The Research
I started this research hostile to religion. I wanted ammunition. I went so deep I could no longer make the argument I set out to make.
I need to tell you where I was starting from when I began the research that became The Ground Beneath.
I had been raised in a tradition I eventually walked away from completely. By the time someone I love asked me a question that sent me down this path, I would have described myself as hostile to religion as a category — not indifferent, not skeptical. Hostile. I believed the research would give me better ammunition. I wanted to know the other side well enough to dismantle it.
“I went so deep I could no longer make the argument I started out to make.”
I examined eighty-five religious traditions — ancient and living, written and oral, from every inhabited continent. Traditions practiced by billions of people today and traditions spoken only in the memory of small communities that have existed for fifty thousand years. I stripped away the doctrine, the ritual, the cultural specifics, and looked at the structure underneath.
What I found stopped me more than once. Every civilization that lasted long enough to leave a record shows the same structural values in its sources. Not similar values. The same values. Across thousands of years, on every continent.
This book does not theorize. It does not interpret. It does not argue for a position. It documents what the source material shows — analyzed without the ego of the analyst standing between the reader and the record. Campbell interpreted. Eliade theorized. Armstrong contextualized. This is the documentation. The reader draws the conclusions.
How the research was conducted: The Method →
Richard P. Wolf is the author of The Ground Beneath, in progress: I am reviewing and cataloging the sources. About the research methodology →
Follow the work
New posts appear here in Author Updates as the research and the writing develop.
JOIN THE LIST →