I swear on... something or other...
Off Topic: What are oaths and why do we still do them in officially godless Modernia?
Why do we still do oaths?
I’ve been mulling over the strange weight we still give to oaths. It seems an oddly antique practice in this hyper-materialistic age, when we officially don’t believe in anything anymore. It started with a news report; a U.S. official took the oath of office on the Bhagavad Gita instead of the Bible, yesterday. I guess most people would not think about it at all, a non-event, the kind of multicultural gesture that barely raises an eyebrow these days. It didn’t bother me as much as it seems to bother some on Twitter. I mean, the US isn’t officially any religion, (except when it seems to worship the state in some weird allegorical way) and it was founded by Deist Freemasons. Unlike Britain or Germany or Italy, it isn’t a “nation” in the cultural or ethnic sense. Having immigrants from wildly disparate cultural backgrounds “integrate” and achieve high office or worldly success is kind of what the place is about - a win.
But then I found myself thinking about the meaning of the oath itself, or of oaths in general, and wondering: does it actually mean the same thing? Is one “sacred book” as good as another when it comes to something as symbolically heavy and legally weighty as an oath? What do people from other, non-Christian cultures think about oaths and divine promises, and the power of symbols like swearing on a Bible?
When we swap one sacred text for another in modern oaths, is it just a respectful nod to diversity? Or does it change or trivialise, or even negate, something deeper about what we’re invoking?
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A promise that reaches the throne of God
In the Christian West, swearing on the Bible isn’t just about solemnity or ceremony, it’s about calling down divine judgment if you lie. It is certainly at the very least an acknowledgement that God is real, and pays attention and holds to account. It’s not merely ceremonial. It’s cosmic. The Bible, in this context, isn’t just ink on paper; it’s the living Word, the ultimate witness. There’s a reason the phrase “so help me God” carries a chill. It’s a holdover from a time when people genuinely believed God was watching, and governed nations, and stood ready to strike the perjurer.
But does that carry over when someone swears on, say, the Bhagavad Gita? Or the Qur’an? Or the Torah? Or on nothing at all? If one says, “So help me gods” or “So help me, unspecified watch-maker deity who may or may not be listening.”
It made me wonder about the assumption that one culture, one religion especially, is interchangeable with the next, something that lies at the heart of the whole proposal of the non-ethnic, “liberal-democratic” state, an invention, let’s not forget, of 18th century rationalistic and materialistic philosophies.
Obviously this raises questions. For Christians with cultural roots in western Europe and the (so-called) “Greco-Roman” tradition, the cultural roots of oath-taking run deep, but I wondered if they are the same everywhere.
The “Abrahamic religions” - it’s not about the book
Take Judaism; its understanding of oaths is close to Christianity’s, but with some key differences. In the Hebrew Bible, oaths are sacred covenants between a particular man - Adam, Cain, Moses and especially Abraham and Isaac, who stand in for and represent the entire Chosen People. Swearing falsely in such a covenant is a direct offense against God, and it’s a God who is immediately physically manifest in enormous, terrifying miracles like the parting of the Red Sea and the pillar of fire.
There’s a caution in Jewish law about invoking God’s name lightly. It’s a serious act, not something you do on a whim.
“You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.”
This commandment isn’t merely against casual verbal blasphemy or flippant language. In its original context, it’s deeply tied to the seriousness of oaths. To invoke God's name in an oath is to call Him as a witness, and doing so falsely is considered a direct violation of the divine order.
In Islam, as far as I understand it, oaths also carry immense weight, but there’s a twist: Muslims generally swear by Allah, not by the Qur’an itself. The book is revered, but not in the same way or for the same reasons Christians revere the Bible. The focus isn’t the book; it’s the act of placing oneself under God’s scrutiny. Break an oath, and you’re not just lying, you’re sinning.
What about books of philosophy?
Then there’s Hinduism, which plays by different rules. The Bhagavad Gita isn’t a covenantal text in the way the Bible or Torah is. It’s philosophical, meditative, a dialogue about duty and the self. The idea of swearing on it is a modern construct, a borrowing from Western legal forms. In ancient India, oaths were more about dharma, the cosmic order. Break your word, and it’s your karma that suffers, but it doesn’t necessarily bring down the wrath of a personal, offended God in the Abrahamic sense.
Yes, it does seem inescapable that using the Bhagavad Gita - which seems in no way analogous to the Christian Bible in purpose or ontology - in such a context is not an equivalent to the Bible in the Western oath-taking tradition. The core issue lies in the fundamentally different cultural and theological frameworks that inform how oaths are understood across traditions. It would be, perhaps, the equivalent of a Freemason or Deist “swearing” on a political treatise by John Locke.
In the Christian West, oaths are covenantal and judicial, directly invoking God's authority as the ultimate moral arbiter. The act of swearing on the Bible is not merely a cultural formality but a continuation of the long-standing belief that the divine stands as an active witness to human promises, especially those concerning leadership and governance, and will mete out consequences in the world’s order for breaking that oath.
In contrast, the Bhagavad Gita does not carry this covenantal role within Hindu tradition. The Gita establishes no juridical or political system that would make oath-taking connected to a personal deity who acts as an enforcer of truth in the same way the Christian or Jewish understanding of God does. In Hindu practice, the integrity of one’s word is tied to individual spiritual consequence rather than a direct breach of a sacred covenant witnessed by a personal deity.
This divergence means that using the Bhagavad Gita in a Western legal oath-taking ritual, especially one designed within a framework of Christian-derived legal system, carries a symbolic but not equivalent weight. It’s an act of respect toward individual conscience, I suppose, but detaches the ritual from the theological and cultural framework that originally gave it binding power.
The modern legal system, particularly in secular democracies like the United States, now treats these variations as interchangeable under the principle of religious pluralism, but that principle does not hold up to the least logical critique.
The result? While legally valid, the act shifts from being a cosmically binding covenant to a symbolic affirmation of personal integrity. The deeper metaphysical bond - in which God Himself holds the oath-breaker accountable - dissolves, leaving behind a ritual stripped of its original cosmic stakes.
How old is that tradition?
A Christian swearing on the Bible in the Western context still carries echoes of a multi-millennial tradition that understands the oath as a supernatural contract, a concept not mirrored in Hinduism or other non “Abrahamic” religions.
The western tradition of oaths is ancient, predating Christianity by millennia and deeply woven into the fabric of our civilisation. From the earliest recorded histories, oaths have served as sacred bonds, acts that transcend mere legal agreements and connects human action and social organisation to a spiritual and cosmic order that many cultures believed governed life itself.
In ancient Mesopotamian law codes we know that oaths were invoked in the names of gods to seal treaties and settle disputes, with the belief that divine forces would enforce the agreement and punish the oath-breaker. Similarly, in ancient Egypt - a state whose head, the Pharaoh, was revered as a living deity - officials swore oaths as acts of loyalty, not just to rulers but to the cosmic order of ma’at, the principle of truth, balance, and order that underpinned Egyptian society.
In Greek mythology, oaths had a direct line to the divine. Zeus, as Zeus Horkios, was the enforcer of oaths, and even the gods were bound by the most sacred oaths sworn on the River Styx. The Greeks saw oath-breaking not simply as a lie but as a rupture in the moral and cosmic fabric, capable of bringing about catastrophe. The power of oaths and divine commands and taboos - like the binding of marriage - could be ruinous not only for the individual but for whole kingdoms.
Jason swears love and loyalty, then tosses Medea aside for a better political match. Medea doesn’t just take this lying down. She becomes the avenger of broken oaths, turning Jason’s life into a Greek tragedy in the most brutal sense.
The Trojan War itself was launched on the strength of the Oath of Tyndareus, binding Greek kings to honour Helen’s marriage, with Paris’s abduction of her triggering a decade of ruinous war.
In the European Celtic cultures the ancient Irish had this concept of a geas, a kind of personal, mystical taboo or commandment that was unbreakable, and laid a compulsion on the person to certain acts. It wasn’t just an oath; it was fate written into your bones. Heroes like Cú Chulainn had geasa that shaped their entire lives, sometimes dooming them. One geas might forbid him from eating dog meat, while another compels him to never refuse hospitality. When these two collided, when someone offered him dog meat as a guest, he was trapped. Either way, he was doomed.
These weren’t mere promises but mystical bindings tied to personal destiny and the well-being of the community. Break the geas, and it’s not just dishonour; you unravel the threads of your destiny. Kings and heroes were often encumbered by complex networks of geasa, and breaking one wasn’t just a personal failing, it risked the health and prosperity of the land itself. The fate of the kingdom was often mirrored in the fate of its ruler, reinforcing the belief that the moral integrity of a king had cosmic consequences.
This principle echoed into medieval Europe, where Christian kings swore coronation oaths binding them to defend the Church, and the weak, and uphold law and mete out true justice. These weren’t seen as ceremonial niceties; they were spiritually binding contracts. To break them was to risk damnation, as well as political upheaval and social collapse. Oathbreakers were seen to be the cause of natural disasters. Monarchs who broke their oaths were sometimes deposed or excommunicated, the spiritual breach considered as significant as the legal one.
What ties all these stories together is the idea that oaths aren’t just about keeping promises. They’re about maintaining the fragile threads that hold the universe together. Break an oath, and you risk more than personal ruin; you risk unravelling the moral fabric of the world.
Oaths in Tolkien - from the disaster of Fëanor to the redemption of Theoden
These non-battle scenes in Rohan are among the most thrilling and satisfying of all; all the fate of the world seems to hang for a moment on Theoden as he pauses. We wonder whether the psychological damage of his spiritual enslavement by Saruman has been so great that he would forget his oaths and the oaths of his fathers, if he will remain himself in this moment of crisis. And we almost cheer when he decides.
And there’s no dry eye to be seen when the great king, risen from a living death to the defence of his realm, accepts the oath of Meriadoc of the Shire, a tiny hobbit, with all seriousness and solemnity. And the rest of the story tells us that Merry was a noble of Rohan to the end of his life.
Oaths, in this ancient sense, are personal, not legalistic, and tied directly to the meaning of personhood, kingship and nationhood, are still deeply embedded in our cultural consciousness.
And, as all these kinds of things do, this brings me to Tolkien. His world, Middle-earth, is a kind of pastiche of Western European, Celtic, and Anglo-Saxon/Scandinavian antiquity, and his ideas about the divinely binding power of oaths, and the terrible consequences of breaking them, come out of the same tradition that gives us the practice of swearing-in officers of the state on the Bible.
Be he foe or friend, be he foul or clean,
brood of Morgoth or bright Vala,
Elda or Maia or Aftercomer,
Man yet unborn upon Middle-earth,
neither law, nor love, nor league of swords,
dread nor danger, not Doom itself,
shall defend him from Fëanor, and Fëanor's kin,
whoso hideth or hoardeth, or in hand taketh,
finding keepeth or afar casteth
a Silmaril. This swear we all:
death we will deal him ere Day's ending,
woe unto world's end! Our word hear thou,
Eru Allfather! To the everlasting
Darkness doom us if our deed faileth.
On the holy mountain hear in witness
and our vow remember, Manwë and Varda!
The Annals of Aman, §134 (Morgoth's Ring, p. 112)
The dreadful Oath of Fëanor, which drove his sons to countless catastrophic, kinslaying tragedies - up to the destruction of virtually every elvish kingdom in Beleriand - all in the name of a vow they could never abandon. Or the haunting tale of Isildur, who failed to destroy the One Ring, breaking the higher call of his oath to oppose Sauron, leading to centuries of shadow.
Their Oath shall drive them, and yet betray them, and ever snatch away the very treasures that they have sworn to pursue.
Doom of Mandos in Quenta Silmarillion
Then there are the dreaded oathbreakers, Dead Men of Dunharrow, bound by their broken oath to fight for Isildur. They’re cursed to an undead existence as restless spirits until Aragorn, the true heir of the ancient line of kings, finally calls them to fulfil their vow. In Tolkien’s world, drawing on the cultures of ancient Europe, oaths are never just words; they’re chains, sometimes redemptive, often damning.
And what does Saruman, through the mouth of Grima Wormtongue, whisper in Theoden’s ear in his time of despairing enchantment? That oaths don’t matter, that there is no hope to be found in fulfilling them, that men will die either way… It was an echo of Sauron’s counsel of despair that destroyed Denethor, through the Palantir, who in the end abandoned his duty, and all hope.
In Tolkien’s legendarium, kingship is inextricably tied to the honouring of oaths. Aragorn’s legitimacy as king is proven not through mere lineage but through his ability to redeem broken oaths, especially by releasing the Dead Men of Dunharrow from their ancient curse1. This act isn’t just strategic; it’s a spiritual rectification, healing the tear in the moral fabric caused by oath-breaking.
Oaths, kings, princes and presidents
Oaths have always been more than public promises, accountable to “the people”. They are the very threads that bind leaders to their people, individuals to the divine, and kings to the land. In ancient traditions, a king’s word could shape the fate of a kingdom, and the breaking of that word could unravel the cosmic order itself. From the cursed heroes of Celtic myths to the fall of Troy, from the divine laws of the Hebrew Bible to Tolkien’s doomed oath-breakers, the message is clear: oaths are sacred ties. When broken, they echo beyond personal failure; they disrupt the moral and spiritual fabric that holds communities and even entire worlds together, and it’s not just the king who falls; it’s the order of society, the peace of the land, the harmony between heaven and earth.
Which leaves us, in the modern world, with an uncomfortable question: when our leaders swear oaths today, do we still believe in their binding power? Or have they become hollow rituals, mere echoes of a time when the cosmos itself seemed to care whether a king kept his word?
For reading to the end, you get a bonus:
It never gets old.
We must remember that these men broke their oath to Isildur to begin with because they had apostatised, and begun to worship Morgoth, through Sauron.
Interesting post. My tendency as an American is to regard almost all those who swear oaths as forsworn. It’s a mere formality that has no meaning unless you believe in God who rewards the good and punishes the wicked. And even then, in these days of the lies of liberalism and universalism are believed by most “Catholics” and just about everyone else, they are just a formality. That so many think nothing of perjuring themselves and therefore damning themselves unless they truly repent is truly horrible. Honor and integrity used to be valued. Even they cannot be relied on. It’s really disheartening that most of the time you can’t take a man’s word, not to mention his oath, as true. Our public officials and religious leaders prove it every day. As Jesus said say what you mean. Anything else is sin.
You're right about that scene. "It never gets old." I cry every time I watch that launch into battle. My response to the brave & noble horses: Go Beauties!