What Is Syncretism?
By: The Modern Platonist
Tags: Paganism, History, Religion, Spirituality, Christianity

What Is Syncretism?

The Golden Age of Ancient Religion and Spirituality Was Fueled by a Traditional Syncretism within the Græco-Roman Imperial Polity.

Syncretism is one of this big words that is constantly around in conversation. New Age spirituality is big on a syncretic approach to things. On the other side, Christians and other conservative religious groups tend to use it pejoratively and see its effects as negative.

But what does syncretism really mean?

The term syncretism comes from Greek συγκρητισμός (syncrētismós), which has an uncertain etymology. Most likely, syncretism is connected to the idea of alliance or federation of what is different. Its current use can be traced back to Erasmus of Rotterdam, in the sixteenth century. In religion and spirituality, syncretism represents combining and recombining ideas from different sources in order to create a new result. Syncretism was the major force behind the religious explosion in Antiquity, from the fourth century BC to the fourth century AD.

Hermes or Jesus? Hermes Kriophoros, who will inspire Jesus as the Good Shepherd. 5th century BC.

In many ways, syncretism is similar to two modern ideas: interspirituality and cultural appropriation. Interspirituality is a modern concept developed in the 1960s by Christians who adopted religious ideas and practices of Hinduism to the point of identifying with both Christianity and Hinduism. When religious exclusivity and denominational limits are blurred, one can practice different spiritual traditions without falling into a contradiction. Christian ascetics like Bede Griffiths, Henri Le Saux or Indo-Catalan theologian Raimon Panikkar were the foundational voices of theory and practice of interspirituality. On the other side, cultural appropriation is a more modern concept coined in cultural marxists environments. It criticizes the adoption and mixture of foreign or indigenous spiritual traditions by another, dominant group — mainly white people. It is, however, a concept more versed in the broad cultural aspects, but it includes religion and spirituality as well.

Yet, syncretism is different from interspirituality and cultural appropriation.

In order to understand its meaning, we need to understand its origins. Syncretism can hardly be separated from its golden age: the area covering from India to Spain during the eight last centuries of Antiquity. It was a very special moment in which the four necessary ingredients for a syncretic awakening were present.

Syncretism combines and recombines different spiritual traditions to produce a new one.

The first ingredient is the existence of a global polity, that is, a cohesive political space covering a vast area. This is generally identified with an empire. Empires come with strong trade routes. It is true that you can have highly developed and solid routes without an empire, but an empire allows these routes to flourish in safety.

The second ingredient, closely tied to the first one, is the cultural exchanges that follow the imperial global polity and trade. When you have a single state dominating over a vast multicultural area, cultures begin circulating to a higher speed. A person living in the empire can easily access other cultures that were harder to reach before. Merchandises can flow freer, but also cultures and ideas — among them, religion and spiritual traditions. While these cultures circulate throughout the empire, they are combined and recombined with others — thus creating new hybrid cultures.

Græco-Bactrian Serapis. Bagram, Afghanistan.

The third ingredient is a byproduct of an imperial global polity, the creation of an imperial center and its margins. The circulation, creation and reception of ideas, cultures and religions follows the pattern of a center irradiating an official state religion and receiving exotic foreign religions from the imperial margins. This is how we can understand the popularity of Egyptian and Græco-Egyptian mystery cults in Rome and the spreading of Roman religion in all the provinces of the empire — while syncretically merging with local religions in Gaul or Britannia, for example.

The fourth and last ingredient is the presence of a dominant mainstream religion. In the Roman Empire this was clear with the Roman state religion, the traditional Pagan worship to the Gods. This mainstream religion, while having official recognition, was able to tolerate and absorb novelty to a certain point. This pluralism and toleration allowed the development of religious novelty. This dynamism intertwines with the center-margins ingredient, where novelty usually comes from the margins. In the Roman case, the novelty came from wealthy margins, like a secondary center: the Eastern provinces of the Empire. The novelty arrived in the form of mystery cults with initiation rituals, and revelation and salvation promises. This religious syncretic novelty could include the aforementioned mysteries of Isis, as well as nascent Christianity.

The Hellenistic world after Alexander the Great. Arrows show the circulation of ideas and spiritual traditions. Source: author.

All these ingredients became a reality after Alexander the Great conquered the lands stretching from Greece to the Hindus in the fifth century BC. He connected extremely different areas and cultures under a unique imperial polity and culture: Hellenism. The Hellenistic world opened up vast areas to trade and circulation of ideas. The Egyptian influence brought new deities, who became hugely popular across the Hellenistic world. This is the case of Serapis, Hermanubis or an Hellenized version of Isis. Alexandria in Egypt was erected as the metropolis to symbolize all this syncretic energy. The case of the god Serapis is extremely relevant. He appeared in the third century BC, as a fusion of Osiris and Apis, but adopting attributes from Greek deities Hades, Demeter and Dionysos. Serapis was linked to the myth of death and rebirth, hence being popular as a god connected to the underworld. His worship was generally paired with the Hellenistic Isis. The majestic Alexandrian Serapeum — the temple devoted to Serapis, adjacent to the library of Alexandria — was considered one of the most beautiful sanctuaries in the Ancient world. Remnants of Serapæa can be found from Spain to Afghanistan.

Hellenistic Isis, second century AD.

Even after the division of Alexander’s empire, the Hellenistic world preserved imperial cohesion. Trade and cultural ties were so strong that the warring Hellenistic kingdoms maintained a rather unusual political continuity. This paved the way for the future Roman dominion.

The Hellenization of the Roman elites facilitated the cultural harmonization of the East and the West, after the late second century BC. In all its plurality and openness, the Roman polity came to be the new imperial structure that extended and continued the Hellenistic ethos. It also represented the apogee of religious syncretism, in an unmatched religious explosion never witnessed in history before.

The Roman Empire during Trajan. Arrows show circulation of religions. Source: author.

The glory of Rome was its plasticity, its incredible creativity for structural issues. Romans were indeed conservative and attached to traditions. Yet, they were able to absorb novelty without perverting the essences of their spiritual and state tradition. This is for example what represented the first Emperor, Octavian Augustus. His conservative, traditionalist renaissance was actually an actualization of Roman life. Mystery cults coming from the East were the latest religious craze in the city. Even though most of them operated in the margins of the city limits — the sacred pomerium — Augustus reinvigorated state Pagan worship with the divinization of Julius Caesar. The beginning of imperial worship of deceased emperors was syncretism operating at the state level. It is inextricably linked to the popular mystery cults in the city brining joy to life and a better hope: Isis, Serapis, Cybele, Bacchus, Mithras and, of course, Jesus Christ.

Christ and Buddha in Hellenistic depictions. The exchange and combination of ideas is the basis of syncretism.

Christianity started as a mystery cult of Judaism. It was perhaps the most syncretic religion of Late Antiquity. It combined Jewish scripture, theology and monotheism with Hellenistic philosophy. Jesus himself was modeled after the wandering philosophers so popular in the Late Antiquity, like Apollonius of Tyana. At the same time, Christianity, either Gnostic or Orthodox, was open to mainstream Pagan influences — shared with many other mystery cults — like the esoteric Hermes Trismegistus, the Chaldean oracles, or Iamblichus’ Theurgy. This admixture was what propelled Christianity to its increasing popularity, with the peculiarity that Christians were exclusive, that is, that a practicing Christian could not belong to any other religion or mystery cult. This paved the way for militant success but also for the destruction of the classical world that made possible for Christianity to exist and succeed.

With the end of the ancient world and the triumph of Christianity, syncretism almost disappeared. We can still find some impulses in Kabbalah — the mystical and esoteric version of Judaism — , but overall since the fourth century AD until the end of the eighteenth century, syncretism was a residual force that was timidly surfacing in moments of plastic creativity, like the Renaissance.

Syncretism began to operate again in Western mysticism through secret societies like Freemasonry. This was clearly at the dawn of the French Revolution, when Masonic lodges were fueling a different conception of religion that was combining Roman revival with new forms of secular spirituality.

The first full-fledged syncretic initiative to appear since Antiquity was Madame Blavatsky’s Theosophy, in the late nineteenth century. It combined Western mysticism (Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism) with Neoplatonic philosophy and Egyptian and Hindu religions. It was also the first attempt to merge all world spiritual wisdom into a single cohesive system.

The modern world contains all the ingredients that make possible for syncretism to exist once again.

In many ways, Theosophy was the preface of the massive New Age explosion in the 1960s. Tied to the crisis of established religion in the West — mainly Christianity — , New Age spirituality intertwined with Theosophy, Jungian analytical psychology and hippie weltanschauung. New Age has given more attention to Eastern and indigenous spiritualities than to mysticism. Being highly eclectic, New Age promotes the creation of new practices and beliefs out of nothing — sometimes without a clear connection with an existing spiritual tradition. This is a direct consequence of the popular nature of New Age spirituality, which is more oriented towards emotional exploration than wisdom acquisition.

It is no surprise to witness that the modern world returns to syncretism. The four ingredients that made possible syncretism in Late Antiquity are back. We have a global polity that covers the entire world with flourishing imperial trade (the so-called neoliberal globalization). Cultural exchanges are at their zenith. Mainstream religion is liquid and decaying, while novelty has strong appeal and acceptance. Finally, there is a consolidated center (the West), with rising margins, mainly in Asia.

“Spiritual but not religious” people rise in America. Source: Pew Research Center.

Syncretism today is a strong spiritual force — the strongest one. There is a correlation of the surge of interspirituality and syncretism with the decline of the traditional religious membership. We can see this clearly in the Pew Research Center data on how Americans see themselves spiritually speaking. The rise of the “spiritual but not religious” group corresponds broadly with this syncretic rise. Unfortunately, this “spiritual but not religious” group that correlates with syncretism in the West is in danger of creating soulless imitation and superficial spirituality lacking knowledge and solid practice. This is also best represented by New Age spirituality.

As a conclusion, we see that syncretism is back and it is becoming, once again, a major spiritual force. In order to make it stronger and legitimate, syncretism needs to be highly proficient of theory and practice of current spiritual traditions. Both Theosophy and New Age are syncretism going wrong (again.) Healthy syncretism can only be done with a serious knowledge of the spiritual classics, especially when reconstructing past spiritual traditions like Heathenry. Syncretism is an incredibly powerful spiritual tool that can bring back the spiritual golden age that the Mediterranean Græco-Roman world witnessed two thousand years ago.