fritterfae

My Old Man by Joni Mitchell via Spotify

I had a horrible, and awkward conversation with my mother over text message today.  Turns out that I never told her that I had gotten married... Last year... I couldn't believe that I hadn't actually told her.  I tell her everything.  So it came as a surprise to both of us.  Needless to say she was upset.  I mean, marriages are one of those things that parents live for with their kids.  To miss out on one can be absolutely devastating.

And to be honest, that never even occurred to me. 

My husband and I have been with each other off and on for about 9 years.  We've been living together about three or four years now.  Hell, we got handfasted (a religious, spiritual binding ceremony) back in that first year we were dating.  I mean, this is not a relationship that came out of the blue. 

So, why did we get married? It wasn't because we loved each other.  We've loved each other forever.  It wasn't because we wanted to signify some kind of deeper commitment to each other.  That's why we got handfasted.  Well, the cold, hard truth of it is that we got married because he needed health insurance, because he wanted to play rugby.  That's really the long and the short of it. 

What was the wedding like?  Well.  I have a friend, who I ordained, who is a recognized officiant for marriages in DC.  We went and got the license, and she did a little ceremony in a friend's living room in front of about 5 of our friends.  We vowed to love, honor, and insure each other.  Seriously.  We did.  Synergistically my ordained officiant friend actually works in health care insurance sales.  So it was probably the most highly appropriate selection of officiants that we could have ever found.

Did it mean something to us?  Sure, but not really like life shattering, life altering, ceremonial hoo-ha. It was a thing we just needed to do. The marriage license itself just kind of sat in an envelope for like 15 months.  We only just recently put it in a frame on the wall.  Arc did that. 

Marriage to us never really felt like something that we needed to do.  It was something that I have been vehement about as a progressive gay man, that it is a matter of legal equality.  But neither he nor I felt like it was something that we needed to do to justify anything to anyone or to make a statement or to mark some kind of milestone off a checklist of life.  As Joni says "we don't need no piece of paper from the city hall, keeping us tied and true."  We've got that already.  We've had it for a long time.  And I imagine we will have it for a long time to come. The paper is just function following form. 

That's not very romantic really.  No fairy tale wedding.  No fancy cakes.  Just a form and a pen and a casual dinner.  About a week afterward I was on my flight to Asia for a month.  Just carrying on business as usual.

For me it was a blip on my own radar.  I didn't bother telling anyone, because it really didn't make much of a difference on my life.  We still act the same way that we did before.   We still talk to each other like we're insane.  We still gripe at each other about doing the dishes or the laundry. There's not really a whole lot that's changed.  Just a piece of paper on the wall.  Well, that and the health insurance.

ants made the leap to superorganism status when they evolved a sterile, altruistic worker caste. Sterile ants tend the queen's eggs and rear them, and defend the colony against invaders. Consider how unusual sterility is in nature. Normally organisms struggle to reproduce and that gives them an "agenda" of their own separate from the group's. But sterile worker ants have no personal agenda, since they cannot reproduce. They will fight to the death to defend the colony. In supporting the queen the allow her to lay more eggs than she could have otherwise. Sterile workers exhibiting altruistic behavior are so unusual and so beneficial that Holldobbler and Wilson suggest that they are the element enabling an insect colony to attain superorganism status. Once a colony evolves them, it has made the leap to that higher level of existence.

Though writing has become the most commonplace of information technologies, it remains in many ways the most magical. Brought into focus by properly educated eyes, the artificial glyphs scrawled onto the surface of objects leap unbidden into the mind, bringing with them sounds, meanings, and data.  In fact, it is very difficult to gaze intentionally upon a page of script written in a known language and not automatically begin reading it.  The ecophilosopher David Abram notes that a Zuni elder might focus her eyes upon a cactus and hear the succulent begin to speak, so do we hear voices pouring out of our printed alphabets.  "This is a form of animism that we take for granted, but it is animism nonetheless--as mysterious as a talking stone." We forget this mystery for the same reason we forget that writing is a technology: We have so thoroughly absorbed this machine into the grey sponge of our brains that it is extremely tough to figure out where writing stops and the mind itself starts. As Walter Ong notes in Orality and Literacy, "More than any other single invention, writing has transformed human consciousness."

"MAGICK is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will."
-- Book Four, Part Three: Magick in Theory and Practice by Aleister Crowley, p. 126

the Science and Art

And you who seek to know Me, know that the seeking and yearning will avail you not, unless you know the Mystery: for if that which you seek, you find not within yourself, you will never find it without.

(Illustration: It is my Will to inform the World of certain facts within my knowledge. I therefore take "magical weapons," pen, ink, and paper; I write "incantations" --these sentences--in the "magical language," i.e., that which is understood by the people I wish to instruct; I call forth "spirits," such as printers, publishers, booksellers, and so forth, and constrain them to convey my message to those people. The composition and distribution of the book is thus an act of

MAGICK

by which I cause Changes to take place in conformity with my Will.)

The drum dates back roughly 500 years, and is believed to have been introduced by a Yoruba king named Shangó el rey del tambor.

He is owner of the Bata (3 double-headed drums) and of music in general, as well as the Art of Dance and Entertainment.

For a long time Europeans in sub-Saharan Africa had no idea. In fact they had no idea that the drums conveyed information at all. In their own cultures, in special cases a drum could be an instrument of signaling, along with the bugle and the bell, used to transmit a small set of messages: attack; retreat; come to church. But they could not conceive of talking drums.

Gleick, James (2011). The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood (pp. 13-14). Pantheon. Kindle Edition.

In solving the enigma of the drums, Carrington found the key in a central fact about the relevant African languages. They are tonal languages, in which meaning is determined as much by rising or falling pitch contours as by distinctions between consonants or vowels. This feature is missing from most Indo-European languages, including English, which uses tone only in limited, syntactical ways: for example, to distinguish questions (“you are happy ”) from declarations (“you are happy ”). But for other languages, including, most famously, Mandarin and Cantonese, tone has primary significance in distinguishing words. So it does in most African languages.

Gleick, James (2011). The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood (p. 23). Pantheon. Kindle Edition.

First let me tell you some assumptions I will be making.

Greek Literature: The Gospels were written in common (Koine) Greek, for a Greek audience. I see the Gospel literature fitting itself in with other Greek mythological literature, from its time, and before it.

Roman vs. Greek: Yes, I understand that I'm talking about Roman ritual, and this story is in a Greek/Roman/Jewish context. I am assuming that Greek ritual sacrifice was not terribly different from Roman sacrifice, excepting the garments one wore, and the lack of head covering in Greek ritual.

Book vs. Movie: The film is not entirely based on the Gospel, but also on other Christian mystical literature. I may flip between the text of the Gospels and the film, so please bear with me.

My religious work to date has been in a personal eclectic Wiccan tradition. Slowly I came to find myself being called to Venus, and over time I began searching to find more information about how devotions were originally performed in ancient Rome. In this
deepening search I found Nova Roma (think SCA for Classicists), and the Religio Romana website. Pontifex Graecus⁽¹⁾ provides a very well researched outline for how Roman sacrifices were performed; let me briefly cover the steps here.

1) Praefatio: Here preliminary offerings of incense, wine, water, etc. are made to Ianus and the deity for whom the sacrifice is intended.

2) Precatio: The sacrificer will make a prayer to the deity stating the intent of the sacrifice, what will be sacrificed, and what is expected in return. The sacrificer will wash his hands either before or after this prayer.

3) Immolatio: When a living animal was being sacrificed, it would be washed, and decorated with ribbons or gold, and cows were sometimes covered in a cloth. There are several steps to this phase:

a) Consecrating the victim, by anointing, asperging, or application of spelt meal.
b) The butchers would verify that the victim was willing, i.e. not panicking, or showing signs of distress,       and showing consent by lowering its head. Then it would be killed.
c) The victim was laid on its back and the belly opened. The haruspex, an omen reader,
    would inspect the internal organs to determine if the victim had been accepted.
d) The victim was divided into an offering for the Deity, and the rest of the meat
    profanated and eaten in a banquet.

4) Redditio: This is the actual act of devoting the sacrifice to the God. The offering would be disposed of in a manner appropriate to the deity being worshipped, i.e. chthonic gods would receive their offerings by burial, or in a ditch; water gods, in a river or stream, etc.

5) Profanatio: The sacrificer would profane the rest of the sacrifice simply by touching it and the meat taken to the following banquet.

6) Epulum: This is the feast of the profanated meat.

Epulum

The story of the Passion, in all of the Gospels, begins with the Last Supper. Anyone who has attended a communion service has heard the words, "Take this. This is my body. Drink this. This is my blood." Jesus is providing here a prophecy, that he will be a ritual sacrifice, and that this act is representative of the banquet feast following the slaughter of an animal. Greek drama is full of prophetic speeches. We need only look to Oedipus, the most infamous of oracular deniers, to know what happens when people receive a dooming prophecy. They don't understand, and they don't believe it. They will do anything to prevent it. This scene is also where Peter is told he will deny Jesus three times, and what does he do? He doesn't believe it. But the audience knows. Every Greek citizen knew all the mythology that was turned into drama for the festival of Dionysus. And every Greek citizen would have known, from the earliest age, how the living sacrifices were carried out. When this scene occurred in the story, everyone in the audience would have known exactly what was going to happen next.

Precatio

After the Last Supper, Jesus and the apostles go to the Garden of Gethsemane. In the Gospel of John, the entirety of chapter 17 is a prayer from Jesus to his God. He tells of his works for the deity, that this prayer is on behalf of the people he has been given (the Apostles), and that he is coming to the deity, as sacrificial victim. He ends this prayer with the desired outcome, ."..and my desire is that they may be with me where I am, so that they may look upon my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the world began" (John 17:24)⁽²⁾.

Immolatio

Flash forward a bunch here. There's been a trial, he was found guilty, and brought to the Romans to be executed. Pilate sent Jesus out to be flogged, and the soldiers placed the crown of thorns on his head and draped him in a purple cloak. Think of the bulls, with gilded horns, and fringed coverings being led through the streets to be killed. Even in the mockery of the soldiers, the unknown sacrificial actions were continuing. In this garb he was brought back before the mob and handed over to Pilate.

When seeing the film I was unaware of this particular scene from John, and I had to look to find it. Pilate stands with Jesus before the screaming mob and says to Jesus, "Surely you know that I have the authority to release you, and authority to crucify you?" Jesus replied, "You would have no authority at all over me if it had not been granted you from above" (John 19:10-11). Pilate is verifying that the victim is willing, and interpreting this twisted answer determines that Jesus is indeed ready to be sacrificed.

Now, I looked, and only in the Gospel of Matthew do we find the scene where Pilate washes his hands. In this Pagan interpretation, and in the popular understanding, this is a very key image. The washing of the hands is done some time before or after the prayers to the deity. Since Jesus himself made those prayers, had been dressed in ritual garb, and had presented himself as a willing victim, to make this a holy sacrifice it is only fitting that the sacrificer Pilate should wash his hands. This is a double act of purification. He says in the text, "My hands are clean of this man's blood" (Matt. 27:24), but in this public declaration he has also unknowingly purified himself to present a living sacrifice.

Flash forward some more. After laboring up the hill to Golgotha, Jesus is crucified and dies upon the cross. In the film and in the Gospel of John we find the following account: "The soldiers accordingly came to the men crucified with Jesus and broke the legs of each in turn, but when they came to Jesus and found he was already dead they did not break his legs. But one of the soldiers thrust a lance into his side, and at once there was a flow of blood and water" (John 19:32-34). As with all living sacrifices the victim is opened and the entrails read; the soldier need not go any further in opening the body, because this would surely have been seen as an omen that this sacrifice was indeed holy and accepted.

Redditio

Unlike the sacrifice of an animal, a human sacrifice would surely not have been consumed, and the entirety of the victim would most likely have been buried according to the tradition dictated by that deity. Here the body of Jesus is given a burial shroud by Joseph of Arimathaea, anointed with myrrh and aloe and placed in a tomb, only to rise again. But hearken back to the Last Supper: "Take this, this is my body." Jesus was consumed, the night before, and every event that transpired afterward, made that prophecy come true, just like every other Greek tragedy. And also, like other Greek tragedies, all of the characters involved in the events were unaware of what they were doing. When Jesus said "Forgive them for they know not what they do," I had that moment of realization, that no, they really don't know. Even though every step has been taken, and every act led into the next, none of them were aware of the huge amount of meaning in this terrible though all-too-common act of crucifixion.

It's my contention that as a piece of Greek literature, written for a Greek audience, the Gospel writers would most certainly have drawn upon existing Pagan cult practices to add weight and dramatic tension to the narrative of the Passion. By placing the concluding act of the Epulum at the beginning of the story, the Classical audience would have been looking for each of these cues in the story, and seeing each of them fulfilled would have been just as shocking to them, as it was to me when I witnessed it in the theater. The image of Pilate washing his hands made my hair stand on end, because I have performed vegetative sacrifices to Pomona and to Venus, and I have stood there washing my hands before my people.

Never in my life would I have expected to feel as though I was living in that age, thousands of years ago, when these stories were first being told. Me, the Pagan, knowing the ways of his people, and being presented with this story, watching each detail unfold, and gasping at every item further down the list. This makes me wonder, of all the millions of Christian people in this world, could any of them have felt this experience as I did? Will any of the others of my Pagan family dare to see this film, to experience this strange connection with the old ways?

How rare a gift I have been given; to see a story so old, perhaps in the way it was meant to be seen.

Endnotes:

1) Graecus, Antonius Gryllus, Pontifex. Template and Guidelines for Domestic Roman Sacrifice.
2) Oxford Study Bible, Revised English Bible with the Apocrypha. New York : Oxford University Press, 1992. All biblical quotations taken from this version of the text.

Secrecy as Power / Proclamation as Power

by Occult Forum Archive » Wed Dec 15, 2004 12:24 am