman Empire, or of the British Empire, or of the United Nations. Were these not also great powers, invested with omnipotence, to rule over peoples and guide their every habit and occupation? Did they not also encapsulate principles supposedly handed down from God on high?

If they did not, then in how far did they fall short of the ideal expressed in the notion of God? If, as I expect, the response to that is that they indulged in or pandered to political and geopolitical machination, then what form would God’s manifestation of His existence require to take in order to evade such a criticism? What possible form could it take to that end? If Man understands power as being simply the exercise of prerogative over the peoples of this Earth, then how short does it fall in its understanding, when it expects of God that He should manifest His power in those terms? In terms, essentially predicated on subjugation, and not love?

Man accepts on the whole the phenomenon of love, in its multiplicity of meanings. And yet demands evidence of God in terms that circumscribe dominance. Superstition again clashes with rationality; and yet it is superstition that evidences, yet again, the illogicality of the rational.

The Enlightenment largely stripped us of our “Sixth Sense”: the fact that failure is the destiny of prosecutions for want of sufficient evidence doesn’t mean that all and everything else must fail for want of it. Yet it does.

“I just don’t feel at one with you, honey, I just don’t feel it’s working.”

“Look, didn’t we have a great time in Florida, aren’t the kids happy, look at our great jobs. Don’t you want to give it another try?”

“You’re right honey, I’m sorry, I don’t know what made me feel that way.”

He’s right, he doesn’t know. But he felt it, didn’t he? The guy’s wife has unwittingly invoked the criminal defence of plausible deniability.

And so did Jesus. He had to. Suppose he’d said to his disciples, “Right, every second Tuesday, you’ll all be getting a signed, notarised parchment giving you instructions and telling you where to preach, where to go to, what to say, and whose dust to shake from your feet, ok? And don’t forget to return the acknowledgements of receipt please, for record-keeping purposes.” God’s, or whoever’s, messages do not come in notarised parchments, they come in little things that sometimes make you sit up and pay attention. By looking with your eyes and listening with your ears. Often, if not always, they will be in a form that, when you explain them, fall squarely into the category of plausible deniability.

They can more often than not be explained away by “you’re mad” (madness being defined as “seeing things”, “hearing voices” and being driven to distraction for no apparent cause whatsoever). Psychologists are the greatest supporting evidential source for plausible deniability, and God probably thanks them for it. For no psychologist faced with an apparent raving lunatic can truly know whether the cause of the madness is a dilation of some vein or a direct voice talking to the patient from heaven (and perhaps even dilating a vein or two for dramatic effect). Or, if not madness, then coincidence.

[From my Facebook page, 5 February 2021.]

Did you ever sense a chill in the spine? Upon hearing a piece of music, or reading poetry? Seeing the cadavers hastily buried in Ukraine, at Bucha and Izium, or piled deep in the ravine of Babi Yar? Upon hearing a speech, by De Gaulle or Churchill, or learning the horrors of industrial prostitution as practised in occupied Manila, the young victims sodomised by battalions, and then, their breasts removed with hunting knives, thrown to a machine-gunned slaughter? Upon hearing of the death of a loved one, or of a colony of birds on an artificial island in Flanders?

The church’s benediction, its message of fare thee well upon conclusion of the act of worship is “May the blessing of God Almighty, and of Jesus Christ, His only son, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all this day and henceforth.” The sentiment is one that is widely enough held to be fulfilled as to cause pause for thought as to its truth and, if true, its manifestation. For, if the Holy Spirit’s fellowship is with us that day, and for ever thereafter, then it is at least thinkable that, in times of excruciating beauty or pain, it might be there, beside us, within arm’s reach, to extend an embrace of comfort around us, to remind us, “Everything, despite everything, is all right.”

I place faith in these superstitions, in these beliefs, perhaps even blind faith. It’s my faith, so it’s unimportant if it’s blind, isn’t it?

At school, morning prayers included a hymn, which we sung from our public school hymnary, which not every boy had with him, and so we’d share. One friend of mine took a critical view of hymns (communal trance and all as they’re supposed to induce) and would selectively omit such sentiments as they contained in a bid to purge from his mind their more trance-inducing poppycock, whilst giving voice to such ideas as accorded with that to which he was prepared, however begrudgingly, to sing along. He was patently sufficiently gifted in the skills of speed-reading, poetical construction and vocalisation to accomplish this exercise to his own satisfaction, though it did occasionally give me cause to look enquiringly whether he was feeling quite all right. Well, if he’s reading this, I can assure him of this: that it stains the character not one whit to join in communal activity that fosters a sense of community; and that a private retraction of any superficially expressed sentiment is always quite permissible. In my view, in any event: a hymn is not an oath.

But the degree to which one is persuaded not to put in one’s mouth words meant but insincerely is a mark of the sincerity accorded to what is in fact vocalised; this is an attribute of great virtue in courts of law, and of virtually no virtue in communings with the deity.

The superstitions to which I hold extend to more fanciful ideas, which I don’t especially entertain but which nonetheless entertain me: a notion that by invoking the thought of a deceased, their spirit may be hailed in the afterlife and comforted or otherwise with the knowledge that they are remembered (in this manner, I console myself with having known personally pop stars and actors who I adulated in their life); that spirits may communicate to me through the pre-recorded music of pop artists and classical composers via the random switch on my iTunes (if you’re curious, read the article here); that sin is not what we do, but what we intend to do - and in that, that mens rea and actus reus reverse their roles as between Man’s and God’s laws (see here); that a coterie of guardian angels serve and protect me in my daily chores - not at my behest, though at precisely whose I am unsure, or for what precise purpose.

Perhaps to encourage me to write this blog post. Who knows? I do, but that’s not for everyone; that’s for every one.