Later this morn I’m driving Michelle to the airport for her trip to France, which we discussed several times. I have a long standing interest in the Cathars and lend her a map of that region showing the main centers of that religious cum political movement.

Yesterday I had coffee with John and gave him a greeting card to give to his mother this weekend. I took the train from there and then walked to Juliet’s place. I printed a copy of her ‘My Story’, including chapter nine, powered up her desktop again and showed her the Shaw web mail function. We also emailed her cousin for a trial to check the connection.

Juliet made us a nice dinner byte and after supper we talked a bit about my ideas on religion, god belief and existence after this biophysical realm. Our discussion makes me realise that the unstructured is the nature of the New Thought tradition. ‘Spirituality’ is an apt description for it. It is a typical transitional belief, much like is secularity to those who do not want to belief in or refer to a higher power.

Yesterday as well, I marked up the entries for the 29th and 30th of April, posted and printed them. I now want to use them to further expand on the thoughts expressed and recorded in those entries. Correction on the earlier mentioned new book by Thomas Moore, titled ‘A Religion of Your Own’ and author of ‘Taking care of the Soul’ some decades ago.

My final note yesterday refers to a structuring function and theology to be considered as principles along with the earlier ten (10) principles. I will now expand on these two ideas. Theology has a well established structure of about five categories, while the structuring function is a concept I developed myself.

As reference for the theology I will use ‘Gnosis’ by Kurt Rudolph, which I studied for my talk on ‘The Gnostics’ on September 4, 2004. A second source will be Ford’s ‘Theology‘, a Very Short Introduction , #9 in that Oxford series, which I studied in the late summer of 2006.

From my study of Rudolph’s ‘Gnosis’ I learned that religions can be structured and I combine his categories with those found in Ford’s ’Theology’ as follows:

1. Cosmogony: explaining existence’s origins and reason for being.
2. Anthropogeny: describes the position of humanity in the cosmos.
3. Theodicy: explaining the presence of evil in existence.
4. Soteriology: teaching the way forward for humans towards redemption.
5. Community: ethics and human conduct.
6. Eschatology: the teachings of the last things.

Some sources also talk about ‘Theogeny’, which deals with the origins of gods. Over the years I have found that the listed six categories can be recognised in ideologies as well and that even includes modern science.

For example the scientist as practitioner must be ‘redeemed’ by the ratio in his works and thoughts, accept the way science explains - in part - the existence of the universe (cosmology) and that all things will be explained - as law of … - in the future.

Even in modern movements such as Environmentalism, Capitalism, as well as in political movements the above mentioned categories can be discerned. Recognising such structures facilitates understanding the processes at hand and forces in play.

It is a matter of recognising the functionality of the process, but does not imply judgement on the content or held values of the reference frame works - ideology - at hand.

The second concept of the structuring function goes back to my discovery and conclusion after reading the four books on World Mythology by Joseph Campbell. I read those books in search of a possible structure that I might find in mythology in general.

The Structuring function:
Structuring/ restructuring the past, creating a perspective on the future enabling action in the present.

At finishing the last book I concluded that myth structures. That was all I could discern at that point. However, shortly after the following insight emerged within me: “Structuring/ restructuring the past, creating a perspective on the future enabling action in the present.” This I felt then, this constituted definition of religious beliefs that were still held and current, while if not, it defined a ‘mythology’.

This idea sequence of structure, perspective and action is one that I was able to apply as a tool to analyse, classify and describe the phenomenon of the various social movements in our own society.

The various ‘Fundamentalisms’ that have emerged in our modern world since 1900 are good illustrations of the applicability of the mentioned idea sequence.

I mention these concepts here to ensure their inclusion in the belief frame work that I am formulating on at this time.
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